Episode 298 / Christiana Courtright / Edelman / Head of Digital Netherlands
Why Advertisers Need to Stop Obsessing Over Youth
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Most ads are targeted at a young audience, but the data shows that the true decision makers are often in the midlife category. In fact, women over 50 are a forgotten demographic (featured in only 5% of ads) - yet, Baby Boomers and GenX hold over 44% of the spending power. So, why aren’t there more ads featuring older people?
Christiana Courtright, Head of Digital for the Netherlands at Edelman, has picked ageism as her shiny new object. On the podcast, she explains how important it is to actually understand who the audience is and who’s making the purchasing decisions. Most marketers get it wrong, assuming they need to market to young people: “we have to start using the data and not our bias… it makes money to be age inclusive.”
We also discuss other data driven marketing traps, such as creating personas that don’t actually exist in real life and using data to simply confirm your own bias. As Christiana puts it:
“If the data you’re looking at has never surprised you, it is likely confirming your bias or your client’s bias. The data should often surprise you.”
Find out how to get data that opens your eyes to new opportunities, what investments matter in data driven marketing, and where the money really is, by tuning in to the latest episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Christiana Courtright 0:00
If the data you're looking at has never surprised you, it is likely confirming your bias or your client's bias.
Speaker 0:13
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Tom Ollerton 0:46
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform, and this is a weekly show about the future of data driven marketing. And I am the lucky guy that gets to go all over the place and meet lots of interesting people and talk about that subject matter, because I love it. I'm obsessed with it, and we've done nearly 300 shows, so I can't stop myself. And today is no different. I'm on did you know I do so many of these as a zoom? I've said I'm on a call. I just couldn't stop myself. I'm not. I'm in person in Amsterdam for Christiana Courtright, who is the head of digital for the Netherlands for Edelman. Thank you for inviting me to your lovely, swanky, bougie kind of hotel vibes office. For anyone who doesn't know you and isn't familiar with your work,could you give us a bit of background on how you got to this job and what you do?
Christiana Courtright 1:36
Absolutely. First of all, welcome to Amsterdam. I have not always been in the advertising industry. I started six years ago, and before that, I was an international journalist in Berlin. So I have in six short years, managed to go from a senior social strategist in digital to the head of digital here in the Netherlands. So it was quite a fast moving career that I've had in the last six years. And what I do now is I run a department of six people, all with different digital talents, and I simultaneously am also in a dual role of being the lead digital of EMEA for Unilever. So I also have that on my plate as well.
Tom Ollerton 2:24
So what has been the best investment of your own time, energy or money in your own career?
Christiana Courtright 2:34
This kind of goes back to what I was just saying around how did I in six years go from just joining the industry to the head of a department, I think the best investment I made was in communication. And what I mean by that is twofold. So one, how do I communicate and present? I think we all assume that just because we can talk, we can all communicate, and I don't think that's true. What I would say is that actually communication is an art. So one thing I did was I invested in a business coach who taught me the art of communication, how to talk and present in meetings, how to also set boundaries at work, while still, you know, maintaining a solid reputation. And then the second thing was, I invested in improv comedy, and the improv comedy was again to help my presentation skills and pitches. I once was doing a presentation class at my last job, and my MD pulled me aside and said, Christiana, you're never going to win pitches if you present like that. And it was a really hard moment where I said, Oh, really. And he was like, Yeah, your speaking skills are just not up to par. So I had two choices. I could either cry and give up, or I could do something about it, and I thought the best solution was to do improv comedy, because it means failing fast all the time. Because that was my biggest blocker. It was the embarrassment of, what if I make a mistake in these pitches?
Tom Ollerton 3:52
Well, as a co leader of a business, I think that's really awful thing to say to someone that's not exactly constructive feedback, is it?
Christiana Courtright 3:58
It wasn't, and it was definitely some of the hardest feedback I've ever received. What I am grateful for now, in hindsight, is the fact that I found a love for improv comedy. I didn't just do it for, like, a couple months. I ended up doing it for two and a half years. I absolutely loved it, and the presentation skills that it gave me, I credit for the reason I have got to do a TEDx. It's the reason I have been able to stand on stage and been invited. I've never felt more comfortable in front of a stage, and I definitely wouldn't have said that four or five years ago.
Tom Ollerton 4:27
Well, I can relate. I've also done stand up really badly. That was painful experience for everyone for a couple of years. But part of that sort of smooshed in was, was a lot of improv, and I, my take on that is it allows you, you know, in the you know, in the Matrix that film, everything slows down. Yes, like, that's what improv comedy does to you in a business context, is because you can, because you're thinking on your feet, you're not, yes, you're listening to what the person's saying, but you also have your own narrative in the background, so that the words come out of your your mouth as kind of... additive is the one word. Whereas if you only ever done corporate, you're like, Oh God, I need to read the words on this slide. But I think it gives you a superpower, really, to be able to calm yourself the fuck down and be able to see things happen slower.
