A recent proliferation of new brand straplines is pointing to an increased awareness of a ‘life-long’ audience brands want to talk to. This is good. For a long time now, women of my age (‘midlife’ or Queenagers to coin Eleanor Mills) have been protesting at the invisibility of their peers – watching them disappear from pivotal roles in the media and industry whilst men of a similar age continue unchallenged. 

But are brands delivering on their promises? Boots’ new strapline ‘With You for Life’ and John Lewis’ ‘For All Life’s Moments’ feel ‘all of life’ positive.

Yet John Lewis’s first advert with the new positioning couldn’t have been more traditionally millennial-focused.

Reinforcing the stereotype of child-birth and child-rearing at a certain age, in a certain social construct. Narrowing ‘all of life’ to the already cliched and overdone.  And missing more carefully considered audience insights. 

Targeting an audience on age alone just doesn’t work. Today we do things like starting work and having children at massively different ages and within many varied social constructs (if we do them at all). And the focus on Millennnials as THE target market for consumer spend completely misunderstands where value lies. 

The over 40s are now outspending the under 40s by 250%. Forbes sees women of 50+ as Superconsumers, holding spending power for up to 95% of household purchases. In the UK, the over 50s total over 23 million people (and growing) and represent the highest disposable income of any other age demographic. At age 65, outliving men by an average of five years, most women still have over 40% of life in front of them.  

And what are they doing? Well, they’re certainly not sitting around at home. The number of over 50s in work has increased by 36% in the last 20 years. By 2050, 47% of all over 50s will be in work. And the fastest growing workplace demographic is women over 50.

With this, life’s milestones are coming later. More babies are now being born to over 40s than to teenagers. And more are being born out of wedlock than in. Young people are staying in education and living at home longer as people stay in work longer. Many more people choose to live alone/unpartnered and many women over 40 are both single and childless.

The relentless fascination with marketing to 18-34 year olds is completely out of sync with where growth and value lies. And falling back onto the usual social mores just doesn’t hit home anymore.

An advert positioning a new mum in her 20s misses the massive swathe of working mums in their 30s and 40s. Assuming a 50+ woman is an empty nester ignores the many with younger children. And single women of an older age are arguably not targeted with anything much at all – even though they are the ones with income and time to spare.

Part of this being seen and marketed to also demands new products and services. Perimenopausal and menopausal women hit this stage on average at about the half-way point in life. Their reconfigured biology offers decades ahead that can be the absolute best but are more likely to be so with products and services addressing their symptoms and needs. 

These insights are not being translated into what this audience wants. 87% of menopausal women feel overlooked by brands and 97% feel brands should work harder for them. 73% hate the way their generation is patronized when it comes to technology and 86% believe style is not defined by age. The over 65s are the fastest growing Instagrammers and GenX spend more time online than GenZ.

Who knew? And how do we make effective change?

It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. The lack of value around older women in particular contributes to gendered ageism and less women making it to c-suite level. With less women in senior marketing roles and leadership dominated by millennial males, brands lack understanding of this pivotal consumer. Brands need to have lived experience to lean on to drive accurate representation in the consumer space.

Marketers have to dig deeper. There has to be a far clearer understanding of consumer psychology than traditional perceptions based on age provide. Brands must rely on insight not instinct. And making connections that go further than age will be more meaningful.

Eg GenX and GenZ show parallels that advertising doesn’t necessarily speak to. Both value meaning and purpose above status and money. Both are interested in mental health and wellbeing. Both crave work/life balance and fulfilling time away from work. They share interests and values even whilst being different ages. And inter-generational connections provide fertile breeding ground for insight and innovation too.

But these too are generalisations. And brands today can’t afford to generalise.

What I will generalise on, is this. That raising the status of age is good for everyone. Stretching out the lifespan in terms of milestones, goals and aspirations helps millennials see that they don’t have to cram in marriage, babies and career – and burn out – before they fall off their perch at 50. Helping GenZ breathe into their expansiveness and see that they have a 100 year life to fill, with no glass ceiling of health, work or life to stop them, will surely reduce the pressure on their mental health (GenZ mental health being 40% worse than older generations) giving them more chance of developing their full potential and the change the world needs.

Brands need to see all of life. And at the moment, that means pivoting the focus away from youth and onto age.

Age, where we all want to get to. Which brands owe it to us to make the longest and best destination ever. (And John Lewis, we’re hopeful for a Christmas ad that cracks it!)

To talk to Claire about insights or opportunities for your brand, please connect and message via LinkedIn or Instagram.

By Lucy Callaghan – Social Media Director at Propaganda

“All it takes is a few great tweets”

This is a comment I hear regularly on the likes of LinkedIn and in marketing circles. See also, “social media built my brand” and “without Instagram, we wouldn’t be here”. All have the same sentiment, that social media is the one stop shop to creating a brand online. Get the social right, and everything else will follow.

