A Fine Line Between Marketing and Harassment: The Case Against Age-Targeted Advertising

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


Get two or more Baby Boomers talking, and sooner or later, the topic of age-targeted cable television ads is likely to come up - often accompanied by raised voices, furious scowls, and language of a most un-ladylike or un-gentlemanly sort.

Simply put, the vast majority of Boomers don't just dislike these ads. They consider them malicious, sadistic, bullying, vulgar, and possibly fitting the legal definition of harassment and stalking. Or as one of my friends said the other day, "They've taken all the joy out of watching TV, which some people still like to do."

If your rejoinder is that "there have always been ads targeted to age groups," the answer is, "Yes, there have been: ads targeted to young children. And both parents and child protection groups have been agitating against them for decades."

But mass age-targeting of adult populations didn't start happening in a big way until two years ago, when every cable television customer - which essentially means everyone who watches TV at home - was finally required to utilize plug-in cable boxes, which many people had refused to do until it became a mandatory requirement for getting cable programming at all.

We seem to remember that this government-mandated requirement for plug-in boxes was supposed to have something to do with either National Security or being able to get alerts if tornadoes or hurricanes were coming one's way.

We now suspect, however, that it had more to do with a welfare-like bailout of troubled cable companies, gifting them with one-billionth of a cent per showing or whatever it is they receive for ads targeting various populations: by locality, by ethnicity, or by age.

To be honest, we don't really mind ads targeted by locality, telling viewers about the stores, restaurants, home improvement purveyors, or other businesses in their immediate vicinities. Even if ones hates advertising in general - and Yes, I'm one of those ad-resistant people - one has to admit that at least locality-based ads have some sort of relevance to one's life and needs. So OK: in this instance, target away!

Ethnic-based advertising is more problematic, especially when it becomes insulting. For instance, ad targeters seem to consider daytime television - including quiz shows and talk shows - the newly-designated province of Black American viewers, with maybe a few Latinos thrown in for good measure. You now rarely see a Caucasian or Asian actor or actress populating the ads shown during this kind of programming - which in itself is OK, I guess.

What's insulting is the kind of advertisements targeters consider relevant to this supposed audience: heavy on payday lenders, pawn shops, deep-discount life insurance, the occasional bail bondsman, and auto loans geared to "those with imperfect credit." I am not Black nor Latina, but if I were, I'd consider this targeting nasty verging on malicious.

But age-targeted ads are even worse - and almost certainly illegal under various statutes, although for some reason, the lawyers aren't agitating yet.

Younger adults are targeted for some of the abuse. Shows geared to teens have way too many acne treatment ads, for instance, 80 percent of them featuring Adam Levine. And people in their 20s and 30s may not appreciate the near-constant bombardment of their screens with ads for family-oriented smartphone plans - "I once got eight in a row," says a friend - occasionally relieved by spiels for cars, car insurance, more cars, more car insurance, and pet products.

Nothing compares, however, to what marketing targeters inflict upon you if they even suspect you're over 50. (We've heard the cut-off point may now have been lowered to age 45 or even 42, but by age 50, every one of us has a  bull's-eye targeting our viewing eyeballs.)

Most "old people ads," seemingly produced under the aegis of marketers in junior high school, would be offensive to target viewers of any age - 85, 105, 125. But they are extraordinarily offensive to my fellow Baby Boomers, one-third of the U.S. population. As we've noted in previous stories, despite the ignorance and bias of far too many kiddie marketers, Boomers are in our 50s and 60s, far more fitness-oriented and in far better health than previous generations in these "prime of life" decades. We're still vital, attractive, active, and productive. Many of us have no desire to nor intention of "retiring" ever. And we in no way consider ourselves "old people" or "seniors." Neither should marketers.

Alas, however, most age-targeting marketers do. And what, in their infinite non-wisdom, these targeters believe Boomers are interested in is - prescription medicine. Also - prescription medicine. And did I mention? - prescription medicine.

According the the age-targeters, once you cross over an imaginary Marketing-Maginot-Line into Old-People-Land  - i.e. when you turn 50 (or possibly 45 or even 42) - your existence must be marred by heart disease, cancerous tumors, diabetes, arthritis, severe hayfever, migraine headaches, something called yeast infections - do you get them from baking bread? - erectile dysfunction (presumably for girls as well as boys), and a whole plethora of diseases I swear I have never heard of, but am constantly being urged to treat.

Perhaps I have a limited marketing imagination - (thank goodness) - but I don't understand the basic value of advertising prescription drugs - as opposed to over-the-counter products - on television in the first place. Shouldn't these drugs be marketed only to physicians and other health professionals? Aren't the doctors themselves quite angry? In this age of limited healthcare resources and the push to rein in escalating entitlements, do we really and truly want to encourage generations of potential patients mistrusting their physicians' judgment and expertise and urging them to prescribe "that cute little aqua pill I saw on Bravo last week?"

