Advertisers Fail Older People
Over-50s in the UK spend £240 billion a year and account for 40% of total consumer expenditure. However, they are poorly served by advertisers who dedicate 95% of their spend to targeting under-35s, according to research from Help The Aged.
According to the study, which draws on research from the BBC, WARC, Saga and the IPA, positive and realistic images of older people are hard to find. Senior consumers feel ignored when faced with ads aimed at the younger generation and resent stereotypical or negative images of people their own age group.
The research recommends that advertising to older people works best when it has a strong narrative structure and powerful benefit messages, concluding that clear-cut messages work in this area.
Older people are viewed as wiser and are therefore less easily influenced by the shallow, image-led vanity of modern advertising. According to the study, older people do not feel the need to build their sense of identity via brands and their sense of self is built on what they do rather than how they seem.
The personal disposable income in the average over -50 household is £205 per week and they are spending £2,761 per household per year on leisure services like cinema, sport, theatre, satellite television, the Internet, holidays and eating out. However, advertising has marginalized this group and continues to concentrate on youth as the holy grail.
The study suggests that people are living longer and birth rates are declining to such an extent that within the next 30 to 40 years, older people will outnumber younger people for the first time in history.
Mike Waterson, chairman of the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC), comments on the challenges facing the industry: “Although the over-50s and over-60s will become a major political and economic power some agencies are still saying that it is the under-35s that matter. They believe older people have fixed brand loyalties and can’t manage new technology.”
Waterson believes advertisers need to address the issue proactively, claiming: “A campaign to educate advertising agencies about the grey market would be useful. Half of their staff are under 30: they may not share the same values as older people and there is an educational problem here.”
Recent figures from Egg and Mori show that the profile of SMS users is broadening, and the over 55s are now sending more text messages than ever before (see Feature: Mobile Marketing Goes For The Greys).
Help The Aged: 020 7278 1114 www.helptheaged.org.uk
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