Brent Rivard | Why Are So Many Marketers Ignoring the $8.3 Trillion Market Hiding in Plain Sight?

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0:22Brent Rivard:Welcome to CMO Confidential, the podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions, and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five-time CMO Mike Linton. Welcome, marketers, advertisers, and those who love them to Chief Marketing Officer Confidential. CMO Confidential is a program that takes you inside the drama, the decisions, and the politics that go with being the head of marketing at any company in what is one of the most scrutinized jobs in the executive suite. I'm Mike Linton, the former CMO of Best Buy, eBay, Farmers Insurance, and Ancestry.com here today with my guest, Brent Rivard.

1:02Today's topic, why are so many marketers ignoring the$8.3 trillion market hiding in plain sight? Now, Brent is the CEO of Geezer Creative, a purpose-built creative agency focused on the 50-plus market. Previously, he served as CMO of Intra Nova Travel, the president of Mass Minority, and the global managing director of Anomaly. He's here today to talk about the opportunity presented by the older consumers and why he believes much of the marketing thinking on age is not just wrong, but completely wrong. Welcome, Brent. Thanks. This is quite the introduction, Mike. Thank you. There you go. Well, I've had a lot of practice.

1:50Yeah, nice. Yeah, you've done this before. All right. So let's start with Geezer. Tell our listeners about the agency and why it was created even in the first place. It's great. I mean, like you said in the intro, I left the creative world and went to be the CMO and see the world from the other side. So I have a lot of empathy for what CMOs go through and what the opportunities are that they're facing and challenges that they're facing. And then I wanted to come back to the creative world, I got a little hung up on the bureaucracy of being client side and had a real inkling and craving to get back to the creative side, but I didn't want to do it.

2:26And the industry had shifted so significantly that I didn't want to do it just as I had before. And I mean, as the world's changed, CMO's challenges have become really finite and their business challenges are different than they were 20 years ago when a Super Bowl ad could cure all. doesn't work anymore. And what I realized, and my creative partners realized is that we were still operating most agencies, you know, 90 some percent of them are generalists trying to figure out very specialized problems. And I found that fascinating that, you know, we have a line on our website that says, you know, if you want to get in the mind of a 52 year old female, you probably shouldn't ask a 25-year-old man.

3:14And, you know, that's kind of a starting point that, you know, why don't we create an agency that is getting after the segment of the market that is the largest disposable income that marketers are ignoring? So if my bet's right, it's that they're going to start not ignoring it. And we're seeing some great momentum that way. And in order to do so, to alleviate some of the pain points of being a client, which I had experienced, we've decided to employ creative teams that are from that same cohort, because I don't want to go five rounds of creative so that my junior teams can learn what business you're even in.

3:54Right. So, or what it's like to be a little older, you could just have me. Yeah. Yeah. So if I, if I, if I want to take on a beauty client focused on 55 year old post-menopausal women, I'm going to assign a creative team that are 55 year old postmenopausal women. Like what a normal idea. This is segmenting of the agency, the agency delivery actually itself. Exactly. Like, like, like this is, I'm going to call it reverse consumer segmentation, if that makes any sense, which I'm going to go to the people that do this. And one of the things inherent in your entire creation of this is the older population is a way to make your marketing numbers for a lot of companies, if only you would treat them as a customer segment versus too old to do anything.

4:45Is that right? Am I looking at that the right way? Yeah, it's as you said at the beginning, it's the elephant hiding in plain sight. You got an$8.3 trillion market that controls 70 % of disposable income. And this is just the U.S., right? This is just the United States. In the U.S., yeah. And we're wanting to still market to Gen Z and chase the shiny young object like it's 1990, where there was, you know, if we can get them when they're young, they'll be a customer for life. Well, that went out the window. And why is that? Because$8.3 trillion is a lot to ignore. Yeah. You know, it is kind of, we've had a bunch of guests on the show that have said, hey, look, the biggest purchasing power group is this over 50 and over 60.

