Marketing to an Older Population

Everyone talks about the “stages of life”: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and then, the Big One – old age.The problem with thinking in stages is that it has the effect of segregating life into different compartments. That’s exactly how marketers and advertisers think. They segregate the population into market segments.Makes sense for them but here’s the problem: when marketers who are in their own stage of life as adults think about those who are in that stage called “old age”, they fall down in their messaging attempts.Because someone who’s 38 or 45 can’t think – or feel ­– like someone who is 65 or 75. So, they fall back on stereotypes and inevitably get it wrong every time.That’s where Dave McCaughan comes in. Dave has been in the marketing and advertising business for decades and he has made the aging cohort a study for the past 30 years.In this week’s episode of The Art 2 Aging, Dave describes how marketers have gone wrong and continue to go wrong with their marketing efforts to the older population. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theart2aging.substack.com/subscribe