What Marketers Need to Know About Aging Boomers , Part 8

Determining the Meaning of One's Life

Purpose is the animating force of life. Animals in the wild that no longer have purpose often are forsaken by their own or taken out by predators.

One of the most remarkable illustrations of the irreplaceable role of purpose in our lives is the cellular process of apoptosis – what biologists often refer to cell suicide. When a cell in your body ceases to have a purpose it literally ends its own life.

Jung’s sixth task of aging, “determining the meaning of one’s life,” is about gaining conscious awareness of one’s purpose for being. It is a profound dimension of human behavior mostly ignored by marketers.

Search for life meaning first begins in adolescence when people begin to continuously monitor their social environments for clues to behavior that best insures acceptance by others, especially peers. Life meaning among the young is framed by styles of appearance, language, material acquisitions, and social affiliations in the quest for a solid footing in the external world.

This worldly search for life meaning makes young consumers easy targets for marketers because the criteria of life meaning are determined by social consensus, which isn’t too hard to figure out.

However, the search for life meaning undergoes a major shift in the second half of life. Whatever people’s material success, many find less and less meaning from “things.” So, they begin to look inward rather than to the outer world in their search for life meaning. This substantially changes their consumer behavior.

Metavalues generally play a significantly larger role in buying decisions in the second half of life. Metavalues frequently transcend economic and even functional values. Metavalues have little or no intrinsic functional relationship with a product. The taste and nutritional value of eggs bought for $1.19 at Safeway may be the same as eggs priced at $3.29 at Whole Foods, but to many customers it is worth paying $2.10 more to support farmers who let their hens roam free. There is no moral value served in buying Safeway’s cheaper, industrially produced eggs. For many, buying free-range eggs at Whole Foods does serve a moral value.

O.K, so hens laying Safeway’s eggs have been fed growth hormones, while eggs sold at Whole Foods come from hens not fed growth hormones. But that is less of a concern for many than the fact that hens serving Safeway are locked up 24/7 in a windowless barn, in cages with a floor area about the size of a piece of copy paper.

As people shift their search for meaning from the materialistic outer world to the more experientially grounded realms of the inner self, they become less subject to marketers’ entreaties to buy a product because of its alleged superiority over competing products. The evolving midlife personality depends increasingly on his or her own counsel in making buying decisions.

I’m astonished by the dearth of attention to Jung’s sixth task of aging in marketing aimed at people in the second half of life. While older faces may appear in ads, values projected more often than not are those of younger people who are still on a worldly quest for a sense of meaning in their lives.

If you have any doubt about the overarching importance of purpose in people' aspirations and behavior in the second half of life, simply reflect on the fact that Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life, with more than 30 million sales is the most successful hardback in American publishing history. As said often before in this space, the aging of the marketplace is dramatically changing the zeitgeist, and an important element in the zeitgeist is the search for life meaning in the second half of life.

Next: Rebirth – Dying with Life

Comments

[joared]

This is a good series you have here. Generally, I find what you say to be quite enlightening.

I do have to highly question the use of the Harvard Implicit Test (IAT) as a very viable tool to measure what they purport they are measuring. The very first comment at "Time Goes By" pretty sums up many of the weaknesses in that test. I think it would be a mistake for anyone to conclude a bias toward any young or old grouping on the basis of this test.

[Marketing Recruiter]

David,

Your blog is one of the best out there. Like, top 5 or something.

You say that "the criteria of life meaning are determined by social consensus, which isn't too hard to figure out." Then you are "astonished by the dearth of attention to Jung's sixth task of aging in marketing aimed at people in the second half of life."

Two things may drive this:

1.) Marketing organizations are driven by selling things, not ideas. "Belonging" and "Purpose" and "Meaning" are ideas. So, there is an existing human capital infrastructure in place that doesn't know how to do what you suggest they do.

The fact that our legal infrastructure prevents religious discrimination doesn't help. In a marketing manager's utopia, a Jewish marketing team would sell to Jewish customers, a Christian team to Christian customers, etc. This increased "value confluence" would enable a tighter "message to market match" between buyers and sellers.

2.) The second reason is that consumers "begin to look inward ... in their search for life meaning." As Rick Warren so profitably discovered, the search inward often involves an encounter with Christ.

And therein lies the rub for marketers: Essential to the Christian message is forsaking worldly possessions. Therefore, there is very little money to be made from driving consumers "inward."

Make sense?
Harry

[David Wolfe]

Harry,

You make a lot of sense. Probably like you, I find a paucity of sensible observations today. We're so consumed with and insecure about who we are, that we want no one to detract from our specialness by expressing their specialness. At age 74, I miss the days when stand-up comedians (often Jewish) made fun of Jews, and ethnic jokes were relished by nearly everyone, from the Irish to the Italians to the Poles and so on.
We've become so politically correct that we've made our lives barren. A friend says she no longer has dinner problems for fear of offending people by what she serves and the boring conversations that take place because everything but sex seems to be off limits as a topic of conversation.

Thanks for your thought provoking comments.

DBW

[Harry Joiner]

David,

I beg your pardon for missing your follow up to my comment.

I much appreciate your thoughts and am really surprised that you are 74. Not because I'd expect less from someone who is 74 -- but because most people your age aren't as web-savvy. Most certainly push the envelop in terms of thought leadership.

You are one of my new role models. I hope I am as vital (and relevant) as you in 30 years.

Hard to imagine that I will be.

God bless,
hair

[David Wolfe]

Harry,

I genuinely appreciate your kind words.

If you separate elders who are intellectually curious from those who simply let life happens to them as the days roll by, you'll find a surprising number of the former are regular users of computers.

With each passing year the fear-of-technology factor declines.

Staying relevant is easy: just keep asking questions and looking for answers.

David