The Swing Generation report from Euromonitor

This new report from Euromonitor is all about marketing to 65+. Why ‘swing generation'? Because of the popularity of swing music at the time of their birth – well that is what the press release says.
Strange combination of the name ‘swing’ with the imagery of somebody with a walking stick. No doubt this was the creative paradigm shift from some youthful marketer beavering away in the bowels of Euromonitor.

Euromonitor’s reports are normally pretty good so why they chose this banal statement for the press release, confounds me: “Many over 65s are determined to enjoy retirement, doing and buying all the things they feel were denied to them earlier in their lives. This presents significant opportunities for all consumer industries, but particularly for marketers of luxury goods and services”. Well I be damned!

The report is reviewed in this week’s edition of Marketing Week (subscription only). It contains some interesting analysis; like that 51% of the Asia-Pacific population is 65+ and that sales of canned/preserved food to the 65+ increased by 52,800% in 2006. I just hope it the explanation for this nonsense is that the artwork person at Marketing Week was having a bad day and that this in not a reflection of the report’s analytical accuracy! Dick Stroud