I am so glad you wrote this Brian (I'm working up something as well). As someone with decades in creating marketing, messaging and brand content, as someone who is "older" I find it stunning how tone deaf advertisers are.
I recently checked out an ad agency targeting my demographic and it primarily used the term "seniors". It's amazes me how marketers fail because they alienate their target audience.
It seems to be a safe assumption they have no one on their creative and editor team who is even close in age to their target market. As I just heard demographic futurist Bradley Schurman say, those efforts are bound to fail.
I'll admit that before truly diving into this space, I didn't even think about these terms. So we can be forgiving of the innocent ageism, while still trying to educate people on the quickly changing landscape of language with regard to older people.
I am so glad you wrote this Brian (I'm working up something as well). As someone with decades in creating marketing, messaging and brand content, as someone who is "older" I find it stunning how tone deaf advertisers are.
I recently checked out an ad agency targeting my demographic and it primarily used the term "seniors". It's amazes me how marketers fail because they alienate their target audience.
It seems to be a safe assumption they have no one on their creative and editor team who is even close in age to their target market. As I just heard demographic futurist Bradley Schurman say, those efforts are bound to fail.
I'll admit that before truly diving into this space, I didn't even think about these terms. So we can be forgiving of the innocent ageism, while still trying to educate people on the quickly changing landscape of language with regard to older people.