Older consumers won’t respond to youthful messaging.
November 3, 2009 at 8:07 pm Leave a comment
“Left-brain-style thinking used to be the driver and right-brain-style thinking the passenger. Now [right brain] thinking is suddenly grabbing the wheel…stepping on the gas.”
– Daniel H. Pink, “A Whole New Mind”
Until we reach our mid-forties, we are following the advice and guidance of our brain’s left hemisphere. And while no one (excepting those with autism) really thinks with just one hemisphere, one side nevertheless dominates. Since most of our marketing models were designed by, and intended for, a youthful market, the system has been extremely effective for half a century. Left brains talking to left brains. Young people in advertising talking to young people on the streets.
Sometime in our forties, our maturing brains are slowly pulled to the right. Suddenly, but not overnight, we are no longer receptive to messages and ideas that are no longer compatible with our new way of thinking. And while they don’t bother us, they certainly don’t seem very relevant either.
Since 1989, when older Americans first started to outnumber younger Americans, this problem has only gotten bigger. And, not surprisingly, we can trace the decline of advertising effectiveness to around that date.
We could list the differences between the two hemispheres for several pages, but for simplicity’s sake we’ll focus on just five.
Youthful, left-brain thinking is:
Logical
Reason-based
Objective
Verbal
Time-sensitive
Older, right-brain thinking is:
Intuitive
Emotional
Subjective
Visual
Time-insensitive
To say the least, these are two very different ways of looking at life, not to mention marketing. They represent different attitudes, different values, different ways of speaking and different ways of listening. It all comes down to how we process the information of life, not what the information is. Which is one of the reasons why so much marketing seems so irrelevant to older consumers: If you don’t understand their needs, there’s no reason for them to try and understand your product.
Mike Baumayr, Chapter Two Communications
Mature marketing expertise from one of America’s “oldest” authorities on boomers, retirement, aging, longevity, and inter-generational marketing.
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Entry filed under: acting older, Ageless Marketing, aging, an agency that specializes in the senior or mature market, Boomers, Chapter Two Communications, Getting older, middle age, Mike Baumayr, phoenix ad agency, second half of life. Tags: "A Whole New Mind.", 40-plus adults, Author Daniel H. Pink, change as we age, Chapter Two Communications, Daniel H. Pink, First half of life, How we change with age, Left hemisphere, Left-brain thinking, mature market ad experts, Mike Baumayr, Older Americans outnumber younger Americans, Right hemisphere, Right-brain thinking, seeing things differently, The aging U.S. population, Under-40 population, Younger values.
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