Creative Thing recently featured as the key marketing contributors in the BBC debate on Middle Age consumers. The debate was featured as a topic for discussion on BBC Hereford and Worcester on Howard Benthams Breakfast Time show. David Yates, Managing Director of Creative Thing talked of the difficulties in defining middle age.

“Middle age is almost an obsolete term. The current crop of people between the ages of forty five and seventy were originally responsible for redefining the way we now see the world.

“The generation who reinvented themselves as ‘teenagers’ in the 1950s are now in their seventies and are reinventing old age. They don’t tend to sit around complaining about the weather, they are off on cruises or climbing up Machu Pichu. Hot on their heels are the 60s Generations. These people are now in their sixties themselves but are fit and healthy. They have high expectations and by and large, retain many of the values that they helped to establish back then – certainly they are still refusing to fit into a middle-age stereotype.

“And every decade seems to follow the lead, even Punks are now in their fifties!”

David Yates went on to say that middle age was not so much a niche marketing concept as a mass marketing one. Thanks to the baby boom, the majority of spenders out there are middle aged. They hold fairly consitent opinions and in some respects they behave similarly to each other.

“One example is that they are more likely to respond to information through traditional routes such as graphic design and even web design. These can presented by companies in the form of brochures or advertising materials and sites. Marketing to the middle age consumer is just marketing – full-stop. Marketing challenges are more accute when trying to understand the current crop of sixteen to thirty year olds.

“They have seen it, done it, played the video game of it, MSN’d their mates about it, swapped text messages about it, chatted on the web about it, and moved onto the next thing before they even get the tee shirt to prove it!”

“What do these people need marketing messages for? They are not inclined to be consumer fodder and have a more jaundiced view of marketing. They operate outside of middle aged conventions and they own all the information they need or, indeed, trust.”