I'm out fishing with Don. He arrived at five am. Because he's 'Not sleeping too well, and it's going to be a beautiful day, and you can sleep when you're dead and why do you need much sleep, you work in advertising and what do you do all day but go to lunch anyway?'
So I'm out about three kilometres off Anglesea, lumpy water, sun inching its way into the sky, just getting nibbles and no real bites. And Don talks. He talks about politics. About relying on your PC in business when you should keep a paper diary too. About the rise and fall of real estate and the escalating cost of medical assistance. About a little girl with cancer featured on last night's news and about how unfair any kind of god would be to let her suffer like that.
I go fishing with Don because he's kind of funny and he makes me think. And because he's a bit older than me, he gives me an insight into baby boomers. They are a club the baby boomers. They recognise each other — bit of paunch. A few wrinkles. Plenty of grey. Educated in the main (via life if not university), with attitude. They gang together. They say, 'Hey, we want it this way' and the government changes tack. They are the people on the boards. They are the leaders of the families who own the real estate, the shops, the farms, the shares of this fair nation.
Baby boomers are who they are, they dominate things in advertising, just as much as they dominate your life. Brashly, purposefully, selfishly and with little diplomacy. A 56—year—old is a very different person to one who's 86, but for the sake of expediency, I'll have to make generalisations about things like health that are not appropriate to some segments, so please forgive me. It's hard to be totally accurate when you're trying to span decades of fellow humanity.
They and their older mates now control, by simple age and experience, most of the nation. They probably employ you. And many of you marketers out there are ignoring them, at your peril. (The Economist, 10 August 2002, says 95 percent of marketing budgets target the under 50s.) Don, like the rest of them, has little patience and no hesitation about speaking his mind.
THEY HAVE MORE MONEY TO SPEND
The pattern with Western life is that you go to school, get your first few jobs, have plenty of money, spend it on clothes, booze and getting lucky, then, assuming you're straight and have the usual hang—ups about wanting to continue the family name etc., you get married. You buy a house, have kids and pay off the bank for 20 years or so. About mid—40s, if you've got most of your mortgage paid and if you've managed to get your kids to leave home, you then have disposable money again.
This is the younger 'senior' market — cashed up, still earning heaps, money to burn. Which is why spending peaks at 45 to 59. When people officially retire, most of them have assets, but not as much income. Yet they still often have more disposable money than they have had since their 20s. And in retirement, they have the time to spend it.
IT'S ABOUT VALUES
The older segment likes values. They respond to people doing the right thing. Note I said doing, not just saying. (NB: Highlight that bit.)
The older a market segment gets, the more predictable are its values. As you study or work with older Australians, you can measure their different values like counting the rings in a tree trunk to see how old it is. Values are not formed the moment a person drops onto this little blue planet. People develop them over time as they experience life. Something happens to you, you clock that into your memory. It becomes a 'value’. And, yes, their values are ‘old—fashioned’; they were developed in old times. The tricky thing about values is, they usually don’t change much once they have been formed.
It helps in any market to know the values of the customer. People simply won’t play with a group (purchase from, invest with) who push values they don’t agree with. This is accentuated with older people, who often make decisions on philosophy, a brand’s personality and what it stands for, rather than just technology or fashion. And in the aged market’s case, they have so much power, you can’t ignore them, which means you must know the details. Like understanding what is ‘doing the right thing’ in their eyes.
Which is also why price is not quite as important as ‘value’. Older people buy things like wool socks, because they last much longer, even if you pay three times the price. They buy offal like kidneys, liver or tripe, because it’s good value for money if you know how to cook it. Over time they have learned what value is. So don’t try to be too clever or to rip them off. It just won’t work on older customers.
THE RISING CAKE
Assuming global warming doesn’t wash them off the beaches or freeze them as they are tramping through the high country, seniors’ numbers will go from about 12 percent of Australians to some 27 percent over the next 40 years. They’ll not only take up more space in the statistics, it is expected that they’ll work for longer — part—time or full—time. Chances are the government will have to move the retirement age up from 65 to more like 70 or even 75, as they demand to be allowed to continue to work. (The alternative is to stay home with the spouse — after a month or two, almost everybody would prefer to work.)
They will also live much longer than previous generations. It will not be uncommon for granny to reach 100. The Queen will get a very tired hand writing to her peers when there are thousands of centenarians dotting the country.
