Dave McCaughan, Expert on Age and International Culture, Explains What Brands Get Wrong about Older People…
9 mins read

Dave McCaughan, Expert on Age and International Culture, Explains What Brands Get Wrong about Older People…

Dave McCaughan is a storyteller, marketing expert, consultant, and public speaker passionate about understanding the interconnection between people and brands. 

He spent three decades with McCann throughout Asia, developing the Strategic Planning practice and working with a stellar roster of global clients.

Ten years ago, he created a fascinating consultancy called BIBLIOSEXUAL for “marketing what matters to people” and joined two partners in establishing AI Agency, which uses artificial intelligence to track the narratives important to building brand stories.

Among the many topics he’s passionate about now are better qualifying “life stages” and redefining aging. An older population can generate tremendous potential for brands; one example is how grandparents spend on various products and opportunities for grandchildren.

Not only does Dave study how older adults are perceived and misperceived in different cultures, but he also looks at what brands get wrong (or right) when targeting them.

He believes marketers must rethink an aging world that disrupts our past notions of reaching 50, 60, 70, or beyond.

VIEW A QUICK CLIP FROM DAVE

LIFE STAGES: NEW LIFE BUILDERS

After spending more than 30 years researching people of all ages and studying market research reports dating as far back as the 1950s, Dave is convinced that “Life Stages” are a much better guide to understanding people’s motivations, needs, fears, and other aspirations relevant to brands than the current “generations” approach– be it Baby Boomer, Generation X, Millennials, Gen Z or “Centennials.”

He also believes that the marketing community needs to rethink all populations aged over 60. “Most marketers have fallen for the many myths about people aged 60 and older. Given the consumer spending of this group worldwide, it is a mistake to ignore them and only focus on youth.”

Today, he asserts, individuals over 60 do not see themselves as “older,” “silver,” or “seniors,” but literally as New Life Builders who are forward-looking and open to new ideas, goals, and experiences– particularly in a post-COVID world. Dave, a lover of language, recognizes the importance of this group’s thoughts of “retryerment,” not retirement.

He adds that people at age 60 are as different from people at 80 as a 20-year-old is distinctly different from a 40-year-old– given their interests, desires, economic needs, and life experiences. Dave has campaigned tirelessly for years to encourage research companies to acknowledge life stages or age breaks for adults over 60 and those under 60. In 2022, ESOMAR acknowledged Dave McCaughan’s appeal. While he’s grateful, he adds that much more work must be done. 

He has worked with marketers in Asia and worldwide to help them rethink aging populations– whether in cosmetics, travel, automobiles, entertainment, beverages, finance, or other categories. Every brand can benefit from this exploration of people’s motivations at various life stages.

To learn more from Dave McCaughan about how brands can drive real growth by understanding NEW LIFE BUILDERS, watch the video interview on Internationalist Marketing TV (IMTV) on YouTube by CLICKING HERE.

LOOKING FORWARD

When Dave moved from Australia to Asia for McCann in 1996, he started a monthly focus group program with people aged 55 to 70+ in 20 cities across the region. He continued that program for over 15 years. For several years, these focus groups also ran in the US, Brazil, the UK, France, and Italy.

The most important learning from that work was that people in the 55-70 age group, whether in Mumbai, Tokyo, Auckland, New York, London, Paris or Sao Paulo, shared a single trait: looking forward.

“When I first started looking at aging issues in the late 80s, I was surprised that some demographers referred to retirement as ‘the waiting-for-death years.’ However, on further investigation, I found that people in their 60s and 70s were actually more likely to be thinking about: ‘What will I do next?’ For the most part, all people from 55 to their mid-70s are exploring options. And now that I’m in that life stage, I get to live, observe, and report on it more than ever.” 

In our conversation, we discuss the following:

  • Let’s begin with the obvious… What do brands get wrong about older people?
  • Wouldn’t the purchasing power of this age group have enormous marketing appeal? Or do most brands feel that featuring older people in their messaging changes perceptions about their “relevance” or “vitality.” Do brands even need to feature “seniors” to encourage 60+ people to buy or try a brand?
  • Can you give us some examples of brands that got this group wrong… as well as those that got it right?
  • You talk about People 60+ as New Life Builders. What does this mean?
  • Just as many marketers believe that young people worldwide have more in common with each other than older generations, do you think that the “Over-60 Set” worldwide is more alike than different?
  • What about the post-COVID experience, especially in terms of strained economics? Many small businesses, intergenerational family companies, and fledgling restaurants did not survive… and many folks in their 50s stopped looking for jobs… Are they also reinventing themselves?
  • You talk a lot about retrying things and looking forward… Do you believe that more people are healthier and living longer, so they have that kind of optimism? Are you finding it continues to the end of life? What about less vigorous people who do not “age well”? Or is there another less energetic stage?
  • You’ve lived much of your life in Asia, where respect for the aged is prevalent, especially in markets like Japan. Do you find that there is a “bias” against older people in other markets? Or is that a misperception?
  • Language can do so much to change perceptions. Is there a way you’d like to characterize “aging”?

Listen to Dave McCaughan discuss new perspectives on aging and to The Internationalist’s entire Trendsetters podcast series here on iHeartRadio’s Spreaker or wherever you download your podcasts.

Dave often talks about how he got interested in the value of aging populations for brands. In the late 1980s, he noticed Australian census data projected that the country would have an aging population by 2015. He wrote a short summary for all company executives, and one showed it to a client who misunderstood the impact.

“The client was from a toy company that concluded an aging population would mean selling fewer toys. I showed them that, in fact, one industry that benefits from an aging, even a shrinking, population would be toys. Why? Because proportionally more grandparents were living longer, spoiling grandkids more with more expensive toys. A conclusion I am glad to say has been proven again and again.”

Dave McCaughan’s Biography

Based in Bangkok since early 2015, Dave McCaughan brings the experience of three decades of leading communication strategy for brands across the Asia Pacific region and now is leading the use of new thinking about demographics and marketing and the use of artificial intelligence based research to discover insights about brands and their stories.

Dave began his advertising life joining McCann, one of the worlds largest marketing communications groups, in 1986 in his native Sydney where he built the Strategic Planning function. From 1995 until 2015 he was based in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo and back in Hong Kong building the strategy divisions of McCann across the region and leading regional strategy and communication campaign development for clients including L’Oreal, Coca-Cola , MasterCard, Nestle, Cathay Pacific, Sunstar, Hitachi, Johnson&Johnson and many others

He has an extensive history of working on the implications of media changes, how society is influenced by them and then influences them in turn. Amazingly still seen as an Asian thought leader on youth marketing (despite the hair) he is also leading key initiatives into understanding the ageing markets of Asia.

Dave has talked at over 500 conferences globally and has been a regular columnist for journals like Advertising Age, Japan Close-Up, Mumbrella Asia, Campaign Asia, Research World. Dave now has a regular column in ICE Business World ( Bangladesh ). He was a board member and contributor for ESOMAR’s Research World for a decade and since early 2016 has produced a series of over twenty five audio podcasts called MR Realities that look at trends and the use of market research in all aspects of marketing and product development.

In 2015 Dave initiated BIBLIOSEXUAL http://bibliosexual.weebly.com/
as a consultancy that brings together his long term passion for understanding the interaction of people and media with brands and stories. He describes a bibliosexual as “someone who understands the relationship between form and content and that for different people one may be more relevant than the other”.

Before starting work in the advertising world Dave worked as a yoghurt maker, a children’s storyteller and librarian, a menswear salesman and for one year as a butler to a rather strange Roman Duke.