The Most Powerful (and forgotten) Demographic: Gen X Women (with children)

According to the 3% movement, women influence 80% of consumer spending and share 60% of the social media experiences online… but only 3% are representing the advertising industry in creative roles. Even as some advertisers have become aware of this forgotten consumer base, they haven’t made a concerted effort to speak fluently in the language of women by including them on their creative teams.

As an advocate of women, a national radio personality with the influence of more than 6 million listeners (mostly women) and a return on investment from almost every one of my advertisers, it still boggles my mind how little advertising companies line their teams with people who most represent this powerful group of consumers.

Let’s explore this for a moment.

To get philosophical, advertising can either be art imitating life, OR life imitating art. In other words, instead of following trends, advertisers have the ability to be the trendsetters…but only if they are willing to take bold risks in the narratives that they tell.

There is a feminine shift happening and it is getting louder by the minute. 

So, if women are trending, then why is the advertising world continuing to behave as if women are not worth their attention in advertising dollars?

It used to be that women were not seen as influencers in the global economy because of their lack of income contributions as compared to men, but in 2018, women’s incomes reached $18 trillion, according to Forbes magazine.

Let’s dig a little further and talk about women with children, shall we?

Even for women who are not working, women who are married with children are the primary influencers of multiple markets, because they tend to buy for everyone in their household. Gen X women with children in particular have found themselves sandwiched in between generations as they take care of their Gen X husbands, their Baby Boom parents, and their Millennial and Centennial children. These market groups include all the subgroups you can think of— the LGBTQ community, the sports-loving community, the Democrats, Republicans AND Independents, the wealthy, the poor, the overweight, the underweight, the healthy, the unhealthy, every culture, every religion, every socio-economic area of the world and every group that I couldn’t think of at the time that I wrote this blog.

Women with children may struggle to feel seen and heard, but the truth is that they are the biggest influencers in everyone’s life. 

How is this not obvious?

I will never forget an argument I had with my boss at iHeart radio who told me that it was proven time and again that stay-at-home moms were NOT a powerful consumer demographic. What he didn’t tell me was that when they had attempted to reach the demographic in the past, they had assumed that stay-at-home moms were sitting around watching soap operas, flipping through fashion magazines, and –you guessed it— eating bonbons.

I can assure you, as a mom who spent the last 12 years working from home and building my network with other moms— I don’t know a single person who would align with any part of that insulting stereotype. No wonder advertisers were failing to persuade that demographic… because it doesn’t exist.  If anyone is marketing to THAT demographic, then they are marketing to NOBODY.

So what is the real reason that women are excluded from the creative playing field?

Call me a crazy feminist, but I believe it is just one more way that the patriarchy is trying to hold onto their power. Giving women too much visibility might lead to equality, which could lead to inclusion, which would most definitely lead to normalization, and that might actually give women the courage to find their voice and use it to advocate for themselves and for one another. Oh, the horrors!

The simple simple truth is that since women with children make up a large majority of the consumer spending as well as the highest amount of consumer influence, it makes the most sense that they should be a big part of the creative process.