Transcript ageless marketing

Ageless
Marketing
Extending the reach of brands
across generational divides
Selected slides from workshop
presentations by David Wolfe
For best results please view in presentation mode
We live in an era being shaped by epochal forces that are
changing virtually everything
The future is disorder.
A door like this has
cracked open five or six
times since we got up on
our hind legs.
It’s the best possible time
to be alive, when almost
everything you thought
you knew is wrong.
The mathematician Valentine in
Tom Stoppard’s play, Arcadia
The aging of society is radically changing the “mind of the
market” and the calculus of supply and demand.
For the first time in history most adults are 40 and older
Age groups: 18-39
In 2004:
In 2010:
40-plus
40-plus
85.5 mil.130
128mil.
mil.
86.9 mil.138
138mil.
mil.
In 2010, the 40+ age group
will be 63% larger than the
18-39 age group
The New
Customer
Majority
Our worldviews, life focus and life story themes change in each season of
life as we strive to reach ever higher and more complex states of being
Season
Age
Range
Spring: Initial personal
development
0 - 22 +
Life Focus
(Source of worldviews and life story themes)
Play (learning)
Fantasy mode: Dei ex machina -- everything will
generally work out in my favor
Summer: Social/ vocational 18+ -40+
development
Work (becoming somebody)
Romantic mode: Heroic –the world is my oyster;
I can make anything work my way
Fall: Inner self/ spiritual
development
38+ -60+ Work-play (search for meaning)
Winter: Climax of personal
development
58+
Reality mode: Disappointment – not as good as I
thought; who am I? What’s my life purpose?
?
Reconciliation (making sense of life)
Ironic mode: Acceptance – there’s some good in
every bad, some bad in every good – c’est la vie!
Behavior in the first half of life is oriented to needs of the social self
Behavior in the second half of life is oriented to needs of the inner self
Each season of life takes us to higher and more complex
states of being, making older consumers more inscrutable
Late Life:
Biologists’ definition of growth:
The movement of an organism
from a lower and simpler state to a
higher and more complex state.
Lowest and simplest state
Highest state
of human
beingness
Jackie Evert, 69
• Middle adulthood
• Early adulthood
• Adolescence
• Childhood
Infancy
Jackie Meadows, 7 mos.
Much of what you hear about aging boomers is wrong! A 58-year-old
boomer is more than a 30-year older version of her 28-year old self
She’s in a different season of
life with a different worldview, and
has different needs,
different motivations,
and different values.
Her priorities have changed:
things that once mattered much,
now often matter less;
things that once mattered little
now often matter much.
She has been changed by the midlife personal paradigm shift that alters
people’s worldviews, values and needs.
A paradigm shift is a change in the way of thinking about
something, not in the way of doing something
Paradigm:
– accepted framework of rules, assumptions and points of
view that define established ways of doing things.
Paradigm shift:
– a process in which one tradition of rules, assumptions
and points of view are replaced by another.
A paradigm shift is not a new way of doing the same thing
you’ve always done.
The
The 21
20stthCentury
Centurymarketing
marketingparadigm
paradigmmirrors
mirrored
a acustomer
product
centric
centric consciousness
consciousness and turns marketers into healers
Marketing was about
huckstering
huck·ster (hŭk'stər) n.
1. A peddler or hawker.
2. One who uses aggressive,
showy, and sometimes devious
methods to promote or sell a
product.
3. Informal. One who writes
healing:
advertising copy, especially for
1.To
restore
to health or soundness; cure.
radio
or television.
2.To set right; repair: healed the rift
between us.
3.To restore to spiritual wholeness.
4.To become whole and sound
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition Copyright © 2003
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English
Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2003
The healing imperative has a pragmatic foundation
“… the possibility for real differentiation comes
not in the product itself but in how you
collaborate with the consumer’s need to
heal…”
“This is the new imperative: The marketer must
now be a healer.”
The customer
Product
features
experience
have losthas
much
become
of their
thecompetitive
main arena of
significance differences
competitive
Huckstering is about processing
company agendas largely through
claims of product differences.
Healing is about helping customers
process their lives through company
devotion to quality customer experiences.
Product differences in a value
category are often insignificant.
Potential differences in customer
experiences are infinite.
In any event there is a finite limit to
product differences.
Jantzen – a brand helping customers become “whole and
sound” – to heal and successfully process their lives
"We're trying to turn Jantzen from being a
women's-swimwear-only company into a lifestyle brand.
“We're defining it as a quirky brand, about
escape, and doing it in a nonfashion way with a
more conceptual campaign than is usually done
in the fashion business.
"Jantzen is the brand to escape your daily life,
and saying that in a witty way."
– Neil Kraft, designer of Jantzen’s brand transformation.
SOURCE: Stuart Elliott/In Advertising: Making an
Emotional Connection. March 2, 2004 NYT Online
From Chico’s website:
Our focus on comfort is the reason for
our unique sizing.
There are many characteristics
incorporated into each and every
product we make, but top on our list is
comfort.
Chico's clothing is made to wear how
you like it to fit. If you like a little room,
go for a bigger size.
One of the most skillful healing marketers
1990 – 12th largest sneaker maker
1996 – 8th largest sneaker maker
2003 – 3rd largest sneaker maker
One more woman renewing her license to dream
One more woman discovering that strength is beauty
One more woman believing in herself
One less woman walking in someone else’s footsteps
New Balance
became the
most popular
athletic shoe for
aging boomers
by connecting
with typical
midlife values.
In a category with no growth between 1997 and 2002,
New Balance’s sales growth averaged 25% annually.
“This is the new
imperative. The
marketer must now
be a healer.”
Melinda Davis
Because those
values resonate
across
generations
even cool teens
have become a
big market for
New Balance
Differences between New Balance and Nike in values
Nike Values
Winning
Roar of the crowd
Extreme effort
The smell of sweat
Physical development
Nike appeals to the youthful,
narcissistic, materialistic self
New Balance Values
Self-improvement
Inner harmony
Balanced effort
The smell of nature
Spiritual development
New Balance appeals to the mature,
others-centered, experiential self
Key marketing strategy under the new marketing paradigm:
ageless marketing:

