a lifestage never seen before : New Life Builders

simple ...?

New Life Builders = the future of demographics?for at least the next 20 years around the world is a life stage we have never seen before

Hi?

I hope you are having a great weekend. this last week i was asked, not for the first time, why i am so interested in the ageing marketplace and more importantly why i am so positive about it. it is less that i am positive about it and more that after 35?years at looking at the issue of ageing populations and the reality of what it might mean for marketers, and overseeing literally hundred?of focus groups and discussions and quite a bit of qualitative research ( and reading a LOT more from other people ) that i ended up understanding a simple reality : we are living right now in a time mankind has not seen before. the age of the late middle age. a time when the growth population are people in their 50-70s thinking about "what to do next?", about retryerment, about new life building.

back in 1988 while still working in Australia i started seeing how population projections were making an ageing market inevitable, not just there but it was already foreseeable?in Japan, Korea, China, Italy etc. and i could already see that marketers were misunderstanding?it ( ask me about the matchbox toys incident next time we see each other ).?

BUT?

It only got stronger in 1996 when I started working in Asia.

first i should point out I dont?believe?or really refer to "gen" breakdowns. My experience?reading "Generation X" and then meeting?the author Douglas Coupland cleared up for me as early as the early 992 that the notion of "generations" as a way to think about business opportunities is very weak when it comes to how they differ. For example I have been collecting "youth studies" that go back all the way to the 1960s for a long time and all that they tell us is that while the ways it is expressed may be different, the concerns, ambitions and "revolutionary" nature of youth does not. eg go look at the participants of the 1968 revolution. go look in high schools all over the West in the early?70s and the concerns over the environment and the "climate clubs"?that were formed. of course what they "revolted against and into" may have changed ( again ask me about the 1990s youth across asia trying to "revolt into the middle class") but the stresses, strains and attitudes of "being a teen" have not really changed.?

generally what matters and how people behave is not about "generations" and generational differences. the key to understanding what people want is understanding life stages.

and that was the great learning about the new super ageing of populations.

quite simply it has caused a lifestage we maybe did not have before.?

think about it. up until very recently life expectancy was, well, short. Yes in the 20th century we saw it starting to stretch. but the reality was that even in the "developed" world we were?talking about living in to your 70s as pretty good. way back before the new millenium started if you had a friend or relative who passed away at say 75 they had a "good life". now? not so much. just?yesterday one of the legendary radio DJ's?( if you are too young to know what that means look it up ) of sydney in the 80s when i was working at McCann died. he was 71. all the bios, the conversations were "wow he dies so early". quite simply in much of the world now we just assume we will live longer. at 60 we expect to live to be near 90. and it a lot of asia and europe that is still short changing reality.

ageing used to mean your 60-70s. now that is late middle age. a new age, a strange age. It is not a case of "boomer" screw ups. it is an unprecedented?world where more and more people will hit their 55-70+ period and then expect/know/guess/assume/find out that they have 2-3 decades to go. never before in history has so many people across just about every country?faced that.?

but again this is not new knowledge. well not if you had been looking around

waaaaaaaay back in 1995 i started looking at the then 55-70 age group across Asia Pacific. the folks that are in their?80s plus years now. and with the help of a whole lot of people and research and understanding came to a few fairly obvious conclusions.

of?course the big difference is that 55-75s in 1995 in those AP countries were fewer but with each decade the numbers have grown as a larger?and larger part of the population. in reality if you look at demographic data you would see that the over?55 age groups around the region are the fastest growing in nearly every country. In japan, hing kong, south korea for sure ... but also in India, vietnam, and all the other?so-called "young countries". yes the?numbers of under 25s is much higher, but proportionally the % of the population over 55 just keeps growing at a faster pace. and will continue to do so.

so starting 20 years ago we could see that each decade there are just many more in that relatively new age group. roughly 55-70+. maybe 20plus years of relatively healthy life to live. their children are grown. much of their financial reality is set. they may be wealthy singaporeans, japanese, australians with good government encouraged savings. or they may be the first generation of the mass urbanisation of manila, jakarta, dhaka. or they may be still living in a village in sichuan, or isan, or utter pradesh. Just a lot more people going through a stage where historically normal life ( grow up, work, raise a family, get ready to die ) has a new period slotted in.?so what to do with it ?

which leads to the reason i refer to people in that new life stage as New Life Builders.

