Brands must not neglect the growth market of older consumers to focus solely on youthful audiences, a leading executive from Harley-Davidson has warned.
UK-based marketing website Warc is quoting Mark-Hans Richer, Harley-Davidson’s chief marketing officer, who discussed this topic at the Association of National Advertisers 2015 Masters of Marketing Conference in Orlando, Florida.
“I’m going to go heretical on you, and say that youth does not own cool,” Richer said. “Youth does not own growth. Youth does not own innovation or disruption.
“And ‘old people’ are a growth market, too. We marketers worship at the altar of youth at our peril.”
Warc says Harley-Davidson has, in fact, aimed to expand its customer base in the last few years, with an emphasis on reaching a more diverse group of consumers.
But this shift has worked hand in hand with a renewed commitment to consumers who are often a lower priority for other brands, despite being a valuable and growing demographic in the US.
“The market potential in front of you today is 111 million 50-plus adults. Ten years from now, it’ll be another 17 million. And ten years from then, it will be another 32 million … and on and on and on,” said Richer.
“The growth prospects are rich and I fear that we are ignoring this.”
Building on this argument, he cited a recent study which pegged millennial spending power in America at US$200 billion. “Contrast that,” he said, “with the buying power of people aged 50-plus – $3.2 trillion.”
From Ray-Ban sunglasses to bands like the Rolling Stones, he suggested these cohorts actually share a lot of things in common when it comes to what they buy and enjoy.
And Harley-Davidson experienced this first hand as its tour for Project Livewire, its first electronic motorcycle, attracted attention from older and younger consumers alike.
“We tend to lock ourselves off into these boxes [that assume] one generation has a certain mindset and a different generation has a different mindset,” said Richer.
“But they share a lot more mindsets than we typically give them credit for.”
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