Christiana Courtright 5:16
I think it gives you a much more diverse range of vocabulary than circling back, and let's put a pin in it, you actually find your own way to speak corporate. And I think that's incredibly important, because it really engages people. When you talk like a human and you speak like real, like a real person does not as a corporate human being.
Tom Ollerton 5:33
Yeah, I always try to pass on the idea of being unprofessionally professional, or is it professionally unprofessional? But either way, it doesn't really matter. It's that you still get the job done, still communicate with people, you're still giving the value and more that you're supposed to deliver, but you're not putting a pin in it, being a human. Well, that's brilliant advice. I'm sorry your boss was mean to you something. It's okay, to be honest, but there you go. Um, you deserve better.
Tom Ollerton 6:04
Anyway, right? So let's talk about coaching a little bit. So so that would have been expensive, I assume.
Christiana Courtright 6:10
So yes, but I had a learning and development budget, so that's where I invested my learning and development funds. So it's a...
Tom Ollerton 6:17
You just carved out of your own budget, or that.
Christiana Courtright 6:19
So my old office gave me, and so does Edelman. They give us a chunk of money each year, and as long as we're investing it into something that helps us professionally, can be whatever you need it to be. I have team members who also have invested in coaches in my team, and have really benefited from it. I think the other thing to also mention is I think that mentorship is still very hard to come by in advertising, I think we're time poor. I think we have to always be billable. So it kind of puts pressure to put things like mentorship aside. I think investing in mentorship in my team, I have seen like the return on investment so much, the progression, the confidence that my team has had because I spent time investing in myself and then passed on what I learned to them. I think that is probably one of the best things I've done so far in my role as head of.
Christiana Courtright 6:19
So lovely, and it's all a bit smooshy and dreamy philosophical, but we've got to talk about data driven marketing, right? So give me your best data driven marketing tip. What's that bit of advice that you find yourself passing on to folk?
Christiana Courtright 7:23
I think that if the data you're looking at has never surprised you, it is likely confirming your bias or your client's bias. I think that the data should often surprise you. It shouldn't just be based on desk research alone. I think speaking to real people is critical to the point where, if you haven't done it, I can't really say then that you're finding anything too rich and interesting, because it's it's the people that offer the complexity, the dynamicism, and also that kind of psychographic intel that you need so that we're not just leaning on those very two dimensional demographics. And that's particularly true for older women or midlife women over 50, because there's such a forgotten demographic in advertising. I mean, we only invest 5% of all of our ads on featuring older women, and so I think that kind of information is important to identify who are your real purchase decision makers? Are you hoping that they're Gen Z, or are they actually Gen Z? Is the persona you've created, even a real person? I mean, I've read so many personas where it's like, Meet Bob. He is a bookstore owner. He also likes to surf on weekends, and he's a graffiti artist. And I'm like, I've never met Bob, and I'm sure many people have not met Bob, and I'm sure he's not even a real person. He's just the person you'd like to advertise to.
Tom Ollerton 8:46
That's a whole podcast there. But we're gonna move on, so we'll now talk about your shiny new object. Yes, which is ageism? Yes. So I think I know what ageism is but what is ageism in a shiny new object, data driven marketing context?
Christiana Courtright 9:06
Well, I think one thing to say really plainly is that often people think ageism is just like a misguided attitude, but actually it has been perceived and known to be the last acceptable form of discrimination. So that's an uncomfortable truth onto its own. Because why is it 2025 and we're still leaning on these assumptions that, for example, old age equals weakness and declining health. Because if you think about it, the data doesn't say that, if you speak to real women over 50, the data says this is just another vital life stage. We're enjoying ourselves. We're not all with bladder, you know, weakness and joint pain, but yet, the only ads that seem to be targeted at us are about declining health, incontinence products, anti wrinkle cream, grey hair dye. All of these are saying that the only value you have is to maintain your youth for as long as possible.
Tom Ollerton 10:00
So the common wisdom that I've been exposed to is that if you get someone into a brand young, then they've got a long term value, right? And no one's gonna argue with that, right? If you hook someone in when they're 18, by the time they're old enough to afford a car or house, a phone or whatever, then that person's great, because you can hold that person for the entire longevity of their life and make loads of money from them, that's the logic, right? However, the tenure of most CMOS is what I don't know. What's the latest figure? A year, year and a half, two, three? It doesn't matter. It's certainly not a lifetime, is it? So it's not like you're going to have these people joining the grad scheme at Unilever at 18 and then working there to, actually Unilever is probably a bad example. Generally speaking, people hop around brands a lot over a 12345, year period, so the idea that they need to kind of get people in at the start and keep them there for whole of their lives. Those two facts don't add up for me. So where's that coming from?
