Saturday, May 25, 2013

The changing face (or not) of older people and why the obsession with water?

Unfortunately, I cannot reference the source for this information, but let's just say they are one of the very few people with the data to make the comments.

If you were to look at the use of imagery to sell financial service products you might have thought that in the past ten years it would have aged? You would have thought there would have been more older people appearing in the advertising?


You would be wrong. It has hardly changed a percentage point.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that more older faces should appear but the simplistic way that so much advertising is created I would have thought the knee-jerk reaction would have been to have used a few more pictures of oldies. I am wrong.

What about the concepts of the imagery (i.e. the mood that is trying to be created) how has this changed in the past decade? A bit, but not much. The one big concept that is being sought is imagery that depicts 'relaxation'.

Either the marketing environment has not changed in the past decade or the marketers that operate in the industry are not very adventurous. My money is on the second option.

I just put 'Retired Couple' into Google and searched using Images.

The above is the first set of images in the list. Notice anything? All but one of them has a male and female somewhere near water. What is it with this water thing? Dick Stroud

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