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Follow the Barfing Baby

There was a time, not so very long ago, when age still meant something. It was a time when kids were kids and adults were adults, when kids would be counted on to be fickle and impressionable, and adults were at least somewhat settled and serious.

But today, how old someone is means next to nothing, especially when it comes to purported adults and that even slipperier concept, brand loyalty.

Oh sure, there are still traditional grown-ups, upstanding citizens whose preferences ossified into a stable State Farm-Ben Gay comfort zone the day they had kids, got married or hit 30. But these adults are an endangered species. Who’s replacing them? You’ve got your pick of monikers: kidults, adultescents, twixters and rejuveniles. They’re urban and rural, poor and affluent and, chronologically speaking, young and old. About all they have in common is a shared aversion to traditional maturity and a commitment to stay playful.

Oh yes, they have one other thing in common, too: As a demographic group, they’re almost wholly misunderstood by the vast majority of earthbound marketers.

In fairness, we can’t say we haven’t been warned about this emergent breed of not-quite-grownup. So you’d expect that marketing aimed at this new man-child hybrid ("rejuveniles" is our preferred term) would be pretty savvy by now.

Dream on. With precious few exceptions, ads aimed at rejuveniles fall horribly flat, either by regurgitating tired old clichés about childishness or mistaking garden-variety nostalgia or rebellion for rejuveniles’ complicated but ultimately hopeful outlooks. Examples are manifold; we’ll pick the worst to illustrate. It’s a spot for E*Trade starring a baby stock trader. “I just look young,” says the infant, as he pokes at a keyboard and brags about his success buying and selling equities online. “If I can do it, you can do it,” he says, before puking up a mouthful of formula.

An ad like this might elicit a snicker, but mostly it just sends eyeballs rolling. The problem is approach. Instead of looking deeper at the underlying values that drive this new breed of adult, marketers can think of nothing more to say than how wacky and unusual it is that adults are doing stuff that kids usually do. Hence, today’s consumers are treated to women playing hopscotch while wearing heels in a recent Oreo ad, or businessmen pogo-sticking and hula-hooping in Nestlé Crunch’s egregious “For the Kid in You” campaign.

How clueless can you get? People, listen please, here’s the thing about rejuveniles: they can’t stand being pandered to. They hate seeing themselves represented as starry-eyed goofballs. The remedy is simple: Aim at the starting point of a moving target and you’ll miss every time. To keep pace with rejuveniles, you’re better off ignoring surfaces and creating associations with shared values, like their need to stay playful in the face of adult responsibilities, or the impulse to buck the forces of conformity and routine, or the hope they are collectively inventing a looser, less conformist, more open-ended version of maturity.

Ironically, the brands that get it right are often the least kid-centric to begin with. Geico has found countless brilliant ways to associate a subject many rejuveniles find deeply horrifying (insurance) with a talking lizard and wisecracking cavemen—perfect juvenile spokescreatures. Apple has been widely praised for its simplicity, style and cool. Less remarked upon is how cannily the brand stirs the wondrous, tractable, preadult impulses of its customers. From the pregrunge sci-fi design of its hardware to the jungle-cat motif of its operating systems, Apple is speaking directly to the rejuvenile soul.

And all without resorting to barfing babies.