An expurgated, slightly altered email exchange with a magazine publisher. No comments or explanations necessary:
On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 7:12 AM, ******* wrote:
Hi Chuck,
I have read your book, Advertising to Baby Boomers, it's a great read and so true and I completely agree that the ad agencies are really falling flat when it comes to even keeping an open mind to advertising in a 50+ magazine...
We have approached all the local ******* ad agencies and (our pitches) seem to fall on deaf ears. The owners are all 50+ but their gatekeepers are millennials and they have no interest in marketing to a bunch of old fogies but they are not doing justice for their clients who's demographic buys the majority of their products, IE: Cadillacs, Travel, Restaurants, Medical just to name the obvious.
Do you have any suggestions as to how to break this barrier between us and the ad agencies about marketing to Baby Boomers? When we circumvent them they take offense saying those are our clients... my response is you're not doing your job representing your client properly by targeting the clients demographic.
Thank you for you time concerning this matter.
*******
On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 3:27 PM, Chuck Nyren wrote:
****,
Sounds like you're causing lots of trouble down there. Good.
I have no answers or concrete advice for you. My first thought is to 'circumvent' but you've tried that.
I've always thought that magazines like yours are half-lifestyle, half-general interest. Why advertisers and agencies don't get this, I don't know. I'd like to see ads for orange juice, paper towels, refrigerators, etc. - not only age-related products and services.
Next week I'll be doing a presentation in Toronto for the Zoomer/CARP folks:
http://www.zoomermedia.ca/
I plan on bringing up the lack of advertising for general consumer items. I'll get back to you.
Chuck
On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 12:36 PM, ****** wrote:
Hi Chuck,
Thanks for getting back with me. It’s very frustrating and I really feel that the ad agencies are not doing their clients justice when it comes to marketing their advertisers. In our presentations we are now asking potential advertisers what the difference is between any of these local magazines except for their names. They can't answer that question. We know for a fact that anyone who is 40 or younger will not pick up our magazine unless for their parents to see. I spoke with ***** Cadillac yesterday and their average buyer is between 65 & 70 but they are advertising in a local rag with a 23 yr old on the cover, totally wasting their marketing dollars.
I'll be sending you a copy of ***********, perfect as a national magazine but we first have to establish ourselves in ********, no easy task and we never expected the response we have been getting.
Sincerely,
******
… When it all comes out in the wash, WOMM will be the best thing to happen to (silly retronym ahead) traditional advertising. Pretty soon, consumers won't believe anybody - even their best friends. They'll realize that they receive the most honest and straightforward information about a product or service from a TV commercial, print ad, or product web site. At least we don't lie about who we are and why we're saying what we're saying.
… The lack of transparency and trustworthy measurement in online advertising will be among the issues weighing on ad executives gathering in New York next week for annual Advertising Week festivities. Also on their minds: fears that they are wasting billions of dollars on ads that aren’t “viewable,” or visible to the human eye, or are being shown on sites with computer-generated fake traffic…
… Chief marketing officers are sick of publishers making far-out claims about how great their ads perform, according to Nielsen Chief Operating Officer Steve Hasker…
… One of the biggest online advertisers told me late last year that they yanked $100 million/year out of adtech and put it into traditional advertising for one simple reason: “It didn’t work.”