Just as bad is how egregiously these age-targeted medicine ads ignore all basic principles of targeted marketing per se. Because if marketers can accurately figure out into which age ranges their viewer-targets fall, can they not somehow also figure out whether or not we actually have any of the diseases and ailments whose cures they're so furiously trying to sell us?

In my own case, I have had my share of sports and other injuries over the years - a broken wrist, a broken leg, and a serious eye injury that required several operations. But other than minor food poisoning, bug bites, and a few colds - all treated successfully over-the-counter - the last real "illness" I had was whooping cough the summer between 4th and 5th grades. The only prescription drug I recall having taken as an adult was a terrific painkiller, after I had some impacted wisdom teeth pulled. (This drug made me tipsy and cheery, like drinking a full bottle of champagne, and dentists are welcome to prescribe it for me again.)

With a little extra research, Dear Marketers-Who-Target, you could have discovered that: I don't have any chronic illnesses whatsoever; if anything, I am an anti-hypochondriac; and as little of my budget as possible is spent on anything remotely "medical." So, Dear Fellas, are you really accomplishing anything, other than making me angry, by bombarding me with nonstop medical ads, based on your misconceptions and biases about my Baby Boomer generation?

Angry about these ads, I am - along with pretty much every Baby Boomer I've talked to. Since the imposition of universal cable boxes replacing VCRs, ads per se are getting harder and harder to avoid completely, so everyone's come up with their individual ways of coping. Personally, I keep crossword puzzles or sudoko handy, to occupy my brain whenever the first frame of an "old people ad" comes into sight. Or I use my remote's "Last" button and set it to the Disney Channel, the only remaining place on cable TV where disease-focused advertising's taboo, because it scares the little children.

If the Market Targeters reading this - and I hope some are - want to know what they might substitute for their obnoxious and sadistic medical ads, if they truly care to reach a Baby Boomer audience, the simple answer is: The same advertising you show everybody else! Humans don't morph into a different species once they pass an arbitrary Age Boundary imposed by the kiddie mis-managers of advertising programs.

Now, me - let's be frank - you probably won't reach in any case, because I have very low tolerance for all advertising in video or digital form. I will read interesting "advertorials" - ones that actually contain appealing information - in upscale print magazines like Smithsonian or National Geographic. But on television - Well, maybe you could hook me with baby pandas. "Baby pandas love our beer." "Baby pandas drive our cars." "Nine out of ten baby pandas prefer shopping at our department store."

But most Boomers, I believe, won't actively curse, write letters to their Congresspeople, or throw plates of steaming spaghetti at ads featuring cosmetics or clothes or restaurants or stores or furniture or - Goddess help us! - even smartphones.

Just spare us from a sadistic diet of ads about chronic illness, wheelchairs, prosthetics, reverse mortgages, and anything whatsoever featuring either Joan Lundin or the AARP.

A last note to financially-strapped cable companies: Whatever the Ninnies-who-Market are paying you to bombard Baby Boomers with these ads, most of us would happily pay you double or triple - three-billionths of a cent per showing? - to rid our screens of age-targeted stalking.

And to every ambitious class-action attorney out there: Willing potential plaintiffs abound. So what in the world are you waiting for?

Anti-Boomer Rhetoric: Time to Can (If Not Ban) It, Once and For All

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


Baby Boomers aren't responsible for the Black Plague, the Inquisition, or the extinction of the dinosaurs. But you might think we were, judging from the irresponsible rhetoric of disdain - and sometimes pure hatred - for our generation that's been permeating the Internet the past few years.

One case in point: an article on the "dumbing down of America" featured at a leading Canadian news magazine just a few days ago. The article, very readable, if somewhat disjointed, covers everything from anti-evolutionism laws to gun control to government healthcare. Although I found it rather biased in favor of the political Left, I enjoyed the read - until two-thirds into the story, the author quoted a professor from a California university, who - Yes, you guessed it - blamed it all on the Baby Boomers.

Boomers, said she, "were so triumphalist in promoting pop culture and demoting the canon" (of traditional education) that we "deserve most of the blame" for the dumbing down of American culture.

Now, although as an ex-college teacher, I hate to disparage a fellow academic, this professor's comments are downright wrong on any number of levels.

First of all, the "triumphalist" extension of the academic curriculum which occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, when Boomers were undergraduates, extended it into such fields as African-American history and women's studies, which most now admit had been badly shortchanged and neglected in the "canon." This professor herself teaches film and media studies, a "triumphalist extension of the canon" which didn't occur until later decades, maybe the 1990s, at most universities.

Moreover, Boomers were students in these canon-stretching decades, not professors. The teachers who deserve the credit for curriculum changes in these years came from Boomers' parents' - or even grandparents' - generations.

Besides, looking down one's nose at "pop culture" is both foolishly snobbish and short-sighted in an historical sense. Well-educated people are those who want to learn about the world through various prisms - highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow alike. And as all historians of culture know, what's branded as  "pop culture" in one generation may well become highbrow "canon" as quickly as a generation or two later. The comedies of Aristophanes and the plays of Shakespeare, for instance, were part of the "pop culture" scene in their respective ages. The Impressionists, among other groups of artists, were scorned and ridiculed by the French Academie des Beaux-Arts, protectors of the "canon" in that country.

