More of us are living longer and what it means to be an ageing consumer is changing. So how will brands market themselves to tomorrow’s older population?

This is a generation that is used to shopping online, holds authenticity in high regard, and has issues like sustainability top of mind.

The old advertising tropes of an elderly couple walking on a beach probably won’t cut through, so how will brands talk to these consumers in a relevant and engaging way?

It is a huge opportunity. As Jen Whyte, Front End Innovation Insights Director at Haleon, puts it: “Where does the money lie? The money lies with this older cohort.”

In this episode of The Persuasion Game podcast, she shares her views on the way brands market themselves to older people now, and how to persuade younger consumers to think about their own futures today.

We also hear from Anniki Sommerville, an author,  journalist, and influencer – who’s built a reputation for her sharp and insightful takes on modern life.

They offer different perspectives on how to speak to and connect with older consumers.

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn for updates.

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Want to know more about us? Visit our website here: thisistheforge.com

This is an 18Sixty production for The Forge.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:33) Global ageing trends and healthcare

(05:50) Preventative health and supplements

(11:03) Marketing to older consumers

(20:58) Authenticity in branding

The Persuasion Game is available on all your favourite podcast apps: https://link.chtbl.com/PersuasionGame

Episode transcript:

Jennifer: I just think that we need to challenge our own prejudices about people who are older. Where does the money lie? The money lies with this older cohort.

Adam: Welcome to The Persuasion Game, The Forge’s podcast about growing brands and persuading consumers in the modern age. Hi Laura. How are you? 

Laura: I’m great. How are you doing, Adam? 

Adam: I’m actually doing really well, but I am worried about getting old.

Laura: On account of your upcoming big day? 

Adam: The big 4 0. Yeah, next month.

And it is official. We are getting old. In many developing markets, consumers are predicted to live longer with birth rates now tracking in decline. And so the question today is, how do we better market to aging consumers and who have we got on board for this discussion? 

Laura: So we’re very lucky. We’ve got two people on board for the podcast today.

The bulk of the conversation you’re going to hear is with Jen Whyte, who is a perfect person to talk to about this. Jen has had a hugely diverse career across FMCG and pharma. Always with an eye to the future, which is why she’s currently at front end innovation in Haleon. We’ve worked together on some really interesting global expansive projects, talking a lot about aging consumers.

And we’re also going to be hearing from Anniki Somerville, who is an author, a journalist, and an influencer who has built a reputation for her sharp and insightful takes on modern life.

I don’t know if you’ve seen her, we’ll put a link in the handle, but she’s very funny and very astute about what it’s to age.

Adam: I started receiving Anniki Somerville Instagram reels. It was almost exactly when I had a child. It felt like the algorithm went, hang on a second, you like some chat about having children and the trials and tribulations of middle aged, here’s Anniki.

Laura: Well, she’s brilliant at thinking about how brands can connect with audiences and particularly representing women in midlife with authenticity and in an engaging way. 

Adam: Brilliant. Let’s get into it.

Laura: Jen, it’s so great to have you on board. 

Jennifer: Oh, thanks a lot Laura and Adam!

Adam: Welcome Jen!

Jennifer: I know, for once eh?

Laura: And actually for the subject of ageing, Jen and I have known each other, what, 20 years am I allowed to say that?

Adam: Oh wow

Jennifer: Yes. 

Laura: How to lose friends and alienate people at the beginning of a podcast! 

Jennifer: Laura, you, you were just a wee girl when I met you. I was still an old woman then!

Laura: I’m still learning from you, Jen. I’m still learning from you. 

Adam: Was this, I guess it was at Unilever, was it? 

Laura: Yes. And I actually, just a little anecdote, Jen, I remember it. We had had this very formal first meeting, and it was my first one as a brand manager. I was sitting there being very fastidious and we were talking about a research process and then just said, Jen said, oh, I wonder if I can just leave you all with one thought: “Sh*t in, sh*t out”. I was like, I like this lady.

Jennifer: Yeah, that’ll be on my gravestone I think.

