So here’s a fun lens to peep through for better perspective on older Boomers and their genesis as renegades. The “lens?” Fashion.

According to some fashion historians, young adults in the 50s chose fashion to illustrate their rebellion of the uptight societal norms. The anarchic attitude toward society created a generation gap that has yet to be filled. Nothing better illustrates the paradox between social mores and the new social awareness of young people like the rock n‘ roll attitude in fashion that burst onto the runways in the 1950s. The provocative styles of rock stars like Elvis Presley and film stars like James Dean directly conflicted with the conservative sexual attitudes of the era. (Don’t forget, at the time it was illegal to sell, let alone use, birth control in most states). As Denise Meechan says online at Rewind the Fifties: “No other decade has captured such a wide divide of class and social structure on the catwalks or of the social oxymoron America has copyrighted into its national structure”.

By coming of age during this dichotomy, older Boomers learned to thrive in states of change and contradiction. Perhaps this adaptive/endurance quality will help them thrive throughout old age, too? I’m betting it will.

So for marketers wanting to better understand older audiences, the idea is not to view them as one-dimensional (old), but from as many perspectives as possible. An afternoon of James Dean or Sandra Dee movies is just one way to experience what older Boomers’ formative influences were all about. Hey,whatever it takes! But, really, weren’t their clothes pretty cool?

“Alpha Moms,” who dominate consumer decisions in their own households, are transitioning into “Alpha Daughters,” who heavily influence the consumer decision making of their senior parents.

According to research by Peter Kruger of AlphaDaughters.com, this group, who have evolved into primary caregivers for their aging parents, are becoming a key target for companies marketing healthcare devices and services. Their influence often extends into many other facets of their parents’ lives as well, with Alpha Daughters doing everything from arranging their parents travel to making major purchases, such as furniture or electronics, on their behalf.

It’s also a relationship that’s on the rise. “Unlike the Alpha Mom market, the Alpha Daughter market is expanding, with elderly people growing into it rather than growing out of it,” says Kruger.

The Alpha Daughter’s role as a proxy consumer is similar to that of the Alpha Mom, a mother who purchases goods and services on behalf of her children and household. In fact, Alpha Moms are responsible for—or at least heavily influence—up to 70% of household expenditures. Factor in the Alpha Daughter’s higher level of technological proficiency, and it’s easy to see how she can quickly become an indispensible “assistant” to her aging parents.

As marketers, this is a phenomenon that should be on our radar, as it’s another factor that can help to guide us through the complexities of marketing to older adult audiences.

Why is this? To understand how a generation’s values and behaviors form, we look at the obvious: their upbringing, and the economic climate and cultural and social mores at play when they came of age. What’s more subtly at work here is a documented, basic trait of human nature: to defy authority by demonstrating opposite behaviors. Could it be we actually enjoy driving our parents nuts?

Take three examples:

The Silent Generation is a term coined in the November 5, 1951, cover story of Time magazine to refer to the generation born during the Great Depression and World War II—the generation that became the parents of the Baby Boomers. The article stated: “Youth today is waiting for the hand of fate to fall on its shoulders, meanwhile working fairly hard and saying almost nothing. The most startling fact about [this] generation is its silence. By comparison with the flaming youth of their fathers and mothers, today’s younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not issue manifestoes, make speeches, or carry posters. It has been called the ‘Silent Generation.’”

Quite the opposite of their offspring, the Baby Boomers. Outspoken and expressive change agents as young adults, they were also the fortunate beneficiaries of a prolonged (with few interruptions) economic upswing that spawned a group of upwardly mobile professionals (remember the “Yuppies”?).

Now meet a group of their children, newly coined the “Yuckies,” or Young Unwitting Costly Kids. Self-described as “sapping my baby-boomer parents of all their hard-earned savings, and probably their will to live,” they say tough!

