The Gift Guide, The Money Demo and Stuff To Do

The PopCulteer
November 22, 2019

We’ve got a shorter than usual PopCulteer again this week, partly due to The 2019 PopCult Gift Guide, and partly due to outside work.

Because The Gift Guide is a bit behind schedule, I have decided to extend it from the intended cutoff date of next Wednesday until December 13. I may not have as many posts as I had planned each day, but stretching it out will mean that I can still bring you all the cool gift ideas on my rather extensive list. Look for more today, and all weekend long, as I try to work my way through it.

One of those outside jobs that’s slowed down the Gift Guide involved consutling on a television advertisting campaign, and that made me start to consider something that will likely turn into a much longer and more involved essay in this space after the first of next year, but I’ll give you the gist of it now.

For decades the “money demograpic” for television advertisers has been adults aged 18-49, with an added emphasis on those aged 18-34. Just as societal attitudes have changed and evolved over the decades, I think maybe it’s time that this “money demographic” be reassessed.

Since I started writing PopCult over fourteen years ago I’ve been more active in the local arts scene and I’ve developed a wide range of friendships with people ten, twenty and thirty years younger than I am. I also have friends ten and twenty years older than me. I know a pretty diverse group of people across many age and class distinctions.

It seems to me that, as a rough generalization, people over fifty have much, much more disposable income people under fifty. It makes me wonder why advertisers don’t try harder to reach that older generation. The average age of a new car buyer is 53 now. Yet, if you watch television aimed at older viewers, you’ll see ads for catheters and prescription drugs more than you see ads for new cars.

Increasingly, even products aimed at kids are being purchased by grandparents, yet the advertising doesn’t seem to acknowledge that anyone over fifty exists. The advertising industry needs to change to address the shift in how long people are working, and how long it’s taking them to reach a point of financial security.

Sometime in January look for a longer essay that will suggest a new “money demographic” that extends the age to 60 or 65 years old, at least for traditional television. Online advertising and cord-cutting has also shifted the money demographic paradigm as more affluent younger viewers are becoming increasingly less likely to watch traditional broadcast or cable television.

In the meantime, check PopCult regularly for more entries in The 2019 PopCult Gift Guide, and look below for some ideas of cool things you can get into in Charleston and Huntington and between this weekend. Keep in mind that there’s all kinds of other things you can do, but these folks were kind enough to post graphics with the necessary info where I could find them.

FRIDAY