Publications (including theCLIKK) tend to have a bias towards new, young, and shiny things. There are a multitude of reasons for this—curiosity, opportunity, staying current—but it’s too easy to overlook what (or who) is already here, and that’s especially true of marketing for Generation X.
Alas, Gen X is a middle child of recent American history; born between 1965 and 1980, they’re sandwiched between Baby Boomers (the enormous post-WWII group) and Millennials (the first to come of age during the Internet Era). Many of them were born in one of the most cynical times imaginable, in the 10 years between Kennedy’s assassination and Nixon’s resignation, with 15 more years of Cold War after that. Some say it’s called Generation X because “X” is a variable that refused to be defined. No wonder they invented grunge.
Anyways. We arrive on this topic by way of Neil Patel and his post on targeting Gen X with paid ads. If that sounds oddly specific, we’d counter that it’s smartly specific; we’ve seen plenty of chatter recently about appealing to Millennials and Gen Z, but very little about appealing to Gen X…
… even though, by this point, Gen X is the group in the prime of middle-aged adulthood, which (joking aside) is when any given generation will have real adult money to spend. So it’s on you to buck the trend, learn that audience, and go where a big piece of the money pie lives.
Oh, and one more thing. Neil is absolutely right to caution that Gen X, like any generation, is not a monolithic entity; the strokes have to be painted broadly when you’re talking about everyone born in a 15-year period. At the same time, let’s not forget that advertising is a big-picture game (forest, not trees) and that successful ads were never meant to appeal to everyone anyway.
0 Comments