Memories of the 28th Century
Targetting Older People
by , 04-06-2022 at 12:10 PM (8853 Views)
I have noticed that advertisers seem to have no respect for the intelligence and knowledge of people of retirement age and older. The products advertised for seniors assume that the seniors are either in poor health or mentally retarded. And I can’t forget that woman with the creaky voice who tells us that she has fallen and can’t get up.
There must be people who buy such things, but they probably were taken in by fraudulent advertising when they were younger also, so they probably have Apple computers, electric cars, and they probably drink bottled water and waste money on other over-hyped products.
Do marketers think that people lose all intelligence when they hit 60 or 65 years of age? They should remember that those people, and people who are even older were mart enough to avoid early death, unlike the people we read about every day.
Fortunately, some of the ads are downright funny. Medic Alert is one thing that I wonder about the market for. Most people carry cell phones or they are in places where there are other people. Carrying around another communication device seems unnecessary. I suppose that for people who tend to fall down and who are in very poor physical condition they might be useful, but there are ways to get up, even for people who are rather weak, and, if they aren’t weak, getting up can be easy, even if there is injury.
Even worse than that are the ads for life insurance. I discovered decades ago that life insurance is a scam, but it has been around so long that there are no laws against it. People who sell life insurance make good money, and they contribute to politicians to protect their business.
Here are ads for 11 products for seniors living alone, and some of them would be useful for people of any age, while a couple of them are simply not very useful.
https://www.seniorsafetyreviews.com/...-living-alone/
And this is another set of ads that were aimed at people who are physically not well, but there is nothing that is especially for old people.
https://www.el-well.com/products-to-...-older-adults/
A few weeks ago, I suggested a shooting stick for an amazingly obese guy who had been given a walker. He should walk, but walkers are inconvenient, except when some truly needs one, while shooting sticks and simply canes most of the time, but if someone wants to sit down, they are available.
https://www.amazon.com/Stick-Chair/s?k=Stick+Chair But he isn’t elderly; he is just in poor condition, and shooting sticks weren’t developed for or marketed to senior citizens; they are for hunters who get sick of standing and waiting, so they want to sit down.
I don’t watch TV very much, so I am sure that others have seen worse or funnier ads that were aimed at senior citizens. It was interesting that when I searched for memory enhancers, the results didn’t feature elderly prominently, but students were listed above seniors, and there was an interesting article from webmd. https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/...th-supplements
This article also warns against reliance on most memory supplements, but it does point out that omega3 fatty acids are helpful; as are the oils in some seeds, but this article is not aimed at older people, and it isn’t advertisement. Looking at this in combination with the ads tells the story; marketing hype is misleading at best.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-...th-supplements .
I am not the only one who has noticed that advertising aimed at senior citizens is bad.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90341477...is-so-terrible This is a rather good article, but it makes me wonder even more why products marketed to older people are so poorly advertised. Maybe the marketing campaigns are assigned to the least experienced people, so they don’t realize that insulting people is not a good tactic for getting them as customers.
Don’t usually think about ads for things that I do not buy, but recently I have seen many ads for dating sites for people of greater ages. That gets me to wonder if that is seen as a potential profit booster, or what.
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