Marketers Need to Come to Terms with the First Task of Aging

From today’s Wall Street Journal article, “Wrinkle Treatments Don't Age Well,” by Rhonda Rundle on page D-6:

“Botox injections help lift the upper face, and dermal fillers such as Restylane plump up sunken areas around the cheeks and chin. Cosmetic doctors say demand for these antiaging injectables is booming, especially among people in their 30s and 40s who aren't ready for a surgical facelift. But the benefits of such injections typically fade within four to six months.”

Carl Jung cited “Coming to terms with aging and dying” as the first of seven tasks of successful aging. 

Few people in their 30s and 40s have yet taken on that task. So to most of them, aging is the enemy. It is the grim reaper of the narcissistic self in the fullness of youth. This is why the boom in anti-aging remedies from shots and tucks to herbal nostrums and skin creams revolves around the still young.

People in their 50s and older typically want to look good but their tight embrace of authenticity keeps most of them from being unauthentic about their age. They are who they are, thinned pates, lined faces, expanded girths and all. Once again, this is why Dove’s reality marketing has scored bigtime.

One of the greatest insults to older people is to tell them that your product will help them feel young. What does young feel like? Al Oerter told me the year he turned 63 when I asked him if he’d like to be 35 again, “Hell no. Not for anything. Life was much harder then."

I just read Tom Peters’ Sep. 23 post on his blog, entitled “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Tom recited a litany of speaking assignments coming up throughout the fall: (they) include these ports of call: Dubai/UAE, Campinas/Brazil, Belo Horizonte/Brazil, Nashville TN, Moscow, Orlando, London, Berlin, Bologna/Italy, Seattle, Sydney/Australia, Taipei/Taiwan,* Birmingham/England, Durango CO, Chicago, Lagos/Nigeria, Port Harcourt/Nigeria, San Antonio, Bucharest/Romania.

Should anyone doubt that the peripatetic Tom Peters at 62 is any less energetic that the snorting young bull he was at 32? Is Tom staying young? No. He’s just not getting older. He’s the epitome of John Barrymore’s immortal wisdom, “A man is never old until regrets take the place of dreams.

Ego sum erat. “I am where you will be,” I sometimes tell young people in marketing. But unless someone has made an effort to show them life as seen through a lens polished by six, seven or more decades of life, those young marketeers don’t really know where I am. Or who I am. Or what I think and don’t think. They need the guidance of more seasoned minds to figure that out. But how many marketing agencies commit time and resources to training the young among their staffs on how to market to the over-40 crowd?

Marketing client companies have no idea of how much money is wasted by marketing agencies that don’t have staff that is firmly grounded in what it takes to be successful in older markets. Believe me, the wasted sums run into the billions when agencies use trial and error as a substitute for grounded knowledge. And BTW, the knowledge I’m talking about runs deeper than the shallow pits of conscious mind disclosures made by consumers in conventional consumer research.

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 I won’t have any new posts until next week as I’m headed off to give a talk on marketing to older markets at Viva 50+, an international conference on aging being held in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Comments

[Mary Schmidt]

David, Thought of you when I saw this quote in my google quote of the day.

"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing."
- Michael Pritchard

Maybe we should form a laughter club, such as Dan Pink talks about in his latest book.

[David Wolfe]

Mary,

Ah, so true, Mary. One of the things I like best about old people (who have made it through life realtively intact -- we must not forget the bitter old do exist, poor souls) is their sense of humor. It is at once a kindlier and more grounded humor than favored by the young. It is often steeped in irony,yet with a good natured rather than biting edge.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

DBW

[Cara Fletcher]

You're right that companies insult their older clients by telling them that their porduct will help them staying young but this is the reality after all.If you want your face to looks younger you should use such products.