The Friday Essay Advertisers take heed - the booming consumermarket is not young and funky, it's old and wrinkly. John Walshheralds the power of the grey pound
Over Christmas, Nintendo launched a television ad campaign fortheir Wii Fit Plus. The aspiring athlete stands on a plastic tray,waves a wand at a television while exercising, and finds that his orher every move, twist and jerk is replicated on screen. As parentswill tell you, Wii technology entertains children for hours. Sowhich foxy, bendy, pliant-muscled, teen dreamboat did the company'smarketing people choose to sell their product? Why, Helen Mirren,Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and veteranactress, whose most famous role was impersonating HM the Queen inold age. She herself, born in 1945, hits 66 in July.
In the commercial, she explains how easy the Wii Fit Plus is toassemble, what a happy alternative it is to a gymnasium ("Gym is apalaver"), how varied are its effects - it's almost, she says, "likehaving a new lover every day". Glowing with health in comfortablesweat pants, she concludes: "I would never have imagined myselfexercising through a video console, and now I feel very, very modernand very young." You could say that Nintendo got their money's worthfor the 500,000 the two-day shoot reportedly cost.
Welcome to the world of the grey pound, where enlightenedbusinessmen strive to win the approval of an ever-growing horde ofcomfortably-off senior citizens. It's quite a market, and it keepsgrowing. According to the Office for National Statistics' new FamilySpending report, the amount spent annually by over-65s rose from97bn in 2008 to 102bn in 2009. That's 16 per cent of the nation'stotal expenditure. Also notable is the increasing disinclination ofthe over-65s to die around the time of their Biblical span of 70.According to figures released in December, one in six people nowliving in the UK will live to be 100.
Perhaps this accounts for the stubborn way that many of thealmost-elderly refuse to accept their status as emblems ofdecrepitude, fit only for the twilight home. According to a reportby LV=, the retirement specialists, sixtysomethings are happier thantheir younger counterparts, feel financially more secure andphysically more robust. They take more holidays than any other agegroup; nearly half take two or three trips abroad a year. Perhapssurprisingly, they have also been embracing technology (email,Skype, Facebook and internet shopping) with age-inappropriateenthusiasm.
What, though, is the response of the retail world to thiswindfall of well-off, well-disposed, energetically high-spendingconsumers? How are they adapting their marketing strategies to hookthese fat trophy fish swimming under their very noses? One way hasbeen to co-opt totemic figures of age and survival. Dame Helen isonly the most recent in a long line. In April 2008, the rock vampireKeith Richards, at 65, was persuaded to make his first-evercommercial. He was photographed by Annie Leibovitz, sitting on ahotel-room bed strumming a guitar, to promote the virtues of LouisVuitton luggage. Other famous faces Vuitton dragooned intocommercial modelling were Catherine Deneuve (67) and MikhailGorbachev (79).
In the world of fashion retail, whose basic orthodoxy is todisplay clothes on the most egregiously youthful and slender, Marks& Spencer caused a small but significant revolution when they signedthe Sixties model Twiggy to promote their rebranding in 2005. Shewas 56 at the time, and is still appearing on television screens,without cracking the plasma, at 61. Debenhams followed suit lastSeptember, when they filled their windows with photos of models intheir 40s, 50s and 60s, looking far from mumsy. It was a newinitiative called The Style List, launched in conjunction with thefashionista Caryn Franklin, and follows other enlightenedinitiatives by the store chain, such as using size 16 mannequins anddisabled models, and banning airbrushing.
Ageing male models are still a rarity in British male fashion. Wehave to look to Germany and Italy for inspiration. The Germancompany Baldessarini, an offshoot of Hugo Boss named after its Swiss-Tyrolese founder Werner Baldessarini, markets its clothing andfragrances squarely at the sixtysomething playboy. The chap in themagazine ads is a craggy, retirement-age Adonis, his hair slickedback with expensive oil; he radiates hard-won success, good fortuneand intellectual genius, while behind him a fruity brunette in ablack, shag-me-Sir-Jasper frock heads for the steps of his Lear jet.