5:26And they're going to transfer this money sometime, but they're not in a real big hurry to actually transfer it down. And they are still buying a lot of shit. Why are people not paying attention to it? You know what? I think it's a hundred factors. One, we've, I mean, ageism is part of the problem, right? A lot of, you know, the 50 plus executives have left the building, especially at ad agencies, less than 5 % of ad agencies in America employ people over 50 years old. So that's part of the problem. So if I'm a creative team and I'm 28 years old, I want to create 28 year old solutions, right? That's my cohort.

6:10And there's nothing wrong with that. You're going to be using your vernacular, your language, your aspirations, and putting your life lens on that. and and that's part of the problem so that you know as I call it the juniorification of the ad business is part of the problem the the marketers I mean if you're a 35 year old marketer and you're taking on a brand and you're an alcohol brand you want to market to your people it just is what it is yeah and you and the third thing I'd say and there's a long list but just focusing on the three is that people aren't taking risks anymore. It's funny, I'm Canadian and I used to admire Americans for just that, like nothing's impossible.

6:56Let's break the rules. Sticking your head above the clouds was how you got famous. That's how you got promoted. And here we were in Canada and I really never loved the conservative kind of nature of Canadians. And, you know, it was like, well. Am I supposed to say I'm sorry all the time too? Exactly, right? I'm sorry. So I always loved that. But I'll be honest, in the past, you know, decade and a half, I've watched America become more Canadian, you know, every day and people don't want to stick their head above the clouds. So wait, you know, one of the things is you look at a lot of CMOs today and a lot of them have come up through the, you know, performance marketing ranks where data is the dominant thing.

7:35If I look at the older market, the senior market, whatever you want to call it, gray market, as a standalone TAM, 8.3 trillion is a really big number. How is it that this doesn't show up on my spreadsheet, especially when I'm selling something that is not youthful driven? And how much does like, when I look at this TAM, how much does lifetime value come into play? because the TAM number alone is just so big. Right. But that whole lifetime value of a customer thing, like just, it looks great on paper. It doesn't exist anymore. Nobody's loyal to anything, any age group. People are still talking about Gen Z's loyalty versus millennials versus boomers versus Gen X.

8:22None of us are loyal anymore. We move and shake everywhere, right? Like where did on running come from? Like they've been around for like 27 years and I'd never heard of it, but all of a sudden everything's on running and it's everything's aloe. Like how did Lululemon get beat up overnight? Like they were the darling of the stock market for two decades, right? Because people aren't loyal anymore, right? That you need to market to people and you need to grab that cohort and get them involved and look at the brands that have lost their way. Like Victoria's Secret lost their way, right? So, but I think a lot of it, you know, to that final reason is that it's just habitual.

9:00We still using the same playbook and nobody's rewarding really diverting completely from a playbook and risk-taking and sticking their neck out and trying and that's all that I think that that's my main message to marketers is by no means am I saying bail on Gen Z and millennial marketing in favor of Gen X what I am saying is it's a monster market that if you are in a category that is attractive to them why not run a test with some reasonable money to figure out that you may be on to the next greatest way of blowing your numbers out the water. And is this an easier market to take? Because when I look at also how media is pricing everybody and what everybody values in media, and it's not just the marketers, it's the media companies are working to deliver shows that drive youth and everything else and and shows that drive social.

9:57How much of this is you just have to actually buck the trend? And how do you buck the trend? And give me some examples of companies that are bucking the trend. Well, there aren't any great ones right now, save for, funny enough, who would have thought that Hollywood would have started to buck the trend? I would have assumed they'd be the last to the party. But if you look at casting and the award shows over the past few years, Hollywood's actually getting ahead of it, right? And we're celebrating that older cohort and really, really leaning into it. Then you have luxury. So the luxury category, you're hard pressed to find somebody under 60 that St.