And, yes, they’ll seek out the ‘sea change’ life, as Don has, moving to the coast with his wife. But also inner city apartments will continue to be in demand, regardless of the current over—supply, because in retirement people seek what they didn’t have during their working lives; if they lived in suburbia, they seek sophistication and travel. If they travelled a lot, they seek a stable village—like atmosphere.
SWITCHED ON
While you could argue that the older the person, the more of a laggard they are technologically (my mother has never used a PC and still writes everything by hand), there are a lot of stand—out exceptions to this. Retirement villages for example are bursting at the seams with older people who are becoming very web—savvy. (Seniors are often too proud to expose their lack of high tech knowledge, so most at first reject it, but over time, when things have proven useful, like mobile phones, they get on board.)
The internet is increasing in popularity and older people are the fastest on the uptake. It is very helpful to meet friends, research concerns from Alzheimer’s disease to estate planning and to email relatives simply and instantly. Seniors are doing every thing on the internet, even exchanging spouses. These were the people tossing their car keys into a bowl on the coffee table during the 60s and 70s—
LOYAL
While they are harder to win over, as they have to trust you and are happy to wait a lot longer to see if you stick it out, they are also much more loyal once won, simply because they don’t switch as often. Making them usually a much better customer to win than someone younger.
NOT TIME POOR
The older segments are the only major market segment I can think of who have time on their hands. Which means they can buy leisure pursuits, and respond better to long copy, direct mail etc.
AGITATED
This disposable time also means they can be very difficult customers. Younger, time pressed people often can’t be bothered to fight a company about an issue. Older people enjoy it for the fun sake alone. I’d love to check the banking or telco ombudsman’s records, but I’ll bet they are heavily weighted to older, bored customers.
WHAT WORKS ON OLDER MARKETS?
SEE THINGS FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW
That is a much bigger issue than the previous sentence could possibly convey. Try to think like them. They may be old, tired, often in pain, but they are still fit enough to do 18 holes of golf and then go to a drinks party for three hours — it may be their last. Most importantly, their brains aren’t old. They don’t feel old. All our research says they feel like they are 20 years younger.
TREAT THEM AS INDIVIDUALS
The older a person gets, the less they are ‘normal’. Many older people I’ve spoken to believe that if people think you are ‘normal’ after 40, you’ve failed to develop as a human being.
DON’T TALK DOWN TO THEM
It almost doesn’t bear mentioning, but many younger marketers patronise older people to such an extent they automatically put their customers off. Talk to them like you talk to a rich uncle, not your mum. Your mum puts up with your attitude because she loves you and hopes one day you’ll grow out of it. No one else will.
FAMILY AND FRIENDS MATTER
They have put their lives into making their families’ lives the best they could. They therefore cherish their families, and those friends they’ve grown to love. Show happy, real families and you’ll hit a chord.
LONELINESS IS AN ISSUE
As families move on and friends inevitably die off, older people suffer from a loneliness and a sadness that’s hard to explain to a younger person. Which is perhaps why so many go to funerals. Not because they want to be reminded of death, but because it’s the only time they know they’ll bump into people they know.
SECURITY
As your body deteriorates, issues like security start to become more important. If you’re not capable of running flat out for 10 k’s at the drop of a hat, you are less likely to feel confident walking past a group of young thugs. Ditto for sleeping in a neighbourhood surrounded by them. A feeling of vulnerability works its way through other aspects of life too. Physical insecurity has an effect on your feelings about financial security (you don’t feel you could just get a job waitressing or labouring if you can’t make ends meet) and even emotional security. If you feel weaker, you want capable friends, family or support systems around.
For this reason sales tactics based on fear actually work less well than more positive ones, as older people don’t want to be made to feel even more vulnerable.
SEX STILL SELLS
My grandmother, at 83, still had fantasies that the old guy up the road was interested in her. Days before she died she told me how he winked at her, that way—
USE BIGGER TYPE
The older you get, the poorer your eyesight. Don’t laugh. It will happen to you. Use 12 point type or bigger. For the same reasons, avoid glossy shiny paper as it reflects.
