Foreign Perspectives

Archive for July, 2010

Whilst we all think that we’d like to live in interesting times, of course such times are interesting because they are filled with the unexpected which is usually a sign of trouble.

Thus over the last couple of years we’ve had by far the most interesting time in global economics for many decades. That interest came in the form of banks and economies around the world collapsing and with the corresponding knock-on effect on the real world in terms of jobs lost, businesses closing, houses being repossessed and taxes rising. And it’s not over yet.

Throughout all that global bad news there have been untold numbers of individuals receiving their own bad news ranging from job losses through to families finding themselves out on the street due to reasons outside their control.

I’m sure that many people would prefer to opt for living in really boring times these days.

For guys cosmetics are a major minefield and one that they simple don’t even think of venturing into except around the time of Christmas or birthday presents and even then unless they’re handed a note, chances are that they’ll come back with the wrong thing.

That’s even for relatively simple stuff too. What on earth is night cream for instance? Why should it be different from day cream? When you read the descriptions there seems to be no really good reason for there to be a difference at all.

Of course the real reason for such things is that it allows for more potential marketing to be done. Thus any brand you can name puts out a whole range of stuff with different names largely so that they can sell more stuff.

In case you haven’t notices, the post-war baby boom began to hit retirement age about five years ago and the retirees will continue to rise in numbers for another ten to fifteen years.

This group has been one of the largest target markets since the 1960s and drives much of the marketing and product development spend that you’ll have seen over the last fifty years or so. Thus today we see things like face wrinkle cream hitting the shelves in quantities that would have been unheard of only ten years ago and all because this group are getting to the point where they need such things.

What’ll happen over the next twenty years as they retire will be a shift in marketing towards a much older age group than hitherto we’ve been used to. The cosmetic industry will have a field day naturally but then so will all kinds of medical aids companies and, of course, the financial services people will move to produce products aimed at a more mature market. No more will the example customer be a 30 year old: think 60 year old these days.

All being well this massive shift will let me buy that immortality pill at some point 🙂