In his fascinating new book, “The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children’s Future – and Why They Should Give It Back,” author David Willetts argues that the post-war generation benefited from a series of advantageous economic conditions such as free university education, job security, and pensions—not to mention rising house prices and high inflation that whittled away mortgage debts. Their children, by contrast, graduate in debt, with devalued qualifications, into an environment where employment opportunities are few. Safe to say, the consumer behaviors they develop now will stay with them throughout their lives—and differ greatly from those of their parents. For reference, look at the famously conservative spending habits of the “Silent Generation” who grew up during the Great Depression. Marketers stay tuned!

While it’s fun to peek ahead at what challenges future generations will have in store for marketers whose focus is on mature audiences, for now, Boomers (with currently over $1.6 trillion in spending power and a net worth that’s nearly twice the U.S. average) still warrant our undivided attention—and likely will for some time to come.

You’re likely already aware that a consumer’s perceived age and his or her real age differ by at least ten years. And while exact figures follow a bell curve depending on a person’s real age (the real one), it’s universally true that people always perceive themselves as younger—perhaps a coping mechanism in a society that seems to prize youth and beauty above all.

Messages about aging have long tended to emphasize the negatives. But, like fine wine, most people actually tend to get better and happier as they age (and I’m not just saying that because I’m, ahem, maturing). In fact, as much as young people pity “old folks,” it turns out neither group would eagerly trade places with the other.

So stay positive. That’s not just good advice for life, but really important when communicating with older audiences who tend to respond poorly to negativity. Always be aware that even the slightest tone of pity can taint otherwise solid communications.

And the next time you’re preparing to write an ad or letter to on older adult audience, put yourself in older shoes—and, like most other older adults, be happy while you’re wearing them. Turning up the volume on this classic may help.

–Robbie Magee

Just because Boomers, by definition, were all born within an eighteen-year window of time doesn’t make them alike.  After all, there were 76 million births during that span—a population just a bit larger than the country of Turkey has today. Now, you may think of Turkey as a homogeneous Middle Eastern nation of Arabs. But, in reality the Republic of Turkey (as it’s officially known) is comprised of two main races (neither of which is Arab), more than a dozen distinct ethnic groups, three religions (including two sects of Islam and adherents of at least three different Christian churches), and its public broadcaster broadcasts in five different languages. Turn on the radio in Istanbul, and you will certainly hear the kind of traditional folk music you’d expect. But you’ll also hear Turkish pop music, hip hop, and heavy metal.

My point? Boomers are a fascinating, perplexing, and highly diverse group—or, more accurately, a group of groups. They challenge marketers to look beyond clichés and generalizations. But, I can’t think of a better puzzle to try and solve. I’d love to share what we’ve learned in our work with this diverse audience—and to learn from you what you have encountered.

—Robbie Magee

It’s obvious that we all change. Our priorities change, and our memories fade. We tire of things after a while so we seek new things. But on a more ambiguous level, our capacity for learning and appreciating things expands and contracts as we age. This brings us to the number one misconception about communicating with older audiences:

#1: Projecting our current likes, values, or tastes on older audiences will result in effective communications.

We can relate to younger audiences because we’ve all been younger—but, we’ve never been older. We can remember our priorities, values, sense of humor, and limitations during our younger years, but when trying to relate to seniors, we tend to “project” our current priorities and values. Furthermore, many younger people are in genuine denial—if not borderline disbelief—about the realities [and frailties] that accompany aging.

So, while things like tight abs at 70 and surfing at 90 seem cool to us, they are not aspirations shared by the vast majority of older adults. But here are some that are:

1. Good health
2. Family ties
3. Financial security
4. Connectedness
5. Purpose
6. Respect for “me” as a person of worth and accomplishment

Choosing imagery is the most fraught with the potential to backfire. For instance, young people love images of free time, “me time,” alone time, leisure activities, vacationing, and clowning around. That is because we’re all still working. We don’t get nearly enough time to de-stress or pursue our favorite pastimes.  Plus, we see lots of people at work and have thousands of interactions with others every day.

Meanwhile, the experiences of retired people are the exact opposite. They are generally alone or isolated more frequently than their younger counterparts. As a result, they tend to perceive the latter types of images as depicting a life of isolation, idleness or frivolity, or—worse yet—not serving any purpose. If you are looking to connect with older adult audiences through imagery, your best bet is to select images that capture their accomplishments, involvement, and abundant life experiences.

