What the Heck is Tai Chi Walking and Why Is It’s Marketing So Effective?

If you’re like me, and by that I mean an overworked, overstressed, overeating, undersleeping, slightly overweight 50-something Male that spends a little too much time on Instagram and far too much time listening to Podcasts, then you’ve probably seen an advertisement for Tai Chi Walking.

It’s a miracle! It promises, in 30 days, to take me from Dad-Bod to ripped Middle-Aged Man.

It looks better than GLP-1 and “the shots.” But I’m skeptical.

Look at the dude in the picture at the left!?!?!  Look at him. All he did was Tai Chi Walking. 

So I tried it. 

Seems like Tai Chi Walking is, basically, doing slow-motion Tai Chi moves … while walking. That’s it! 

Problem is, I must be doing Tai Chi incorrectly because I’ve been at this for well over 30-days and I’m not looking any more Tai Chizzled than before I started walking while simultaneously doing Karate and Tai Chi poses.

The only thing I’ve really come to realize is … I’m a sucker for advertising. I also learned, or am reminded, advertising nowadays doesn’t reach anyone by accident. I asked some women and some young people and a random person at this restaurant (where I’m writing this Blog) if they’ve, “ever heard of Tai Chi Walking” and … no. Nobody other than my 40- and 50-something friends know what the heck Tai Chi Walking even is. 

I’m a grown man. I know what I need to do in order to (a) lose weight and (b) get ripped like the dudes in the photos I’ve included in this Blog Entry. I need to (a) lift weights for 1-2 hours daily, (2) stop eating sugar and eat buttloads of protein, and (3) shave all my body hair and hit the tanning booth.

I wish Tai Chi Walking was all I needed, but I know, in my heart of hearts, that’s not how it works.

Yet, I’m a sucker for advertising and even though I work in advertising, and I know how the soup is made … I fall for good advertising (case in point, my fridge is full of Dr. Pepper and I test drove a Nissan).

All of which proves something my company recently published about “Demos” … defined as age groups in marketing and advertising who are the desired target of an advertising campaign … my gullibility proves the results of the study …

Traditional Demos, specifically Adults 25-54, need to be redefined. My company says that Adults 25-54 should be Adults 25-64 … and I agree. Of course I do. I work for Audacy (hi, Kelli) but even if I didn’t … I agree. 

Adults 55+ used to be “ancient.”  The idea was that  by age 55 there was no sense in trying to get a person to change their brands. But this was invented when people would say things like, “I’m a Marlboro man,” or, “I only buy RCA TVs,” or, “I like my Fords,” or, “I eat Raisin Bran for breakfast and I’ve been doing that for 30 years,” or, “I drink Maxwell House,” or, “when I need a washing machine, I’ll go to my guy Hank at Highland Appliance because he always gives me great deals and he’s the reason we have those nice Ginsu knives,” and, “Palmolive dish soap really does make my hands soft so why would I use anything else.”

You were a Crest toothpaste person or a Colgate person or maybe you went alternative with Aim toothpaste.

You were a Dapper Dan man. Or maybe you used Bryl Creem.  You used Dial Soap or maybe you were crazy and used Dove or Irish Spring.

There weren’t alotta choices for products and there weren’t alotta places where a brand could find “it’s people.”  

TV. Radio. Newspaper. Magazines.

And Yellow Pages, I guess. Maybe a highway billboard.

But nothing like it is now. 

Now?  Nobody thinks of a 57-year-old as “old” and while, yes, some 57-year-olds have “their brands” … you know and I know we’re easily influenced because we’re “Gen X”. Our generation was all-in on brands but only for as long as nothing better came along. We’re still the same people and we don’t think we’re old.

Atari was replaced by Commodore 64s for video gaming. Which was replaced by Nintendo and we loved it until Sega Genesis came along. And we loved THAT until Nintendo 64 came along and only loved that until Playstation happened and then Xbox and then back to Playstation. And somewhere in the middle we had Nintendo Wiis.

If I asked everyone age 52 in the year 1987, “tell me all the brands of cars you’ve owned” . . . .I think it would be a straight vertical line … all Fords or all Chevrolets or mabye if they lived out west, Hondas or Toyotas.

If asked all my fellow 52-year-olds about their car brands, I can’t think of anyone my age who hasn’t been all over the map with makes and models

And so, this was the longest way ever to say (a) my company is right in their research that the most sought after Demographic should be extended to 64-years-old instead of 54-years-old  . . . (b) advertisers absolutely should target this 40-, 50-, and 60-something Gen Xr because we’re the same disloyal and easily influenced people we were in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s and (c) if I’m going to try and pay money for a Tai Chi Walking App … don’t you think I’m worth advertising to for whatever you got?

Viva la impulse.