Generational Marketing

At Senioragency, we don't believe in the concept of "mass marketing" as a way of reaching the senior audience.

It is unrealistic to believe that one product, one distribution channel and one message will convince all of the many population segments which make up a senior audience of active consumers which stretches from 50 to 85 plus.

Across the world, setting aside the obvious differences of nationality and culture, the huge numbers of consumers over the age of 50 have different values, different aspirations, different physical appearances, different needs, different history, different financial circumstances and even different heroes. Mass marketing just does not have a place in the strategic planning of brands trying to reach these consumers.

At the other end of marketing is, of course, the "one-to-one" concept. Very attractive, but quite unrealistic. Even with the best CRM and by using the newest online communication technologies, it is idealistic to hope that each individual customer will be touched accurately and adequately.

Today, the only media channel allowing one-to-one marketing is still the oldest one in the world - personal dialogue.

Generational Marketing offers the best way forward for communicating with the senior audience, because it offers a real dynamic understanding of consumers. It can appear personal and universal at the same time. Wherever we are, whatever our age and our social group, we all belong to a generation with a common history. "We are the children of our times rather than of our parents". Senioragency has been using Generational Marketing since 1999 to improve results for our clients.

Our analysis combines history, age and life-cycle to better understand how consumption behaviours are formed in separate generations. It strengthens our ability to monitor our age-based segments and to anticipate their evolution.

Each generation clusters the people born within a period of ten years, we refer to them as cohorts, and by looking at the major influences in their formative years, we can identify visual and historical triggers which will be common to all - regardless of their current very different circumstances. These triggers will help marketing and advertising campaigns achieve peak levels of interest and considerably improve the receptiveness to key messages.