This is a topic that, as you may have noticed, is near and dear to my heart. And I could go on for pages about just this one particular misconception. And I will—stay tuned for a white paper on the subject.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any of the remaining misconceptions to marketing to mature audiences:

• #2: Generation gaps are shrinking.
• #3: If we build it [to suit ourselves], they will come.
• #4: Old age is a fixed point on the horizon.
• #5: Disrespect will go unnoticed.
• #6: Older consumers are more reluctant to open their pocketbooks.
• #7: Older adult audiences share the same aspirations, and respond to the same motivational stimuli, as younger consumers.
• #8: The mature market is one big, homogeneous market.
• #9: Designing your website with older audiences in mind will “wreck it.”
• #10: Older adults are technophobes who don’t understand the Internet.

- Robbie Magee

Research indicates that the majority of intergenerational conflicts arise from value differences. Understanding generational values and how they have developed over the years can help us all to alleviate stress among the generations, as well as challenge one of the misconceptions that sabotage marketing to older audiences:

#2: Generation gaps are shrinking.

Just because older and younger generations’ lifestyles share similarities—especially when it comes to technology adaptation—don’t assume the gap is shrinking. In fact, the generation gap (historically referred to in the singular) appears to be multiplying.

Consider people who are now in their seventies: Married, working, and raising children at a young age, they followed the rules and did things by the book. They value discipline and doing the right thing, even if it means taking the more difficult route.  And, for accomplishing this,they wish to be respected.

By comparison, today’s fifty-year-olds grew up testing the system, pushing the limits. They paved the way, and expect their kids to do the same. “Boomers” want personal gratification, so messages such as, “Your contribution is unique,” work best. “Generation X-ers,” on the other hand, want independence. They like to hear, “Do it your way.”

According to Morris Massey in “The People Puzzle,” “we cannot change the generations, nor reconcile their differences.  Instead, we need to acknowledge the validity of their values, and to change how we motivate and work with differing generations.”

For marketers, the challenge is remembering that, unless we’ve experienced something personally, we can’t truly relate—or, to use an old hippy phrase, know where someone is “coming from.” Accept that we can’t change the way older audiences will perceive or evaluate our offerings.  Instead, believe that their reactions will be based on deeply held value systems and a lifetime of experiences that may differ greatly from our own.

We are, after all, products of our generations.

- Robbie Magee

For instance, last week one of my colleagues here at the agency was saying that his parents—who are in their seventies now—like to rent movies. He immediately said it would be “cool” if they used Netflix, as he does.   I then assumed cable on-demand. Nope! They have a different system that works just fine for them: they borrow DVDs from the public library.  It works like this: submit a request and, if a movie is available, take a ride to the library and pick it up. My colleague’s parents are put on a waiting list for popular movies, so they wait for a phone call telling them when it’s their turn. He couldn’t fathom waiting for a movie in this day in age where immediacy is the name of the game.

This leads me to the next misconception in our series:

#3: “If we build it [to suit ourselves], they will come.”

As marketers, we often make the mistake of believing that if we offer a new product or service based on features that appeal to us—in this case, the ability to have something immediately—then older audiences will respond favorably. Yet for many non-working adults, instant attainment isn’t as big a deal.  Nor do they accept that just because something is “new,” it means that it’s automatically better.

Advertisers have typically believed it was much harder to get older audiences to switch brands or try new products. This is rapidly changing. When we’re faced with positioning a product or service in an older adult-friendly way, the real questions to ask ourselves are: “according to their terms, why is this better than their current solution?” and “does it complete an unfulfilled need?”  The latter may be more difficult to answer given that mature adults are already getting by just fine without whatever it is we’re offering.

Old age, or old habit?  The results of our campaigns to older adult audiences may improve if we stop to consider that it may very well be the latter.

