Immersion Active presents Ageless Marketing

The Foundations of a New Marketing Paradigm (Part 8)

The Seasons of Life:The Rosetta Stone of Consumer Behavior

I remember a story from the days when TV shows came only in black and white – I think it was a Rod Serling Twilight Zone story – about a man who sold his soul to get a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper today. Predictably, the outcome was not a happy one for him.

How much would companies be willing to pay for a description of the mind of the market, say a dozen and a half years or so into the future?

In Serving the Ageless Market, which I finished writing nearly 19 years ago in 1989, I predicted a number of changes in the mind of the market that have come to pass. A sampling:

Elevated interest in products as “gateways to experiences” (which has produced what Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore dubbed “The Experience Economy” in their book by that name.

Lower tolerance for hyperbole with stronger demand for “reality” marketing (as witnessed by the recent Dove campaign based on “Real Beauty).

Increased interest in spirituality (as witnessed by the emergence and growth of megachurches and the wide scale infusion of spiritual themes in popular music.

A cultural shift toward the “right” brain (as witnessed in a number of books including Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind).

More interest in buying “cheap” for lifestyle maintenance simultaneously with more interest in buying “pricy” for lifestyle enrichment (as witnessed by media stories about the rich and famous buying at both Target and Neiman-Marcus).

A boom in activist philanthropy in which benefactors wouldn’t simply write checks and set up foundations to give money to worthy causes, but would roll up their sleeves and get directly involves in causes (as Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Milken and many other philanthropists are now doing).

A resurgence of 1960s and ‘70s values with broad, positive consequences for society.

A severe recession in housing markets that would last about 10 years (We are now at the beginning of that recession the ultimate major cause of which is not the subprime lending fiasco, but shrinkage in housing demand caused by falling population count in the 35 to 45 age cohort along with the tendency of older people to stay in their traditional home).

A shift of in perceptions of the purposes of capitalistic enterprises whereby companies would strive to operate for the benefit of society as well as for the benefit of shareholders.

To varying degrees all of those predictions, along with a number of others I made in Serving the Ageless Market, have come true. How was I able to see as far out as 20 years into the future?

The answer begins with a notable occurrence in 1989 that went unnoted by media, business school academics and virtually every company in the land: for the first time in U.S. history, the majority of adults were age 40 and older. This meant that the youth and young adults no longer made up the “cultural majority.” The values of people in the second half of life would increasingly influence the zeitgeist – the spirit of culture – as their numbers became more dominant. They now outnumber adults under 40 by an astonishing 137 million to 86 million.

If you have followed this series, you know why the shift of the cultural center of the adult population into the Fall of life made it virtually inevitable that my predictions would be realized. Truly, the seasons of life are  a Rosetta Stone that can give us significant clues about the mind of the market, years into the future. By studying demographic projections years into the future, I could clearly see the nature of the worldviews, values, aspirations and general behavior of the New Customer Majority years into the future. I knew this would dramatically reshape the zeitgeist, and in the process dramatically change the calculus of supply and demand. That has come to pass.

 

As I wrote the final chapter of Serving the Ageless Market in which I made a number of predictions, I was sure that the book would be a big-time best seller because I had drawn a picture of the future a number of years hence. I was to be disappointed, though the book did better than the average business book, it never came close to making the best seller lists.

In retrospect, Serving the Ageless never had a prayer of a chance to become a major best seller. Why that is will be the subject of my next post in this series.

The Foundations of a New Marketing Paradigm (Part 7)

How an understanding of the seasons of life can make you a more effective marketer

In 1956 the head of consumer research for the Radio Corporation of  America, Wendell Smith, wrote an article for The Journal of Marketing that triggered one of the biggest procedural changes in the history of marketing.

Smith argued for more tightly focused marketing in “Product Differentiation and Market Segmentation as Alternative Marketing Strategies.” He said that greater marketing effectiveness could be achieved by grouping consumers into categories or segments according to shared characteristics. In essence, Smith said instead of using a shotgun to fire indiscriminately into the marketplace, conserve resources by firing only in the direction of the most likely purchasers of a product.

Marketers quickly embraced Smith’s somewhat commonsense logic. Ever since Smith’s pivotal article, marketers have so focused on differences among consumers that they have neglected crucially important commonalities in the total consumer universe – what is often called human universals..

A key tenet in the marketing model I’ve spent years developing – developmental relationship marketing (DRM) – holds that marketing strategies should rest on a foundation of “human universals,” regardless of the product or primary consumer segment to be targeted.

Human universals are traits shared across the human species either androgynously, by gender or by level of personality development (season of life). Think of that concept in terms of Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Basic Human Needs.

