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How do you explain “lifestyle social media marketing” to an old-school founder?
Posted by on September 9, 2025 at 11:28 pmSo my dad runs an e-commerce product with basically no social presence. He's 65. I’m a digital marketer, so a couple weeks ago I started posting AI-generated lifestyle content on Instagram to at least get some traction.
One post was an “essentials” flat lay: our product on a table with sunglasses, coffee, and some other everyday items. From my POV, it’s about building context and aesthetic association. It's showing the product as part of a lifestyle, not just a boring product shot.
He looked at it and immediately went off on me:
“What the hell do sunglasses and coffee have to do with our product?”
Total disconnect. To him, marketing = product photos. To me, marketing = lifestyle, context, identity.
For anyone who’s worked with more “old-school” owners, how do you bridge that gap? How do you explain that these lifestyle cues are actually part of selling the product?
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1 Reply
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What’s the product, or what industry? Can’t tell if his concern is justified without knowing the product. Is the product and brand old school?
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Keeping Up with the Joneses
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Keep it old school, embrace his personality, do curmudgeon interviews with him, make him the gruff owner. We don’t need more flatlays and we certainly don’t need more ai flatlays, but some good old dad advice? Yeah that’s the good stuff.
Don’t know the company or the product but I’m sure you’ll pick up on other unique aspects. Personally I’d love to just watch the two of you argue/debate about the posts you make. -
I’d give him an example like apple in the 00’s
Show their older adds and explain how they branded their products, and made a killing from it.
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I don’t know that I would explain. He owns a business. You hold marketing insights and the capacity to execute a comprehensive social media campaign.
Prove your value. Develop KPIs that will speak to the bottom line of your patriarch’s business. Develop KPIs that will spotlight your positive impact and evoke possibilities for future success with the right mktg mix.
Well done is better than well said.
Imo
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there are plenty of marketing and advertising case studies where very clever people explain how they presented products
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depends on product. good luck
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Lean into old school as your positioning. Leverage your Dads experience and expertise for content.
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Ask him for his favorite commercial or Ad, watch it or look it up with him and ask him what did that commercial or ad had to do with the product (1st Jake from State Farm – Kakis Commercial), then explain that marketing is not just displaying the product, it’s telling the story from the products perspective, or narrating where the product lives on its day to day to make the person think and/or feel the need/want of the product.
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Lead with an analogy he already respects: remember when print ads stuck the product next to a happy family on a picnic? Same trick, new channel. People buy the life they picture, not the object in isolation. Pull the last month’s site analytics, then run a simple test: post one plain product shot and one lifestyle shot, each with its own UTM code or discount word; show him which drives more clicks and checkouts. Numbers talk louder than theory. If he’s worried about relevance, pick props that match real customer data-age, hobbies, basket size-so the scene feels native, not random. Short captions like “morning grab-and-go” help him see the story, too. I’ve used Canva to mock up variations and Later to drip them out, but AdComposer AI is what I ended up grabbing because it spits out a batch of on-brand image/copy pairs in minutes, perfect for those A/B demos. Lead with proof, close with profit-that language never misses with old-school owners.
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Lead with an analogy he already respects: remember when print ads stuck the product next to a happy family on a picnic? Same trick, new channel. People buy the life they picture, not the object in isolation. Pull the last month’s site analytics, then run a simple test: post one plain product shot and one lifestyle shot, each with its own UTM code or discount word; show him which drives more clicks and checkouts. Numbers talk louder than theory. If he’s worried about relevance, pick props that match real customer data-age, hobbies, basket size-so the scene feels native, not random. Short captions like “morning grab-and-go” help him see the story, too. I’ve used Canva to mock up variations and Later to drip them out, but AdComposer AI is what I ended up grabbing because it spits out a batch of on-brand image/copy pairs in minutes, perfect for those A/B demos. Lead with proof, close with profit-that language never misses with old-school owners.
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Maybe random AI content doesn’t make sense for an e-commerce brand LOL
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