back in 1996, with the help of my mate don?norris i set up the PULSE program for McCann across first?Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia and india and then the rest of asia. weekly focus groups across 12-13 cities talking to people about life. no big , specific brand focus. just exploring what mattered to people. we started with teens because we were working on coca-cola advertising. but quickly expanded to young adults starting their careers, to people creating and raising families and added 55-70 year olds initially to look at "grandparents". but i soon realised that was a bad definition. because they were not just grandparents. they were people thinking about "what they would do next". how to fill in the years ahead, how to find new interests, new hobbies, for a lucky few travel and education, for most new ways to make their next stage of life healthier and happier.?

in places like india, australia, taiwan and across the region we saw that people at all economic levels at that age were always interested in "what will happen next, what will i/we be doing next" ... not all expected it to be a great life, but all were focused on literally what they would do to build a new life in the next 10,20,30 years. often that would mean working till not possible. for the new middle classes it would mean maybe slowing down. for many finding new things to do, or a return to seeking new health activities, etc etc. the key of course was that by that stage of life the key elements of the 25-55 age range , raising afamily, was slowing down. yes there might be family responsibility, limited income, expectations of taking care of family ... but the immediate needs of child raising were slower, less of an issue ... hence a new life starts.?

and i have continued to do work with people passing that ever increasing "late middle age" and guess what ...

it is still true ..

of course some misconstrue i am talking about the upper middle class where new life building might mean travel, holidays, hobbies and fun times.

but i have done work with rural village New Life Builders as well .. there it might just be the move to not doing so much physical work, more focus on keeping up traditions etc

but always a major refocus of life

and the term "New Life Builders" ?? well back in the 90s when I was doing that work with McCann PULSE, the weekly qual groups with ordinary people in each of 13 cities across asia ( over 400 groups a year for first 5 years ) where we rotated what we ended up calling Identity Builders ( 16-23 year olds ) Career Builders ( 23-30) yea olds, Family Builders ( 30-45 ) ... and then we were stuck .. what to call the 55-70+ year olds were were talking to ... in one group in kula lumpur we actually asked a bunch of working class workers in the late 50-early 60s ... and one said roughly?"well we are starting a new life" ... and then at a McCann global strategy leads meeting i was explaining all this and the ever wise Joe Plummer suggested "well why not call them "New Life Builders"?and there you go. done deal !!

a new life stage. one mankind is finding?out about for the first time in history.

one that marketers and advertisers and governments were slow to latch on to even though all the stats and signals and signs have been there for 3 decades. but now, finally i am starting to see more companies and brands and officials starting to understand.?

brands from mouthwash to theme parks, real estate to sports cars, skincare to fashion and a whole lot of others starting to ask me more often to talk to them about NLBs.?

i can talk forever about it ... hey if you know me you know my talking about anything is just normal

but it just happened that in the last 2 weeks 3 old colleagues reached out, after in one case near 2 decades, to ask for a little help, three organisations asked me to speak about NLBs and then asked for more, and 5 linkedin contacts asked for some more to read or watch. ... turns out the world is getting the NLB idea it seems. so below is a short reading / viewing list you might find useful?... and of course...?

if you want to know more ... want help... want to focus on the fastest growing market in 2023, 2024, 2030, 2040 give me a yell :

"The Future is New Life Builders" ... a short article that David Alberts and the team at BeenThereDoneThat BeenThereDoneThat asked me to write a year ago ... for those of you who want a short hit of reality about NLBs

"are we finally focusing on new life builders" .. another short article explaining some simple changes needed when we think about researching the new life builder

"Rethinking New Life Builders" ... one of a series of webinars where Steve Sowerby and i talked to experts about health marketing .. in this case my old colleague Aki Kubo

"Longevity is Better than you think" ... where i was asked by 瑞信 suisse to explain the real difference that an ageing society is making and why retryerment?is such a powerful motivator for businesses to think about ...?

"ageing is better than you think" ... a slightly longer talk i gave for my friends at the #globalwellnesssummit Global Wellness Summit concerning rethinking what ageing populations are about ...?

"retirement?is better now" ... a discussion with my mate Aki Kubo again and my good friend Susan Bell ( who REALLY understands what retirement is all about these days ) ...?

and there is just a whole lot more ... happy to chat about all things?#newlifebuilders #retryerment #ageingpopulation #ageingasia #agingpopulation #agingasia #demographics #generations