Gen X: Silent No More

‍Welcome to the morning after, futurists. 

Gen X may have been one of the most important deciding factors in yesterday’s election outcome, which saw former President Donald Trump nab a decisive victory in both the electoral college and popular votes.

That same generation that has been missing out on brand overtures for decades experienced a “flippening” last night that might shift the strategies of many of our readers. 

As we wrote in The Geezer Tsunami back in 2023: 

“Everyone's talking about Gen Z. 13 year olds who literally have five dollars between them? [Yet] the parents are working. They're VP's or they're managers or directors, they are running companies… Gen Xers in their 40s and 50s are the people who had the most influence at this point in time on Gen Z. And yet no one's talking about them. They’re a forgotten generation.”

The “forgotten generation” of Gen X has been left out of the conversation — especially with brands, but increasingly in identity politics. The latchkey kids grew up to be hedge fund managers; and are slowly shifting out of their Obama-era progressivism toward traditional conservatism.

Despite their relatively meager size (around 20% smaller of a population group compared to Gen Z, Millennials, and Boomers), they have the lion’s share of buying power.  And yet, nobody is speaking directly to them.

Well nobody except Joe Rogan.

And, by association, advertisers on Rogan’s podcast. Nearly half of the 40+ advertisers active on the Joe Rogan Experience have products targeting an aging Gen X population. Those products fit squarely into the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: safety, security, health, and food:

If 2008 was the ‘social media’ election and 2016 was the ‘disinformation election,’ 2024 might be remembered as the ‘podcast election.’ The longform podcast interview and all of its associated soundbites and TikToks dominated this year’s election coverage. Those podcasts are supported by a growing market of DTC brands who are spending hand-over-fist to gain brand recognition in those channels.

And that’s why this election was so different—the last generation to grow up in the monoculture of legacy radio and TV networks now have a formidable amount of capital in a world that is not made for them. They follow Dave Portnoy for politics and pizza, hold a few conspiracy theories loosely in their worldview, don’t buy into “brat” in their politics, and are used to being left out of the conversation. 

And their media reminds them—constantly—how they don’t fit into the cultural conversation.

“While it’s chic to deride Boomers as being Luddite anti-technologists,” we wrote in The Geezer Tsunami, “it’s certainly not the case with Xers. Sure, your terminally-online Nana gets most of her news through social media, and she is most likely to do so on an iPad; but Xers are digitally savvy by comparison.” 

Insider Intelligence/eMarketer found that Xers and Millennials are close to even in digital adoption, despite their values and shopping intents having an ever-widening gap.

After the failed Biden plan to forgive student loans, generational marketing expert Amy Silino wrote for Future Commerce Insiders: 

Our resourcefulness, self-reliance, and the ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps' mentality, birthed from the latchkey kids, the spike in divorce, the end of corporate loyalty, and the start of the ‘corporate layoff’ all contribute to [a lack of empathy].

So, from a worldview perspective, the lack of enthusiasm for this program existed before you even considered that most of us worked our tails off for years (decades in some cases) to pay our student loans.

Is it any wonder, then, that socially progressive programs are losing support by a majority of Gen X as they age?

According to Victoria Buchanan, who runs cultural foresight for Nike, this phenomenon isn't new. “People's views generally become more conservative as they age,” she said via a post on Twitter/X. “Once you own a house, your kids are at school, and you’ve got a pension plan, what you want to protect changes.”

— Phillip