At the bottom of the Pyramid, no substantive differences exist in basic physiological needs between a homeless person and Bill Gates. The same is true at the next level: basic safety and security needs. Another notch up, we all have pretty much the same basic love and belonging needs. And who would argue that any fully functioning person could thrive without self-esteem and the esteem of others?

The Pyramid is of course capped by basic self-actualizing needs. At that level, a person enjoys substantial gratification of needs throughout the four lower levels of the Pyramid. He no longer has any concern about food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Similarly, he is no longer burdened by unmet physical and psychological safety and security needs. His need for love and belonging finds satisfaction in personal, social and vocational spheres of his life and he enjoys a large measure of respect and esteem of others and is fully comfortable with who he is and his accomplishments.

Clearly, there are huge differences between the homeless soul and Bill Gates in the magnitude of satisfaction of basic physiological needs. The same holds true at each level of the Pyramid. Maslow in fact said that significant gratification is required at one level before a person can graduate to a higher level. His view that progressive development depends on earlier levels of development is compatible with those of Erik Erikson. He divided personality development into eight “psychosocial” stages, the fullness of development on one dependent on fulfillment at earlier stages. According to Erikson, a person cannot develop a full capacity for love (fifth stage/ young adulthood) until he has acquired the capacity for fidelity (fourth stage/adolescence).

Developmental relationship marketing is based on the premise that stages of personality development predispose the general nature of people’s worldviews, needs and aspirations. The “developmental” part of the DRM label refers to DRM’s structuring around the four seasons of life discussed earlier in this series of posts. I contend that once a marketer understands the expression of human universals in each season of life, he or she will have a deeper grasp of consumers’ needs and motivations than can be derived from any survey or focus group research.

Next: The Seasons of Life:The Rosetta Stone of Consumer Behavior

The Foundations of a New Marketing Paradigm (Part 6)

How the stories we live by change by season of life

We live our lives as personal narratives. As we move through the seasons of life our storylines, characters and the mythic themes of those narratives change. The developmental objectives of each season form the plotlines of our narratives. The life focus of the season we are in keeps us on track in following our plotlines. The mythic themes of personal narratives determine the general character of our worldviews – how we connect to the world. (Click on the accompanying graphic to see in larger type more details on the seasons of life.)

The mythic theme of Spring is fantasy. Fantasy gives flight to the imagination and obscures the boundaries between reality and nonreality. This is why children see nothing incongruous about animals talking like people in storybooks and film.

Teens also invest heavily in fantasy. Their views of the world and their future cast through the lens of fantasy inform them of an infinite array of possibilities. Yet, as with young children, teens are generally inclined to reflect a passive outlook that assumes life will generally break in their favor as a natural consequence of their desires.

Summer’s mythic theme is romance, not just in the context of Eros, but also in the heroic sense. Summer’s theme fosters feelings of power: “There is nothing I cannot do if I put my mind to it. The world is my oyster and I will harvest many pearls.”

Summer’s worldview is more intentional and activist-minded than one’s worldview characteristically is in Spring. A young adult headed towards success knows that meeting Summer’s developmental objective of social and vocational success isn’t just going to happen simply as a consequence of desire. They know that it takes focused attention and hard work.

Summer is a time when the influences of materialism are strongest. In Summer, we generally demonstrate our social and vocational successes through what we buy and the friends we keep. This has long made consumers in summer the darlings of marketers.

Fall’s mythic theme is reality. Less attention is paid larger-than-life dreams that fuel ambitions in Summer. We tend to become more realistic about our capabilities and limitations in Fall. Most of us begin seeking a simpler and less stressful lifestyle than we experienced in summer. Our materialistic appetites begin ebbing as we start examining our lives less in terms of material accomplishment and more in terms of life’s ultimate meanings.

Those who are in the Fall of their lives (nearly all of whom are boomers) now exert the greatest influence of any 20-year age cohort on the zeitgeist – the “spirit of the times.” They are the largest 20-year age cohort and have the most money to spend. Almost reluctantly it seems, marketers are beginning to adopt the falltime consumer as the new darling of the marketplace.

Winter’s mythic theme is irony. With relatively little time left, many people in the Winter of their lives ironically experience increased patience. One 85-year-old woman who had just planted several shade tree seedlings in her garden when asked why she didn’t plant larger trees replied, “Because I’m into beginnings, not endings.” We have less interest in Winter in solving the mysteries and conundrums of life. We become quite accepting of the idea that life is filled with an endless sea of incongruities and paradoxes and resigned to the idea that much in life happens that cannot be explained.  The black-and-white simple descriptions of reality that satisfied the younger mind have given way to a reality painted in shades of gray.

NEXT: How an understanding of the seasons of life can make you a more effective marketer