For more years than I can count, Adults 25-54 has been the “holy grail” of advertisers whether it be advertising agencies or local businesses. My belief is that advertising agencies started this demographic ball rolling which – over time – trained sales reps in all media to focus on this demo which – in turn – caused us to “train” our local businesses that this was the coveted advertiser group where to focus their marketing dollars.
It’s time to revisit the 25-54 demographic because of two reasons – the disparate life stages and the widening financial gap.
Selling 25-54 no longer makes sense for many reasons. First, in today’s society, 25-54-year-olds include latter Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and the first two years of Gen Z.

And we know how much those four generations have in common, right?

The 25-54 demographic is in reality a family reunion with some grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, and younger siblings put neatly into an advertiser-ready demo that has come back to haunt us as media sellers. Businesses owners and marketing decision makers now hang onto that demo like a dog with the proverbial bone and are reluctant to consider moving their dollars away from that “tried and true advertising pool” that is now the shallow end of their potential customers.
If you’re a local business owner or marketing decision maker, you MUST change your focus if you want to thrive in this economy. 35-64 is the age range you must focus on for one simple reason: it’s where the money is, especially at the upper half of the age range.
Consider these changing life stage dynamics for those under 35 years of age:
According to a 2021 Pew Research study, about two-thirds of 25-year-olds (68%) are living outside their parents’ home, compared with 84% in 1980. And only 22% of people this age were married in 2021, compared with 63% in 1980. The same pattern holds when it comes to having children: Just 17% of 25-year-olds in 2021 had a child, compared with 39% in 1980.
Now consider how these trends affect your business:

• Today’s young adults are getting married much later than their parents’ generation. The gap in the share of this age group who are married is especially wide among young adults ages 25 to 29: 29% were married in 2023, compared with 50% in 1993.
• Young adults are also delaying having children. For example, 27% of adults ages 30 to 34 had a child in their household in 2023, compared with 60% in 1993.
• 44% of young adults say they received financial help from their parents in the past year. The top two areas in which they got help were household expenses and their cellphone bill or subscriptions to streaming services.

 
For businesses who want to attract married couples, couples with children, and/or home owners who have money for big ticket items commonly purchased according to that lifestyle and income but instead put their money into the lazy “we’ve always done it that way” demographic advertising buy, is aiming at a target that isn’t there.
In short: putting your marketing budget into the old “tried and true” is doing so at your business’ peril.
Our society, way of life, lifestyle, and patterns of behavior have all changed and we no longer live in an era of common experiences. As advertisers it is mission critical for your business to follow the money and talk to the lifestyle of the people with that money if you want a chance to grow.
And the next time a sales rep walks in and talks about how they’re number one in the 25-54 demo, tell them they can attend that family reunion without you.
If you’re looking for an advocate for your business who offers a wealth of experience in buyer behavior and messaging that cuts through the noise, contact me today for a complimentary marketing strategy session.