A German-born, Turkish visionary called Umit Benan has set out astore of clothes that is the envy of other designers. He has dresseda cast of 60- plus men as members of a stylish, slightly shagged-out rock'n'roll band, with an uncompromising style. The models forhis Retired Rockers collection are a gallery of rogues in mix-and-don't-match styles and colours, shiny suits, 1950s shades, chocolatecorduroy waistcoats, headbands, leopardskin jackets, voluminouscoats, vaudevillian hats... The look is intensely silly and oddlyreassuring - as though warning relatives that sixtysomething geezerswill dress up any way they damn well please. But Benan clearlyunderstands his ageing market - he makes chaps look convincinglyslim, even at sixtyish, in his luxurious, well-cut fabrics. Whatabout the mature female denim-wearer who wants to look trendy butdoesn't fancy (and frankly can't fit into) her daughter's super-skinny, boot-cut jeans?
The company with the answer is Not Your Daughter's Jeans. Theirsoft-sell marketing coos with reassurance: "Some people say thatyouth is wasted on the young. But age has its distinct advantages.You're a little wiser, a lot more confident and face it - sexierthan ever. You're not a teenager any more - you've been there andnow you're past it, beyond it and happy to be exactly where and whoyou are. You wouldn't trade places with your daughter, or tradeclothes with her either..."
Their version of denim contains 4 per cent Lycra for extrastretch, and a front panel that holds the mature female stomach in.Shrewdly, their advertising doesn't show a whole woman - only thelower half of a horizontal model, the jeans stretching across acurvaceous, mature bottom.
The health market - or more bluntly, the infirmity market - isset to become a battleground, as companies compete to sell oldercustomers mobility aids and the like. The problem for them, ofcourse, is image and the built-in dismalness of their names. Foryears, the Zimmer frame has become synonymous with decrepitude,immobility, the shuffling of the stricken. The Stannah Stairlift hasbecome the humorously generic name associated with old ladies (thelate Thora Hird comes to mind) unable to drag their elderlycarcasses upstairs. The ear trumpet was comically Victorian,associated with retired brigadiers and irascible dowagers, but itsreplacement, the hearing-aid, featuring a crayfish-shaped plasticbox worn behind the ear, fatally signalled the owner as a Deaf OldGit.
You should see them now. Hearing aids have changed beyondrecognition. Leightons, the leading opticians, reassure theirreaders thus: "Many people fear that a hearing aid will make themlook older and be unsuitable for the active, busy lifestyle whichthey are probably enjoying. [Don't you love that 'probably'?] Butmany of today's programmable and open ear hearing aids are amazinglylight, small, stylish and clever. Just like the human brain they canidentify those sounds we want to hear, while filtering out unwantedsounds, like background noise."
The super-grooviest deaf-aids are the Phonak brand. They fitinside the ear, are virtually invisible and boast cool digitalfeatures - "StereoZoom, which takes binaural processing technologyto a whole new level" or the "DuoPhone" which lets you hear a voiceon the phone in both ears. And now that a few million teenagers walkaround with headphones in their ears, the aural stigma or wearing anearpiece has virtually disappeared.
You'd think, wouldn't you, that to make walking frames seem coolwould be beyond the ingenuity of man? The name of the mainmanufacturer is so generic that when a group of octogenarians formeda rock band in 2007, they called it the Zimmers. But while thelight, tubular walking aid still carries about it a whiff of thegeriatric ward, say hello to the Rollator. It's European, it'ssophisticated in shiny tubular blue and it looks like a shoppingtrolley with a seat, a basket and a set of brakes. Using just one, areckless oldie could execute a nifty 180-degree turn on a streetcorner. Pimp my Zimmer frame - who'd have thought it?
Stannah sold their first Stairlift in 1974 and their name hasbecome as generic as the Zimmer frame, "thought I read somewhere,"admits Patrick Stannah, the company's CEO, "that Henry VIII issupposed to have had a stairlift". The market is now worth 150m, ofwhich Stannah has 30 per cent. The once-derided device for gettingthe elderly to the first floor has become unwontedly popular in thelast couple of years. Stairlifts, you might say, have gone throughthe roof. "The reason for their increased market penetration," saidStannah, "is that they really change people's lives. They allow themto live in their own home. The alternatives are not attractive -living downstairs all the time, moving house, moving to a care home.We've been selling stairlifts for 40 years - and now we're sellingto the sons and daughters of our original customers, who learntabout the benefits 40 years ago. People simply know more about thebenefits they provide. They've been normalised."
