Paying Older Audience Attention

Brought to my attention, being in the older, more experienced audience myself, struck me as rarely paid attention to.   Good first look at this kind of resource problem.

Your Messaging to Older Audiences Is Outdated   by Hal Hershfield and Laura Carstensen

July 02, 2021

Summary.   Given a rapidly aging population, effective messaging to older people holds national importance for public health as well as marketing of goods and services. Older people make up an incredibly diverse demographic that varies in terms of physical and cognitive ability,...more

One of the most pressing concerns in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic was how to best communicate information to those who were at greatest risk — particularly, the elderly. Unfortunately, many attempts were riddled with stereotyped depictions of older people as frail, lonely, and incompetent. In doing so, messages from advertisers, public health officials, and policymakers may have failed to resonate with large swaths of their targeted audience. Given a rapidly aging population, effective messaging to older people holds national importance for public health as well as marketing of goods and services.

Arguably, the greatest challenge is market segmentation. Older people make up an incredibly diverse demographic that varies in terms of physical and cognitive ability, economic power, and social connection. Aging is also changing over historical time. Several studies have shown that the incidence of dementia appears to be decreasing over time; some research suggests this is due to higher educational attainment and improvements in cardiovascular health. Today’s older generations are less lonely and happier than their younger counterparts. As a result, market segmentation based on chronological age is becoming increasingly difficult, if not futile.

A more telling predictor of behavior and a better approach to age segmentation may be time left in life rather than time since birth. Healthy versus sick offers more meaningful insight than whether someone is in their 70s or their 80s.  ...