10:36Laurent is all over it. And a lot of the luxury brands are starting to really pay attention to this cohort. But that aside, I don't see anybody that's really confidently carving out a segment and saying, I'm consciously going after Gen X as a cohort with our product and getting after it. To me, it feels like autos and an awful lot of people that, you know, if I have money and I like the convenience of what money buys for me, that this market is just sitting there for me to take. if I design a product and I've designed a bunch of products for all kinds of different like segments are you saying that I could go after this from a both a product standpoint and also a channel perspective a hundred percent right if you think of the health club business if you got the longevity business is like just exploded right you know so they're starting to pay attention They get it.

11:41You know, oh, Gen X and boomers want to live forever and they're spending copious amounts of money on their on their health and well-being. So health clubs need to start paying attention. We aren't the 50 year olds of our parents generation. I mean, it's funny. Somebody posted I can't remember where it was on Instagram. It was like this is a picture of so and so at 35. And then here's a picture of a 35 year old today that's basically like dancing on TikTok. this person's you know you know mature for like we're just not the 50 year olds like we're filling up when i'm in my gym in my building right we're filling up gyms we're working out we're still training like we were in our 20s we still we still buy we're not we're not gonna let go right no we're still and and like i said like um lululemon right great idea there are a whole bunch of 50 year olds doing yoga right so give me an example of of brands that should do this but don't like you already put lulu on the table i guess when you look at on you can say maybe nike should have been paying more attention to the older consumer give us some other brands that should think older but don't you know i was on ancestry and that was definitely we were targeting older you know 45 and up all the time i mean my previous life travel right we don't do five thousand dollar vacations right multiply that number by four we sit in front of the curtain yeah on airplanes start probably marketing to the people that don't sit at the back of the plane right it's not a horrible idea i'm not saying that everybody that's 50 plus is wealthy that's a that's bullshit too but you know um there's that opportunity where we're traveling a lot and we're enjoying like the beauty category i mean i was speaking to a particular beauty company and and doing just some you know just desktop research and me going it's not even gen z you're marketing to women with allowances like how about you pay attention to my wife right the amount of money spent like the the running joke in my family every saturday is gee are we going to Sephora by any chance?

13:51Like I pick up a couple of things that somehow are$180 every weekend. Right. So is this because I'm sitting there in the marketing job and I might be a little on the younger side and I have a playbook? Like, is this all about the playbook or is it all about the culture in the company that says you can't break the playbook? Or is it all about the, I don't even want to hear that just because we will get them anyways. That's one thing people will say is we will get them anyways. And how do I assess whether I should push on this and whether it's my playbook, my culture, or my company that's in the way?

14:34Yeah, I think it's a little bit of all of the above, right? I mean, if you think of the playbook that's existed the same and you're, you know, like I was saying, the world's becoming a little more risk averse and sticking your head above the clouds hasn't become as popular as it used to be. So do I balk at the playbook and really try to shake it up as a young marketer or do I just I'm kind of happy to have my job in the world of AI and the headlines of taking everything over and maybe I should just stick to the playbook. but it is absolutely company culture. I mean, you know, once upon a time I've worked for some great companies that had incredible cultures around, you know, nothing's impossible, like push, push, push.

15:17And those are great cultures that if you have that culture with a tried and true playbook, yeah, probably if you wanted to break the rules, you could. But if you have that culture, you probably don't have a stringent rule book. And it's the way we're bringing up marketers. You know the people of Procter & Gamble and the Unilevers of the world. And hey, they've come up with great systems for developing marketers. And this is how we do it. And we test our ads and we do animatics. And hey, it's worked for them. I can't criticize them. But at what point does that become detrimental to your business's health in discovering new growth in a world that you should be discovering new growth in all the time?

15:56And how much of this is ageism where I say, look, I mean, if you look at all the technology that's roared into the marketplace, whether it was mobile, digital, social, whatever, where everyone immediately thought this is a young person's game. It turns out that it's everybody's game. But there's that inherent bias that old people just don't get it. Right. How do you fight that? How do you fight that? And how do you prove that it's not the issue? Well, I mean, I had a great debate with a couple of young people at one point that I said gen x arguably is the most adaptable generation in the history of the planet i mean think of what we went through i mean we went from beepers to cell phones to palm trios to blackberries to iphones to iphone being a real smartphone to cameras like that's just that piece of tech we went through the incept there was no internet right we went through internet 1.0 2.0 2.0 whatever the hell it became 3.0.