I’m here to tell you it’s a trap. Sure, social media can help your brand, but it’s not the ONLY route to success, and it absolutely can’t be seen as an alternative to traditional marketing methods.

Brand 101 starts with.. a brand! And by brand, I mean an image, tone and product that will be recognised by consumers in a range of settings, be it supermarket shelf, TV advert or yes, an Instagram post. This together creates the brand concept. The brand then needs to act purposefully, give consumers something that they actually need, and have a product that actually works. Got all those things? You still won’t become a millionaire through social media. Nobody has heard of you yet*.

Once you have your brand concept, you need to tell people about it, in a consistent way. People forget things. Especially marketing material. So you have to repeat it. Over, and over again. In lots of different ways. Forever. Heinz means beans. Beans means Heinz. This line in various formats has bean (sorry) around since before Mark Zuckerberg was even born. It’s used in and out of Heinz’s advertising for the last 50 years, and with it has come consistent brand creative, all perpetuating the concept – “we are the market leader for beans.” See also “it has to be Heinz”.

When Heinz had their viral moment with Weetabix last year, it wasn’t successful because it was right place, right time, just some teenage social media exec in a dark room somewhere at Weetabix or Heinz HQ**. It was successful because they’ve had a whole half a century of brand consistency and loyalty under their big, beany belts. Beans means Heinz. Heinz means beans. The social media professional running the account thought of Heinz. You looked at a pile of beans perched inexplicably atop some Weetabix, and it made sense for it to be Heinz. Mission accomplished. The most powerful brand recognition survey you could ask for.

I’ll stop crapping on social media now, as it’s actually my job to do it, and it does have its place at the brand table. So here’s the point in the blog post where I start to big it up. Why do I tell my clients they need to be on social media? Well, creating a relationship with your customer is usually first reason. Influencing conversions, that’s another. Potential access to 2.3 billion people usually convinces the media buying sort. Social media can work throughout the customer funnel, from driving awareness through to taking action. But it can’t build a brand alone.

Brand building instead is achieved through consistency, purpose and delivering a reliable product that consumers will buy. That activity should be delivered across multiple channels, not just social, in order to hit your potential audience repeatedly in different settings, at different times and in different need states.

“But Glossier/Gymshark/[insert millennial start up here] did it!”

Did they? Or did they just tell you they did? Glossier actually launched after 4 years of market research from it’s founder, Emily Weiss, while she was interning at – wait for it – VOGUE, the largest circulating fashion magazine in the world.

Glossier’s organic social media feed alone did not lead them to become multimillion pound turnover business. Concentration on a lean D2C, digital-only offering with low overheads, 4 carefully researched (and healthy margined) launch products and savvy investment did.

Social supported the brand execution just like any other channel, and their affiliate marketing scheme literally paid users to promote the product. In short, investments were made here. Cash was parted with. It wasn’t ‘a few tweets’, it was 4 years of hard graft, business acumen and smart marketing which involved a social channel or two.

But, none of this would have worked if the social executions didn’t replicate the Glossier brand values, have the right ‘look’ (even if that look was diverse) and meet the brand’s brief.

Propaganda believe in brand first, social second. All it takes is some careful insight and discovery, brand positioning, brand concept, purposeful activity, quality product that solves a problem, AND THEN few great tweets.

__________

*Unless you have your viral moment, which in itself isn’t a marketing strategy. It doesn’t happen to everyone, isn’t predictable, and is at the complete and utter behest of the social media platform itself. If you’ve experienced one though, congrats!

**A lesser known fact is that Weetabix tried this approach with several other FMCG brands before finding viral success with the beans combo.

Propaganda, the Leeds-based strategic brand consultancy, has been nominated for a Social Value Award by the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) for their impactful work for GenM.

The award celebrates work that has enabled clients and consultancies to achieve outstanding and sustainable benefits for wider society.

GenM was founded by Sam Simister and Heather Jackson, who were unwilling to settle for the invisibility of the UK’s 15.5 million menopausal women and non-binary and trans people in menopause.

The founders engaged Propaganda in 2021 to help their brand gain traction. Working hand in hand with Sam and Heather, Propaganda recommended a strategic pivot from being a one-stop shop for consumers to becoming the menopause partner for brands. By partnering with existing brands, GenM was able to rapidly scale their social impact, while creating a sustainable business plan for long-term .

To raise the profile of the menopause audience – making the invisible visible – Propaganda created and produced powerful national campaigns, achieving a wide range of national and industry coverage including titles such as Forbes, The Times, Camapaign, Marie Claire, Courier, Times Radio, and BBC News.