marketing that attracts interest across
generational divides;

marketing that does not associate a product
with a specific age group;

marketing based on values rather than on age.
Ageless marketing is customer centric marketing that
focuses on helping customers process their lives.
There’s a New “S” Word in Marketing
“Human behavior is now being ruled by a new pleasure
imperative – a new primal desire – that is at least as
powerful as the one that brought each of us into the world.”
Self-actualization is an advanced state of
psychological maturity in which behavior is more…
 Realistic, more practical – notice to ad makers: novelty has less appeal
 Dependent on context – notice to researchers: behavior is harder to predict
 Detached, more individuated – less subject to peer and other social
influences, yet more caring of relationships
 Resistant to persuasion – less influenced by advertising bombasts that makes
claims about product features and benefits being superior
 Emotional, intuitive – “gut feelings” often trumps reasoning
Focused on peak experiences – desires are less narcissistic and
materialistic, more experiential; pleasure sought in little things
 Introspective – more self-informed
 Authentic – less disposed to trying to impress others; fewer “airs”

Authenticity becomes more
important in the second half of life
– as film actress Jamie Lee Curtis
“THE MORE I
LIKE
ME, THE
has
testified to
LESS I WANT
From True Lies
to
“True Thighs”
TO PRETEND
TO BE OTHER
PEOPLE”
“I don’t
have
Sept.
2002great
issue
thighs. I have very big
breasts & a soft, fatty
little tummy. Glam
Jamie, the perfect
Jamie… it’s such a
fraud.”
Jamie Lee Curtis is on the same road
to self-actualization followed by
people in midlife in every generation.
It’s in her genes!
Seeing more of the Real You in advertising is coming
Dove decided to use “real women” after
research showed 98% of British women
think models used in beauty advertising
are unrealistic.
A final reflection from a sage abbot …
Storytellers help us
process our lives.
Abbott Joseph at a storytelling retreat in Charleston, SC Nov. 1998.
And so it should be in marketing…
marketers helping people process
their lives... And acting more as
healers than as hucksters.
Thanks for your generous attention!
David
Please visit my blog at:
http://agelessmarketing.typepad.com