Laura: So Jen, our more recent work was a collaboration, a global collaboration on the future of healthcare, which was one of my favourite projects that we’ve worked on at The Forge because It was such an interesting, culturally nuanced future facing, all sorts of different implications across all sorts of different categories, project.

But we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the observations we have from the developed markets, which is a huge number of these populations are getting older and that we’re having to look at a very different reality of what it means to grow old than perhaps it was 20 or 30 years ago. Can we talk a little bit about what some of your key observations were on that?

Jennifer: Well, you know, when we think about the future of aging and what’s going on at the moment, globally, one in six people by 2050 are going to be over the age of 60. Or 65 perhaps. That’s a lot of people, that’s a lot of future ageing, quite honestly. 

Laura: That’s huge. And then of course, the implications that come off the back of that are healthcare systems. I mean, they’re currently on their knees as it is. I mean, we talk about that every day. We hear about that in the news every day in this country. And it’s not only this country, no. Globally, it’s in many other markets as well. It’s just an enormous strain on healthcare systems.

The other thing is as well, is they’re becoming increasingly centralised. So there was one lady in Italy who we spoke to in the study and she said that she’s to fly from Sicily to Milan in order to get proper healthcare. 

Laura: Yeah. So at the time the need is increasing, the access is reducing. 

Jennifer: Yeah. The access is reducing to healthcare systems and therefore the onus is becoming more on prevention and preventative health and improving that health span lifespan, and closing that gap because we’re all living longer. 

Laura: Yes. It’s funny, isn’t it? Sometimes you think, oh, we’re all living longer, and there’s an instant assumption that it’s sort of joyful and easy, but actually there’s a lot of data that says you can have, I think it’s around nine years globally, where your health is in a really poor condition, but you are living. You know, you are alive for all of that time and it’s quite a scary prospect for everyone because it’s a gap that’s increasing rather than decreasing at the moment. 

Jennifer: I think it’s a really crucial point actually, that nine years and how do we reduce it?

And how do governments help us reduce it? How do our healthcare systems help us reduce it? But also how do we ourselves, how do we take ownership and accountability for our own health? 

Laura: Yeah. 

Jennifer: And you know, when you’re a 20-year-old, do you think about what your health is going to be like when you’re 80?

Adam: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s a huge behavioural change, isn’t it? To have people think about a problem, which is currently not a problem for them. How do you go about some of that persuasion around preventative health? 

Jennifer: And I think that’s probably the million dollar question, Adam, quite honestly. For governments, for businesses such as ours, how do we get people, you know, if I think of like the world of supplements, arguably that’s a preventative measure you’re taking for your long-term health. 

But actually we know that one of the biggest barriers to frequency of use is, is frequency of use. And actually remembering to take your multivitamin tablet every day, or your joint health tablet every day. Often these types of products just sit on the shelf or sit in the kitchen basket and people forget about them. 

Adam: Yeah. What’s quite interesting is there’s no visible feedback loop is there? Like in other areas of your life, say you’re saving for retirement and compound interest is incredibly powerful for helping you to do that. You can see over time your savings pot begin to grow, but that compound effect of the vitamins or the supplements building up in your system or helping you preventing it, it’s invisible, isn’t it?

You can’t actually see the benefits or it working. 

Jennifer: Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I guess it’s a bit like how also if you think of like physio treatment or you’re doing your physio rehab, which I’m supposed to be doing at the moment, you know, until something personally affects you then you don’t actually do something about it. 

Adam: Yeah. 

Jennifer: That’s what we, I think healthcare systems, anybody who works in the whole healthcare sector, they’re trying to get people to probably bring in some form of intervention. And those interventions can be product solutions. They can be lifestyle changes, they can be, you know, when your doctor’s always telling you exercise more, eat less.

And of course the whole obesity is not just a kind of modern developed market problem anymore. It’s a much bigger, wider global issue nowadays, and people have to take some form of ownership for it for their health. 

Laura: Yeah and it’s interesting that digital tools have been so key to that in the UK because we do have a deficit of doctors.

