Companies Target the 55+ with the Cool Products & Campaigns Once Reserved for Millennials

The 60+ generation is aging radically different than previous generations. They start businesses, run marathons, and travel widely. With increased longevity and substantial wealth, they put a premium on health, wellness and nutrition. And yet, this powerful demographic attracts only 10 percent of marketing budgets and less than one percent of global innovation. That’s changing dramatically, as many industries are now targeting seniors with product design, experiences and campaigns with a cool factor once reserved for millennials.
 

Summit Trend in the News

Forecasting the Future

• Industries (including food, beauty, fitness, tech, housing, fashion, etc.) will refocus on the 50+ because of overwhelming global facts: People over 60 will double by 2050 (from 12 percent to 22 percent of the world population); there will be one billion people over 65 by 2030; and we’ve just hit the tipping point where there are more elderly people than children in our world.
   
• Boomers invented the wellness concept/market, but the industry has been myopically obsessed with millennials. Dave Stewart of Ageist notes that one of the very top priorities of today’s 55+ is health and wellness seen through the lens of a self-empowered, educated consumer, rather than as a patient. The wellness market will wake up to this unprecedented opportunity.
   
• Ageism will be the world’s next big discrimination issue.
   
• More people will regularly live to be 80, 90 and even 100+, so companies need to “forget aging” and help them with these many chapters and with ongoing “new life building.”