Just like my dear old gran

I would like to thank Chuck Nyren for telling me about the lead article on the brandchannel.com web site titled “Engaging the Aging: Marketing to Europe's Seniors”. Interbrand, the branding consultancy, finances brandchannel.com.

The article talks about a recent French billboard advertisement from lastminute.com that features a grinning caricature of an older woman with large unfashionable sunglasses in a bikini, over which is splashed the caption “Stay fresh this summer.” Her husband is portrayed as a man with an oversized stomach. On the corner of the advertisement is the slogan “heat wave 2004” which is in questionable taste since 15,000 old people died in France last year in a freak summer heat wave.

The advertisement, according to lastminute.com's managing director in France, Pierre Paperon, was initially aimed at seniors, but was then extended to a much wider audience. "I got the idea from my grandmother who loves to travel, but it's for anyone really," he explains.

The article then follows the usual format that I talked about in my post 23 August “not another article about the 50+”

What really amused me about the article was Mr Paperon’s comment about getting the idea for the advertisement from his grandmother “who loves to travel”.

I have now interviewed a lot of marketers about how they view marketing to older people and I am always amused at the way they invariably bring up the subject of their parents and grandparents. It normally goes something like “My parents (or grandparents) have a great life; they seem to have more holidays than I do and are always out and about”. This is said with surprise, verging on disbelief and a touch of envy. I think they really are saying “I thought my parents were a couple of boring old farts and I was wrong”

I get the distinct feeling that a lot of marketers view the world of 50+ marketing through a filter that is constructed of a mass of emotions and opinions about their own parents and grandparents. If this is right, then we have a problem. Dick Stroud www.20plus30.com