Christiana Courtright 11:03
It's a great question. I think that a couple of things, and I'll say this more from my own experience of working with brands, is I think that I'm not gonna get into Byron Sharp now and talk all about the science behind marketing, but what I will say is I think that there is an argument for retain and grow, because if you have customers who are, let's just say, more mature, and that is your current customer base and your current purchase decision makers, but you would also like to acquire younger customers so that you know they stay part of, you know, part of your brand or part of Your product for the rest of their lifetime. That is a wiser strategy than only trying to chase the young, which seems to be the predominant strategy of just attract Gen Z and let's just ignore the mid lifers, because there's this assumption that if you feature Gen Z or young, it'll still influence and engage the midlife but that's proven to be incorrect. That is false data, because midlife people want to see people who look like them in advertisements, not young aspirational people. And I think it actually creates more anxiety to see young people than it does actually to inspire them, because it's like, oh, we're irrelevant now, we're invisible now. We don't matter now.
Tom Ollerton 12:22
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Tom Ollerton 12:59
So the older generation in certain markets has a massive spending power, right? A massive, huge, disposable...
Christiana Courtright 13:07
Two generations hold 44.3% of global spending power. So that's Baby Boomers and Gen X.
Tom Ollerton 13:11
So there's 44% of money on the table.
Christiana Courtright 13:14
Yeah, that we're leaving off the table by ignoring
Tom Ollerton 13:18
So that, like, to me, that is like the most whopping business opportunity that even the thickest CEO or CMO would understand. So why is why is it not happening?
Christiana Courtright 13:29
This is something that I've tried to unpack, because I think it's one of the greatest questions we have. For example, I would say Dove is one of the only companies who, over a decade now, has been combating age bias. They launched real beauty in 2004 they have seen their sales go from 2.5 billion to over 4 billion within the decade. That is the financial proof that any CMO would need, which is it makes money to be age inclusive. And you don't have to do only midlife or only young. You can have just a broad, diverse range of ages for your product. So I think part of the problem is, I think the fact that, first and foremost, between the ages of 45 and 54 in the ad industry, 70% of ad professionals exit the industry, and you are three times more likely in that age group to be forced up by redundancy than to leave due to burnout or to go client side. So I think the first issue is the fact that we don't have midlife people in advertising. So how are we to challenge age bias if there is no one speaking up for the midlife person and being authentic to their experiences? I think it's also the reason why a lot of the advertisements we see play on very tired stereotypes that are almost offensive, like old ladies who have beige tights and woollen cardigans and are driving around in souped up mobility scooters like this kind of comedic, because it's like nothing's funnier, right than a midlife woman trying to be young again, haha, like no one's laughing who is over the age of 50, but yet this ad is still everywhere. Like, start going online and look at recent ads featuring older people, and I can bet you, you will find that stereotype more times than you care to count.
Tom Ollerton 15:08
So we are obviously a million miles away from true representation in advertising. Yes, I I've been in this industry for 16-17 years, and what's happened in the past, kind of three or four has definitely been a step in that direction. It's part of our vocabulary as an industry. It's something that's talked about from sort of conferences to WhatsApp groups to this people are put in like positions. You know, it's representation. And certainly representation in the UK is definitely going the right direction in terms of race, culture, background, beliefs, all that kind of stuff. I don't see that when it comes to age.
Christiana Courtright 15:47
No. And I think this is one thing that really frustrates me as an advertiser who's been campaigning against ageism in advertising for the last six years, is how have we been able to talk about so many difficult topics, and yet, when it comes to age, something that we all experience. It isn't just a group of people who age. We all age. We still can't seem to tackle that last piece of discrimination. I don't understand it.
Tom Ollerton 16:13
So who, who would benefit from tackling it? Where's the money?
Christiana Courtright 16:18
Well, interestingly, there was a recent study done where a car brand was very sure that men were their purchase decision makers, very sure. And so then they put all of the data, not their ideal persona of males, but just their data of who's been buying their cars recently, the category, and what they discovered was that actually midlife women were the purchase decision makers of cars, not midlife men. And so the AI actually confronted their own bias and said, hey, hey, you've got it wrong. You've got completely the wrong customer. Don't advertise this way. And then they completely redid their advertising towards females, and it increased sales by 50% so I think this is the important thing. Is we have to start using the data and not our bias, in order to identify who real purchase decision makers are. And I recommend any brand who might have a hunch that it's a little bit broader than maybe people 18 to 25 to start inputting data into AI and not and to leave their bias out of it.
