A+E has embarked on a series of research studies to better understand the themes and attitudes around aging and to dispel the myths about older adults. Being a woman of a certain age, I am especially curious about the takeaways and how we as a society can pivot to a more productive representation.
“I became acutely aware of my own ages beliefs about my life and others because I'm human and conditioned by this society,” confessed Tabares who added, “Believing messages that have bombarded us for decades makes it hard to not be affected,”
The Next Phase of Total Audience Research
A+E has done considerable work on the value of total audience. “Last year we talked about bringing to life the power of the adult 50 plus consumer. We talked about the scale and spending power conducting proprietary studies that were based on actual purchase behavior and receptivity,” explained Tabares.
This latest phase is in creative messaging which is still partially in the field but has already produced a wealth of attitudinal information. “It has been all about understanding the lived experience of being an older adult,” Tabares stated, “We told marketers that this is a really important consumer segment, yet they feel overlooked and undervalued. Let's have a closer look so that we can come up with some insights that will help navigate and provide insights around the creative, about how to connect with them and reach them.”
Crafting The Methodology
Ageism probably started early in our history when we moved from an agrarian to an industrial society. “We use to value our elders or older people because they were the purveyors of knowledge. With industrialization and post modernism, society started to shift toward seeing older people more as a burden on society and the economy,” Tabares said.
The way this plays out in advertising messaging today is with representation that leans on unflattering stereotypical identities of aging. “We tested ads that leaned on tropes whether it's making fun of the older person as the butt of the joke or one that's vulnerable, dependent, weak and frail,” she explained. But, “there are also positive stereotypes such as the happy, loving, doting grandmother grandfather and a person who's retiring, very active and wealthy. So there are positive and negative stereotypes. We're testing that full spectrum.”
The challenge is that the older cohort is treated as one large segment devoid of nuance. In fact there are many sub-segments. According to Tabares, “We have been taught to conceptualize older people as this homogenous group.” In order to craft a more nuanced look at the older cohort, the methodology included an ethnography of 60 participants which then went into field to form a quantitative survey. “Then we did an ad audit with Marketcast using AI technology to evaluate about 20,000 ads to see what is the representation and who are we seeing in these ads. There is also an ad test in field using survey based data testing 28 different ads that we had identified as representative of some of the consistent themes in terms of the rules or the storylines are the attributes,” she noted.
Highlights of the Creative Study So Far
The results of the ethnography not only reveled how older adults view society’s perceptions of them but also how they themselves feel about aging.
Feeling of Unworthiness - Society, the respondents felt, viewed them as, “passive, feeble, out of touch, undesirable, unsexy and irrelevant,” Tabares shared, “What this brought up was a sense of unworthiness. In the eyes of society, we're just not as worthy. Why can't they see who I really am and that I am worthy.” One 44 year old female respondent expressed a common theme; “I feel like the older, I get the less significant my opinion is and society as a whole is starting to look through me rather than at me.”
Gender Differences on Aging - According to Lantieri, “Women are (negatively) impacted by ageless- beauty ideals. They also feel less permission to age and then they're harder about it on themselves when they do. They're more likely to say they must keep the signs of aging at bay compared to men.” Essentially, women have less permission to age than men and, “they're less likely than men to agree that wrinkles and age spots and gray and white hair are normal things accumulated over time. It's not surprising that women 50+ are less confident compared to men.”
Chronological Age Has No Meaning - “Chronological age is constantly being redefined and shifting,” noted Tabares, who added, “Most people in the qualitative research, on average, perceived themselves as 15 years younger. Chronological numbers are a very homogenized narrow view and not very helpful. We tend to feel our age psychologically, cognitively and socially.”
Ethnic Differences – Lantieri did a deep dive by ethnicity and found that, “Black adults 50+ are more positive about aging than other groups. They feel more comfortable, more confident, more optimistic, more likely to agree that their life has meaning and have a lot to look forward to. They're forward looking and not saying that their best days are behind them.” Their positivity includes a recognition of the gains they have in getting older such as, “wisdom, gratitude, increased faith and spirituality. They're also more likely to agree there's no shame in getting older, that aging is normal and it should be normalized. They don't let age related changes hold them back.”
Among the Asian population, “They're more likely to feel confident about how they're doing in terms of their health and their finances, more likely to say that they're thriving financially and they're less likely to report experiencing mental can medical conditions and needing help with mobility and things like that,” stated Lantieri. Overall they report feeling more confident about their health more so than the other groups.
However, “The white adult population 50+ is having a harder time,” she added, “They are more likely to say that aging is scary, less likely to feel that they can lean on their families for help if they need it and least likely to say that they don't let those age related changes hold them back. They also feel more negative about their appearance versus all the other groups are most likely to say they're less attractive compared to when they were younger.”
Dispelling the Myths of Age
What can we do to dispel the myths of aging? For one thing, older adults want representations that are relatable. “It's all about creating more realistic portrayals,” Tabares recommended, “We are not a homogenous group. Don't hide us. People don't disappear with age. Include more of them in more varied roles.” According to Lantieri, “Contrary to popular opinion, people 50+ are over five times more likely to say they want to see realistic depictions than to see someone who looks younger than them in ads. That was a key finding for us because we hear over and over that everyone wants to see younger. But that's not what the data is saying.”
Advertisers should take heed. Adults 50+ consume a range of goods and services but they are not always properly represented in certain ad categories. “The advertising industry and marketers have already decided like what categories suit older adults and that is a fairly limited set of categories like financial services, health and medicine,” noted Tabares. The gaps are startling. “On average, 5% of the faces in automotive are people 50+ but, they account for like 40% of the dollar spent in the category. How do we justify this? How can anybody look at this data and say this is correct?” Cosmetics is even worse with zero percent representation of regular, non-celebrity spokespeople in cosmetics ads. According to Lantieri, “The AI driven audit classified nearly 90% of faces in national TV ads as under 50, and so it isn't surprising that only 5% of adults 50+ say they always see people like them and media.”
Conclusion
Changing ingrained perceptions can be frustrating. In regard to the ongoing conversation about diversity and inclusion, “Not a lot of people are talking about inclusion among about the biggest consumer segment out there; the population that holds the most powerful economic strength,” stated Tabares, “There's a massive opportunity here. We have to change their understanding about aging and not be afraid of it. As media companies, as purveyors of ideas, we influence culture. We help people understand and make sense of life. It is a moral and social responsibility to start articulating a different narrative, accepting, embracing and knowing that that journey is different than the one that we've been depicting for decades. That's my little soapbox. We're going to get there,” she concluded, optimistically.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
Artwork by Charlene Weisler
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