How Do We Best Understand an Audience of Older People?
Does age really tell us anything meaningful about people? In some cases, yes. But not to the extent that marketers have traditionally relied on it.
“Is Joe Biden too old to be President?”
It’s a question repeatedly asked by headlines in major publications and across social media. And the amazing thing is no one bats an eye at it.
But what if the question were this?
“Was Barack Obama too Black to be President?”
Or how about:
“Is a woman qualified to be President?”
Those last two questions definitely got you to bat an eye because they’re completely inappropriate. But so is the first question, even if it doesn’t feel the same.
All three use a single demographic factor as the basis for questioning someone’s qualifications to lead a nation. And all three are absolutely useless in answering the question without resorting to prejudice and stereotypes.
In the first case, what people are really asking is if Joe Biden is cognitively competent to lead the United States for a second term. And that’s a perfectly legitimate question, but it has nothing to do with his chronological age.
The same is true for those who call for term limits for politicians based on chronological age. Term limits may be a good idea for a whole host of reasons, but basing them on how old someone is doesn’t make sense outside of ageist stereotypes.
Yes, some people suffer from significant cognitive decline as they get older, but in much fewer numbers than is popularly believed. And even then, the key word is some, not all.
In fact, many people in their 80s are doing quite well in leadership positions. And, believe it or not, the same is true for some people in their 90s.
As an example, shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway are perfectly fine with Warren Buffet (92) leading the company as CEO. In fact, it’s fair to say that shareholders will be concerned when he no longer does.
So does age really tell us anything meaningful about people? In some cases, yes. But not to the extent that marketers have traditionally relied on it.
Welcome to the field of demographic targeting. While not completely useless, demographics have much less power than you would think, given their prevalence in marketing circles.
Worse, demographics are at the root of the ageism we’re fighting against. This is also true of racism, sexism, and all sorts of other discriminatory behavior.
It’s time to move beyond demographics, ironically right as we’re experiencing one of history's largest age-based demographic shifts. Let’s explore why, along with some alternative approaches that provide a better starting point.
Demographic Dumbness
Take a look at this demographic profile to see what you can understand about the person described:
This person is a male born in 1948 in the United Kingdom. He’s been married twice, is exceedingly wealthy and well-known, and lives in a castle.
Okay, this actually describes at least two different people: Former Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne and recently-crowned King Charles III.
Pretty much the same guy according to the demographics, right?
Imagine trying to market to these two gentlemen using the same strategy and messaging. A targeted bold message certainly won’t work on both of them, and any attempt to make the message generic would likely fail to entice either.
These two men have entirely different lifestyles and worldviews. They have radically different values and attitudes. That’s why any attempt to craft a message that appeals to both is doomed to failure.
It seems like an extreme example, but it’s really not. That’s because people who share mere demographic characteristics often don’t agree on much of anything. This is best summed up by a statement I’ve run across repeatedly in anti-agism circles:
If you’ve met one 70-year-old, you’ve met one 70-year-old.
The data agrees. Analysis shows that no matter what demographic bucket you look at – Gen X or Millennial, rich or poor, male or female, college-educated or not – on average, the people in each cohort will agree on an issue 10.5% of the time. That means they disagree 89.5% of the time.1
Not exactly confidence inspiring when you’re investing time and money on marketing. And yet your whole life, you’ve heard about the “coveted” 18- to 34-year-old demographic. Coveted why?
The answer is that this is a throwback to mass media advertising. You start with broad demographic criteria, and then your messaging and product sorts people out from there. Add in a marketing obsession with young people, and there you have it.
As content marketers and digital entrepreneurs, we’re doing something far different from mass media advertising. And yet, we’re starting with a broad demographic cohort (people over 50) and then sorting people out from there with our messaging.
The question is, how?
The Perennial Approach
Using age-based demographic buckets dates back to the “Mad Men” golden age of advertising when it was thought that age was a way to identify interests (based on stereotypes, of course):
Young people must like fizzy soda and fast cars; old people prefer iced tea and slow cars — sell them stuff accordingly. And if you want to help an old person feel young? Sell him a sports car, of course.
The “Perennial” approach takes into account that people of all ages share the same interests, and therefore age is not a relevant factor. The concept has been around since 2016 when Gina Pell coined the term. Here’s how she explains it:
We are ever-blooming, curious people of ALL ages who know what’s happening in the world, stay current with technology, and have friends of all ages. The term Perennials is not a fluffy euphemism for relevant people over 40. Millennials can be Perennials. Octogenarians can be Perennials. Even children can be Perennials. I’m talking about a mindset. Not a flat, one-dimensional timeline that runs from birth punctuated by generational barriers designed to categorize and divide us.