Tom Ollerton 17:27
So I'm gonna have to push you on the AI bit. Yeah, it's incredibly broad. What do you mean specifically by putting it into the AI?
Christiana Courtright 17:34
Yeah I mean, that is incredibly broad, I think, because I obviously was not part of this case study. All it said in this case study was that they inputted it into artificial intelligence. What I imagine it is, is that it was an app or tool when it was identifying things to do with consumer data and information. What I can say is, though, that I have done this without the use of AI, and I think you could find very similar results without inputting it into an app or tool. For example, we had a brand who was very confident that they needed to target younger people, kind of going back to our earlier conversation, in order to be culturally relevant and in order to drive sales, we did focus groups around the whole of Europe about who are their current buyers and also who are the challengers against this brand. And what we identified was a more mature customer, but also a far more interesting customer than who they thought. They thought the people who currently bought their brand were uneducated, not very interesting, suburban. And actually, we found that these women had complexity and really diverse interests and were dynamic and interesting. And so that became a really interesting moment where we could hold up their own data and say, hey, who you thought was purchasing your product isn't as uninteresting as you think. And this plan to target young in order to attract and be culturally relevant isn't necessary. You can be culturally relevant while still speaking to midlife women. And so we found that way to balance the two.
Tom Ollerton 19:02
I try not to talk about my own business on this podcast, for this isn't a platform for that, but I think that the... I don't think it's that hard to really experiment with this, right? So in a world of generative AI, which still isn't there, we still know its shortcomings, but at some point you're gonna be able to generate anything for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in any format, right? If you want to a car ride with Brad Pitt sitting in there with a go driving through space, you could probably have that. Not right now, it's a little bit weird. However, if you are a brand that, as you described it, that could sell at different age groups, young through to middle age and beyond then if an AI can generate assets or ads or images of an old person using the product, middle age, young, whatever, and then you can automate production of those ads and then serve them to relevant media groups. So you serve the middle aged people to this age bracket and so on and so forth. You can prove very quickly, very easily, very cheaply, whether the hypothesis that one audience is more valuable than another very quickly. I don't think you even need to put it into AI and go, oh, like, what does the AI think? It doesn't matter. Like, create hypothesis. Is it young, middle, age or old? Create those assets using AI, deploy them to those audiences and see which does has the best return, be that engagement, attention or conversion metric. So I think there's such it's been really inspiring to hear you talk about this stuff. And it's like, I can think, I'm going through all of our brands that we work with, going, oh my gosh, yeah. So it's, it's such an obvious thing to test and so easily done.
Christiana Courtright 20:48
I think so. But the one caveat I would say around generative AI and to be careful with is, so I've been obviously playing with chatgpt and having fun like generating images there. When I ask it to generate images of women who are 50 and 60 and 70. It sometimes gets it right. It sometimes does a very offensive job of making women who are 50 and 60 look more like 80 and 90. So I think we just have to also be mindful that the images it generates are respectful and authentic to actually how these people look, because otherwise we're just perpetuating age bias even further.
Tom Ollerton 21:20
Well, that's your prompt, isn't it? You know, I think that's the trick that, yeah, anyone who justifies or doesn't justify Chat GPT, so that, look, here's a picture of a car. Oh, that's not very good. Or that is really good, that that's the problem, right? It's that how we were learning the other day about, like, having a sandwich, where you go, like, what is my intention? What do I want to get out of AI? Then you let the AI doing the bit in the middle, and then you own it, and then you re craft it at the other end, which I think is a really nice way of looking at it. So yes, there's definitely going to be ageism built into those algorithms, of course. But with this kind of thought your leadership, it's helping us ask the questions before we get to it, which I think is really powerful. So unfortunately, we've run out of time. I could talk about this all day long. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, where's the best place to do that and what makes a message to you that you'll actually reply to?
Christiana Courtright 22:09
You can reach me on LinkedIn, and I would be most interested. If you want to talk about ageism and advertising. That's a message that will definitely pique my interest. If you have a hunch that maybe there is a diver, more diverse age group of consumers, and you can't figure out how to identify it. I think that's something I'm very interested in. Mentorship is another thing I'm always interested in, if you want to be mentored, I'm also always available for that. So those would probably be the two things that I would be most engaged in if you reached out to me about.
Tom Ollerton 22:38
Perfect, thank you so much.
Christiana Courtright 22:40
Thank you.
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