Shoppers of a Certain Age: Somehow, the Media, Marketing, Advertising Have Lost Track of Women Over 50

Pattie Heisser's epiphany came in 2005 at a cosmetics counter when she realized the young women there had no clue how to meet her needs.

Back home, she noticed that when women aged 50-plus like herself smiled from a TV commercial, they were usually hawking osteoporosis pills or denture cream.

"I realized that advertisers were not targeting baby boomers," said Heisser, a former corporate marketing consultant who lives in Sebastopol, Calif. And when they did "what was pictured as us is not what I was experiencing in the women I knew."

Heisser responded by starting the online Magazine 50+ Fabulous (at 50fabulous.com). Experts who write there are all women over 50 and include Leslie Shankman-Cohn of Memphis, a partner in Jill Hertz Interior Design and a specialist in design that accommodates an aging population.

How 78 million baby boomers, now age 45 to 63, managed to largely slip off the radar screen in advertising, the media and entertainment industries, except for health and insurance issues, is the "multimillion dollar question," said Jody Quinn, U.S. creative director and manager of Boomer Insights Practice at Edelman public relations company in New York.

Advertising still targets broad markets generally up to age 54, said Quinn, a boomer herself. "After that, everybody is dead.

"My opinion is that advertising decision-makers and brand marketers are a lot younger than we are, and, as a result, may feel uncomfortable delving into an older segment," she said.

Yet Edelman research reveals that boomers, the wealthiest demographic simply by virtue of numbers, are not particularly brand loyal, she said. They shop around. They also try new things.

Women over 55, for example, are the fastest-growing users of Facebook, according to a February report on insidefacebook.com , which tracks the company. More surprising, boomers of both genders age 45-54 are the biggest users of Twitter , according to an April report from ComScore , the Internet use tracker. Some speculate they see business advantages in such networking.