Marketing's age concern

This is the cover story in the latest edition of Marketing Week. Good to see that the subject is getting more coverage. Sorry but the article is subscriber only. This is a taste of what the article says:

"The rapidly ageing UK population isn't just causing a pensions crisis, the marketing world is also being affected by the demographic changes. The accepted strategy of targeting under-35s is coming into question as brands chase the grey pound. But are the over-55s - notorious among marketers for being less prone to brand promiscuity than younger consumers - ready to listen to them?

The issue of how to promote brands to the burgeoning mature market is set to become a major concern for marketers over the next 20 years.

Cruises, coach tours, financial products and medicaments are age-specific and can be directly targeted at the senior market. But the bigger question is how best to promote products such as packaged groceries, new media, cars and clothes, which are bought by people across the age spectrum, when declining childbirth and increased longevity mean there are fewer consumers under 35 and more over 50.

Marketers also sense a looming crisis. Some believe that the age shift will drive the conventions of 20th-century marketing into a crisis, as older people are harder to persuade to change brands or try out new trends. Consumer capitalism itself will suffer as new products have generally been aimed at younger generations.

Others see this as defeatism and believe it is the high numbers of young people working in marketing departments that make so much of their output unattractive to older audiences. They argue that marketing has become "ageist" and will have to change to accommodate the new realities.

But sceptics point out that marketing is predicated on winning new customers under 35, whose brand preferences are then set for the rest of their lives. With their numbers shrinking, the take-up of new technologies will decline while the growth of new markets continues to stagnate.

I will stop at that point since the article goes on about the Y&R Europe planning director Simon Silvester and his report "You're Getting Old. Europe's Demographic Problem is Your Marketing Problem". This must be the most quoted report that puts opinions before evidence.

Anyway, coverage of the subject is good thing. Dick Stroud www.20plus30.com