USE OLDER COPYWRITERS
If you want empathy with older markets, use people who have something in common with them. Brief them to use more conservative words — older people don’t appreciate modern jargon, especially wanky business terms or SMS type derivations. You can, however, use words that seem old—fashioned like the ‘hip’ words from the fifties/sixties, like ‘groovy’ or ‘fab’. Language itself is important — most older people appreciate correct grammar more than those who are younger. They’ve read more books, many of which were written when writers knew what a sentence was. You know, subject, enclosed thought. Unlike me— Oh, well— And they grew up in an era which used English rather than American. So they prefer spelling that doesn’t use z much. Where colour is spelled with its u intact. But they have spent years reading the Woman’s Weekly, so keep in mind that weird magazine ‘girly speak’ English is also quite acceptable, at least with the females.
REMEMBER — NOBODY IS OLD
Use people who look about 10 years younger than your actual target market.
NO BULL
Older people are far more media savvy than any other group — kids aren’t media savvy, they haven’t been around long enough. Older people have been watching TV or listening to the radio for 50 years. They have heard all of the ads before — they are so much more critical of creative than young people, it’s scary. Because they saw the ad you’re trying to push when it was a new idea, 20 years ago.
GIVE THEM FRESH IDEAS
Give them radical ads — they appreciate them more than you think. But don’t make them look ‘radical’ because they can’t read bad typesetting — and they can’t be bothered to have to try just because it looks fashionable — make the actual content original. A hard concept for your young design group to comprehend, but a more sophisticated ad agency might get my point.
EDUCATE THE MARKET
Older people with more time are more inclined to attend seminars or lectures. You can tie these in with brand promotions.
USE A SENSE OF HUMOUR
Anybody older than 50 has to have one. If they didn’t they’d already have killed themselves.
DON’T CLUTTER MESSAGES ON TV
Loud background music makes it hard to remember phone numbers when you’re pretty deaf. Details no longer help if your memory is not what it should be, or you can’t get to the pen and paper quickly.
REDUCE RISK
Money back offers work well with older people who are unsure of newer marketers.
RESEARCH
Older people have more time; they are cheaper and easier to research with. They are also more open to helping marketers, as long as they agree with your values. You can therefore afford to research them more than other markets.
DO YOUR SUMS
Many strategies for luring seniors will backfire as their numbers reach full bloom. I can see seniors’ discounts being phased out in the near future as offering discounts to the one older person in every four people is unlikely to be a profitable way to go.
MEDIA TO USE
COMMERCIAL TV
According to one source who really ought to know, 94.4 percent of older people watch TV, and their numbers are very strong during daytime, when few others can watch.
NEWSPAPERS
They have plenty of time on their hands, so, according to the same source, 86.1 percent read newspapers.
PR
Is very effective, especially in print media like women’s magazines.
DIRECT MAIL
Works well, and names stay relevant longer, but be persistent. Few older Australians will trust you straight away. They didn’t come down in the last shower— Newsletters and company magazines/brochures are very effective sent the same way.
LOCAL PAPERS
Have a higher proportion of older readers — who are community focused and happy to have a freebie, even if it’s full of ads. For the same reason leaflet drops are also very effective, given the offer is relevant.
RADIO
Still has a place with the older market — the older the more relevant. Many of them spent their childhoods huddled around the wireless. And they don’t sleep so well, so there’s a significant proportion who you can hit with radio, especially late at night and even early in the morning and I mean before dawn— PR stories at this time, especially planned talkbacks, work a treat.
PACKAGING/SWING TAGS ETC.
If you’re targeting older people, design packaging and point of sale with them in mind. That means promises that sound right to them, typefaces they can read, tops you can get off if your hands don’t grip too well— My grandmother could never open jars, cans or bottles because she had arthritis and would have starved to death if her diet had been left to most food manufacturers.
PROMOTIONS
Given they are time rich, many older Australians like entering competitions. If nothing else, it gives them something to do. It’s amazing how participation rates go way up if you just aim your promotions at those in the community who actually might be able to enter—
Like Don, people in the older market are wrinkly and often grumpy. Wouldn’t you be if your hips hurt and you felt your kids were sitting around just waiting for you to die? But they are also a rich seam of potential sales and will stay loyal much longer when won. They are a powerful consumer group and very influential on their fellow customers — they have little to lose by speaking their minds. They are also big networkers; upset one granny in Dubbo and watch your sales plummet in Perth.
If you want to win them over, give them ‘value’. Demonstrate real respect. Do the right thing by them and especially be ethical when dealing with complaints or disputes. Don’t churn them like younger customers, who have grown up to expect corporate insensitivity. Treat them like you’d like your mum to be treated and they’ll do what she does for you: feed you, clothe you, give you a warm cuddle, a bit of sound advice and a helping hand—