The future of marketing is intergenerational

In order for companies and brands to remain competitive they must stop considering older consumers as an afterthought.

Photo: Mike Harrington/Getty Images; Unsplash

Policymakers, employers, and marketers traditionally have concentrated their attention on people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s. After all, these have been the largest age groups, the biggest spenders, the trend-setters, and – so we thought – the embodiment of the future of consumption.

Nowadays, however, older people are playing an increasingly important role in consumer markets.

In the US in 2021, for example, there were slightly more people above the age of 60 than between ages 20 and 34, and the after-tax income of Americans above the age of 60 was only about 20 per cent lower than the income of Americans below that age.

A linear projection of these trends indicates that in no more than five or six years, Americans above the age of 60 will become a larger consumer group in terms of income than the 20-to-34-year-olds.

This means that in order for companies and brands to remain competitive they must stop considering older consumers as an afterthought. However, marketing teams should resist the temptation to merely shift the focus from one generation to another. Companies must also recognise that blanket generational characterisations have long lost their appeal. The obsession with generations is a peculiarly American habit that made sense when comparing the Greatest Generation, who grew up during the Depression and fought in World War II, with the Baby Boomers, who were born into affluence. Such a gargantuan contrast is absent when comparing Millennials and Gen Z, for example.

Most importantly, generations exist only in our imagination. The extensive research undertaken by marketers and social scientists,
as reviewed by researchers at Wayne State, DePaul, George Washington, and Leipzig universities, shows that the boundaries between generations are fuzzy, if not arbitrary.

Additional research shows that it’s always been hard to ignore the bewildering degree of variability across individuals within the same generation – for example, think about the differences between a Millennial who lives in Brooklyn and one who lives in Des Moines.

Finally, generational thinking is absurd at a time when the revolution in real-time data from smartphones and digital platforms offers more accurate ways of predicting and shaping individual consumer behaviour.

Yet companies today continue to position their brands as if the bulk of the market is people under the age of 40.

Consider cars: according to a study by the US Federal Reserve, the average age of new car buyers in America climbed from under 45 in 2000 to more than 53 in 2014. Nearly half of all new car purchases are made by people above the age of 50 – but when was the last time you saw someone of that age in a TV car advertisement?

One reason for the inability of many brands to adjust to this new situation has to do with who is creating their branding and marketing. About 64 per cent of people working in American advertising, marketing, and public relations are younger than 45, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A first step for marketers is to create an “ageless” brand, one that emphasises common values across different age groups. But the ultimate destination must be to build a “post-generational” brand.

To start, brands should shift the narrative. Think of consumers as individuals, not members of an (imaginary) generation. Increasingly, people prefer to be treated as individuals.

Avoid thinking that age equals lifestyle. Today’s consumers want to pursue their preferred lifestyle irrespective of age. In turn, an active lifestyle tends to prolong life. A 60- or 70-year-old nowadays is in much better physical and mental shape than someone of the same age in, say, 1980. This means that people considered to be relatively “old” often have lifestyles we would describe as “youthful”.

Once upon a time, companies had to conduct expensive consumer surveys and wait weeks for the results. Nowadays, real-time data on individual purchases is available immediately and with an astonishing level of detail.

Increasingly, younger consumers are being influenced by their parents or grandparents, and by the so-called “granfluencers”.

Brands need to assume that inter-generational influencing is growing faster than intra-generational influencing.

Brands can win from bridging rather than segmenting generations by crafting an uplifting message that brings people together.

Plan so that products or services remain relevant as people age. People’s needs do change as they grow older. But products can be designed in such a way that they serve the needs of a wide spectrum of age groups.

Winning brands will be those that are much more than just age agnostic or age neutral. We’re already seeing a shift in this direction.

Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, with their “Grow Up Campaign”, Nike with its “Unlimited Youth” marketing blitz focused on Madonna Buder, the 93-year-old triathlete known as the “Iron Nun”, and Progressive Insurance’s “parentmorphosis” concept are overcoming generational stereotypes and exploiting post-generational understanding and influencing.

These approaches combine humour with an uplifting message and a surprising punchline.

It’s time for marketers to shed old ways of thinking and realign their priorities. A first step is to become an “ageless” brand, one that emphasises common values across different age groups. But the destination must be to build “post-generational” brands – that is, to create a narrative that allows for generations influencing each other’s preferences and purchases through interaction. As I point out in my book, The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society, people nowadays would like to play, learn, work, and rest at any age they feel like doing so – not necessarily whenever tradition says it is “age appropriate”.

Mauro F. Guillen is a vice dean at the Wharton School and the author of the new book, The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society. Copyright 2024 Harvard Business Review/Distributed by NYTimes Syndicate.