17:00So that when people are like, Oh, I don't know about your generation and AI. I'm like, what are you talking about? We're the best generation for AI. One, we grew up prompting people, right? So AI is only good as the person prompting it, right? We grew up prompting people, we grew up saying so what and strategy sessions. And how do you get to meaning out of that? We didn't, our generation doesn't use AI to get an answer. We use AI or I use AI to get to a better one yeah like hey so we've done a bunch of shows and the implication in some of your comments is that many leaders marketing leaders in particular know they should do this but they just won't do it we did a show called the truth behind the curtain and b2b marketing in particular where you know the guests basically said i like 60 percent of marketers know they should do something different but they're not going to um what's your take on that and they're afraid they're afraid but like are they they're afraid that they will get shot for trying a new thing or they're afraid they're just afraid that they don't really believe the answer i think they're afraid yeah i think that if you're a studied or they're just a piss poor a marketer.

18:20I'll just call it what it is. Like if, if you're a good marketer, the qualities of a great marketer, maybe that's being ignored in the hiring process, right? You should be genuinely researching your segment, your growth opportunities. You should be dialed in. You should be questioning everything. You should be searching for growth. You should be questioning everything that you've, that your company has ever done and looking for new opportunities. But if we're hiring people that are just, you know, hey, they stick to the systems and they don't stick their neck out that much and they don't rattle the cage, then you're getting what you deserve.

18:57So give me our listeners, like when they go home and look in the mirror after listening this show, how they might actually take a look on whether the boomer millennial market might be right for them. Like, I always want our listeners to say, all right, am I the blocker or am I the problem? And how do I know? Because there's probably not a bunch of people going out there. I'm ignoring this market on purpose. Right. You know, I should look at myself in the mirror and ask myself what? Start with the basics. What's the size of the market of the of of that generation currently purchasing your product that you're ignoring?

19:38Right. Or what's the percentage of a competitors that you could actually steal share from that are in that? And then I think you have to question what your KPIs are, because I think that's what leads us down the wrong path a lot. Give me an example of good KPIs and bad KPIs. Well, if sorry, if you're saying, well, let me dream something up. OK, so the social campaign that I'm launching is rewarding engagement and shares and blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah. But the 50 plus cohort, we don't consume social media that way. We look at it, we check it out. We're not the ones that are sitting commenting and massive back and forth engagement with the brand.

20:20We don't do that. So your KPI might be like, no, but we did something in social against 50 year olds, but engagement wasn't the numbers that we're supposed to do for our KPIs. Maybe your KPI is wrong because that cohort doesn't do that. And maybe your KPI should start with commerce. And when you say commerce, you're talking sales. Exactly. Yeah, because my thing is, like, all the other marketing diagnostics, like shares or mics or anything, they're diagnostics. They're not actually an outcome. The outcome has to be sales. How many meetings have you been in when literally a marketing team will be defending themselves going, well, I mean, hey, we hit this number, this number, this number.

21:05Well, I did it. Wait a second. But this says marketers, here's what I hear you saying. Correct me if I'm wrong. if you really want to pay attention to this market, you should look at what it could buy, not what it can do with the media you give it. Right. And then you should figure out how to get it to buy more. And that may be, if you're not measuring it the right way, you may be ignoring the fact that you haven't figured out how it buys stuff, but it wants to. Right. Right. And if you're and question that you might not know and get curious, because if I'm a 30 year old marketer and I'm like, well, why?

