The wastage nobody counts
Marketing has a word for money spent on people who were never going to buy. Wastage. There is a second kind: the people who had the money and were never asked. Nobody’s report counts it. 47% of Britain’s household wealth sits in households where the main householder is 45 to 64 ONS, 2025.
The five Gen X groups your marketing has never met.
Your research sorts Gen X by age and income. I sort them by what they value and how their lives are going. That gives five groups, and each wants something different from a brand. They come from 1,276 interviews, read alongside 308 dated entries on what happened to this generation. Nobody else has them.
- 30%Getting On
- 26%Steady and Caring
- 19%Free Agents
- 13%Squeezed
- 12%Health-Hit
Think of one customer you want to reach. Answer six questions about them and see which group they belong to.
Ways to work with me
Strategy
From one page on your category to a business case your finance director can check.
Start here
01The briefing
One page on your category.
I send you one page:
- what the public figures show this generation spends in your category, with the base and the date, and where the figures stop
- one of your ads, or a competitor’s, set against my five Gen X groups: which one it speaks to and which it leaves out
- one thing about how this generation buys in your category that you didn’t have
Send that page to your agency. That’s what it’s for.
Built from public sources. Share your own data and you get more back. Five days at most.
The half day
Where your marketing is losing them.
Half a day in the room with you, your agency planner and your insight lead. You leave with what to say instead, written down.
The strategy and the business case
For when you need to take it to the board.
I size what this generation spends in your category, and how much of it comes to you now. I set out who to go after and what to say to them. Then I put numbers on it: the money at stake, and what it costs to win it. Your finance director can check every line.
Four to six weeks. After that, I build the brand platform and the revenue engine behind it, on a retainer.
Talks and training
Talks
For a conference, or in house. I have spoken on hundreds of stages and platforms from Boise to Berlin.
- The Wasted Generation. Who holds the money, and why the marketing keeps missing them. For brands, agencies and boards.
- Thriving in The Apex. For chief executives and boards, on what the top is really like.
- Trusted to Run It, Struggling to Get Back In. For HR leaders: where your hiring screens out people over fifty, and what to change.
Training
Ninety minutes at your office, for up to twenty people.
Short sessions for client and agency teams, built on UK evidence about people born 1965 to 1980. Book one or the set.
- Generation X, by the evidence. Who they are and where the money sits, from UK sources. Your team leaves knowing which figures stand up in a category case.
- Writing the brief for Generation X. Your team brings one of its own live briefs and leaves with it rewritten.
- Creative that doesn’t patronise. Casting, voice and the jokes that misfire. Your team leaves with a checklist to run before work goes out.
- Working with Generation X. For younger teams who work for Gen X leaders or pitch to Gen X clients. Your team leaves knowing how these people decide, and what loses them in a meeting.
Areas of expertise
What each session can be built around. Ask about any of them.
- Who Generation X are
- The years that made them
- What they buy, and why
- Where the money sits
- Writing the brief
- Creative that doesn’t patronise
- Marketing that works with them
- Older influencers
- What Gen X want at work
- Gen X at the top
- How a Gen X board decides
- Pitching to a Gen X client
Five questions about your customers
Guess, then see the answer.
Generation X in the figures
14,061,939 people in the UK are aged 45 to 60. One in five. ONS, 2026
The money is in the house and the pension.
At 45 to 54, the median household has £7,200 in savings and investments. Today’s 45 to 54s are projected to retire with a median pension pot of £62,000, less than the generations either side.
It is two audiences.
39% of 35 to 54s trust advertising; at 55 and over, 22%. Facebook reaches more 35 to 54s than any other commercial media brand. For the over-55s it is ITV.
They watch the TV and the phone.
Live TV a day at 55 to 64. Ad-funded streaming reaches 36% of 35 to 54s every week.
One I built
Gen X at Work is a brand platform I built. I created it because I learned that our generation was both running British business and struggling to get back into work. I also saw that brands were either ignoring or patronising us. The Wasted Generation, apparently.
Me
My early career was in advertising in the Nineties in global ad agencies including Saatchi & Saatchi and Ogilvy. I was a regular fixture at the Groucho and other disreputable Soho establishments.
Then I built an agency. I ran a 200-person business through its acquisition by The Hut Group. I know what a plan has to survive once it goes to the board.
Some brands I’ve worked onDellHPMicrosoftCoca-ColaDiageoO2BootsGilletteKingfisherTescoMinistry of Sounddeckchair.com
Agencies I worked inadam&eveDDBAKQAJWTMcCannMullenLoweOgilvySaatchi & Saatchi
Tell me what you’re working on.
Get in touch →Or email magnus@genxatwork.com. I reply within two working days, then we have a thirty-minute call.