Tupperware filed for bankruptcy on September 18th. I have mixed feelings about this as my mother was a Tupperware salesperson in the late 1950s. I grew up with Tupperware containers in the kitchen cupboards, in the panty, heck, I even had some Tupperware brand toys. When my mother passed away in 2016, I took all of her Tupperware home and now my kitchen and pantry are filled will those same containers from my childhood home (no, the toys are long-since gone).
Tupperware always reminds me of home, of Mom baking and cooking, storing ingredients in some containers and leftovers in others. Even decades after her last sale with Tupperware as a company, Mom always spoke highly of the company and the product.
Even though the thought of Tupperware firmly tugs at my heartstrings, I am at the same time filled with frustration and anger. Bankruptcy never should have been in the cards for such an iconic brand. The answer as to why Tupperware finds it on the brink of extinction is that they forgot what made them special in order to be like everyone else.
One of the “knocks” on Tupperware is that it’s not the fanciest or prettiest food storage container which is true, I suppose. Through the years Tupperware received feedback that to remain competitive it needed to make their containers prettier. So they did.  And, when they did, Tupperware became just another storage container on the shelf. It was no longer special because it no longer looked like the iconic container America had come to know.
What made Tupperware so special? The answer lies in Tupperware’s unique and innovative “burp” technology. When you sealed the lid on a Tupperware container, you knew your food would stay fresh. But it wasn’t the burp nor the guaranteed freshness of the contents.
No. And therein lies what could have kept Tupperware thriving today if they hammered home a message only they could convey.
You see, Tupperware was never about the burp, it was about the how your burped it and who it was meant to benefit…and this  was the story Mom told me that I have never forgotten even though Tupperware has.
Mom told me that Tupperware was “designed for old ladies who had lost strength in their hands due to arthritis”. Tupperware was not mean to be closed with fingers or even the palm of a hand. YOU SEAL TUPPERWARE WITH YOU ELBOW.
Can you imagine if Tupperware went to market today with that message for older people or any individual with an injury or a condition that make closing things with hands difficult? No other container has been designed this way but in its efforts to be like everyone else, it stopped letting people know what made them unique and relevant and important.
Recently I shared this story with some co-workers who then demonstrated the proper way to seal Tupperware. Watch it and ask yourself if you’ve ever seen that or wonder why you were never told the proper way to seal their containers.
Then ask yourself if you’ve forgotten to tell your current and potential customers about what makes you, your business, your product singularly special because you are trying to position yourself just like your competitors.
And, one day when I no longer walk this earth, my daughters can fight over who gets my Tupperware because it’s still the best thing out there…even if Tupperware forgot to tell us why.
​If you're looking to rediscover your "special sauce" and bring your message to the masses, contact me and let's make it happen.

Radio has always been special to me since receiving a transistor radio for Christmas when I was six years old. Ten years later my broadcasting career began a few weeks after my 16th birthday at a little 3,000-watt radio station in rural Iowa. Over the next 35 years, I worked in the radio industry in variety of roles including on-air personality, program manager, college instructor, and sales. Five years ago, I walked away from radio and moved to television because I could see radio as an industry rotting from the inside out. The slow decline of the radio industry began with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the loosening of ownership restrictions and with technological advances.
 
The recent Alpha Media bloodbath resulting in the firings of local on-air personalities, news staff, and sports announcers doesn’t signal the death of radio. The bloodbath signals the death of LOCAL radio which is even more devastating for the communities to which these radio stations were licensed to and committed to serve.
 
Until now.
 
The phenomenon of corporate ownership announcing mass layoffs of staff certainly is nothing new. This has been happening for many years. However, what is different is for an ownership group to move away from staffing morning drive announcers, news staff, and sports staff enmasse. Local radio stations – and newspapers – have kept us informed as to what’s going on in the community, have covered city council meetings, school board meetings, county taxation hearings, reported on crimes in addition to sharing local human-interest stories about our community members. Local radio has also given high school sports an important platform, providing a way for family members and friends to listen to their local athletes and teams as they compete in their sport of choice.
 
And now, sadly, communities in small markets across the country have lost that connection to their local heartbeats in all of those contexts. Local broadcast television does a terrific job in covering the big stories and the important goings-on in the communities it serves BUT local television stations do not have the resources – human or financial – to be in every one of these communities covering all of these meetings and events with the depth and intimacy that their local radio stations do.
 
Or used to do.
 
Local radio stations in small market communities will become automated, voice-tracked, syndicated, soulless automatons with no more heart than the human beings at the corporate levels who decided their investment bankers were more important than their FCC mandate of reflecting the communities in which they were to serve.
 
Granted, the slow decline in radio – and local radio in particular – has been coming for a long time and it’s been easy to see if you’re paying attention. To be fair, the decline is not solely corporate driven. Technology, the economy, and society have all played a role in an incremental decline in the radio’s viability in all sized markets.      Here are factors that contributed to the slow erosion of an industry:
 

