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Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Demographics, culture wars, and advertising
There is an ongoing legal and marketing illusion in which companies are treated like people, “legal persons”. In reality that concept has serious limitations, as for example you can’t jail a company that commits crimes. One frequently touted fake personality trait is pretending that companies have values. They don’t, other than shareholder value. Companies pretend to have values to be more attractive to both customers and employees, but anybody who has worked for a while in any company can point out numerous discrepancies between his real work experience and the proclaimed company values. One highly visible example this year was how many companies changed their “values” when the US administration changed.
Due to the culture wars, there has been heated discussion over the last years on how “woke” companies are, and how that affects their bottom line, e.g. “go woke, go broke”. And I was wondering in how far that is less of a culture war story, and more of a demographic and generational story. Since the beginning of time, young people have often tended to be more progressive than old people. And since the Mad Men days of the growing importance of advertising to our consumer economy, advertising has tended to be targeted mostly on younger consumers. There is a cold, economic logic to that: Tastes are formed at a younger age, and if you can gain a loyal customer at young age, you might be able to keep that customer for a long time.
However, this assumes that advertising only gains customers and isn’t losing you any. With culture wars issues becoming increasingly divisive, that is no longer the case. Whether it is Bud Light, the story of Gilette making an ad against toxic masculinity, or Disney’s remake of Snow White, there are now a growing number of stories where marketing has done more harm than good to a brand. And there are demographic and socio-economic factors that play into that. Who are your customers, and how much money do they spend on your product? While it might be fashionable to complain about Boomers on social media, companies have to consider that there are a lot more of those boomers than there are younger people, and that, on average, those Boomers have a lot more disposable income than Gen Z.
That doesn’t mean that advertising shouldn’t target younger generations or shouldn’t be modern and progressive. But there are a lot of progressive themes that either are also attractive to older customers, or at the very least aren’t insulting to them. Disney’s marketing for Snow White was a disaster not for being progressive, but for being actively insulting to the original and the generations that loved that original. That mixes badly with the very idea of a remake, which is to exploit nostalgia. It also mixes badly with cinema customer demographics: Cinema goers are an aging demographic, both because of younger generations being more likely to stream content, and because a night out to the cinema is an increasingly unaffordable luxury.
To a lesser degree this also applies to the video game business. It is good to modernize genres of gaming, but not to a point where you lose older demographics. The average age of the video gamer is increasing, and the idea that games are for children is totally outdated. Some people argue that for example Civ 7 went too far with modernization, losing a lot of older fans of the series, while having a price point that wasn’t really attractive for a younger and more casual crowd. In that case a split might have been a better idea: A classic Civ game for the fans, who spend hundreds of hours playing that, which justifies a higher price, and a casual version on mobile platforms with more accessible monetization options, like Free2Play.
In the end, companies aren’t people. They don’t have values, because they don’t have convictions. While “fighting the man” might sound attractive to young people (until inevitably they turn into the man later in life), that sort of adversial culture doesn’t really adapt well to marketing strategies. Gaining one younger and poorer customer while scaring off two older and richer ones isn’t economically viable. If you have fake values, at least make sure that the promotion of these values increases your bottom line.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:14 AM Permanent Link
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Would you care to cite your sources for the statement "Cinema goers are an aging demographic"? That stood out immediately to me as the opposite of everything I've seen reported on the subject over the last decade or so. A quick google search brings up numerous sources for figures saying the opposite. For example:
"From January 2024 to the end of June 2024, 30% of the audience was made up of women 18-34, with men 18-34 coming in next at 23% for a combined 53%. That's not to say that other demos weren't also going to the movies. 23% of the audience were under the age of 18, and 8% were over the age of 55."
That's from https://www.thepeopleplatform.com/blog/2024-mid-year-state-of-cinema-report-kids-movies-sequels-pave-the-path-forward-for-cinema and is talking about the USA. Slightly older but still relevant might be the figures from MPAA U.S./Canada Theatrical Market Statistics, Attendance Demographics for 2017, March 2018 as reported at Movieguide (https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/who-goes-to-the-movies-4.html) which says:
"Of the 264.7 million who went to movies at least once in 2017, 34.41 million were age 2-11 and 26.47 million were age 12-17, while 29.12 million were age 18-24, 63.53 million were age 25-39, 34.41 million were age 40-49, 31.76 were age 50-59, and 45 million were age 60 or over."
Boomers may have the most money and they may have grown up with the cinema as a prime form of entertainment but they notoriously don't go there much any more. There's an argument to be made that that's because there's not much being made that they want to see but I suspect it has at least as much to do with the fact that old people don't really like to go out after dark, especially in cities. And that's because the streets are filled with young people.
"From January 2024 to the end of June 2024, 30% of the audience was made up of women 18-34, with men 18-34 coming in next at 23% for a combined 53%. That's not to say that other demos weren't also going to the movies. 23% of the audience were under the age of 18, and 8% were over the age of 55."