But our topic isn't pop culture. It's Baby Boomers and the off-the-cuff, by-rote condemnation of an entire large and influential generation, who deserve much better. The professor of media studies - whose subject area alone should have made her more sensitive to the effect such casual remarks can have - clearly felt no qualms whatsoever pinning so weighty an accusation as blame for the "dumbing down of America" on the beleaguered Boomers.

But snide, silly, and malicious remarks like these are now standard fare among a certain smarmy segment of the chattering professions - journalists, politicians, and to a lesser extent, business and academic commentators.

One glaring example was the apparently well-liked young female blogger, who compared Baby Boomers - all 80 million of us in the U.S. - to the Ku Klux Klan and expressed her hope that we would die off quickly, along with the Klan, because people like her - biased people? Mean Girls? - would never really be free to live the lives they want to live until the last Klan member - and Baby Boomer - were dead.

One could dismiss this screed as just plain idiotic, until one notes that it spread like wildfire all over the worldwide Internet - and pretty much no one "called out" this young blogger for her, shall we say, uncharitable attitude towards Boomers.

Similarly, a few young bloggers have taken to publishing Boomer Death Watch columns, a la the Celebrity Death Watch pieces that Hollywood has gifted us with for decades.

The difference is that the Hollywood stories, whether you find them interesting or in horribly bad taste, have focused on actors, directors, musicians, and other entertainment figures in their late 80s, at the youngest, with many in their middle 90s. Boomers, you may have noticed - or didn't - are in their 50s and 60s, or thirty to forty years younger than the Hollywood Death Watch "honorees."

To which I say: Enough! Basta! No mas! Stop the Insanity! and, if I knew them, similar phrases in Tagalog, Swahili, Navajo, and Tuvaluan.

If it is now Taboo to make malicious blanket statements about either sex or any race, religion, or ethnic group, it's high time anti-Boomer propaganda went the way of the apatosauri, which - No - Boomers did not make extinct by feeding them Brie gone bad and leftover sushi.

To editors and other media gatekeepers: When someone makes a nasty anti-Boomer comment on your site or channel, treat it the same way you'd treat a sexist, racist, or religiously insensitive remark. To Google, Bing and other search engines: Consider "filtering" such remarks, the way you now protect, say, Satanists and those who sacrifice baby antelopes.

And to my fellow Boomers around the world: When you come across a nasty or foolish or downright sadistic anti-Boomer blog or article, muster your courage and conviction - even in the face of lurking Trolls - and tell them, "I am a proud and honorable Baby Boomer, and what you said offends me."





Ellen Brandt, proud and honorable Baby Boomer, is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, which seeks to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad, including those over age 50.







  

EllenImpromptu, Series Introduction

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


We've decided to expand the scope of the EllenImpromptu blog series and present this new Introduction to explain the changes.

EllenImpromptu was meant to contain a grab bag of pieces which, for various reasons, do not fit comfortably into the format of Destitute Ivy Leaguer - Will Work For Change, the blog associated with our Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, a broad-based, non-profit, non-partisan venture focused on the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the United States and abroad.

For instance, the first story in the EllenImpromptu series focuses on the rash of anti-Baby Boomer rhetoric - some of it out-and-out hate speech - on the Internet and why we all must unite to stop it.

The second story in the series looks at age-targeted advertising on cable television, a serious blot on that mass medium, which pretty much every viewer detests.

Now, we've decided to expand EllenImpromptu with material from several of my past blogs posted on the Word Press site.

We are doing this for two reasons: First, some of these articles are even more relevant today than when we originally published them a few years ago. We would now like them to reach a larger audience and believe Blogger and Google can help us accomplish that task.

More importantly: Since virtually all of my blogs have a strong political dimension, I believe it is ethically incorrect to "monetize" them. Some others may disagree with this position, but it is the way I feel.

Lately, Word Press has begun to "monetize" my blogs - and everybody else's - with unauthorized advertising. I disapprove of this practice, and I do not wish my blogs to be part of it.

In addition, Word Press has failed to prevent entire blogs - every single word - from being bodily stolen and incorporated into the blogs of unethical, criminal individuals who maintain their own sites at the Word Press venue. Complaints about this content theft fall on deaf ears.

I know of at least three of my articles which have been bodily lifted from my Word Press blogs and posted at sites with which I not only have nothing whatsoever to do, but sites of which I heartily disapprove in a political sense. I wish to prevent this from happening in the future.

While I will allow some of my past blogs to remain at Word Press, I will start revising and reprinting several others at EllenImpromptu and Blogger, beginning this week. Once a blog has been re-published at Blogger, it will be deleted from Word Press and available only here.

Look for the first two of these revised blogs - on Political Centrism and Political Polls - to appear shortly.


Ellen Brandt is Founder of the  Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, which seeks to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad.