Almost every brand that one comes across these days is targeting the youth, and thats across categories. Of course, some brands have been doing it forever, and some have just joined the party, maybe because the increasing incomes have forced them to define their target audience, so communication can be made in sync.
Now youth, honestly is a very vague term. For some, its actually ‘youth’, say 18-25, and for some, its more ‘young at heart’ which means it can go upto 35. I’m not saying thats really old, all I’m saying is that with a workforce thats getting younger as every year passes, 35 ain’t young. But thats not the point of the post.
A person aged say 50 now, got his first whiff of liberalisation when he was 33. And those were the days when employees still contemplated one life-one organisation. And in the seventeen years since, things have changed drastically – more brands, more options, and more costs. Did he have enough time to be able to react or cope or build a corpus enough to enable himself to lead a decent lifestyle? Judging by the number of products that cater to the current 50 year old, i guess not.
But this generation (30 year olds now) is aware of this and also aware that even this can change in a flash, and that they need to be prepared. They are very familiar with brands and the costs associated with their lifestyle tastes. So, will the brands in say, 10 years time also start catering to a 40 year old who was once their target audience? Will Levis, which i buy now, have a design for me when I’ll be 50, because i don’t see any brand now that does? (Enlighten me if i have missed it, please)
Because, unlike the current hapless senior citizens, who didn’t know what hit them, the future senior citizens would be a prosperous lot, with at least some money to burn. Please don’t get me wrong here, I am not saying all senior citizens are poor, but I do come across a lot of them who look at the brands, the malls, the clothes and the accessories with a melancholic expression that acknowledges a changed world, and their inability to make sense out of it or cope with it.
until next time, this provoked the thought