Then again . . .

Yesterday, I put up a post about how the over 50 set is spending most of the money (that's kind of a gross summary, but feel free to read the whole thing yourself -- it's just below).

The point was, sort of, that it is odd that consumers are mostly over 50 but the creative people at agencies are not. Specifically, by next year 50% of all consumer spending will be done by people over 50, but the average age in the creative department of an agency is 28. Not surprisingly, people over 50 generally feel they are ignored or portrayed negatively by advertising.

And today, Adweek reports that 45% of 18-34 year-olds reported being at least somewhat influenced by advertising in their purchasing decisions, compared to 38% of 45-55 year-olds.

"This pattern of response" says the piece, "will not please people who think advertisers pay too little attention to older consumers, as it suggests the elders would be more resistant in any case, while young adults are still comparatively impressionable."

(Well, it pleased me, because it made such a perfect partner with yesterday's post and keeps everybody safely confused. Which I think it a good way to be most of the time. Confused.)

Also, 18-34 year-olds were the most likely in the poll to find today's advertising interesting, while 45-55 year-olds were the least likely. Of course, this makes perfect sense, since most of it is produced by 20-somethings.

So let's try to summarize, shall we?

Plus 50 spends most of the money but most of the ads are done by people much younger while people much younger are most likely to be influenced by advertising and also most likely to find it interesting except that the people who are actually spending most of the money and should be targeted by most advertising are least influenced and find it least interesting . . . but that's probably because it's done by people much younger than they are.

I think there is something to learn in all this. Is it, as the Adweek piece says that older people are more "resistant" to advertising or is it more that they don't respond to advertising created by 20-somethings for 20-somethings? I think that's two different things.