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: Samit Sinha, managing partner, Alchemist Brand Consulting, expressing concern that because of our new thrust on young India, where 50% of the population by 2015 would be post 1991-born, marketers are not specifically focused on the elderly, not realising that many among them would not just have a propensity to spend, but may also have the money and time resource to do so.

“Being less flirtatious at that age, they are more engaged with the media, yet they are not regarded as an important target for a wide variety of products and services,” says Sinha.

Sinha adds that exceptions include products “necessarily targeted at them, such as a Zandu Chyavanprash, or an ICICI Prudential policy.”

But did you know that the old travel more than the young? In the West, they even have a name for this class of travelers—empty nesters—and have special holiday packages designed for them.

In contrast, in India, the old are influential only if they are “rich” (Starcom finding). And, these cliques don’t just stop at products. They also extend well beyond—into services. So we have a 70-plus widow, the resident of a plush house in, say, Sainik Farms in south Delhi, who has a nice retirement income (her only son is settled in downtown California), who may occasionally like to go for a quiet dinner with friends but there isn’t one place she can think of that caters to her age demands in terms of accessibility, sixties music, or where the menu also features a low-sugar, low-sodium range of delicacies.

There are men’s only and women’s only and kids’ only sections at apparel stores; have you ever come across a seniors’ section? Not even at an outlet of a top national retailer.

Refer to box on page 1 for the number of life insurance brands that still subscribe to this age metaphor. Note that there is hardly any FMCG brand in the list, except for the HelpAge pizza delivery ad. Even the much acclaimed, Shoaib Akhtar challenge ad for Stronglas was true to type. The elderly woman was featured solely as a foil to the hunk cricketer.

The Starcom research found that there are three behaviour-changing events in a senior’s life: the birth of a grandchild; the death of a spouse and children leaving home for studies or marriage. These are significant milestones, and if marketers were to zero in on these three events, they would probably have an award-winning ad.