People do not willingly buy products that make them look bad or that are in conflict with their self-image. To make sure that they look good to others, people in first-half markets depend on cues issued by their peers. However, as people move into midlife and beyond, looking good to others, at least in the sense of making big favorable impressions, begins to be less important. By age 60, people generally—there are exceptions, as always—become relatively impervious to peer influence on their buying behavior, especially those who are well along the path of self-actualization.
A different kind of social influence comes into play when people get their first AARP membership solicitation. Commonly, people who have celebrated their 50th birthday shy away from products that are associated with older age, which is why many people throw away AARP’s first invitation to join 35 million other people aged 50 and older. The brand manager of a well-known nutritional supplement with a name indicating that it is for people over 50 told me that if his company had to do it all over again it would choose a different name. He said research indicated that many people in their 50s do not buy the product because they perceive it as a symbol of being over the hill.
Aversion to associating with age-based products poses a daily challenge to extended services retirement communities. A 78-year-old, concerned with being associated with old people, might walk into a retirement community sales center and announce, "I am not here for myself, you understand. I am looking for my sister (sometimes it’s his mother!). I’m not ready to retire yet," notwithstanding that he might have said his final goodbyes to his office 15 or 18 years earlier.
A famous case of a product being spurned by older customers because of an age stigma originated in the kitchens of Gerber a few years ago. After learning that a number of older denture wearers bought baby food for their own use, Gerber created a line of pureed foods for them and rolled it out under the inelegant name Singles. The product never got off the ground. Its failure was foreordained by behavioral subtleties among older people that traditional research might not reveal. It’s hard to image a denture wearer in a focus group saying, "When I buy Gerber baby food for my sore gums, no one thinks I’m buying it for myself. They think I’m buying it for my grandchild. Heavens! If I bought Gerber Singles, everyone would know that I’m toothless!" My dentures-wearing mother would never have confessed that to a researcher.
Affinity shampoo also had an inauspicious launch for similar reasons. It was first marketed for "over 40" hair. The sought-after market rejected it. However, Johnson & Johnson saved the brand by repositioning it in ads showing the quieter, mature, special kind of beauty that women in midlife can project, doing so with no reference to age.
Campbell’s Soup tried tying a product to age with its Senior Singles— Soup for One. That one was dead on arrival.
Our society’s long preoccupation with the idea that beauty, vitality, excitement, and sex are reserved for the young promotes the idea that after 50, if not in the 40s, age becomes a steadily progressing liability. Consider how many laws reinforce that idea by coupling the words elderly and handicapped, as in "for elderly and handicapped persons." How often does one see public conveyances that post "For elderly and handicapped persons" on certain seats? As long as age and handicap remain somewhat synonymous, many older people will have an aversion to products and services associated with "old" people. Rule number one in ageless marketing:
Market to values, not to age.
The fastest way to kill a brand’s chances in older markets is to tie it to age. But, you may ask, aren’t some products by their nature age-specific, such as Medicare policies? I was involved in designing a series of television ads that were essentially ageless for PacifiCare’s Secure Horizons Medicare brand. The credit for solving the problem of adapting ageless marketing to an inherently age-specific product goes to Brenda For-rest of Portland, Oregon, a former art director with McCann-Erickson who struck out on her own. Her solution was to first present PacifiCare in a voice-over as "for people from 0 to 64" in the first half of the 60-second spots. Then the spots introduced its Medicare brand, Secure Horizon, with the voice-over stating it was "for people 65 and older." This projected the idea of continuity, as in "Whatever your needs, PacifiCare will meet them for a lifetime." Forrest never used those words because the stories she told in the commercials said it all.
The spots started out with a typical family scene, in a park in one case, at an art festival in another. The characters were established in the first 30 seconds in a scene from early family life, but with older people included. In the second half of both commercials, the older people who had been introduced in supporting roles in the first 30 seconds now moved to front and center as the main characters.
The first commercial opened in a park showing a dad with his three children. Off to the side, the grandma was doing a crossword puzzle. The two older kids were doing somersaults, but the youngest, about three, was not able to get one going. Dad picked her up by the heels and tried to move her through the motions of a somersault. When the second segment began, the grandma put down her puzzle, went over to the little girl and did a slowly developing somersault so the little girl could see how it was done. The little girl followed suit, executing an awkward but complete somersault. That commercial engaged a metaphor to reflect a powerful force in people’s lifestyles and product choices: independence. While the dad tried to control his daughter through a somersault (making her dependent on him), the grandma showed her granddaughter how she could do it on her own (independence).
In the second commercial, a family, together with its grandma and grandpa, are shown at an art fair. As children line up to get their faces painted, one of the older kids bumps a little girl of about three out of line. That symbolism of being outside the mainstream carries over to the second segment when the little girl is shown on the sidelines while other kids are whooping it up in a folk dance. Grandpa sees her all alone, looking pensive, goes over to her and brings her into the middle of the dance floor where they dance together. Showing the little girl getting bumped in the first half of the commercial was a conceit intended to create an empathetic connection between the little girl and older people watching the commercial. Remember from Second-Half Customers Seen Through a New Consciousness my 57-year-old friend being bumped aside at a cosmetics counter when the clerk chose to serve a twentysomething woman out of line? The empathetic connection set up in the first segment was reinforced in the second segment as the little girl stood a bit lost and alone on the sidelines, a feeling not uncommon among older people.
The metaphorical presentation of two small children echoed two common concerns among older people: maintaining independence and having a meaningful place in life. Through children, PacifiCare attempted to build appeal for the Secure Horizon brand by demonstrating the empathetic understanding of older people. Both commercials were good theater, and both worked amazingly well.
A benchmark survey was conducted prior to their launches to measure awareness. Six weeks later a second survey, according to Forrest, reflected the strongest lift for an established brand that she had experienced in 25 years in major league marketing. A local columnist asked her readers, "Have you seen those PacifiCare commercials that just bring tears to your eyes?" The take-away from this tale of ageless marketing: Don’t present brands based on age, even brands that are only used by older people. Values sell better. The PacifiCare commercials I’ve just described projected nurturing values in a family context, not a healthcare company’s context.