In the six months since launching, 55 pioneering brands have become GenM Partners, publicly committing to take action to improve the menopause experience. Partners include household names such as Boots, Marks and Spencer, Royal Mail, and JP Morgan.

Most importantly, organisations are already creating positive change, from developing menopause-specific products, and enhancing store signposting, to creating menopause workplace policies, sharing taboo-busting internal comms, and launching campaigns to overcome censorship of women’s health on social media.

Laura Kynaston, Managing Director of Propaganda, said, “As the only brand consultancy ever to be accepted as members of the MCA, we are delighted to be nominated for our work with GenM. It underscores Propaganda’s purpose-led approach. In all our work, we strive to make it matter. And championing a better menopause experience matters to millions of under-served women, as well as impacting everyone in our wider society.”

Sam Simister, co-founder of GenM, added, “Propaganda got to the heart of what we were trying to achieve. Their recommendations made the evolution to our new brand proposition easy. We’re still in our first year, with a clear trajectory in place to attract and retain more brand partners, who collectively will help us normalise the menopause conversation and improve the menopause experience for all.”

The MCA Awards winners will be announced on 14 November 2022.

Links for more information:

Propaganda: http://www.propaganda.co.uk/

GenM: https://gen-m.com/

MCA Awards Finalists: https://www.mca.org.uk/mca-awards/finalists

Leeds-based brand and creative consultancy, Propaganda, is launching a new consulting arm, Propaganda Agency, helping brands realise the opportunity to differently frame how we see mid-life and the years beyond. Propaganda has appointed brand strategist Claire Lowson to lead the new division. 

As a Founding Partner of GenM, the menopause partner for brands, Propaganda’s new age-positive offering forms part of its commitment to changing the conversation around the menopause. Propaganda Agency will be the recommended brand support for GenM’s consulting division.

GenM launched last year and has so far signed up over 50 Partner brands including Co-op, Boots, Royal Mail, M&S and WW (formerly Weight Watchers), each pledging to do more to improve the menopausal experience. Building on its initial success, GenM is now launching a consulting division to support its brand Partners – connecting them with expert businesses who can help them adapt and shape their menopause offer. Propaganda Agency will work alongside this division, offering brand and marketing consultancy to GenM’s Partners.

Claire Lowson joins Propaganda to lead the new service. She brings extensive experience in brand strategy for clients including Kimberly Clark, GSK, Aviva and BT. Prior to that she was MD of TW Creative where she ran the RBS and Barclays accounts. She lectures on the Master of Design course at Ravensbourne University and oversaw the brand strategy and rebrand for Leeds Playhouse, formerly West Yorkshire Playhouse, where she is a Trustee. 

With a recent IPA report showing that less than 5% of marketers aged 51+ are female, Propaganda is committed to addressing the lack of older women in the industry. Through recruitment strategies, new role creation and an active freelance base for seasoned talent, Propaganda is working to address this gap of female understanding, knowledge and talent in marketing.

Laura Kynaston, Managing Director at Propaganda says: “Through our work supporting GenM’s brand proposition and launch, we’ve developed a deep understanding of the mid-life audience. It is clear those experiences demand new and appropriate brand responses. Propaganda Agency will help brands change the way this market is represented in campaigns, product development and internal communications, better serving this audience and driving societal change.”

Claire says: “Many forget that the menopause transition (which starts in relative youth) kicks-off the most powerful phase of life yet. From corporate clients retaining senior talent, NPD creating a new market, or external campaigning for aspirational ageing, the societal and commercial benefits are obvious. As marketers, it’s time to colour in the decades beyond 40 and switch out the cult of youth for the cult of powerful ageing.”

Heather Jackson, co-founder of GenM says, “Normalising the conversation around the menopause, and ageing as a whole, is one of the most important things we can do to make a change. Together, GenM and Propaganda will support responsible and forward-thinking brands to play their part. The outstanding work we have delivered with Propaganda over the last year speaks for itself – strategically we couldn’t have asked for a better partner. GenM looks forward to what together we can deliver to drive real change to the change over the next important and impactful years ahead.”

Contact Claire to find out how your brand can influence ageing positively. For greater representation, relevance and commercial opportunity.

Contact: [email protected] 0113 322 9660

Leeds-based brand consultancy agency, Propaganda, has created an inspiring new brand film for retail logistics specialists, Clipper Logistics. Launched to mark the brand’s 30th anniversary year, the film – titled ‘Enabling Retail’ – celebrates Clipper’s industry-leading retail proposition.

Blending live action with seamless CGI, the minute-long spot sees a digitally rendered version of Clipper’s iconic pegasus soaring across the world as consumers in every corner of the globe order items with ease and convenience. Representing an omnipresent guardian over retail, the winged horse connects retailers to consumers, villages to towns and cities to countries.