21:48I don't understand. Why wouldn't a 52 year old male be engaging with this incredible social campaign just like a 30 year old? Great. Ask the question. Yeah. Then you might find the answer is, oh, that's either the wrong KPI or that's not how I'm going to win them as a client. right that might be how you're going to build awareness with them but they're not going to click through and buy like you know like think of the difference between you know i think gen x is is is healthy when it comes to purchasing things via instagram or social channels but but maybe a 68 year old isn't so if you were going to the boomer segment you might not be driving like it's just basics like follow the behavior of the cohort and learn go to school but inherent is this is what you are saying is you should take a look at this market as a purchasing segment

22:45versus a media segment. Yes, 100%. And that means you should go find the data that allow you to understand how it buys stuff, not how it engages with media. And I hear you saying, correct me if I'm wrong. Don't confuse the media with the sales. Exactly. And also don't confuse your, your, don't confuse your predispositions to this segment. And that's a, we're all guilty of that. Right. I do it the other way. Right. Oh, young people, they should, that's, I'm wrong. Rose, young people. God damn them. How about, you know, there's a whole bunch of people, There's an inbred by our internal bias, almost always that you have to cast younger spokespeople.

23:37You have to show up in younger media because even if your brand appeals to older people, you don't want to give it the halo of old. Right. It's the old adage, right? You can you can sell an old guy, young guy's car, but you can't do the opposite. Exactly. We're in a world where now you can do the opposite. like Demi Moore you know she's lighting it up and you have a lot of young women aspiring now to that notion and you have wait tell us about not everybody has followed Demi Moore like you so tell us what Demi Moore is doing well just I mean her whole unapologetic way of aging and stop telling me about anti-aging and Pam Anderson taking her makeup off and saying I don't wear it anymore I went from Baywatch to a confident woman in her own skin that's taking ownership of her aging process and enjoying it, right?

24:29And you have women online that are getting, you know, the trolls would come out and start, oh my God, she looks so old. And they're punching back and going, we're super proud of it. Like, this trend is amazing for young women because we all know what's happened with young women being mistreated and unfairly marketed to with just people that were just - Aspirations that are unachievable, yeah. Unachievable. So the other thing inherent in this maybe is in the age of AI, where I can produce and send content to everybody, are you also saying that there is a lot less holding you back than there might've been 20 years ago where I have to shoot all these commercials or I have to do this and now i can create a bunch of content i can market to different segments um is that yeah and it's so specialized i mean it's i mean just a meta platform i mean we love to hate meta but at the end of the day if you want to target a 56 year old man that's balding it's pretty easy but it's just about wanting to we're not selling your hair care products Right.

25:40Yeah. Like it blows me away that Gen X, I don't know if it's combined with boomers. I think it might be Gen X and boomers outspend Gen Z eight to one in alcohol sales. Yeah. But every brief from an alcohol company, I know this for a fact, because I still hang out with a lot of them. It says 25. Yeah. But sorry, you're going to change. It's one thing back to have been marketing me when I was 25. Yeah. Now you're trying to take a generation that is, right, not drinking at all and doesn't want to, and is, you know, is smoking instead of, you know, vaping and consuming cannabis and mushrooms instead of drinking.

26:22You're saying that you're going to convert them to drinking? Yeah, you're going to convert them to drinking. I have an idea. Mark it to me. Mark it to me. Yes, show me your bourbon. I'm ready. when i end my day i have a choice of a cocktail and you're not marketing to me so you know what i'm ignoring you right and you have and then you have what what is uh what what i won't even pick on a particular company but alcohol companies in the last four years their stock prices are down approximately 40 to 45 oh yeah i have a great idea try something new so this how about this Hall of Fame best and worst marketing practices you're seeing across this segment today.

27:10Doing the same thing you did yesterday, right? I mean, it's just, it's becoming like, it's becoming like marketing malpractice. Like it's, it's, and it's, it's starting to become, it's not fun, right? Like I'm not seeing a lot of fun out there. I'm not seeing a lot of like, oh, my God, did you see that move that Company X just pulled? Yeah. Like back in the day, marketing was like war games, right? Yeah. If you have ever read the book, it's Canadian, but it's called Loggerheads. And it was about the epic battles between Molson and Labatt back in the heyday of marketing and advertising. and the greatest story in the book was that I think it was I can't remember which it was but Labatt had come out with a twist top it was Labatt because it was for Bud Light I think and they kept it so under top secret and at the time Miller Genuine Draft which was owned by Molson was like the clear bottle like the corona so they Labatt actually shot a Super Bowl ad about a clear bottle and purposely leaked it like to somebody that found it and they're like oh my god they're coming after us so we're going to do an mgd ad that is going to be this this this this and this and they caught molson exactly where they wanted them and they released their super bowl ad and it's the twist off cap and they had a two-year head start and drove something like 40 market share flip like just astronomical numbers these are great marketing stories and mgd is molson gold is that what it is what's that no uh miller genuine draft miller genuine draft okay and it's the rights to that was uh was from molson so but there's these great stories of just marketing moves and i haven't i haven't heard anything also there's something in there that you just said it wasn't just marketing it was also product design and development.