We don’t have the ability to start creating more local services, but things like couch to 5K or Change for life. You know, these apps that have kind of managed to sort of nudge people and iteratively track progress. To your point, Adam, like give a little bit of a feedback loop. I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for a badge on these, on these various apps.

Adam: What badges have you won on Peloton? 

Laura: I’ve won so many badges. I’ll show you. 

Jennifer: Or you’re pinged gold. 

Laura: Maybe it’s maybe a wooden spoon. You kept trying. But yeah, getting that continuous feedback is not something that you can build into a physical product per se. It’s almost like, well, you have an absence of a problem, and that’s quite hard to build a motivating story around, isn’t it?

Jennifer: Yeah. And it is the absence of a problem, you know? And I suppose it’s if you get a migraine, it’s a migraine or a headache, you know, you take a tablet. Because you’re treating it at that point in time. 

Laura: I suppose the interesting thing then is if you want to motivate people in these categories, which are a bit more preventative, you have to hit some others to pleasure sensors, don’t you? And we were talking earlier, Jen, about how perhaps there were some learnings from other categories that brands like vitamins, minerals, and supplements had taken to give that little bit more pleasure to the experience. 

Jennifer: Well if you look at the world of supplements again, I mean, there’s supplements for everything, vitamins for everything, but also the formats have changed.

Remember, they used to just be sort of like big, chunky tablets. And nowadays, you know, you can get lots of different formats. So it’s a bit more excitement, a bit more pleasure. It’s a bit more colourful, and the category’s a bit more interesting than it used to be. And I think people want to see that, particularly in a cat when you don’t get that immediate, going back to Adam’s point, when you don’t get the immediate feedback loop.

Laura: Yes. 

Jennifer: So you need to get some form of feedback, you know, in some way or other.

Adam: Yeah.

Jennifer: And perhaps the feedback loop there is in the delight that you’re giving the consumer and when they’re making that purchase decision. So I’m taking home my lovely jar of gummies, for example. 

Laura: Another thing we talked about was the trend towards personalisation in health.

We were talking about Zoe. I think we’ve all been now individually targeted with various different vitamins.

Jennifer: Even I have at my age.

Laura: But all of us were citing a different one, weren’t we? 

Adam: Yeah. 

Laura: We were all being stalked by a slightly different one.

Jennifer: Well, again, I was kind of reading an article about blood tests and you can get a blood test, you can do all sorts of blood tests these days, and then off the back of that, you can get your personalised solution. 

Laura: Yes

Jennifer: Ready-made, sent to your door for you. Whether it’s, you know, oh, you’re lacking in X, Y, and Z and therefore we are going to recommend you take A, B, C, and I think that’s a trend that is only going to increase.

Laura: A hundred percent, especially with a push towards more pharmacy led care as well.

I think that credibility of a pharmacist recommended solution or having a relationship with someone that’s not a doctor, but could give you like a personalised recommendation is only going to grow as a cultural discourse. 

Jennifer: And even with online, in the UK, ASDA online doctor service, you know, they offer all sorts of things.

That type of service is relatively easy to get a hold of. 

Adam: Yeah.

Laura: The other thing that’s really interesting about targeting us as we all age is that it’s about a mindset shift in terms of how we sell the things we sell. I think there is an innate bias in the marketing industry. It’s not new news to anyone that youth sells, and it’s very hard to get out of that mindset that an older consumer is not a slightly less aspirational one, or someone that’s kind of dying out of the segment or perhaps has less money to spend when in fact a lot of the data says that the inverse is true, right?

Jennifer: Yeah, and I have quite an opinionated point of view on this one actually. 

Laura: We love it.

Adam: Excellent.

Jennifer: Because I do think a lot of marketers are very young. Therefore, how do you put somebody in the shoes of that person? Marketing’s a young world. It’s a young person’s game. And advertising is as well, largely. And I just think that we need to challenge our own prejudices about people who are older.