Sociologist, political economist, and author Mauro Guillén (you’ve met him in earlier issues of Longevity Gains as the author of 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything) asserts this as a bona fide socio-economic trend. He sees a post-generational society of Perennials emerging thanks to longer lifespans, improved health spans, and evolving technology:
In his book, The Perennials, Guillén says that after universal schooling and old age pensions took off in the 19th century, life began to be organized into rigid stages of learning, working, and retiring.
Now that we are living longer, with very different technologies, he thinks we are poised for a “postgenerational” society of perennials, or people defined by how they work, learn and live, not by when they were born.
Based on the language Guillén is using, we’ve got a similar approach to explore. It goes beyond interests and focuses on stage of life.
Stage (Not Age)
When Guillén says “learning, working, and retiring,” he’s channeling the work of Stanford professor Susan Wilner Golden, who uses “learn, earn, retire” in her book Stage (Not Age): How to Understand and Serve People Over 60—the Fastest Growing, Most Dynamic Market in the World.
Sixty-five as an age marker that signifies the entry into old age no longer works. The classic view of modern life was one of three stages: learn, earn, retire. No more. It doesn’t make sense anymore. You don’t retire at sixty-five if you have 35 percent of your life left.
To a certain degree, Golden is taking an aspect of the Perennial concept – how people work, learn, and live – and adding age back to a limited degree. In other words, her work focuses on the various stages of life that encompass the broad stage we’ve traditionally called retirement.
Golden doesn’t use the word “retirement” as a stage of life for many of the reasons we’ve already discussed. People are already pushing retirement age back because they simply don’t want to retire. Plus, the economic reality of living a healthy life into your eighties, nineties, or beyond means retirement is likely not feasible anywhere near 65.
Instead, she defines multiple later life stages that replace the generic notion of idle years:
Repurposing: Moving a career focus to a new central purpose
Relaunching: Activities that allow you to start a new part of your life
Transitioning: Facilitating the move from one identity to another
Resetting: Recoding a value system to support new priorities and goals.
We shift our focus and interests as we move from one later-life stage to the next. This means a constantly evolving landscape for older adults, tied together by “long-life” learning:
A big part of what used to be retirement will now be learning. In fact, learning will span all parts of life in a more meaningful way instead of being that thing you did at the beginning. Both individuals and companies will increasingly need to integrate transition planning and upskilling throughout careers and over time. New businesses will continue to emerge to support these multiple life stages and transitions.
This emphasis on long-life learning is essential, and we’ll cover it in upcoming Premium lessons of Longevity Gains. But for now, we have to ask ourselves if the Perennial approach or the later-life Stages approach will allow us to know an audience of older people at an intimate enough level to succeed.
It’s a Good Start, But…
The Perennial approach moves beyond demographics to focus on interests, which touches on psychographics to a very limited extent. We’ll explore psychographics in more detail in an upcoming issue of Longevity Gains.
The Stage approach is a bit more multifaceted but ultimately is still about what an older person is interested in at a particular stage of later life. Demographics are broadly involved but segmented by interest based on whichever stage a person is in.
I’ve nothing but respect for the work of people like Professors Guillén and Golden. But if I may say in all humility, leading an academic career is different from the down-and-dirty experience of a bootstrapped digital entrepreneur and content marketer like yours truly. 😉
In fact, anyone who’s ever started a blog, podcast, YouTube channel, or email newsletter knows about interest-based targeting. It’s what we call choosing a niche, and if that’s all it took, everyone who tried would succeed.
Interest is crucial as a starting point. But there’s much more to it in order to truly connect with an audience at a level that leads to success. We’ll get into that in the next lesson.
Allison, David. The Death of Demographics (p. 19). Lioncrest Publishing.
As one of those folks that have 65 in the rearview mirror but whose brain cells are still firing in synch, I especially appreciated this issue of Longevity Gains. I'm busier now than when I was officially employed. Many of my friends ask why I want to stay productive and not spend my remaining years with relaxing.
I define a good day as one when I learn something new. A great day is one when I both learn and teach.
I guess you might get a clue as to how that attitude informs my approach to business by simply reading the name I chose for my business. That name is Lifelong Learning, LLC.
I will have reached my primary goal in life if, on my last day here on earth, I can reflect on my years and decide that the world is a little bit better place because I was here. I intend to keep learning, growing, and sharing knowledge and skills until the day I die, Lord willing.
How about you?
79 years of age and still active as an entrepreneur, artist, author and aspiring copywriter.