1. The “land bubble”. In the 1980s corporate farm operations began buying family farms but they bought the land at a price that would be difficult to sustain profitability. There are only so many bushels of crops that land could produce each year and the ridiculously high values at which they were purchased. When the market could no longer support the over-leveraged farmland, the bubble burst and the farm economy with it. The same is true with radio. Consolidation brought forth a “land rush” of radio stations, purchased in multiples that were far above their actual value and sustain profitability. Corporate ownership groups could barely keep up with the debt load. When the market corrected itself, the value of radio properties collapsed along with some companies, unable to get out of the debt load it created. Cost-cutting measures i.e. layoffs were the easiest way to try to get radio’s financial house in order.
2. The “Would You Like Fries With That” philosophy.  In the late 1990s former Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays said that he wanted his stations to be like McDonalds restaurants on the programming side. His philosophy that – like McDonalds – despite where a listener traveled in America, the quality of the product would be consistent. That’s a nice sentiment in principle but it flies in the face of radio’s mission – to operate in the best interests of the community it serves. The tastes, beliefs, and priorities of each community are different, regardless if those communities are in the same state or across the country from one another. Radio – local radio – was never meant to be homogeneous. Radio was meant to be a reflection of its community.
3. Commercials are a bad thing. Research is important but it can also create a trap from which you can never escape. Radio is a prime example with one phrase: “More music, less commercials”. Yes, when asked, people will respond that they’d rather hear less commercials but the “more music, less commercials” mantra trained listeners into thinking they didn’t like commercials…that they were, in fact, bad. Radio commercials are bad because radio professionals are clueless about writing effective, engaging (not necessarily entertaining) commercials. People watch the Super Bowl for commercials, right? Every radio commercial has become homogenous, interchangeable, and meaningless because of laziness and lack of training for its production and sales staffs. Every business proclaims “great products, great prices (we won’t be undersold!), great staff, great location, conveniently located, been in business 100 years” and all of it is boring. It’s no wonder why listeners want more music.
4. Voice tracking. Personally, I think voice tracking is a cool tool. To be fair, automation is nothing new to radio. Voice tracking is slick and allows you to do an on-air show that is so close to live it is tough to tell it’s recorded. However, voice tracking has turned into a crutch rather than a tool. As “land values” plummeted and revenues dropped in economic downturns, voice tracking was utilized as the ultimate cost-cutting device. Announcers from markets across the country could voice track other stations in their local group of stations or voice track stations in cities in which they didn’t live. Ownership groups also could have an announcer in one market voice track a handful of stations it owns across the country and save money by paying the voice track talent less than the full-time announcers it used to employ. What radio has now is a live or syndicated morning show with voice tracking the rest of the day…for now, anyway. Which, thank God, gives us even more music and less commercials.
5. The digital love affair. The final radio company I worked for positioned itself as a “digital marketing company that owns radio stations”.  Advertising revenue fell across the board before corporate types realized their core enterprise – radio – had lost market share to other media and scrambled to recover (if it is ever able to do so). Every medium has fallen in love with digital because it provides more direct access to consumers and there are big dollars to be had. Radio has gone all in on digital to drive new revenues at the expense of its core product. Print and phone books HAVE to sell digital to survive. It won’t be long until radio is in the same boat as print and phone books because radio has fallen in love with the shiny object and has forgotten what made it special. Digital is important but it is not special; regardless if you claim your digital offerings are different than your competitors. Digital connects advertisers to consumers but it does not connect nor serve the local communities. Digital simply serves ads.
6. Radio forgot what it was. The corporate types and the researchers thought radio was a communication enterprise. It most assuredly is not. Radio is a relationship business. Once upon a time, radio was the most intimate medium. Radio is a relationship between the personalities and the listeners. The “people at the top” thought that websites, email, and social media would connect listeners to the radio station and to its personalities in a way never before possible. And it’s true, they did. But in – again – falling in love with digital, the connection became more disconnected and less personal. Digital provides listeners greater access to seeing their favorite personalities, learn about them, and communicate with them BUT the greatest connection between the personality and the listener was the request line. Forget social media, a listener can have instant interaction – a relationship – with their personality. Or just call to find out if the “cue to call” to win a contest is coming up or if they missed it. Radio forgot who it was and lost touch with the people who made radio the most powerful relationship builder and community connector ever.
7. Radio became just another jukebox. The cumulative effect of points 2-6. When iTunes, Spotify, satellite radio, eta al, came along, radio had one very large collective bowel movement (“Why, they have even more music and less commercials they radio does!!!”) and further turned away from their mission of super-serving their community and their most fervent fans. Television didn’t poop itself when cable tv came along or when satellite tv appeared or now as connected devices/streaming services have emerged. No, television never forgot who it is but adapted to the new developments/new technologies/societal changes while maintaining its core mission. Local television still super-serves the communities in which it broadcasts and reminds people who they turn to for happenings i.e. severe weather that the other television outlets will never be able – nor want to – compete.