I don’t think we should regard people who are older, and I’m in that category now, so I don’t think I’m any less aspirational or I’m dying out yet. I’ve got plenty of life in me yet, and I just think that brand managers, marketing managers need to think that one through. And the other thing as well is you’re delivering against a category need.

That need doesn’t change necessarily, so I still need to clean my teeth whether I’m 20 or I’m 55. The need doesn’t change. The need for indigestion tablets, for example, the need doesn’t change. The frequency might change because I might be, as I’ve got older, I might suffer more from indigestion. But that fundamental need doesn’t change.

So therefore it’s about how you communicate to them. And one brand that I think that always does the older person communication really well and has done for years is L’Oreal, they do it brilliantly. They’re not condescending, they’re not patronising. I think they do it really well and I think their current campaign with Helen Mirren, you look great, is brilliant.

Laura: Yes. It says “You look great”. And then it says for any age. And that’s been like scrubbed out and it’s just a photo of Helen Mirren looking incredible and her sort of innate confidence and sexiness just standing out, isn’t it? 

Jennifer: Yeah. Because actually when I tell people how old I am, and I don’t often do that, is they always say, “oh, you look great for your age”.

Actually, that’s quite condescending. 

Laura: Yes. And as an influencer, Anniki had an especially interesting point of view about challenging our stereotypes and showing up authentically. 

Anniki: Traditionally, we always believed, and that might be another angle for brands to think about, is that we always thought about ageing as options narrowing down, less choice, less opportunity.

In particular women over a certain age, it feels as if they become invisible and you know, once they can no longer reproduce, they’re not seen as being valuable members of society. You know, that’s some of the culture that we’ve lived with. But I think that’s shifting now and we’re seeing lots of women who in their midlife are really doing a 360.

They might be leaving their partner, leaving their job, deciding that they’re going to do things on their own terms. And it might be quite dramatic changes, or it might be quite small changes. I think sometimes they’ve been talked down to and patronised. I think that’s something that we are seeing now with this new emerging kind of midlife movement is that that’s come to a close and actually brands are waking up to the fact that they need to be quite sophisticated and switched on in order to speak to that woman.

Menopause – it’s great that people are talking about it more, but it’s not the only experience that women have. So I think there are definitely some brands where they’ve basically just slapped menopause onto their product and gone. Okay. That’s it. We’ve ticked off the midlife lot. So we’ve got our menopause deodorant and our menopause cleanser and our menopause fabric conditioner.

And you know, we’ve got all of these things, but there’s a bit of a danger that you’re jumping on the bandwagon. And for a lot of women, I hate to say it because many women will struggle through menopause, some women won’t. Some women will be fairly symptom free, and some women, actually, what I’ve found in my experience of talking to women is that they’re struggling under other things. They’ve got the juggle of trying to work and bring up children and look after their parents and do all the other things.

Menopause is just one of many things that are on the list of things that they have to think about. And so I think there’s a danger of being quite reductive where you just think, okay, a lot of brand owners are just thinking, right, okay, so you’ve just said midlife, we need to bring out a menopause product.

Laura: But Anniki it’s interesting because actually there are brands, even really long established heritage brands that have sort of managed to pivot and seem to really understand women in the round at this later life stage, for example, Good Housekeeping, who you’re now a writer for. 

Anniki: Yes, and I definitely think they’re a good example. What I think is interesting about them is, this sounds counterintuitive, but I think in terms of the group of women that they’re talking to, it’s actually really broad.

So they don’t actually, you know, actively target midlife women. They’re talking to any woman probably from 30 onwards. In terms of they’re doing big pieces of research where they’re trying to understand what are all of the different attitudes of different generations. So, you know, gen Z, gen X boomers, you know, how does it work? What are the commonalities in terms of the things that they think are important? And then tailoring the content to them. 

And interestingly, I think that’s what’s for brands moving forward, I think actually looking at what are the common threads that you are hearing throughout the kind of female experience is really important.

What you don’t want to do is go, right, I’m just going to stick a grey haired woman on the packaging. And then I’m sorted. You know, I’ve done it.