29:09And also when you think a twist off cap changes the game, but it actually did. Stuff like that did change the game. Any last tips you would give people before we get to our traditional last question when they look in the mirror and say, am I getting all I can from this market other than the math and the, you know, give it a shot thing? Start by asking the question you just asked am i getting enough from this market am i missing out on growth that's your job if i'm a regular brand like i'm not i'm not like targeted to kids or i'm not diapers or something should i say i should always have my at least fair share of this market 100 i mean start with are you paying any attention to it is it your market it's not for everybody i don't know that i'd uh would i no i don't think i'd be saying to monster energy drink i think really think you should launch something to baby boomers like i don't think that's i don't think yeah the baby boomer red bull shot it's not for everybody i'm not saying that every category but for the vast majority of there's monster opportunity in this segment they have a ton of disposable income and get curious again as a marketer like do like it's it's like it's like marketers don't are they're afraid to be marketers again like just question everything and just look at it and in this day and age back in our day you would have had to have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars to get the answer to this question you would have you could probably spend thousands if that and get the answer to the question right just figure that out on on various platforms that are highly efficient and high but you know we're probably not the only agency that's specializing in the 50 plus market so yeah absolutely i'd love you to call me at geezer creative but if if there's somebody else out there just hire somebody specialized it's not rockets i didn't invent this like remember like 20 years ago somebody was like i'm gonna have a female only agency incredible idea or i'm gonna have an hispanic agency in the united states wow what a novel idea to hire somebody that's hispanic to go after an hispanic market they might just know the insights better than i all right well so giddy up there's a market at 8.3 tier in our market waiting for you, which brings us to our traditional last question.

31:32Funniest story you can share on the air or practical advice we haven't talked about yet. You can pick one or both of those, but you must pick at least one. Pick at least one what? At least one of those two questions. Practical advice we haven't discussed yet or funniest story you can share on the air. Oh God, I don't know. I mean, I wish I had a funny story. I wish I could have prepped for this. Funny stories. I got nothing off the top of my head. I'm sorry. Okay, then you got to go to the practical advice column. I mean, I'll just repeat the practical advice. practical advice for those interfacing with agencies that are working on this segment like what is the best advice you can give your your potential client base for engaging an agency of your type of of any time i'll even go to any okay any time we're still doing talking about the age old like we're still like sending out rfps that are 73 pages from clients and like pitching like what?

32:37At the end of the day, there's no shortage of talent in any country in the creative space. Hire people you want to work with, right? Don't run a pitch. Get them in a room for a day, two half days, right? Do jam sessions, do some working sessions, talk about your business problems, talk about the opportunities that you think are there, and listen and interact with these people. If the lead person that you're going to be dealing with in a room is an ego maniac and they kind of rub you the wrong way, I have a great idea. Leave. And if you're really loving that company, but you haven't really even heard of them before, give them a shot, right?

33:17Give them a shot. They might just be able to deliver something fantastic for you. All right. I think that's a great way to end the show. Thank you, Brent. Awesome. Thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you are enjoying the show, please like share and subscribe you can find all of our more than 170 episodes on apple youtube and spotify which include the ai marketing battle of you from the front lines the unit economics of ai can llms actually make money colonel mustard in the study with the job spec how poor design shortened cmo lifespans and managing the geopolitical landscape hey all you marketers Stay safe out there.

33:59This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential.