Aunts comprise new demographic group

The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)

HACKENSACK, N.J. — Marketing executives and major corporations have discovered a new demographic group with a triple A rating — the affluent aunts of America.

They’ve been dubbed PANKS — Professional Aunt, No Kids — and some researchers believe that acronym could apply to 50 percent of U.S. women.

Census figures for 2006 show 45 percent of women under 44 don’t have children and that figure has been rising every year. If women over 44 are added into the mix, the percentage is estimated to be half of all American women.

The woman who coined the term — Melanie Notkin — a former marketing executive for American Express and L’Oreal, and the doting aunt of nieces and nephews — launched a Web site devoted to PANKS last year and has already drawn the support of top advertisers. Those advertisers — Hasbro, Disney, Warner Bros. and Sephora, among others — are eager to reach women with disposable income who love spending it on kids of relatives and friends.

Notkin’s Web site, SavvyAuntie.com, has more than 2,300 registered members, and her Twitter following is 8,100 subscribers strong and growing. Her site provides social networking, blogging, tips on gifts for nieces and nephews, and what are the best products to buy.

Notkin, 40, of Manhattan said she started SavvyAuntie.com after realizing there was nobody talking to women like her — professional women without children but devoted to the offspring of siblings or friends.

“I had a pretty savvy lifestyle,” she said. “I was a senior-level executive and I traveled to Paris often and had a great wardrobe. But when it came to the most important little people in my life, I wasn’t very savvy. I realized there were no modern resources for the cosmopolitan aunt. Everything was sort of ‘Old Aunt Sadie.’ I thought to myself, ‘Hmm, there’s a real opportunity here.”’