Today’s Age Shuffle

For generations, 40 has been the dreaded milestone in aging. It marked the edge of the map of youth, the point of no return on the downward stumble to crumbling old age. Adolescent behaviors and keeping options open could stretch through one’s 20s and into one’s 30s, but not into the 40s. Anyone in his or her 40s who hadn’t settled in to some form of genuine adulthood risked ridicule.

Protagonists portrayed in the movies, TV, and other mass media are overwhelmingly fresh 20-somethings and well-moisturized 30-somethings who could pass for younger still. Yet out in the real world, 40 and above is increasingly the norm as populations across the globe grow older. Already, 40 is the median age in Japan, and it will be in Europe by 2010. In the United States, the average age will continue to be in the upper 30s, thanks largely to the constant influx of younger immigrants, but even the U.S. is seeing a shift toward 40 as the norm.”

There is an age shuffle, as 40-somethings behave as 30-years-olds traditionally have (partying, dressing provocatively, looking young and glam, having babies, traveling, and saving next to nothing), while more and more 30-somethings seem to be acting like traditional 40-somethings (worrying about retirement, mortgage payments, life insurance, marrying, and settling down). It’s almost as if men and women who grew up in the 1970s still feel entitled to have and do it all, while those who went through adolescence in the ‘80s have reacted against the excesses of that era and the decade that followed and decided to roll up their sleeves and get down to the hard work of being bona fide adults.

The world of rising 40s challenges businesses, brands, and marketers to rethink not just what and how they’re communicating, but their whole attitude toward age.

The Yin and Yang of Modern Life: Material Chores in a Digitized World

The march of progress over the past century has given individuals greater control over many aspects of their lives. Certainly from the mid-1950s onward, virtually every innovation of consumer technology has increased people’s autonomy, allowing them to do more things independently, whether it be placing a phone call, getting cash from an ATM, or baking marbled rye in a bread machine.

For better or for worse, it’s a help-yourself world—and that includes chores as well as pleasures.

Something else has changed, too. Much of our lives now take place in the digital sphere. To paraphrase tech guru Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, people are increasingly moving digital bits around rather than atoms; they are manipulating information rather than material. E-mail has largely replaced “snail mail.” The content of thousands of heavy vinyl LPs and slightly less heavy CDs can now be fitted onto a tiny medium of similar weight to a single vinyl LP. Money used to be heavy metal, then it became paper, and now most of it is bits and bytes shifted between computers.

Yet there are certain aspects of modern life that simply can’t be digitized—they remain stubbornly material. Even telecommuters have flesh-and-blood bodies that need food to eat and shelter from the elements. However much of our lives we spend on the telephone, in cyberspace, playing computer games, or consuming electronic media, the household chores still need to be done in the material world.

The New Luxury Market

Today’s luxuries may be products, services, and pleasures that most people can’t afford, but they may equally be ordinary things individuals normally simply don’t find the time, energy, or opportunity to enjoy.  Luxury in the 21st century isn’t about what you can afford to spend, it’s about what you can afford to enjoy.  The pace, complexity, and clutter of life today make it difficult for people to savor their pleasures fully; having the best of everything is not luxury if the person doesn’t take real pleasure in it. 

Taking time to savor sights, sounds, textures, smells, and tastes to their full measure without rushing on to the next thing is increasingly becoming a luxury for many people.  Self-indulgence isn’t just about feeling good; it’s also about doing good—particularly among the wealthy.  And, ease is the ultimate luxury: Feeling carefree becomes a luxury when work is more pressured than ever, job security is a thing of the past, and everyone is being pushed to take responsibility for his or her own health, wealth, and well-being. People rarely have the luxury of feeling light and easy, of being able to luxuriate in the sense that the only thing that matters is what they’re enjoying right now.

Convergence is Coming Together

For more than a decade now, convergence has been a buzzword among switched-on marketing people, digerati, and crystal-ball gazers. They’ve predicted convergence, observed convergence, designed for convergence, and debated the implications of convergence.   But what exactly is convergence? As with many buzzwords, the exact meaning depends on who’s doing the talking.

Whatever the precise context may be, convergence is a shorthand way of talking about things coming together in a common format or in the same space. It’s bringing big changes to the way we work and live. Convergence means categories that previously existed separately are seeping into each other; they’re merging and forming new hybrids. The boundaries between different types of technology and different types of media content are becoming blurred. This is extremely important because brands no longer know exactly which sector they are operating in, whom they were competing against and with what tools.

The shift in power between the sexes is creating a situation in which women’s scope of action is growing fast, while men are increasingly boxed in. The rules of the gender game have changed dramatically, as modern economies continue to move away from relying on muscle power and toward leveraging brain power.  Female independence and the focus on greater equality between the sexes has marginalized men and forced them to reinvent themselves and their views on masculinity. The enormous impact these shifts can have on a variety of industries is something worth talking about.

Some key findings include:

• The complaint always used to be that it’s a man’s world, but that has clearly shifted and is expected to shift more. The media, the workplace, the home, and the marketplace are all areas of modern life in which gender fluctuations are having a significant effect.

• Today women have far more leeway than men—more choice and more room for action and self-expression.

• In a world in which the media reflect and shape opinions more pervasively than ever before, the survey confirmed that most people, and not just resentful men, think the media—and, hence, public discourse—are run with a pro-female bias and are in the business of promoting female values.

• Over the years, women have been vocal in their demand for greater respect from men. And it seems the men were listening.

• Today more than ever, marketers and media owners work on the age-old premise that “sex sells,” which has the effect of giving sex a lot to live up to.

• There are very good arguments for businesses to be “gender blind.” In fact, the opening of job opportunities to women has reached the point at which many respondents agree, “Some professions and careers are becoming dominated by women.”

• Yet for all the progress made by women, there’s little doubt that there’s still a long way to go. Consider the issue of remuneration.