by Jaye Albright

Country has always been pandemographic in appeal, more of a lifesyle than an age group.  And, the biggest challenge our sellers have historically had in turning our rating shares into revenues shares hasn't been as much the old "NRA rednecks in pickup trucks" stereotype as it has been that the demographic groups we deliver most efficiently skew 35 and older.

Whether it was Hank Sr., in the 50's; Patsy Cline, Chet Atkins and Jim Reeves in the 1960's;  Glen, Buck and Roy in the early 1970's, the Urban Cowboy in the early 1980's; the class of '89 or Shania and the Chicks in the mid-90's, country's past growth thrusts have always come when younger demos suddely discover a new evolution in our music just as the upper demo core does the same thing.

This may be why, in the past, in spite of many predictions that it was about to fragment, the music has changed, growing the audience, rather than segment in appeal.

Now, a new book, "Ageless Marketing" by David Wolfe and Robert E. Snyder may help explain why country radio audience shares and also Nashville's share of music retail are growing again.  And, this time, it's a shift in pan-demographic values that is driving the growth, which of course is also being spurred by great new music by almost every meaningful superstar of the last 15 years with the exception of Faith Hill and Garth Brooks.  Hopefully, it won't be too long before they come forward with great, new material as well. 

Here's what's going on:

Sorting consumers into age groups seems to make sense because it presumably makes clearer where marketing dollars and effort will yield the best results. This has usually meant much bigger investments in younger markets because many marketers believe that the marketplace value of people 35 and older falls with rising age. After 50, they fade from most marketers’ radar screens altogether.

But segmenting consumers by age now makes less sense. Unprecedented changes in marketplace demography make age-based marketing increasingly counterproductive.

Slow population growth or actual shrinkage in five-year age groups from 10-14-year-olds to 40-44-year-olds is eroding the traditionally biggest source of growth in consumer demand. The 25-44-age cohort, who spends most per capita on vehicles, housing and housing related products, is shrinking by 4.3 million people in this decade. These conditions are forcing many companies to look beyond their traditional target age groups for growth, but they raise the long-standing marketing dilemma of courting older consumers without turning younger consumers off.

Ageless marketing gets around that problem by invoking values that resonate across generational divides and by tuning marketing, including product design, promotions and customer relations, to psychological stages of life.

Why Ageless Marketing?

A new customer majority has emerged. For the first time ever, most adults are 40 or older. This New Customer Majority has radically changed the rules of marketplace engagement because its members see life through a different lens than younger consumers who once determined the rules.

The New Customer Majority is huge! In 2000, it was 45% larger than the 18-39 age group (123 to 85 million), by 2010 it will be 61% larger: 138 to 86 million money-spending consumers.

Growth challenge: Expect no sales growth in this decade among 25-44-year olds because they're shrinking by 4.3 million people.

The marketing sweet spot is aging boomers. They will swell the 45-64-year age group by 16 million in this decade.

The New Customer Majority, the richest market by far. By 2010, adults 45 and older will outspend younger adults by $1 trillion ($2.6 to $1.6 trillion).

Prime strategy for this decade: Compensate for shrinking young adult markets by using ageless marketing to get more sales from every adult age group – marketing based on values that appeal across generational divides.

In a recent prep email Neil Haislop (neil@countryforever.com) posed this trivia question which makes the pan-demographic point of country's universal values:  "WHAT COUNTRY SINGER HAD TWO HIT SONGS RELATED TO TWO DIFFERENT GULF WARS?"

The answer of course is:  in late 1990 Aaron Tippin released "You've Got To Stand For Something," a song that peaked at #6 in early '91 and became a rallying song for the first Gulf War.  Then, in October 2001, "Where The Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Flies" became a post 9/11 rallying point and one of the tunes played in American tanks when the second Gulf war began.

Universal values that unite individuals across the all "Season of Life" can strongly influence consumer behavior.  Karl Rove would probably also say that these things can also strongly influence political loyalties as well.

Each person’s life is a story, unique in some respects, but to a remarkable degree more like every one else’s story than we generally acknowledge. Understanding the commonalities consumers' share in their life stories offers valuable insights into their needs and behavior that most marketing ignores.Our individual life stories have much in common with the life stories of others because in each season of life our deepest needs tend to be quite alike others who are passing through the same season. I believe that marketing that reflects these universal needs will generally make stronger connections at deeper levels with consumers than marketing based on superficial differences between consumers – the more common path in marketing.

To see how season of life plays a huge role in shaping consumer behavior it helps to understand how human development across four seasons of life shapes the foundations of human needs.

Each season of life has a primary developmental objective that gives rise to a bundle of needs. By -season of life, the primary developmental objectives are:

-Spring (the first two decades of life): acquiring basic intellectual, emotional and social skills needed to enter adulthood with reasonable prospects for success.

-Summer (the second two decades of life): becoming someone socially and vocationally.

-Fall (the third two decades of life): determining the ultimate meaning of one’s life as part of more fully developing the inner self.

-Winter (the remaining years): reaching a transcendent state that deepens life satisfaction and increases resilience in the face of untoward conditions the future may hold.

It’s important to realize that needs whose satisfaction is necessary to fulfill a season’s primary developmental objective are anticipated in DNA.The presence of those needs is not within our control – only what we do about them is. For example, a teen’s keenly felt need to be part of a “herd” is innate. How that teen responds to that need is (somewhat) a matter of his or her individual will.

Or, to put it in radio terms:  the more 'relatable' your content is, the larger your audience will be.

"Ageless Marketing" gives plenty of reason to believe that the coming decade's predicted demographic profile offers another exciting opportunity for our format and our music.  We just have to get the AGELESS values right.

Read more/order the book: http://www.agelessmarketing.com/

Reach the authors: 

David Wolfe
Tel: 703-758-0759
wolfe@agelessmarketing.com

Robert E. Snyder
Tel: 860-525-6688 Ext 133
snyder@agelessmarketing.com