This is Not Your Father`s Market
by G. Richard Ambrosius

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Until the 1990s, the predictability of human behavior worked as the median age of adults stayed under 40. However, the world of business and marketing today is struggling to adjust to a new market using an old paradigm. This would be similar to a 60 year-old that has worn glasses since their adolescence using a 40 year-old pair of glasses to read today`s paper. The facts would be there. You just couldn`t see them.

As Peter Doyle stated in the European Journal of Marketing, "the 90s are not proving a good decade for marketing." To understand a mature market requires a look through the lens of new science. A view of the consumer wherein the feelings and emotions offer a doorway to their needs and keys to motivating them to action…integration of reason and intuition with old science.

New science, and new marketing, requires an understanding of what this means and an acceptance that sometimes things just happen. Still, a majority of marketers, market researchers and ad agencies continue to use traditional logic and methods tested in the youth markets of yesterday to reach and attract the maturing markets of today and tomorrow. Trusting the devil they know and fearing the unknown. Still, insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

In this New World of marketing, there are varying levels of informed opinions and few, if any, experts. The next millennium will surely be a place full of opportunity. It will also be a place where constants become variables; standards become guidelines; cause becomes effect and long-term customer relationships are as important as quarterly projects and sales quotas. Objectivity will become illusion and subjectivity will become reality in the design of marketing communications.

Much of what I first learned about marketing was jettisoned out of a need to get outside the box. Population growth no longer fuels market growth and pushes living standards up. The once easy world of marketing has become complex with exploding technology and ecommerce complicating the formulas for change. Relationship, database and Internet marketing are replacing mass marketing. The one-stop, hard sell, in your face sales techniques are going the way of the electric typewriters and rotary telephones. Subjective sales and marketing methods are gaining followers.

While few in depth studies on mature consumers exist, studies of adult development are abundant enough to reveal major mid-life changes in values, attitude and behavior. Central among these changes is the increased value placed on relationships, personal autonomy and customer service as an expectation, not a motivator. You can`t expect to simply use older models while projecting the values of a youth culture. You can`t use emotional visuals and objective copy that focuses on features and benefits and gain the attention of older consumers. You can`t use the same techniques, methods and design concepts and expect different results. Isn`t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Instead, it is time to seek new knowledge on the values and developmental behavior of the new, mature consumers.

Richard (Dick) Ambrosius is founder, president of Phoenix Associates. For the past 23 years, he has been an outspoken advocate of positive aging by specializing in a developmental approach to marketing, planning and problem solving.

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