Rethinking the Age Wave, by G. Richard Ambrosius

As the business community discovers the maturing market, a disturbing trend seems to be appearing in print articles and television coverage. They begin, the typical baby boomer is. Typical? Generally speaking, we have as many differences as we have common interests. Further, we become less alike with each passing year, just like previous generations in the same life stage.

We are driving change because there are so many of us, not because we differ from previous generations of older adults moving into life`s third stage. Certainly some of our experiences were unique. Those experiences changed the context in which we view work, life and change. While our minds process marketing messages as our parent`s minds did, we receive those messages in a different context.

The older you become, the more you become who you are. Unique. As different from other boomers and Xer`s as fingerprints. While sharing some experiences, we did not experience them in the same way. The context differs vastly even within the 18-year age cohort called the baby boom. Boomers tend to be more educated. Many stayed out of Viet Nam by staying in school. Some fought and some protested. Others were encouraged by their parents to improve their lot in life.

Boomers have been labeled as cynical by some consultants. I believe that, like all experienced consumers, we simply know what we want. We are just becoming less tolerant of bad service with each passing year. Just as our parents did; and are!

Because we grew up with television, we are just tired of youth-oriented images of older adults and celebrity endorsements that have nothing to do with product quality or service. We are tired of the exaggerated claims and hyperbole that dominates ads. Surely, two out of three doctors have recommended everything by now.

Our numbers, knowledge and awareness are causing health care providers and insurers to reevaluate the importance of service and user-friendly information. We are driving financial services to repackage product offerings in light of the new reality that retirement is an outdated term, four generation families are common and cross-generation promotions should be developed.

We will not go quietly into that good night labeled as retirement; but we will not go thinking we are teenagers either. We will not seek twenty years on the golf course or shuffle board courts. We will stay involved with family and community. We will reinvent retirement as a lifestyle.

Marketing messages must not just target lifestyle. They must be concepted in accordance with the cognitive processes of the intended receiver and be in context with their life`s experience. Maturing consumers must see themselves in visuals and their needs and aspirations reflected in copy.

For example, consumers often chose a retirement community in spite of the advertising rather than because of it. Retirement communities remain need-driven choices due largely to positioning strategies used. In spite of the evidence that retirement is an outdated term and medical models of design and branding of everything from services to internal signage de-market the offering, the need oriented benefit approach remains in vogue. The brochure headlines promise independence and the copy goes into detail explaining how the Independent Living Community will take it away with a bundled package of services.

Insurance companies and brokers use fear of the desolate later years to sell products by asking, Will you out live your savings? Could a year in a nursing home rob your children of their inheritance? What if you live to be 100? Benefits, attributes and hyperbole continue to dominate ads along with 80-year-old water skiers, surfers and body builders. You can be vital, dynamic, wise and involved without a surf board and cell phone. While more realistic older models are creeping into ads, the majority still portrays age as seen through the eyes of young copywriters and creative directors.

Corporate advertisers in collusion with major networks still prefer the 18 - 50 cohort (like they all have something in common!) and avoid shows when demos skew older. Is it possible that a 35-year-old and an 85-year-old could both like Touched by an Angel, Cosby and Matlock?

There is hope. Some copywriters are discovering the value of story telling even in 60-second television spots while leaving out the hyperbole. Insurance companies are creating mature market groups and the Disney Institute was created to cater to charter Mickey Mouse Club members who began turning 50 in 1996. Health promotion and prevention is being offered to older consumers as part of Medicare Supplement policies and HMO offerings. Even long term care innovators are moving from caring for the physical ailments to caring about the well being of the mind and spirit as well.

Age Wave was a pioneering book that awakened corporate America to the reality that the market was changing. Others books and theories followed as we experimented with a new paradigm for marketing in a one-to-one, technology-driven market dominated by adults over forty. In spite of the growing body of anecdotal, qualitative and quantitative data on older markets and a changing marketplace, little has changed in the way products and services are packaged and sold.

Albert Einstein said, You cannot solve a problem using the same consciousness that created it. There is a message here for all managers, marketers and advertisers. Call it developmental marketing, quantum marketing, lifestage marketing, relationship marketing or what mature market specialist David B. Wolfe calls developmental relationship marketing, but it is past time for new leadership among professional marketers.

The age wave began hitting the shores in 1996 as 78 million Boomers began joining the 77 million already over age 50 to create a maturity market unparalleled in our history. Those who can generally get outside the box and begin building loyalty will be on the crest of the wave as it breaks the shoreline of tomorrow`s marketplace.

Richard (Dick) Ambrosius is founder, president and CEO of Phoenix Associates. For the past 23 years this nationally respected consultant, trainer, author and entrepreneur has been advocating for an end to aging stereotypes and the introduction of positive aging and ageless marketing.

Copyright Richard Ambrosius. All rights reserved.