As a little holiday gift, I bestow quick links to previous installments of misconceptions that sabotage marketing to mature audiences:

• #4: Old age is a fixed point on the horizon
• #5: Disrespect will go unnoticed
• #6: Older consumers are more reluctant to open their pocketbooks.
• #7: Older adult audiences share the same aspirations, and respond to the same motivational stimuli, as younger consumers.
• #8: The mature market is one big, homogeneous market.
• #9: Designing your website with older audiences in mind will “wreck it.”
• #10: Older adults are technophobes who don’t understand the Internet.

- Robbie Magee

But what happens once we complete the mandatory sequence of our early development and disperse into an infinite combination of later life stages? We’re challenged here by the word “combination.”  It’s nearly impossible for a toddler to simultaneously be a high schooler, or a newborn a kindergartner.  But, as we age, we can—and do—transcend multiple life stages. How, then, can we as communicators possibly relate to people we can’t accurately peg on the life -stage path?  First, we have to abandon the following belief:

#4: Old age is a fixed point on the horizon.

Life is no longer linear to older adults—it’s cyclical. We don’t follow in our parents’ footsteps.  Long gone are the days when we went to school, started a job only to end up staying at the same company for 40 years, got married and had kids, retired, and moved to Florida.

More often than not, adult lives now go something like this: go to school, find a job, get married, have kids, get divorced, remarry, have more kids with the new spouse, find a new job, become a caregiver, downsize, relocate, go back to school, start a new career, and so forth.

The implications here?  No matter what “generation” we belong to, our lives now have more commonality than ever before.  Advertisers should consider how this can actually open and expand potential lines of communications. While we’re at it, let’s also abandon the “retirement” stereotype. The vast majority (approximately 90%) of people over 50 say they plan to work after the age of 65.  Not only are they living longer and have the ability, but they also have the need largely due to diminished traditional retirement “provisions” such as Social Security and pensions.

But the upside to remaining in the workforce longer is that the limitations of living on a fixed income will be less dramatic, as older adults will continue to spend money on work clothes, be able to afford to travel regularly and dine out, and continue to participate in hobbies and sports.  In short, people who continue to work well into their sixties and beyond will continue to share many of the same buying behaviors as younger people.

Whether we consider this to be a merging of generations or a slow down of the aging process, it demonstrates the importance of not making assumptions about attitudes and abilities based on how previous generations have aged. Today, adults over 50 are clearly more “forward-looking” than their parents were. In some ways, they may think more like their kids do than their parents did.

For marketers who are “fearful that marketing to Boomers means an entirely new, additional effort and budget,” consider the perspective of The Boomer Project, which cited the recent re-release of the Beatles anthology as a reminder that “the trick is to develop programs that cut across everyone, including Boomers.”

- Robbie Magee

#5: Disrespect will go unnoticed.

Through our work with our mature market practice clients, we regularly promote financial services and healthcare products to older adult audiences. Our top criteria are:
Suitability: Is this product appropriate for the prospective buyer?
Balanced messaging: Does it promote educated evaluation and purchase?

These may sound quite simple, but they’re effective because they genuinely respect our older audience’s desire to trust us to help them choose. Key words here are, “desire to trust us to help them.”

I have a proposition here—especially for those who wonder why we hold this trust in such high regard. I encourage you to view the documentary, “An Age for Justice: Elder Abuse in America.” Then click, “take action” to assist the American Society on Aging in their mission to eradicate elder abuse. All the watchdog groups and predatory advertising regulations in the world simply cannot achieve the same outcome as raising awareness and empathy for older adults, who become victims because of their greater need for our help and their desire to trust us to do the right thing.

Thank you in advance for caring. May we all age gracefully and well.

And in case you’ve missed the previous installments of mature market misconceptions, view the following links below:

• #6: Older consumers are more reluctant to open their pocketbooks.
• #7: Older adult audiences share the same aspirations, and respond to the same motivational stimuli, as younger consumers.
• #8: The mature market is one big, homogeneous market.
• #9: Designing your website with older audiences in mind will “wreck it.”
• #10: Older adults are technophobes who don’t understand the Internet.

-Robbie Magee