Brand loyalty: A marketing rule written by Mother Goose

"Catch ‘em with your brand when they’re young and they’ll stay with you for a lifetime.” There are still too many marketers who believe that hoary old saw. Time to put it on the shelf next to some other old but not-so-bold truths like Milli Vanilli sang their own songs and no one will ever know the true identity of Deep Throat. It’s a fairy tale with just enough truth to it to make it seem plausible.

That branding idea reached it’s zenith at the mid-point of the last century when the size of the baby boomer generation caught the attention of marketing people everywhere. It was the biggest population bubble in history, something that a well-managed brand was supposed to capture and ride to profitability for decades to come.

Except it never worked. If it did, Gerber would own just about every square inch of supermarket shelf space with Gerber-branded baby food, soups, dry cereals, canned vegetables and fresh beef and pork. Cherry Coke would still be a major soft drink, not just something brewed up at a soda fountain as a sixties treat. Pop Rocks would still rule the candy counter. And I would still be driving a Ford product, graduating from that Mustang of my youth to a Lincoln LS in my dotage – maybe with a Bronco and a Mercury Monterey along the way. Mother Goose couldn’t write that fairy tale.

So why am I still watching “smart marketing people” chasing the holy grail of 15-25 year olds? The real money is still with the baby boomers. We’re the folks, after all, that are financing the lifestyles of most of those youngsters. We’re still the biggest population bubble in history and now we have large amounts of disposable cash as we’ve reached our peak earning years. As we’ve aged, we have special dietary needs, a market largely unrecognized by food companies.

So with such a large and financially stable audience, why are so few food processors chasing the market? Many of us have to watch our sodium intake but most prepared foods are saturated with salt. The dietary fat we could burn off when we were active twenty year olds now goes straight to our bellies and backsides.

Care to check the fat and sodium content of most processed foods on the supermarket shelf? It’s almost impossible. The mice type used to print product labels is unintelligible to aging eyes. It doesn’t matter, though; most of the products exceed our daily maximum intake for fat and salt in one small serving.

Here is the real truth in marketing. The consumer is a fickle beast. What’s hot today is tomorrow’s embarrassment. Each generation tends to reject the choices of its predecessors and then change its mind from year-to-year as its needs evolve. I needed a Mustang as a newlywed, a Toyota van as a suburban father of two and a Chevrolet SUV when I moved to a snow belt state.

I was a big fan of Campbell’s tomato soup as a starving student. Can’t stand the stuff now. Like most people, red meat was a favorite for a few decades, carb loading gained my favor for a while and now I’ve gone back to meat. In an unscientific survey of a few friends, my history seems pretty average. In no instance have I discovered an undying, decades-long attachment to a particular brand.

Here’s my suggestion to food marketers everywhere. Dump the single-minded pursuit of the youth market. To make money like you had the keys to the mint, go where the money is – the aging boomer generation. We need lots of stuff, we’ve got the money to buy it and only a few companies have “discovered” us.