Generation Reinvention # 9: The Future of Business, Ageless Marketing, and a Brave New Worldview

On January 7, 2011

Marketing dollars have traditionally targeted youth markets because many marketers believe that the value of people 40 and older falls with rising age. A youth bias became particularly evident during the teenage years of Baby Boomers with introduction of advertising campaigns such as “The Pepsi Generation.”

After 50, consumers have traditionally faded from most marketers’ radar screens, except of course for age-specific products addressing health deficiencies due to aging. Today there is more than a small problem: people 40 and older in the U.S. outnumber 18- to 39-year olds by 138 million to 87 million.

Segmenting consumers strictly by age now makes less sense. In 2011, millions of Baby Boomers will turn 65. In 2014, all Boomers will be over age 50. This unprecedented change in marketplace demography will continue for the next 19 years. By 2030, one in five Americans will be over 65.

Ageless Marketing gets around tendencies toward youth bias in marketing by invoking values that resonate across generational divides and by tuning marketing, including product design, promotions and customer relations, to psychological stages of life.

Our guest this week has been for over 20 years the most articulate and respected author and spokesman for Ageless Marketing, a paradigm shift toward understanding changing consumer needs from a meta-value perspective. His insights inspire new thinking about psychological development across the lifespan. He has been a thought-leader in identifying shifting business values, a maturing of the value proposition companies and their products bring to our lives. The best companies today focus more on share of heart than share of wallet.

David B. Wolfe is an internationally recognized customer behavior expert in middle-age and older markets. He has written three influential books and is now working on his fourth and most ambitious project, Brave New Worldview. This book investigates how society’s values are dramatically changing as a result of underlying trends of aging demographics and an overall psychosocial maturation of the human species. We’re finally learning to think with both hemispheres of our brains.