Jennifer: And actually I’m going to be a bit more base here. I’m going to talk about the money. 

Adam: Mm-hmm. 

Jennifer: Where does the money lie? The money lies with this older cohort at the moment. 

Laura: That’s right

Adam: Well, I read the other day that over seventies are now more likely to pay income tax than gen Z. So the wealth is kind of just moving further and further into the kind of the hands of older people and yeah, you’re absolutely right there’s just more and more money there. 

Jennifer: And that is why, yeah, that is a fundamental reason why brands should go there. 

Adam: Well, yeah. Just commercially. 

Jennifer: Just commercially, yeah. That’s where the opportunity lies. 

Adam: Yeah. 

Anniki: I was looking at some of the stats in terms of how much that market is worth, because I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s such an interesting market.

I think it’s like 17.6 billion is just the menopause market alone is what, worldwide, what it’ll be worth. And you know, these do tend to be women who have a bit of disposable income. And I still think there’s massive opportunities there because on the one hand, what you can see is that a lot of women are feeling quite overwhelmed and time poor.

And I think one of the most common mistakes that I see, certainly in the beauty industry, and I’ve worked a lot in that industry, you know, as a qual researcher, Is that there’s this massive amount of complexity sometimes around the beauty industry, what the benefits are, what ingredients you need to use. And there’s this huge opportunity for women. They’re actually in the market for these products, so they want to buy these products. So if you can, I know that the tween audience is absolutely huge now for beauty brands. But I think sometimes there’s a danger that you forget about this very sophisticated consumer who wants to buy your product, can afford to buy your product, but is also feeling completely overwhelmed by the amount of information that’s going on in terms of what kind of ingredients you need to look for, what kind of benefits you can expect.

Adam: But there’s, I mean, there’s a huge opportunity, isn’t it, to overcome some biases here. If online shopping continues to kind of grow at the rates that it does, you know, over sixties are going to be more likely buying things online than they are. I don’t get, that’s the sense of the view in marketing departments about what over sixties and over seventies are doing. So I think there’s…

Jennifer: But never mind that. The over eighties. I look at my dad, he’s 87. He buys loads of things online. That’s all because he’s now disabled because he is so arthritic. So he does all his shopping online. And he’s really good technically. Really good technically.

And he’s fully aware of where he can buy what from digitally. 

Laura: That’s right. 

Adam: Yeah.

Laura: And even if he is a sort of leading-edge example today, but we are talking about us in, you know, 10 or 20 years, there’s going to be that baked in level of digital literacy isn’t there? 

Adam: Yeah. 

Laura: Where people are just going to have an intuitive understanding of how to shop across different channels, the role of mobile versus PC, you know, it’s all going to be like so second nature. 

Adam: As the millennials and the say Gen Xs of the world become older and they become that older target consumer 

Jennifer: That is me Adam, by the way

Adam: Gen X or millennial?

Jennifer: Gen X

Laura: They’re the coolest generation gen.

Jennifer: Yeah. Nice of you to check in.

Adam: The original rebels. 

Laura: Exactly. 

Adam: Yeah. But as they become that older population that we’re talking about, a lot of the things that they hold more dear to them or the things that they believe in are going to become more important reflecting back to them in the way that we talk.

Authenticity, sustainability, these are kind of big topics today, I guess, among younger consumers, but they’re going to become more important later on. How do we kind of prepare for some of these things and kind of move some of the conversation on? 

Jennifer: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Authenticity is probably a word that will probably span across all generations, actually. If I think of my own generation and the younger generation, I think authenticity is absolutely fundamental and key to a brand’s success. People know when a brand is fibbing or lying to them. 

Adam: Here’s Anniki talking about that.

Anniki: Certainly if you look on social media, there still is that sort of influencer culture where people are filming beautifully manicured homes, you know, gorgeous curated kind of bookshelves. But I hear an awful lot from everyday women that I talk to that they don’t want to see that anymore, that it doesn’t make them feel good.

