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Marketing to today's 65-plus consumers

Ad Week, 7/27/09

Abstract:

Stick around for seven or more decades and you're apt to become the focal point of some stereotypes before you're done. In the case of today's 65-and-older consumers, though, the problem is that the stereotypes of frail-and-lonely ancients are more creaky than the people to whom they're applied. And it doesn't help matters that baby boomers talk loudly about being poised to transform the nature of old age, as if it has heretofore been unchanged dating back to the Stone Age. Looking at some survey data on 65-plusers, and hearing from people professionally engaged in understanding and marketing to this cohort, we get a clearer picture of how older Americans see themselves and the advertising that's aimed (or, often, misaimed) at them.

For starters, people whose chronological age would seem to put them squarely in the "old" category often don't see themselves in that light. In a Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey released last month, 60 percent of respondents age 65-plus said they feel younger than their actual age -- in many cases much younger. "Among respondents ages 65 to 74, a third say they feel 10 to 19 years younger than their age, and one in six say they feel at least 20 years younger than their actual age," according to the report. Even more telling, when asked flat out whether they "feel old," 78 percent of the 65-74s and 61 percent of the 75-plusers said "no."

Needless to say, this sort of complication is apt to give gray hairs to marketers -- or would, if many marketers weren't oblivious to such nuances. Thanks to advances in health and longevity, people in what's sometimes called the Silent Generation (which accounts for the bulk of the current 65-plus cohort, including those born from 1925 to 1942) are already pioneering a change in what this life stage means.

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