Getting older, and bolder

We're not getting older, we're getting bolder

By TOM ZUCCO

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 23, 2001

Is America ready for this kind of ad? The seniors market is shifting, say advertising experts, and marketing has to change, too.

Forget the elderly couple strolling the beach at sunset. We have seen the future of advertising directed at seniors, and it may shock you. The people in these new ads are tanned and smiling, like always, but they may also be riding a Harley or hiking the Alps.

Or . . . naked.

That's the vision Stephen Gordet has. Gordet, owner of a Miami-based advertising agency, took out an ad last month in the South Florida Business Journal and in South Florida editions of the New York Times that features a couple in their early 70s. They are embracing. And that's not all they are.

They are models, they have perfect hair and teeth, and they are nude. (It's a G-rated shot, but they are naked.)

Are we ready for ads aimed at seniors that picture naked older people? People who could be our parents. Our grandparents. Or worse . . . ourselves.

For the most part, the answer is yes, say the people who track our preferences. Seniors today are less stuffy and more active than ever before, and baby boomers, that huge group of seniors-in-waiting, will be even more so. (You're a boomer if you were born between 1946 and 1964).

These are people who will have the time, the money -- and most important of all -- the attitude.

There is a widely held perception by people who are just becoming seniors (or will be there soon) that they're not old. That plays into the hands of advertisers, said Britt Beemer, president of America's Research Group, a marketing company and the author of It Takes a Prophet to Make a Profit. With the help of plastic surgeons, Harley Davidsons, Viagra, Rogaine and other drugs, they are regularly cheating Father Time.

"Since baby boomers are going to refuse to grow old, none of this (kind of advertising) will be edgy to them," Beemer said. "Look at the success of Viagra. There are huge industries that develop out of keeping boomers from feeling that they're growing old."

Beemer, a baby boomer himself at 52, said his generation is the first to be overwhelmingly resistant to the natural changes of getting older. "With all the drugs at our hands to help us remain young," he said, "we can defy the biological clock."

And it's not just boomers. People who are already seniors are also on the front lines in the battle against age.

"A lot of people in their 60s that I talk to refuse to go into the seniors category unless there's some monetary benefit," Gordet said. "If their banks want to give them free checking, they'll take it. But otherwise, no.

"The reason is that once you get into your 50s and 60s, most people, unless they become ill, see themselves as 10, 15, or even 20 years younger than they are. They don't think of their body as deteriorating or aging."

That, Beemer said, is because many older people are in better health than people of the same age a generation ago. And because seniors today believe they look younger.

"I think marketing has driven them to that point," Beemer said. "From drugs to health foods to exercise machines, the aging population is a multibillion dollar industry."

Still, there's that lingering question.

What's next? Baywatch: The Sun City Center Episodes?

"A large number of people would say the ad is just too much," Gordet said. "But Calvin Klein had to take some commercials off TV because they were too suggestive."

But those were young people. And they weren't nude.

This is like seeing George and Barbara Bush in the buff.

"We were trying to say that seniors have a full range of feelings," Gordet explained. "I've gotten a few calls from people who ask how I can show that, and why couldn't we at least put a little clothes on them?

"They said they thought of their parents naked and think it's disgusting."

Imagine that.

"But I've also gotten a call from a nurse who asked for copies to put in her office, and from other people who congratulated me for trying to change the attitudes we have about seniors."

If nothing else, the ad shows a side of seniors most people haven't seen before.

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