Consumer Brands Are Leaving Trillions of Dollars Behind by Ignoring Women Over 40

In 2021, when I was 37, I became a first-time car owner, first-time homeowner and first-time parent within a three-month span. After nearly two decades spent living in wildly expensive cities and focusing on my education and career, a global pandemic ushered in the rise of remote work and allowed me to move out of New York City while keeping a job in media. Under these new circumstances, I—and many people in my peer set—finally found myself with the time, resources and appetite to enter the life stages that my parents’ generation entered a decade younger. 

As I met these milestones, I was struck by how much there was to buy to support this drastic lifestyle shift. After relying on public transportation to get around since I was 17, what type of car would I purchase, and who would insure it? After 20 years of only looking as far ahead as each 12-month lease, what kind of home would I buy, and where? What real estate agency would assist me? What bank would handle the loan? Where would I go for renovations, furnishings and upkeep? And in the transition from a “double income, no kids” household to a family of three, the spending opportunities were endless—from prenatal vitamins and maternity clothes to nursery fixtures, kids’ clothes and college funds. And that was before I hit a spendy, post-partum self-image reckoning, with its accompanying skin care, wardrobe, health tech and fitness expenses. 

All of that spending should have been easy. Because I was not in my twenties, with its professional and financial precarity, and instead in my late 30s—15 years into a stable career and well-compensated—I had real money to spend in all these new categories. But as I went to choose a car, furnish a home and prepare for a baby with that cash burning a hole in my pocket (metaphorically speaking—I don’t carry cash, I’m not that old), I realized all the brands that should have been competing for my dollars didn’t seem to care all that much about winning my business.

Working in media, I know that the demographics of a publication’s audience are an incredibly important consideration when wooing advertisers to spend their marketing budgets with you. Media execs are incentivized to pursue a younger generation of users, trying to bolster the percentage of 18- to 34-year-olds in their audience so advertising partners know they’ve captured the trendsetters that marketers are so eager to get their products in front of. Older audiences are thought to be less influential and more set in their ways, not as susceptible to building affinities for or joining fandoms around new products. The (false) thinking goes that these consumers don’t have as much sway over others’ purchasing decisions as 20-somethings do and that they already know what product they’re going to buy and what brand they’re going to buy it from now until the end of time, goodbye.

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.

Despite this current and future financial power, most marketers are ignoring this demographic, and people like me are taking notice. Most women in this demo think consumer brands underestimate their spending power and intellect, and only 5-10% of marketing budgets are earmarked for an over-50 audience. Imagine the opportunity for brands that recognize and respect the power of these audiences and decide to enter this vacuum by marketing to us directly. 

That includes earmarking bigger budgets to put ads in front of these audiences, but that’s not the only way to speak to this demo. Brands must make us feel more represented and supported in their creative campaigns and brand initiatives as well. When more than 90% of people over 40 can’t remember a brand using someone their age in marketing campaigns, casting midlife women can go a long way with customers (see: Bobbi Brown’s Jones Road Beauty). When three-quarters of millennial women say they want brands to speak about current realities with honesty and candor, those that avoid stereotypes and tropes by centering real customer voices and experiences will build trust and affinity (see: Dove’s beloved Real Beauty campaign). When the vast majority of millennial women believe that brands should actively make people’s lives better and hope to see brands advocate for policies that advance women’s rights, marketers should consider what advocacy campaigns align with both their brand value proposition and the pain points of the audience they wish to reach. (See: Bobbie’s Paid Leave For All partnership).

Initiatives designed to capture these audiences pay off. GM focuses on speaking to women’s concerns about car safety, and they’ve built a robust network of female car dealers. Buick has the highest female buyer representation in the U.S. of any automaker. L’Oreal has shifted to casting older models in its campaigns; the world’s biggest beauty company boasted sales up 9.4% in Q1 2024.

As my husband and I add a second child, a second car, and a new kitchen to our household, I have a lot of spending decisions to make, with few brand affinities that are fully entrenched in these areas and an interest in spending with brands that acknowledge my value. A challenge to marketers: Convince me to buy what you’re selling. I’m open to it.