Marketing is obsessed with generations, no cap, and may I add, skibidee toilet…
Clients, marketers and researchers are keen to unlock the secrets of how to appeal to Gen A and Gen Z, and what that all means for established wisdom and strategy for their brands. However, is it possible they are focused on the wrong generations? The tone in reports on Gen A is often one of fear, fuelled by how un-childlike their youth appears to be, and articles carry titles such as ‘Who’s Afraid of These Gen Alpha Queens?’. As youth insights specialist Casey Lewis points out in the article, Gen Alpha are living in a culture and reality that we have created for them. They see our world through their eyes, they test our creation to find the best of it and the worst, perfectly enacting the role of cultural hackers.
Whilst the kids play with legacies that we have made for them, there is another group that is experiencing a phase of life that is genuinely novel — late adulthood. Life in your 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond has never existed in the form that it does today, and with changing health outcomes, conversations around longevity and a soon-to-be bulging population (millennials in the UK are the largest generational cohort), it is only set to continue to evolve, experiences diversify and opportunities expand. We are most familiar with the changing conversation around age in categories like beauty, which have long counted anti-ageing as a key motivator for purchase.
A testament to this change is to compare the content I grew up watching, including 10 Years Younger (2004 – ) when people were shamed on the street before being given plastic surgery to cheat ageing (‘From a distance, Kerry Fender seems frumpy, defeated and middle-aged’, reads the description of one episode), to now, where brands such as Better Not Younger talk about celebrating unique beauty and the wisdom of age, providing functional support for the needs of hair in later life. In beauty, the ‘anti’ is being removed from anti-ageing to reduce the pejorative nature of the term, but still, the idea that youth is better than age persists across many categories and throughout culture — take Coralie Fargeat’s ultra-bloody body horror The Substance to see this cultural truth taken to its extreme conclusion.
Despite our cultural beliefs, the experience of late adulthood is changing
Economically, we are compelled to stay in the workforce longer as retirement ages are raised by governments around the world. We will all live longer as healthcare improves and we seek out longevity as a driving goal of our wellness, whether that’s through community and lifestyle as suggested in Netflix’s documentary Live to 100 (2023), or through hardcore science as practised by Bryan Johnson. Emerging from these approaches is a new gold standard of living that is less connected to ability and appearance and more connected to activity and joy — vitality.
We are seeing communications emerge that centre the idea of vitality as a key benefit for late adulthood. There are some categories in which this feels more familiar, such as insurance, with Australian provider Ryman depicting retirement as youthfulness in their spot ‘Live Remarkably’.
More interesting is the emergence of categories that previously felt very youth-focused, such as gaming
IKEA has appointed 76-year-old Grumpygran1948 as the front for their BRÄNNBOLL gaming collection, based on insight that 7 million people over the age of 55 are regular gamers. Harry Style’s brand Pleasing celebrates self-expression as a universal human desire featuring people from all stages of life in its comms. In Brazil, for the 70th anniversary of Burger King, they produced an ad depicting older people embracing passionately with the tagline ’70 years and the fire’s still burning.’ The theme that unites these examples is communications that don’t coddle or limit what people can feel and allow for a depiction of lives lived full and joyously.
It’s not only how we communicate that is changing, but also what we are communicating about. A significant positive to the changing relationship with ageing allows for broaching subjects that are taboo, hidden, unresearched and that have the capacity to massively improve people’s lives. Over the last few years, innovations and conversations have multiplied around menopause, with the number of products available (e.g. faace’s menopause face, Wellbel’s women+) and the openness with which they are being discussed growing and diversifying.
Rather than continuing to obsess over youth, perhaps we should spend more time considering the neglected and expanding life stages, bringing as much diversity of experience and representation to late adulthood as we imagine exists for Gen Alpha. For not only is there opportunity to innovate products and services for a growing population, but also opportunity to improve quality of life and promote vitality as a driving force for everyone.
Featured image: The Substance (2024) / Working Title Films and Blacksmith