The rise of mid-life women in modern marketing and what’s driving it.

For decades, adverts for lifestyle, beauty, and mass-market household brands have overwhelmingly featured youthful faces. But 2025 saw a shift with more mature, mid-life, well known faces being cast to front major ad campaigns and support PR activity and we only hope this is set to continue in 2026.

We’ve seen actress Sarah Lancashire play the not to be messed with head of security in the Yorkshire Tea adverts, whilst Baylis and Harding recruited Amanda Holden in 2023 for their Christmas gifting advert and following a 9% growth in sales re-appointed her for 2024 and 2025 and acknowledged she resonated across a wide customer base.

But why this change over the last couple of years? We think there are a few forces behind this shift:

Demographic and economic reality: older age-groups (50+) still hold significant spending power and form a large part of many brands’ customer base. Yet historically they’ve been underrepresented in adverts. In 2023 Campaign magazine reported that only 4% of people cast in global ads were over 60,  even though this group represents a substantial portion of population and purchasing power.

Cultural attitudes: societies are gradually confronting ageism, and there’s growing recognition that “age diversity” should include more than tokenistic representation. Some brands now aim to reflect real life with varied ages, life-stages and experiences. The return to older stars can signal maturity, heritage, trustworthiness, nostalgia, or timelessness.

Building Trust:  for brands,  older celebrities bring benefits. Familiar faces with decades of public trust or affection can cut through the noise in a crowded media landscape. A well-known actor can deliver gravitas, humour, or relatability, often in ways a younger influencer can’t. That could be part of the motivation behind Burberry’s signing of Jennifer Saunders for this year's Christmas advert - embodying a confident, culturally significant British humour, adding nostalgia and familiarity.

So it feels like it’s a thumbs up to baking a well known celebrity face into your marketing campaign.

So rather than relying on familiar celebrity faces alone, the real opportunity for brands is to engage mid-life women in a more meaningful way. This audience isn’t niche,  it’s financially powerful, brand-loyal and often making purchasing decisions across households, from beauty and fashion to travel, finance and wellness. They’re also digitally savvy, culturally influential and increasingly vocal about wanting representation that reflects their reality, not stereotypes.

Brands need to move beyond token casting and invest in understanding mid-life women’s motivations, ambitions and lifestyles. Whether through product innovation, authentic storytelling or community-led campaigns, there’s a clear commercial advantage in speaking to this demographic with relevance and respect. Mid-life women aren’t just visible in marketing again — they represent one of the biggest untapped growth opportunities for brands ready to connect with their spending power and long-term loyalty.