NOTE: Frank Kaiser has spent 40 years selling millions of dollars worth of soap, cereals, services and most everything else to consumers around the world. Here, he offers free advice on how today's seniors -- a group having more money than God Himself -- feel about TV and advertising.

Dear Advertiser,

Seniors are pretty much invisible to advertisers in America. We get weary of watching a TV world where you seldom see anyone over 50. And when you do, they’re most often ding-a-lings, duffers or bores.

Consumers 18 - to 49-years-old are whom advertisers want to reach. So that’s who we see on TV.

Except news shows. Seems that no one under 55 watches the news anymore. With just us geezers watching, TV news brings with it reminders of our false teeth, arthritis, and continence problems. It’s a senior world from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. every evening.

Then it becomes prime time when the only seniors you’ll ever see are fools and idiots.

Watch Frasier’s Martin Crane, permanently planted in his Barcalounger squatting in front of a television with his jumping dog Eddie by his side. On Everybody Loves Raymond, Marie Barone is overbearing and meddling; husband Frank is long-suffering. Both are clichés older than I am.

It’s not that advertisers and TV producers want to insult us; they live in a world where no one lives beyond 49.

Turn 50 and — Poof! — you’re a goner. While we as a nation see more gray every day — a boomer turns 50 every eight seconds — advertisers believe the viewing world is forever young. Mention the senior market and even veteran admen and women conjure Mr. Whipple squeezing Charmin while Clara chortles “Where’s the beef?”

The result? Older viewers are fleeing the networks in droves. Since 1990, one third of viewers 55 and older have deserted TV’s top 20.

And advertisers still don’t get it. Especially the part where we geezers are rich. And spending like crazy. We, the 50- to 75-year-old market, control 70 percent of our country’s net worth and over half of its discretionary spending.

When it comes to seniors, advertisers still buy time on programs that casts our age group as drooling dumbbells. It’s traditional!

Specifically, it’s the advertising agency's 20-something media buyers who are at fault. They know not, and actually think it’s humorous to stereotype a senior as a know-nothing goof.

Here’s the real picture. Americans 50 and over own 80 percent of the personal wealth in financial institutions.

• Own more homes than any other age group.
• Purchase 41 percent of all new cars.
• Spend 74 percent more on a typical vacation than 18- to 49-year-olds.
• Enjoy more than $900 billion in income.
• Sixteen million of us exercise at least three times a week.

Even when they actually want to reach us, advertisers biggest blunder is thinking that old people are old.

I’m sure by now you understand perfectly what I’m saying here.

Here’s another surprise. The same concepts that are important to you are important to us: respect, connectedness, independence, personal growth and revitalization.

We all want affirmation of personal worth. If advertisers want to capture our attention on the tube, older characters must embrace some of these aspects.

Above all, don’t talk down to us. We’re not dumb. Don’t show us that way. Remember the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercial for emergency communication devices? They almost killed that entire product category. Elders, even those who could have benefited from such a product, stayed away in droves.

Don’t base your sell on fear. Better to talk about maintaining independence.

I trust you guys and gals will learn all this soon -- before you go on wasting millions of dollars. Because until you and your clients catch on, I and my millions of peers and their dollars will continue to get geezer mail that never gets opened and stereotypical TV that never gets watched.

Frank Kaiser

PS If you'd like to talk with me personally about your product or service, and how to best sell it to seniors, call me at 727.726.0066. Or, to see my Suddenly Senior website for lots more for and about seniors, click here.

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The biggest hurdle for Madison Avenue is its belief in five key assumptions about mature consumers — some dating to the days of I Love Lucy — despite mounting research to the contrary:

• Myth 1: Mature consumers are brand loyal. This is the single-biggest myth, experts say. Consumers 45 and over are just as likely as younger consumers to experiment with or switch brands, according to a study by AARP and RoperASW. "Marketers who abandon this stereotype will find themselves rewarded," says Jim Fishman, publisher at AARP Publications.
  
  
• Myth 2: Mature consumers care only about price. Consumers 45 and up are more likely to buy higher-priced brands and less likely to change brands just to get a cheaper price than people younger than 45, says Stephen Frost, research director of AARP Publications. "These consumers are not eating cat food on limited budgets."

  More than 60% of them say "quality" is the most important factor in choosing a brand. Take John Bohl, 73, a retired teacher from Brooklyn, N.Y. He just dropped more than $20,000 for a new Toyota RAV4 without blinking — but not before careful research. "I read Consumer Reports," he says.
  

• Myth 3: Mature consumers don't shop the Web. The image of technophobic old fogies dies hard. The numbers tell a different story: Roughly half of 50-plus consumers own personal computers, and 70% have Internet access, according to the Senate committee. About 92% of those PC owners have shopped online; 78% have made purchases.
  
  
• Myth 4: Mature consumers think alike. AARP says marketers must speak to at least three groups: leading-edge boomers, 45 to 56, still in their peak earning years; the gap generation, 57 to 65, who are planning work and lifestyle changes; and consumers 66 and up, entering retirement years.
  
  
• Myth 5: Marketers can reach mature consumers as "spillover" by advertising to younger consumers. Marketing is becoming so segmented that mature consumers need their own messages, Frost says. "Very soon, the 45-plus market will represent half the population, and the traditional target of consumers aged 25 to 44 years old will shrink."