When you turn 40 (which I recently did), you fall off of marketers’ radars and media plans entirely, into an abyss of invisibility—at least until it’s time to sell you Prevagen.
But what if brands rethought their approach (or lack of approach) to these audiences? What if they examined the fallacy that elder millennial and Gen X women have limited influence, unremarkable spending power, and entrenched brand preferences and, therefore, are no longer worth marketing to—and instead realized that we are among the most valuable audiences out there? These women are entering key spending categories later in life. They are extremely influential culturally and financially, and they are largely ignored by marketers—leaving a huge opportunity for the consumer brands that are smart enough to pay attention to them.
While the way college-educated knowledge workers like myself reacted to Covid-19 reshaped the housing market and created a subtle baby boom, the trend of meeting life stages later is detached from, and predates, these pandemic shifts. In 1980, the average woman married at 22; today, it’s 28, and the midlife first marriage rate among women has increased by 75% since 1990. In 1980, the median first-time homeowner was 29; now they are 35. In the last 30 years, birthrates among women in their 20s have declined, while they’ve risen for women in their late 30s and early 40s—a trend that is especially prevalent among college-educated, city-dwelling women with high household incomes. The idea that you have to reach women in their 20s in order to capture their entry into new life stages—and therefore their influence in new spending categories—is a dated one.
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Three of 2023’s most economically powerful people (Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian and Greta Gerwig) are women in their 40s, and Taylor Swift will age out of that coveted 18-34 demo this year—and their power is echoed by this demographic as a whole. When elder millennial and midlife women are ready to spend—whether on entertainment, tech, beauty, travel, groceries, auto or in areas like early parenthood that used to only be the province of younger women—they show up with influence and money. Women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing, either through buying power or influence, and women older than 50 drive $15 trillion in spending power—which is 27% of all consumer spending in the U.S. By 2030, women are expected to control much of the $30 trillion in wealth that is soon to transfer from baby boomers to younger generations—namely millennials, who will all be in their mid-30s to late-40s by then.