I am sick tired of articles about 50+ marketing always focusing on the vast market potential of older consumers. Nine out of ten articles in the UK will have a sentence, normally in the first paragraph saying ‘they own 80 per cent of the UK's wealth, worth more than £280 billion’. I must put up my hand and admit to doing the same in my own writing.
I now believe this ‘scare them by the numbers’ approach is at best useless at worse counterproductive.
I sense that when younger marketers start reading these much quoted statistics they filter them out and pigeonhole the article as yet another one banging on about old people.
Just consider these facts. Cigarette packets in the UK contain a health warning that covers 30% of the front and 40% of the back. It reads something like ‘smoking kills, or smokers die younger or even more dramatic ‘smoking clogs the arteries and causes heart attacks and strokes’. What result have these dire warnings had on young people? In 2002 more 20-24 year olds smoke than they did in 1988.
What’s the connection between these two issues? If you keep saying a dramatic statement it quickly loses its impact and is ignored. Dick Stroud: www.20plus30.com
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