Demonstrating Clipper’s agility and reach, we see satisfied customers in futuristic cityscapes and the great outdoors alike, while the pegasus, an animal known for its speed, strength and reliability, remains an ever-present figure regardless of location.

Led by Propaganda’s creative team, the concept was developed by Lee Bennett and Oliver Meech – Creative Director and Head of Copy, respectively. The video elements were created by Manchester-based Chief Productions and directed by Mark Ingham.

Julian Kynaston, CEO of Propaganda, said, “We’re so proud of this work. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this film but the results speak for themselves. The team did a fantastic job at finding a novel, exciting and unique way to illustrate the amazing work that Clipper does. A huge well done to everyone who was involved on the project.”

Richard McMurrough, Director at Propaganda, said, “This film is a celebration of the transformative journey that Clipper has taken over the last 30 years to become a leading player in retail logistics. It perfectly captures and expresses their unique proposition of agility matched by ability, which has been central to how they have consistently innovated in their field and can now justifiably claim to ‘Enable Retail’.”

Having worked together for over a decade, this video is a product of Propaganda and Clipper’s 14-year shared history as the two brands have grown, evolved and developed over the years.

The full film can be watched here: https://twitter.com/ClipperPlc/status/1496824831882539010

Leeds-based brand consultancy Propaganda has partnered with infaant, a new children’s clothing brand, to develop its market and launch strategy. Created with the intention to inspire a sense of curiosity in children, infaant’s minimal yet child-friendly designs reflect themes about the world around us.

Pre-launch, Propaganda undertook its extensive Brand Discovery™ consultative process to identify ways to refine and amplify infaant’s messaging, before developing a take-to-market strategy. The brand creative and campaign launch was brought to life by Propaganda’s Creative Director Lee Bennett, who will be responsible for the continued creative delivery.

Crafted from organic cotton, infaant’s stylish and fun clothes are designed to provoke conversation on difficult topics, such as climate change, in a way that is accessible to children. The brand is unapologetic about this, aiming to stimulate inquisitive minds, rather than attempting to insulate young people from the issues that will affect their future. 

Ryan Knight, founder of infaant, says: “infaant is about more than just clothes – we believe that the more knowledge we can impart on our kids today, the better chance we give them to make an impact on tomorrow. It was important to me to partner with a team that understood this vision.

“Having had a relationship with Propaganda for some time, I knew from the track record that it was the right choice to support infaant. The team’s expertise has been invaluable in the journey so far.”

Laura Kynaston, MD of Propaganda says: “Supporting brands with purpose and a desire to shake up the status quo has long been part of Propaganda’s DNA. We loved working with infaant to push the traditional codes of childrenwear to do something not only different, but that matters – appealing to an audience of parents looking beyond fast-fashion and seeking to grow their child’s understanding of the world. We’re looking forward to being part of the infaant journey and inspiring the free-thinkers of tomorrow ”.

Leeds-based strategic and creative brand consultancy, Propaganda has launched an advert campaign for leading garden building manufacturer and online retailer, Woodlands Home & Garden Group. Yorkshire-based Woodlands engaged Propaganda to develop a nationwide campaign to unveil a distinctive new look for its award-winning e-commerce brand, Tiger Sheds.

Propaganda created two national TV ads which are live across all ITV channels and the ITV Hub. The ads star a typical British family and Eric the Tiger – the face of the brand – brought to life through CGI. Featuring two separate stories with 30-second and 10-second versions of each, the adverts will air until June 2022. 

Outdoor living has become increasingly popular over the last few years, with more homeowners than ever planning to update their garden spaces. Consumers are also becoming increasingly confident when it comes to shopping for garden buildings online, and it has become evident that both quality and choice is of utmost importance. The new campaign for Tiger responds to the overarching consumer need for more space, whether it be for gardening, storage, living, working, playing, for pets or even a workout. It embodies the spirit of allowing the consumer to find their own perfect space.

Created in collaboration with director Chris Cottam and Manchester-based creative agencies Chief Productions and Flipbook, the ads seamlessly blend live action with CGI. Oliver Meech, Head of Copy at Propaganda said, “We wanted to create a distinctive campaign for a category devoid of recognised brands. One that showcases the much-needed space that Tiger Sheds provide, reinforces their position as market leaders, and introduces their new tiger character, Eric.”

Ala Kowalczyk, Propaganda’s Design Director added, “Central to the creative execution was a recognition of the many strengths of the Tiger brand. Additionally we worked to recognise changing consumer behaviours and create content that would bring this to life in an engaging way.”

Woodlands’ Managing Director, Ged Lees, said, “We have a distinct message to offer consumers the choice they need – this is why we have invested significantly in printed brochures, digital marketing and not just one but two TV creatives, to make clear to consumers that Tiger has a building for whatever they require. Tiger can help find your perfect space.”

The adverts can be viewed at the links below: