In the marketing industry, creative is the cornerstone of content-related deliverables. From social media assets to video production and everything in between, creative gives brands the opportunity to turn their messaging into eye-catching, engaging content.
So, as a company or advertiser looking to target Baby Boomer audiences, what can you do to frame your messaging effectively and ensure that the 50+ crowd takes notice? At Coming of Age, we have over 25 years of experience designing and implementing creative that resonates with seniors. If you feel like your creative hasn’t been resonating with an aging audience, Coming of Age can help you navigate your next creative endeavor.
Lead with Relevant Imagery
Conceptually, most marketers are aware that creative deliverables rely on compelling imagery to capture an audience’s attention. For 50+ audiences, it’s especially important to choose imagery that is relevant to their life experiences and aspirations without relying on stereotypes or broad generalizations about seniors.
When choosing imagery for your creative:
- DO focus on imagery that shows seniors active and enthusiastic in a variety of settings and circumstances. Take care to present different types of activities to accurately frame your target audience as having the agency and desire to seek out new and enriching experiences.
- DON’T utilize imagery that frames aging as negatively impacting a person’s quality of life or social standing. Contexts centered around medical conditions such as mobility complications or end of life care may send the wrong message to potential customers.
- DO make imagery relatable and recognizable to everyday people. Similar to our first point above, your imagery should tell your audience that you understand how they spend their days now and how they want to spend their days in the future.
- DON’T emphasize the age of the subjects within any stock imagery or footage. Frame your audience as everyday people looking to make the most out of their lives.
- DO ensure that your creative’s copy or text complements the chosen imagery in one way or another. While there doesn’t always need to be an explicit link between images and text, your imagery should at least underscore the central theme that you are trying to convey to your audience in one way or another.
- DON’T sacrifice consistency for specificity. Your chosen imagery should be a natural extension of your brand’s aesthetic, so take care to foster a consistent, authentic visual presence throughout your creative efforts.
Create Emotional and Customer-Focused Content
Creating an emotional connection with your audience is easier said than done, especially when targeting Baby Boomers. For one thing, older audiences are more receptive to emotional content than their younger counterparts. By centering their creative approach on emotional appeals, brands can focus their efforts and streamline their development processes to choose only the most effective emotional appeals for their audience.
The complication, of course, lies in the broad spectrum of emotional appeals that brands must choose from. To land on the most effective emotional messaging, start by crafting a message that relies on positive emotions and benefits rather than negative consequences. Creating demand or capturing attention by telling your audience that they lack something (an experience, a service, a device, etc.) may yield short-term results, but older audiences tend to not gravitate towards brands that frame them as lacking agency or expertise. Avoiding emotions like fear, guilt and anxiety can help usher your audience further down the Buyer’s Funnel more effectively and start your relationship off on the right foot.
By developing creative that revolves around positive emotional messaging and positions older audiences as the heroes of their own story, brands can reinforce what older audiences stand to gain from fostering an ongoing relationship with their products and services.
Be Authentic and Genuine
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the key to connecting to Baby Boomer audiences (and any audience, really) lies in crafting authentic messages that speak to the genuine thoughts and desires of your target demographic.
As we age, our lived experiences give us a fuller understanding of how we’re advertised to and the common strategies that brands use to vie for our attention. For the 50+ crowd, who have seen advertisements make the leap from radio and cable TV to digital billboards and streaming platforms, it can be easy to become cynical when so many brands are hoping to catch your attention on a daily basis. To counteract this cynicism, don’t rely on the same old conventions or an overused bag of marketing tricks; instead, take the time to craft a message that is authentic to your company’s mission and genuine in its desire to improve the lives of your customers.
50+ audiences can spot inauthentic messages and counterfeit emotional appeals a mile away, so be sure to focus on making Baby Boomers the heroes of whatever story you’re telling and frame your brand as a gateway to meaningful experiences. Related to our previous points, this gives your audience a sense of personal agency and avoids the pitfalls of negative emotional appeals, setting your brand up to be an opportunity instead of just a product.
Your creative and copy shouldn’t feel stale or “corporatized” if you want to draw in older consumers looking for new, positive experiences. Making your creative an authentic, genuine extension of your brand’s vision is more than a strategy; it’s a reassurance to 50+ audiences that your company takes their experiences, desires, and choices as seriously as they do.
Conclusion
Understanding and addressing the distinct needs, behaviors, and preferences of older generations is easier said than done, but there’s plenty that brands can do to make their creative more impactful among Baby Boomers. Between keeping your imagery centered on the lived experiences of your audience, focusing on positive emotions that keep your customers front and center, and centering your creative around authentic and genuine messages, brands have no shortage of tools at their disposal to make their next campaign more impactful among seniors.
To learn more about our portfolio of creative efforts and find out how your brand can keep Baby Boomers front and center, reach out to us at comingofage.com/contact.
You may also be interested in:
- 7 Tips for Effectively Marketing to Seniors
- Designing Your Website for Seniors and Boomers
- Why Your Marketing Isn’t Resonating with Baby Boomers