Hey, this is Tom Webster, and this is Sounds Profitable for Wednesday, May 8, 2024, the Wilford Brimley Podcast. While podcasting is popular with younger demographics, the biggest growth potential lies in audiences 55 and up. But first in case you missed it, podcast advertising the safest bet is now live and free for everyone.
This free compilation combines the greatest hits of Sounds Profitable research into one document for podcasting to make its case to perspective buyers, internal teams, or anyone else who needs an arm twist in that podcasting is the safest bet. Available now, and the link is in the show notes. Also, it's a nice day here in Boston, the windows are open, and of course, some was jackhammering, so you're gonna hear a jackhammer.
I just had a nice, close, clean shave. I didn't cut myself once. It was dare I say a pleasurable experience. And I got me thinking about Wilford Brimley, and I'm sure you remember Wilford Brimley, if you're internet years old, the guy you're thinking of is behind the diabetes meme.
But even more people know him as the star of cocoon, which was the basis of an also internet famous comparison that shows Tom Cruise at the same age making mission impossible as Wilford Brimley was in the making of cocoon. Tom Cruise today is somewhere between 61 and 61, it's kind of hard to tell.
This comparison is often trotted out as an example of how we're all living longer and aging better than we used to, but I can tell you something else about that picture of Tom Cruise and Wilford Brimley side by side. Both men are wearing a lot of makeup, and one of them has had some work done. It's good work, but it's work nonetheless. It's a hint. It isn't Wilford. I mentioned this because I want to talk about where the biggest growth opportunity lies for podcasting.
In the last five years, thanks largely to YouTube and Spotify, podcasting has grown enormously with younger Americans, particularly 18 to 34s. In last year's Sounds Profitable Study, the medium moves the message. We learned that the overall reach of podcasting with 18 to 34 year olds was nearly equal to that of television and catching up with AMFM radio. And a lot of agency people I presented that to over the past year were a little surprised by that.
We often talk about podcasting as an engagement medium, but if you're trying to reach young Americans, you can reach them at scale with podcasts as well. But that is not what should stand out to you about the demographic data from podcasting. No, if you're like me, your eyes are drawn to the right side of that graph, you know, where the olds are.
The average reach of 55 plus with podcast listening, AMFM and television, 74% of 55 plus watch TV, 68% listen to AMFM radio, and 14% listen to podcasts that's compared to 50% for 18 to 34. This is a conversation that I have with a lot of publishers. If you want to grow your audience, you can either try to be an existing podcast listener's sixth favorite show, or you can try and create a new podcast listener. If you opt for the latter, the math is pretty obvious. They're going to be older.
There's no question that the biggest growth opportunity for podcasting is 55 plus, and to some extent that's going to happen organically as existing listeners age into that demographic. But if we really want to grow podcasting as a medium, we've got to start attracting and retaining older listeners. It's the great blue ocean of new potential for the format.
To do that, however, we have to talk about the great elephant in the monetization room, the relative lack of interest on the part of advertisers in marketing to the 55 plus demo. This continues to perplex me. I'm often asked to provide sales teams with 25 to 54 numbers of our data for buyers, which is the top end for such requests.
I'm never asked to provide 55 plus numbers, except for the most specific requests. And yet so many brilliant content producers are 55 plus, and some of the top sellers in podcasting are 55 plus. Walk into a brand-team meeting at an agency, though, and you'll very likely see the same picture. A room full of 25 to 34 year olds with an older manager, and this is less about over-agism and more about the churn of agency life. It's a tough business.
Now, before you accuse me of being agist, I'm not suggesting that younger professionals are somehow unable to do the work of marketing to the 55 plus demo. What I would say is that pushing back against stereotypes and advocating to brands that the 55 to 74 demo also sleep on mattresses and order food and have even more money to do so has been a slow process, and maybe not the first inclination a brand team has.
Well, this is where podcasting could actually take a leadership role thanks to our long, at least in pod years, long-ish history of direct response, performance marketing. Whether a brand is focused on 55 plus or not, a podcaster who knows how to talk to older listeners can sell a mattress to older listeners and promo codes don't lie.
Rather than wait for the day when buyers ask me for our 65 to 74 numbers, podcasting can today wrap its big ol' arms around older listeners, talk to them the way they want to be spoken to and sell them things with performance metrics being the proof in the pudding. Make that happen enough, and the brand dollars will follow. That's capitalism.
Rather than trying to make podcasting a young medium, we actually have the opportunity to make podcasting the discovery medium for the curious, regardless of age, and to market to older listeners for whom age is nothing more than a level up in the game of life. So how do we do that? Well, it's simple. You talk to them, you learn about their interests, newsflash, it isn't retirement funds.
I recently turned 55, that's the year that I fell off the rolls of advertising interest, and I'll spare you the I feel better than ever business I do, by the way. But I'll tell you this. At this age of my life, I have two things. One, a desire to make the things around me in my life better, and more money to do so than I did when I was 35. If I could sum up my current capitalist impulses in one sentence, it would be this. Why am I still putting up with this?
You know, when I was younger, I put up with a lot of things I really didn't know any better about, like shaving. For over 30 years, I shaved with a disposable razor that contained a cartridge with an ever increasing number of blades, I think five the last time I used one.
Disposable razors and cartridges suck, you know this, I know this, they are the printer toner scam, but for your face, the handle is cheap, and then you're doomed to a lifetime of throwing out cheap plastic, all in the name of convenience, and the dubious value of a close shave, which for these medusa-bladed monstrosities really just means an irritating one.
Well, last year, 55-year-old Tom said to himself, why am I putting up with this? So I bought myself a nice, heavy metal safety razor, a box of a thousand sharp blades, and I spent on some fine British shaving cream. Today, I shaved the shave of champions. Every stroke brings a satisfying, nick-free swath of smooth skin. I'm reducing, reusing, recycling.
I compost the used blades to fertilize my garden. I make razor blade beer while listening to razor blade vinyl records. I will brook no further inconvenience regarding my face or its depilation. A crappy shave is a thing with which I will no longer put up. Now this is how you talk to a 55-plus listener, you make their lives richer and better and a little more interesting, and you introduce them to products that make them ask themselves, why am I putting up with this?
You treat them not as elders, but as mages and paladins and wizards who have achieved a higher level because they have fought more dragons. You treat them like Wilford Brimley. And let me tell you something about Wilford Brimley from Cacoon. He always played older than he was because, well, that man did some living. He was 25 years younger than the rest of the elderly cast members in Cacoon, but was heavily made up to appear much, much older.
Hence the picture. He was 50, but he was made up to look 75. Wilford Brimley was a Marine. He dropped out of high school at 14 to become a cowboy and honest to God, Jimmy from Yellowstone Cowboy. He was a ranch hand, a trick rider, and eventually a Hollywood stuntman before he even started acting. That man did some living. You want to reach 55 plus? Talk to them like they're that Wilford Brimley. And go watch the last 10 minutes of absence of Malice while you're at it.
Thanks again for listening to this podcast, The Wilford Brimley podcast. This episode is hosted on Speaker, I'm Tom Webster, and I'll see you next week.