Good on Sex for knowing its age

Manhattan's martini-soaked sitcom Sex and The City is coming to the Big Screen at month's end. I'll catch it with my best girlfriends and we'll giggle, and have a round (or two) of cosmos afterward.

But what I'm most happy with is the approach they're taking with the females. Because while those girls are still very sexy, they're now grown women.

Let's remember the series debuted 10 years ago when they were in their early 30s (and Samantha was in her early 40s). And those women have been off the air for four years. So, instead of picking up right where it left off, the show's writers are taking a still fun, but more mature approach with their characters.

According to Sarah Jessica Parker, "You cannot pretend we're 32, still running around New York drinking with liberty and looking for interesting sexual partnerships. It would have been vulgar. None of us wanted to do that." And so the film begins not where the series left off four years ago, but in the present.

Ahh, as it should be. And as such, a lesson to many marketers.

In an age where authenticity rules--and in an era when the youngest of the baby boomers are moving into their fifties--marketers need not only realize how their brands have aged, they should embrace it.

Keep your offerings relevant. Offer loads of value. But understand that just as your audiences age, your brands mature, too. If you're aching to to position your brand differently or skew younger? Don't give your brands a heaping dose of identity disorder (and a really tacky facelift), spin-off entirely new brands.

Because time waits for no (wo)man. And time needn't be your foe. Fact is, we trust brands that have stood the test of time (think IBM, GE or Coca-Cola). But we mock those that try to dress like 30 when they're 60 (think Xerox). Or try to act 25 when they're 15.

And we altogether ignore those brands that think throwing a sporty spokesperson in the mix will fool a younger demographic into buying their product.

Comments

[Cam Beck]

The guys' equivalent to this is, I suppose, the continuing saga of Indiana Jones. Though I have my doubts it will reach the same quality as the first and third in the series (where the Nazis were the antagonists), I hope its progression to the cold war era will be just as fulfilling.