That's from https://www.thepeopleplatform.com/blog/2024-mid-year-state-of-cinema-report-kids-movies-sequels-pave-the-path-forward-for-cinema and is talking about the USA. Slightly older but still relevant might be the figures from MPAA U.S./Canada Theatrical Market Statistics, Attendance Demographics for 2017, March 2018 as reported at Movieguide (https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/who-goes-to-the-movies-4.html) which says:
"Of the 264.7 million who went to movies at least once in 2017, 34.41 million were age 2-11 and 26.47 million were age 12-17, while 29.12 million were age 18-24, 63.53 million were age 25-39, 34.41 million were age 40-49, 31.76 were age 50-59, and 45 million were age 60 or over."
Boomers may have the most money and they may have grown up with the cinema as a prime form of entertainment but they notoriously don't go there much any more. There's an argument to be made that that's because there's not much being made that they want to see but I suspect it has at least as much to do with the fact that old people don't really like to go out after dark, especially in cities. And that's because the streets are filled with young people.
Maybe it is different in the US? My comment was from snippets of news I heard over the years, but mostly concerning Europw. Having trouble finding solid data that covers more than the last 5 years, which were obviously atypical. Found data from Australia at https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/audiences/attendance-patterns/by-age that suggest that people over 50 went less often to the cinema in the 1970s and 80s than they were in the 2010s, while there was a lot less change in the other age groups.
I think lots of companies are actually very bad at identifying what brings their customers to them and how to keep them. Look at Target's recent troubles in the US.
A few years ago they faced a lot of social media backlash from right wingers for simply selling Pride items and even other items with rainbows and colors even if they weren't specifically LGBTQ related. While the backlash did make it onto mainstream news coverage I can't find anything showing store traffic or sales were affected. Target ended up removing some LGBTQ Pride items from their stores reportedly due to harassment and safety issues of their store staff. This of course pissed off a lot of left leaning people.
The CEO, like those of many other companies, publicly embraced Trump's initiatives after the election. They eliminated their DEI and other Equity programs. Now they are facing a situation where they are down in store foot traffic for the past 10 weeks and are currently facing multiple boycotts from both religious groups and left wing advocacy groups. They are also suffering from Trump's tariffs and the CEO was part of a group of businessmen who warned Trump about empty shelves coming to stores soon if things don't change.
I don't know if you guys have Targets in your countries but to paint you a picture of what Target is it's basically a fancier Wal-Mart. People don't shop at target because it has good deals or items they can't find elsewhere. They shop at Target because they choose too and don't mind paying higher prices for the better shopping experience (less crowds) and supposedly higher quality merchandise.
Their main shopper demographic is younger white females with disposable income who tend to be college educated. This is exactly the type of clientele who can simply choose to shop elsewhere if for whatever reason they don't like what the company is doing.
I'm definitely not some business savvy person but I would say publicly embracing policies that upset your largest customer demographic is not a good way to run a business. See Tesla for another example of the same thing.
A few years ago they faced a lot of social media backlash from right wingers for simply selling Pride items and even other items with rainbows and colors even if they weren't specifically LGBTQ related. While the backlash did make it onto mainstream news coverage I can't find anything showing store traffic or sales were affected. Target ended up removing some LGBTQ Pride items from their stores reportedly due to harassment and safety issues of their store staff. This of course pissed off a lot of left leaning people.
The CEO, like those of many other companies, publicly embraced Trump's initiatives after the election. They eliminated their DEI and other Equity programs. Now they are facing a situation where they are down in store foot traffic for the past 10 weeks and are currently facing multiple boycotts from both religious groups and left wing advocacy groups. They are also suffering from Trump's tariffs and the CEO was part of a group of businessmen who warned Trump about empty shelves coming to stores soon if things don't change.
I don't know if you guys have Targets in your countries but to paint you a picture of what Target is it's basically a fancier Wal-Mart. People don't shop at target because it has good deals or items they can't find elsewhere. They shop at Target because they choose too and don't mind paying higher prices for the better shopping experience (less crowds) and supposedly higher quality merchandise.
Their main shopper demographic is younger white females with disposable income who tend to be college educated. This is exactly the type of clientele who can simply choose to shop elsewhere if for whatever reason they don't like what the company is doing.
I'm definitely not some business savvy person but I would say publicly embracing policies that upset your largest customer demographic is not a good way to run a business. See Tesla for another example of the same thing.
Seems like the moral is to avoid getting involved with any 'moral campaign' other than the most anodyne (cancer ribbons or whatever). Anything controversial will offend one side more than it pleases the other (and there are also those who will demand a mile if you give them an inch).
This reminds me of the time when my girlfriend broke up with me citing a need to "pursue better opportunities for shareholder value."
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