If someone on social media is showing me perfection, I am much more cynical now and engage with it far less. I think brands for a long time now, and I think the advertising certainly, has woken up to that fact, you know, user generated content. All of these things are about hopefully showing some of the little nuances of real life and real experience rather than trying to pretend that we do live in very lovely, perfect lives, because we don’t.

What everybody wants is to connect. We all want to connect whether we’re, you know, whatever occupation we are in, whatever friendships we have, with our families. And we don’t actually connect through seeing other people living perfect lives. We connect through vulnerability.

When I was doing qual research, and I still do it now, often what clients would really warm to was not, I mean, obviously data is mega important, but what they would often stick with them after the debrief was these little quotes, verbatims that you’d pulled out or pieces of video where they’d suddenly get this insight into a character or into a person who was engaging with their brand, and they’d be like, aha, I get it.

Because if you can get into the shoes of somebody who’s buying your brand, then that’s a real superpower, and obviously being able to understand what does their life look like? What are the things that they’re worrying about? How does your brand sit within all of that context, which is very messy usually, and very overwhelmed, then you’ve got a real insight into how can I make that brand really impactful for you, and how can I help it solve some of the problems you have? 

Jennifer: Laura, you and I were talking about this one, the Sweaty Betty, the “Wear the damn shorts” campaign. 

Laura: Yes. 

Jennifer: That’s just brilliant. It’s aspirational, it’s fun, and it’s also offering a healthy aspirational tone of voice. 

Laura: Yes, it’s about multiplicity of beauty as well, isn’t it? Multiple different facets of beauty, multiple different facets of health that you know, you don’t have to have like Giselle’s legs in order to wear a pair of shorts. You can actually get out there and enjoy it because you are healthy and different types of bodies are healthy.

And I think that representation of different people, all as aspirational, all as healthy, is something we’ll probably see moving forward. That there’s not going to be like that kind of monoculture of beauty or monoculture of one ideal. 

Jennifer: Absolutely. I think there’s also another campaign at the moment with Crew. 

Laura: Yes. J. Crew. I love J. Crew 

Jennifer: Well, I love Julianne Moore. 

Laura: Yes. Yes. 

Jennifer: And Diane Keaton, I think they’re fantastic advocates of the brand. 

Laura: Yes. And the whole thing is about modernity, like modern heritage. So it’s like playing with that idea of some, some things just endure and are timeless and it works so well for the brand too, doesn’t it?

Jennifer: Oh, timeless. Lovely word to end on the future of ageing

Laura: We’ll live forever because we’re timeless.

So that was quite the education. What did you think, Adam? 

Adam: Well, first of all, I really enjoyed having two people to bring to that talk. You know, in lots of ways they were, they were saying the same thing, but they actually brought some different perspectives too. And I think one of the things that both of them said, which I thought rings really true, is this is a huge market. 

You know, we’re talking millions of people, billions of pounds, and when was the last time we saw a brief that specifically asked to unlock that market or to talk to that market or to connect with that market or create products for that market? I can’t remember seeing one, and it just seems crazy really, that businesses aren’t thinking about it in a commercial way. 

Laura: Yeah, it definitely feels like the tide is going to be turning, but it’s long overdue, isn’t it? 

I think the thing I took out of it was how interesting it is when you take a kind of macro force or like a huge, wider, contextual issue, and think about it for older consumers, health was one way into that conversation with Jen.

But you could do that by thinking about how lifestyles have changed, how relationships have changed, how money has changed, and just use that as a lens through which to understand what’s going on for that target demographic and how you can be real with them across all aspects of their life and how you can get out of some of these stereotypes.

It was certainly a huge eyeopener for us in healthcare. But I think that there’s so many opportunities to un-stereotype, especially with older consumers, but with all audiences really, and that was such an interesting way to do it. So I really enjoyed that part of the conversation.

Adam: Yeah. It adds such a richness and a depth, doesn’t it? When you’re thinking about people’s day-to day lives through a specific context like that. 

Laura: Absolutely. Great. See you soon. 

Adam: See you soon.