Audience insight21 August 2025By Laurence Bray

Gen Z matters for trends. The 30–60 audience matters for spend.

Gen Z helps shape culture, but many of the decisions that keep households moving are made by people aged 30 to 60. Effective campaigns need to understand both influence and purchasing power.

A multigenerational household representing people aged 30 to 60

Are brands missing the bigger picture?

Brands know the power of social platforms. Influencer and digital ads on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube spark huge reach, cultural buzz, and metrics that light up quarterly reports. The UK digital ad market hit £35.5 billion in 2024, a 13% year-on-year rise. Video display, spanning social channels, publishers, outstream, AVOD and BVOD, grew faster still, up 20% to £8.3 billion (IAB UK Digital Adspend 2024). The platforms clearly work.

But the question isn’t whether social works, it’s whether brands are talking to the right audience. Too many campaigns default to a Gen Z playbook, because that’s what feels “native” to TikTok or Instagram. In doing so, brands are overlooking the 30–60 working-age demographic, the group that not only has the real spending power, but also supports the generations above and below them.

The sandwich generation: spending power in two directions

This audience isn’t just paying for themselves. Many are the sandwich generation, carrying responsibility for children on one side and parents on the other, and many more are still supporting adult children long after they have left school.

An estimated 1.4 million people aged 16 to 64 in the UK were sandwich carers between 2021 and 2023, caring for an adult relative while raising dependent children. One in six (16%) found it quite or very difficult to manage financially, compared with 9% of all adults, and 53% could not work at all, or as much as they would like, because of their caring responsibilities (ONS, Sandwich carers, UK).

Research tracking around 2,000 sandwich carers in the UK Household Longitudinal Study found that becoming one brought a significant decline in mental health that persisted for several years. People aged 30 to 49 are the most likely to be sandwich carers (UCL, published in Public Health).

42% of parents pay for their adult children to join them on family holidays, spending an average of £2,424 per trip (Kent Reliance poll of 4,000 adults, reported by The Telegraph).

An adult child aged 18 to 25 living at home costs parents around £3,400 a year. Beyond the home, parents still cover groceries (36%), household bills (28%), mobile phone bills (18%) and subscriptions such as streaming (15%) for their adult children (Compare the Market survey of 2,010 parents).

This same group also pays mortgages, funds family holidays, buys cars, manages pensions, and often chips in for elderly parents’ care or bills. They’re not side players. They are the economic engine of UK households.

The platforms aren’t the problem. The voice is.

Working-age adults are highly active across the same platforms brands treat as Gen Z territory. Monthly reach among UK online adults in May 2025 (Ofcom Online Nation 2025, Ipsos iris data):

YouTube: 94% of online adults, 46.3 million people.

Facebook/Messenger: 93%, 45.9 million people.

Instagram: 78%, 38.5 million people.

TikTok: 56% of online adults, after double-digit audience growth for a second year running.

At that scale, none of these is a youth channel. So access isn’t the issue. The problem is approach. Too many brands show up speaking in a Gen Z voice, chasing memes and micro-trends, while the 42-year-old parent scrolling past thinks: this isn’t for me.

Influence matters. But the person carrying the cost, risk or responsibility deserves equal attention.

The loyalty question

Gen Z is culturally powerful, but they don’t buy like older cohorts.

81% of Gen Z and millennial consumers switched brands in the past year (Salesforce Connected Shoppers Report, via EMARKETER, 2025).

Only 30% of Gen Z consumers surveyed in the US and UK said they would revert to their “go-to” brand for a new product or service; 62% would check out other options (McKinsey, 2023).

Among Gen Z consumers with a favourite brand, more than 50% would switch if another brand were cheaper or of higher quality (McKinsey, 2023).

Gen Z matters for trends. But if you’re a utility brand looking for recurring customers, loyalty, and monthly payments, the working-age demographic is your market.

Why brands are missing a trick

The working-age audience is there in volume. They’re paying the bills. They’re supporting their kids and their parents. Yet they rarely see themselves reflected in the campaigns designed for the platforms they actually use. The opportunity isn’t just to show up. It’s to show up in their voice, reflecting their choices, their pressures, their humour, and their lives.

Where this goes next

The 30–60 demographic isn’t just another segment. They’re the core customer base for utility providers, financial services, FMCG, and travel. They hold the purse strings for two generations while managing their own. Smart brands will rebalance influencer and digital strategies to stop chasing trends and start speaking directly to the customers who drive the P&L.

Plan around the decision

Double W starts with the decision a campaign needs to change. Who notices the message? Who researches the options? Who approves the spend? And who lives with the result? Sometimes that is one person. Often it is a household negotiation.

That is the thinking behind Between Generations (Coming Soon), our research programme into the people holding modern households together. It helps brands move beyond broad demographic labels and build campaigns around real pressures, behaviours and choices.