Field Observation / Reflective Industry Analysis
When age becomes the brief.
A reflection prompted by an industry discussion about how wellness is marketed to people aged 60+.
Current status: Field Observation
Observation
Sixty-plus is an age bracket. It isn't a customer profile.
I was listening to a Global Wellness Institute discussion about advertising wellness to people aged 60+.
One of the contributors made a very simple point:
“Somebody's birthday isn't the brief.”
Exactly.
Put 60+ at the top of a customer brief and it can become very easy to start filling in the blanks.
What she looks like.
What matters to her.
What she needs.
What she wants.
What wellness means to her.
Before long, we've designed a whole woman from her date of birth.
That's quite a lot of work for two numbers and a plus sign.
What the discussion highlighted
The discussion was based on work examining how advertising and marketing portray, engage and sometimes overlook consumers aged 60+.
One of the recurring issues was the lack of depth behind the demographic.
Contributors talked about familiar shortcuts: assumptions about older people, outdated stereotypes and creative briefs that don't provide enough understanding of the people they are supposed to represent.
One contributor described the problem particularly clearly: once 60+ appears in the brief, age can start becoming the insight.
But age isn't an insight.
It's information.
Assumption challenged
Two women can both be 64 and have completely different lives.
Different priorities.
Different health experiences.
Different spending behaviours.
Different expectations.
Different relationships with ageing.
Different reasons for engaging with wellness.
Age may be useful context.
The problem isn't using it.
It's allowing age to do the job of understanding the customer.
A thinking device, not research participants or evidence.
Age: 64
- Priorities
- Strength, energy and keeping pace with a demanding working life.
- Relationship with wellness
- Practical and routine-led, with a preference for clear purpose.
- Behaviour
- Books around work and values reliable digital access.
- Desired experience
- Efficient, expert and easy to fit into the week.
- Reason for using wellness
- To support performance, recovery and continuity.
- Value considerations
- Will pay for expertise, consistency and saved time.
Age: 64
- Priorities
- Curiosity, enjoyment and making space for herself after a period of change.
- Relationship with wellness
- Selective and experience-led, with no fixed routine.
- Behaviour
- Chooses slowly, asks questions and prefers personal recommendations.
- Desired experience
- Warm, unhurried and shaped around individual choice.
- Reason for using wellness
- To feel restored, interested and more connected to herself.
- Value considerations
- Values attention, flexibility and a memorable experience.
Beyond the advertising
What if the assumption reaches further than the advert?
The original discussion focused on advertising and marketing.
From a Business Innovation & Service Design perspective, I'm interested in what might be happening before the advert exists.
If assumptions about age influence how a customer is represented, could those same assumptions influence what gets designed for her?
The proposition.
The service.
The environment.
The customer journey.
The language.
The pricing.
The experience.
By the time a business starts deciding how to advertise a wellness service, many decisions about what that service is and who it is for may already have been made.
So perhaps advertising is only one place where the assumption becomes visible.
- Proposition
- Service
- Environment
- Journey
- Language
- Pricing
- Experience
Age is information.Understanding the customer takes more.
Design question
So perhaps the more useful question isn't:
“How do we market wellness to people over 60?”
It's:
“What do we need to understand about the customer before her age becomes useful information?”That changes the starting point.
Instead of beginning with an age category and designing from the assumptions around it, we can begin by understanding the people within it.
What are they trying to achieve?
What matters to them?
How do they behave?
What are they choosing already?
What frustrates them?
What do they value enough to pay for?
And where, if anywhere, does age materially change the answer?
Business Innovation question
What might wellness businesses be missing?
There is another possibility here.
If a large group of consumers is being understood primarily through demographic shorthand, businesses may not only be communicating poorly with them.
They may also be missing opportunities to create something different.
A different service proposition.
A different experience.
A different way of accessing wellness.
A different business model.
Or something we haven't thought of yet.
That doesn't mean there is automatically an untapped market opportunity here.
It means there is a question worth investigating.
Where this could go
The question stays open.
This is currently a Field Observation.
It could lead to further investigation into how wellness businesses segment, understand and design for women aged 60+, including the assumptions visible in existing propositions, services, environments and customer experiences.
It may develop into research, a design question, an experiment or something else.
Or it may go no further.
For now, the question stays open.