 
In the final analysis, the radio industry is the epitome of a man going through a midlife crisis…panicking at his loss of youth, his receding hairline, and those couple extra pounds around his midsection who buys a Corvette, divorces his wife, turns his back on his kids, and starts dating a 20-something blonde with “legs up to here” in a desperate attempt to recapture something he lost. When the days comes that the man finds his life has fallen apart, his ex-wife and kids want nothing to do with him, the twenty-something blonde moves on to another sugar daddy, and he’s alienated his friends, the man wonders where everything went wrong.
 
I’m not going to be one of those people who proclaim that radio is dead. People have been beating that drum since broadcast television came into existence. Radio is not dead.
 
Local radio is.
 

​​Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are the hot item of conversation across America, across pop culture and social media, and across sports fandom. But are they really an item? We’ve only seen her cheering on Travis and the Chiefs from a luxury box in two games. The only time we’ve actually seen them together is when the two were leaving Arrowhead Stadium in Travis’ convertible following the Chiefs 41-10 drubbing of the Chicago Bears. The conversation since then has raged around the question: “Are they or aren’t they dating?”

This past Sunday night my family had our monthly family supper with our daughters and their significant others. As we waited for kickoff of the Chiefs-Jets game on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, my Taylor Swift superfan youngest daughter weighed in.

“I don’t think they’re dating,” she bluntly asserted. “It’s just a big publicity stunt.”

To which I replied, “So what if it is just business? What’s wrong with that?”

Let’s take a TMZ timeout for a moment and take a look at this from a different perspective. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are not just performers in their respective career endeavors…they are two very powerful brands. What if their “publicity stunt”  is a cross-partnership to expose each other to different fan bases to further elevate their individual brands? What’s wrong with that?

Absolutely nothing.
​
​National consumer brands partner all the time. Apple has partnered with Mastercard  (Apple Pay) and with Nike (activity trackers) provide value for both consumer bases as well as for the brands themselves. And we don’t ask: Is Apple acquiring Mastercard? Is Apple acquiring Nike? Is this just a big publicity stunt? Nope. Or, maybe we are attracted to doing business with one because we already due business with the other. Or, we just shrug and go on about our lives. Consider the impact of the Taylor-Travis partnership according to Forbes:

• Fanatics reported a 400% increase in Kelce’s jersey sales which put him in the top 5 players in the NFL.
• Kelce’s podcast with his brother Jason (another NFL player), called New Heights, ranked first on Apple’s charts.
• Kelce added 383,000 new followers on his Instagram account.
• Stubhub reported a threefold increase in Chiefs ticket searches.
• The Chiefs sold more tickets in a single season since the start of 2023 season.
• According to Taboola, Swift and Kelce have been dominating the most-read-about entertainment topics: Taylor Swift is the #1 entertainment story and Travis Kelce is #2.

Of note, the first game Swift attended was also the most watched program with females including Woman 18-49 in which Roku TV reported ratings growth of 63%. Females are another group the NFL has been reaching out to. According to a survey conducted last April and reported by Statistica, 24% of the females called themselves avid fans of the NFL, with 42% responding they were not fans at all. By comparison, 51% of males considered themselves avid fans of the NFL with 19% calling themselves not a fan at all.

