Senioragency has had the opportunity to run hundreds of in-company seminars. Never have we presented seniors as a single group. On the contrary, we have systematically stressed the need to establish coherent segmentation criteria in relation to the company’s characteristics.

There are various options: first of all, we need to understand that the ’senior’ population as such does not exist. Over-50s form too large and varied a group to be summed up in a stereotype. Without going as far as marketing’s distant ideal, the ‘one-to-one’, there must at least be segmentation.

One of the options is the generational approach, which has the advantage of being dynamic and taking the sociocultural context into account. We could thus refer nowadays to the May 68 generation (born between 1945 and 1955); the Algeria generation (born between 1935 and 1945); the Liberation (referring to the Liberation of France in 1945) generation (born between 1925 and 1935); the Wall Street Crash generation (born between 1915 and 1925); the Roaring Twenties generation (born between 1905 and 1915) and the Verdun generation (born between 1895 and 1905).

In fact, this is a view of things that we in our agency are tending more and more to share, particularly as a way of accounting for differences in behavior between ‘new seniors’ and their elders.  But there are many other ways of segmenting this group, each of which has its merits: age, health, occupation, time available, social class, etc. None of these is perfect, of course, but each can be used to enrich the others. For our part, we generally opt for age as the basis for segmentation.

Despite being an artificial approach to things, it has numerous advantages:

- Simplicity. Everyone understands the principle and the content, which is quite something when it comes to a subject as little-known as seniors. Many a more accurate and original segmentation method has not met with the success it deserved because it was poorly understood.

- Applicability.
Age is a concept that can be found at the heart of nearly all market research and all planning tools. It is therefore compatible with media tools, for example - something that is fundamental.

- Universality.
Age as a variable has a similar, comparatively objective impact whatever the sector or country concerned. It is a determining factor for life cycles and even for generations. It is an approximative segmentation method, but one that is more comprehensive and often more objective than most of the alternatives.

- Durability. The concept of generation is an appealing and dynamic one. But since the generations are constantly in motion, they are obviously impossible to handle consistently over time. A 50-year old nowadays is quite different from the generational viewpoint from a person of the same age 20 years ago. 

- Effectiveness. Segmentation by age has long been applied in many marketing programs. We’ve seen other methods come and go, and be challenged, but age has continued to dominate almost everywhere.  

Do we really need to reinvent the wheel?  For Senioragency, we have established and given a name to four age segments. These have been put to good use over the last five years and are likely to remain unchanged for a good few years to come. The four segments are:

- the ‘Happy Boomers’ group (50 to 59-year olds)

- the ‘Liberated’ group (60 to 74-year olds)

- the ‘Peaceful’ group (75 to 84-year olds)

- the ‘Very Elderly’ group (85-year olds and over)   

One thing is sure: seniors as they are depicted in most advertising do not exist! Yes, there are over-50s who are systematically disregarded in the vast majority of companies’ marketing policies. Yes, there is an experienced population out there that is more demanding, better-off overall, and often has more free time. But there is no single large group of ‘old people’ that nod off in a recliner, sipping seltzer water