The secret, it seems, is to sell to the dependants of theimmobilised. "The reality is, they are a really positive thing forpeople, so we talk to the extended family, the sons and daughters,and we get current customers involved in spreading the word." But isit possible to make them acceptable to a generation who thinkthey're Keith Richards and Helen Mirren? "Our stairlifts are welldesigned, they look good, they're ergonomic, they're aestheticallypleasing, they're a mile away from where they were 40 years ago,"said Stannah. "We can do great things with upholstery. We haven'tsold a Stairlift to a rock star yet, but I'm sure it's coming,sooner or later."
Mr Stannah should check out the video for Pulp's song Help theAged, on which Jarvis Cocker can be seen serenely gliding up a longgraceful staircase on a bespoke version of the ascending throne.
Even the sex industry has come round to accommodating the needsof the aged. In Germany, where prostitution has been fully legalsince 2002, special provision is now being made for this nichedemographic. The Artemis brothel in Berlin, the largest "luxurywellness" house of prostitution in Germany, told the local newspaperDer Tagesspiegel that they were introducing "facilities" for the oldlecher. They were coy about the actual details (for which we shouldbe grateful,) but they included newly-installed seats in theshowers, "helpful personnel" and changing rooms that can accommodatewheelchairs. Among the country's 150,000 officially registeredprostitutes, many now offer advanced forms of occupational therapyto senior citizens in retirement homes. Some homes have evenconverted rooms into "intimate encounter" boudoirs, with theblessing of the local church organisations which own and run them.
You would think, in view of all this activity, that the age lobbywould be pleased and flattered to be wooed so assiduously bymanufacturers. But you'd be wrong. Age UK, the charity formed by the2009 marriage of Help the Aged and Age Concern, has been running acampaign for a year called the Engage Business Network. Its aim isto persuade companies to take older people into account as consumers- to consider, for instance, how hard it can be for frail hands toget past layers of plastic packaging, or for short tempers to dealwith call-centre telephonists in Pondicherry.
"I think business still underestimates the importance of olderpeople," says Mark Gettinby, general manager of group productdevelopment. "They tend to focus on young consumers and nobody else.A good example is mobile phones. People haven't engaged withproducing a mobile that works for older people. Most major telecomsconcentrate on getting customers to change their contract; but olderpeople tend not to change their phones so frequently, so they're nota target. But also, the buttons on many phones are so small, they'rehard to use - and they haven't brought phones to market that dealwith such issues. In fact, they've gone to extreme lengths to makethings ever smaller rather than to be legible. Not just the buttons,but the menu options too."
He makes an exception for the Apple iPad, which is provingsurprisingly granny-friendly. "The iPad's tablet format willprobably be the thing that cracks technology for older people, bothin its size, its operability, and its point-and-touch user-friendliness. It doesn't require complicated menus and it doesn'tflash a sign saying 'Fatal Error!' which can be scary for people whodon't know what to do."
Age UK has also looked into the financial services market. "Wediscovered that 97 per cent of travel insurers have an upper agelimit, which might kick in as early as 69. We've started doing ourown insurance and the oldest customer we covered was Harry Patch,the First World War veteran, who was 109. We insured him to travelback to the battlefields of Flanders. We're also looking at carinsurance, where people have gone to town putting upper age limitson people who feel they can't shop around. It's not about age,though - it's about whether people feel confident about driving."
The charity has been lobbying UK companies, trying to persuadethem that the grey pound is worth capturing and the older customerworth pursuing. "We've been working with forward-thinkingorganisations, like Marks & Spencer, to demonstrate that things likefood packaging can be done better. The Government is aware this ishappening. Their view is that if British companies don't do it, someforeign company is going to come and do it much better and theBritish are going to lose market share. So we're both saying, 'C'monguys, get your act together and do this.'"
Bold words from the age lobby. Stand by for an explosion in goodsfor the Third Age generation. Sit tight for the supercharged golfbuggy. Hold on for Jean-Paul Gaultier incontinence pants. Stand byfor the Philippe Starck walk-in bathtub...