The partnership has already paid dividends for Travis Kelce and for the NFL. However, Taylor Swift is benefiting too.
The Taylor Swift: The Era Tour concert film will be released in 100+ countries on October 13. Industry analysts project the opening weekend will generate over $100 million in box office. During its Sunday Night Football several promos for the movie aired. Swift’s global concert tour resumes on November 9 in Argentina. Next year, the Eras Tour continues with tour dates in Europe, Asia and Australia, before returning to North America in the fall. During Taylor’s hiatus between tours, she has lost none of her momentum – and could be gaining even more momentum – by virtue of her headline-making partnership with Travis.

Oh, and Capitol One – who Taylor is a spokesperson for – ran ads during the Chiefs-Jets game – which was seen by potentially 29 million people.

If this is a business partnership, it’s a damn good one and smart.

What, then, can your business learn from “Traylor”? Is there a complementary business (or brand) that you can partner with that – in combining forces – elevates both brands and the value you create for each other’s client/consumer base? Can you in an image show the consumer increase their level of curiosity/interest in checking out your product or service from the other “fan base”.

Brand loyalty is still a thing (just as NASCAR has proven) and people will follow a beloved brand…even if it’s something they’ve never tried or had an interest in before due to this simple fact: their beloved brand would never do anything to steer them wrong. This dynamic does not guarantee you new business but it does provide a new opportunity to expand your customer base.
 
If you’re looking for ideas, strategies, and execution on how to do this, I can help. Reach out to me today through my contact tab to schedule a strategy session.

I've been a fan of superheroes since the age of four. I'd watch the tv shows, read the comic books, and then act out my own adventures in the backyard. But a superhero isn't a superhero without a mask and a cape which is where my mom came in. Mom was a Jacqueline of all trades and, above all, she was a master seamstress. Now, knowing this and believing Mom could do anything, I asked her to make me superhero costumes. Her first was a Batman cape and cowl when I was four and her last - and perhaps greatest - was Iron Man armor when I was 12. All she had to go on was her son standing next to her with a comic book pointing and saying, "That's what it should look like." She never disappointed in what she created from scratch with no patterns other than a comic book drawing. Looking back on it all, I marvel that she was able to craft what she did almost out of thin air and realizing she should have been given sainthood for putting up with my "requests". But she didn't just create my superhero costumes. Mom sewed my clothes. In fact, I didn't have a store-bought pair of jeans till I was a Senior in high school.

Sew - sorry, couldn't resist - what does this have to do with my lesson on staying relevant? Enter JoAnn Fabrics. Can we agree that Home Economics is a thing of the past and that fewer and fewer women are sewing? Shouldn't they be nervous about their customers eventually dying off and them with it? Maybe not.

JoAnn Fabrics - in an era where they could be in danger of disappearing from existence - has embraced cosplay (or Costume Play for the unfamiliar). JoAnn's not only has how-to books on their shelves but they have signage in their stores proclaiming them as "Cosplay Headquarters". When I first saw this signage and did a little investigation, I was dumbfounded on many levels.

First level - the genius of JoAnn Fabrics in seeing how they were uniquely positioned to take advantage of a growing segment in our culture who are proudly making costumes of their favorite pop culture figures - whether it's superheroes, movies, video games or anime - and want to custom make their costumes to look as authentic as possible.
Second level - being able to pivot without alienating their base sewers/crafters. That's a tough trick for any business segment. And history is replete with businesses who crashed and burned trying to do so. Kudos, JoAnn Fabrics.
Third level - realizing that Mom and I were OG cosplayers. She didn't live to see JoAnn's pivot and would have gotten a laugh at how we were cutting edge in her sewing room all those years ago.
The lesson learned here is that "old school" doesn't have to mean outdated. What societal or cultural trends can your business adopt to keep yourself relevant with a new segment? Once you figure that out you open yourself up to new revenues but, more importantly, you open yourself up to a new generation that allows you to stay in business. Remember, JoAnn Fabrics didn't change their business model nor attempt to create new product lines, they found out with a simple messaging pivot they could attract an audience to use and to experience their products in a slightly different way that keeps their cash registers ringing. Whoever came up with that idea should get a gigantic raise.
Oh, and yes, the picture below is that of me just after Mom finished my Iron Man armor. No patterns, just a kid with a comic book standing next to her at the sewing machine. She was amazing. And I was one incredibly lucky son.