Hire a grizzled old skeptic as your VP of marketing

Sorry to be philosophical for a moment here, but it fits today’s topic.

Human society needs two impulses: protection and exploration. Somebody needs to explore the great unknown, try the new food, make friends with the weird tribe on the other side of the river, and somebody needs to make sure we don’t burn the house down doing that stuff.

This often plays out as the young against the old, which is a theme in an article Bo Sacks distributed last week called “‘Over-65s should be an advertiser’s dream’… so why aren’t they?” by Omar Oakes.

People over 65 have money, and they spend it. People over 55 are two and a half times wealthier than the rest of the population. Isn’t that exactly what an advertiser wants?

It turns out the older crowd is wise to your tricks. They don’t pay as much attention to advertising.

But part of it might be that marketers are obsessed with young people. How many times have you heard a marketing expert talk about how to reach Gen Z? But as Bob Hoffman would point out, they don’t have any money.

There’s much more to the article, so I’ll link it below and you can read it for yourself, but I want to get back to my theme, which is that a good marketing department needs creative, crazy new ideas – to find new markets and new approaches – but it also needs somebody to say “not so fast, Junior.”

Think of the Metaverse. That was a stupid concept, and I’m glad I called that one early. But think of all the money that was wasted trying to make the Metaverse happen – investing in the Metaverse, buying NFTs for the Metaverse, reading endless articles about how to cash in on the Metaverse.

“What are you doing about the Metaverse?” people would ask, and I’d say “I’ll ride there on my Segway, wearing my Google Glass.”

As an old high school friend used to say, “meet you there.”

Marketing conferences are all about how you should invest in the latest new gimmick – which, what a coincidence, is exactly what the speaker happens to do in his day job.

The shiny new object is usually a piece of discarded aluminum foil from a hot pocket. But sometimes it’s a silver coin.

How do you manage this?

Hire the excitable young marketers who want to sell to Gen. Z and chase the latest craze, but make sure they report to a grizzled old skeptic who asks some simple questions like, “but do these people buy anything?”

Resources

‘Over-65s should be an advertiser’s dream’… so why aren’t they?
https://the-media-leader.com/over-65s-should-be-an-advertisers-dream-so-why-arent-they/

Dial back your expectations for the Metaverse
https://krehbielgroup.com/2022/10/27/dial-back-your-expectations-for-the-metaverse/