How Can Brands Adapt to the Aging Population
Inclusion & equality is not just a marketing tool or a buzz word. It is a core value that brands have to embrace throughout their whole organisation, or risk alienating everyone who isn’t them.
Nearly 12 million UK residents were aged 65+ in mid-2017, equating to just over 18% of the population. Of those, nearly 600 thousand were aged 90+, and incredibly 14 thousand were centenarians.
With over 65’s contributing a whopping £320bn of annual household spending, brands would be foolish to ignore the spending power of the Grey Pound.
Yet more surprisingly, grey money isn’t just going to bricks and mortar establishments. Older shoppers (65+) spending online has boomed to 48% in 2018.
So what can brands do to bring the over 65’s into their cohort of loyal spenders?
Be Accessible
People will not use your services if they can not. This may seem like a common-sense answer, but very few organisations act on this knowledge. When browsing your online offering consider:
- Is there enough contrast between text and background colours?
- Is your website screen-reader friendly?
- Can you use your keyboard alone to navigate your website?
- Are your images annotated?
- Is your content easy to understand?
Be Inclusive
Is your organisation inclusive? Does it employ a wide range of ethnicities, abilities, genders & ages? Do your employees value diversity? If your organisation does not value inclusivity, then any marketing will show the cultural bias coming from within your organisation.
Take a look at your marketing material, and see if it reflects your brand values. Does it show and appeal to all protected groups? If you were from a different background, would you feel like the marketing material would represent you? Stepping into another’s shoes is a great start to understanding someone.
Get Feedback
If you want to know what people think of your brand, ask them!
Regular and in-depth customer research will reveal exactly what people want from your brand. Customers will be very frank with their thoughts on your brand if given the opportunity, but it is equally important to listen. Too often we see brands conduct surveys, but ignore the results as they do not reflect what they want to hear.
If you want to go the extra mile, conduct sentiment analysis on any written feedback, this can give valuable insights into the emotions of your customers, not just their thoughts. While this sort of deep-dive can seem scary at first, it can be a powerhouse of customer-centered design. Ocado uses sentiment analysis & natural language processing to route customer emails to the right department, speeding up response times and improving engagement.
As with inclusivity, feedback should be gathered from wide-ranging groups, from loyal customers to those who feel alienated by your brand. Identify pressure points, and work to resolve any conflict between you and your customers.
Remember, it’s happening to all of us
Inequality is often attributed to being a problem for ‘them’ and not ‘us’, but it is happening every day, in every industry. Aging is happening to all of us. Yet ageism is happening to people in the 40’s who are considered ‘too old’ to be in their role.
Society has changed and our attitudes need to catch up. Especially as the retirement age keeps getting later. We can’t just lump everyone from 50 to 90 together as the Saga generation. Madeleine Morris, Founder of The Society of Very Senior Creatives
Age does not affect capacity, the Notorious RBG is 86 at the time of writing, and is still a powerhouse of political will, whether you agree with her political agenda or not. David Attenborough is 93 and still making TV programs, and Nicholas Parsons is 95 and still producing regular radio content.
