Brands looking to expand or launch into the Korean beauty market must consider baby boomers; a rising demographic interested in looking younger and seeking effective yet simple makeup, a study finds.
ageing
How ‘Fake News’ Drives The Millennial Myth
Now, I’ve got nothing against Millennials. Two of my favourite people on the planet are part of this cohort (my daughters). But what really pisses me off is how the hysteria over Millennials causes otherwise smart marketers to ignore the demographic and economic realities. Older consumers, Baby Boomers and beyond, are an equally (if not […]
5 emerging trends for healthy-ageing food products in Asia
A recent conference in Singapore discussed nutrition trends toward healthy-ageing. Called the Healthy Ageing APAC Summit, a speaker from Euromonitor explained 5 consumer trends shaping demand for new ‘healthy ageing’ products; Food for prevention Seeing food as a first line of preventative medicine. Becoming more nutritionally aware of the relationship between good food and good […]
5 lessons healthcare can learn about ageing from general business
I was recently invited to deliver a keynote address about ageing and healthcare to a group of 400 medical specialists. A tough crowd and a big challenge. My first reaction was ‘What on God’s green earth can specialists learn about ageing from a businessman?‘. This became the title of my address. The thing is, nobody is prepared […]
Is P&G’s Olay going Ageless?
An Ageless Cafe by Olay popped-up at an up-market shopping mall in Bangkok recently. This intrigued me for two reasons. Firstly, because Olay is one of P&G’s flagship brands and despite its extraordinary global marketing sophistication, P&G has made some fundamental mis-steps when tackling the issue of ageing. I wondered if the Ageless Cafe had […]
Struggling to find the word to define older people
Apparently, Japan’s 60-somethings don’t like to be called ‘seniors’ yet in other parts of the world, this is the best of a bad bunch of classifiers. According to a study by a research arm of advertising agency Hakuhodo, nearly 90% of respondents in that age bracket — which includes the baby boomers who took part in […]
Is the beauty industry changing the way it thinks about ageing, or is it just a new spin?
The beauty industry is caught between appearing youthful yet desperately clinging to their ageing customers. We see the signs everywhere; The increasing use of older women in advertising. For example Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren and others promoting for L’Oreal. The move away from the expression ‘Anti-Ageing’. The Editor of Allure magazine has resolved to stop […]
Apple TV spot incidentally provides positive reinforcement of aging
Having spent a lifetime in the ad industry, it’s hard for me not to comment on a TV spot from Apple that features older people. Usually, my evaluations of the depictions of older people in advertising are negative. I’m scathing about the use of outdated stereotypes or worse, downright ageist portrayals. But increasingly, there is […]
Is ‘anti-ageing’ an ageist descriptor for brands?
Commonly used in the beauty world, I have long maintained that the expression ‘anti-ageing’ is ageist. It implies there’s something wrong with ageing. Imagine if skin-whitening treatments were positioned on an ‘anti-black’ platform! Now there are signs that the anti-ageing term is losing popularity. According to this article in Elle, Google reported that last year […]
Reframing Ageing – Let’s talk longevity?
A few weeks ago I helped to run a collaborative innovation workshop in Singapore, themed around opportunities in ageing and longevity. The workshop was managed by Hugh Mason of JFDI and sponsored by BOSCH. It brought together a group of entrepreneurs and enterprises including Munich Re, BP, OCBC Bank, Singapore Press Holdings. The innovation output was […]
