OPINION21 March 2012

Rethinking age, youth and beauty

Age, youth and beauty were the dominant themes in this morning’s MRS Conference session on culture and trends.

Age, youth and beauty were the dominant themes in this morning’s MRS Conference session on culture and trends.

Lisa Edgar of The Big Window applied some research rigour to the old saying, ‘You’re only as old as you feel’, coming up with a model of “perceived age” that showed itself to be a more reliable predictor of behaviour than “chronological” age.

Edgar called for a more nuanced view of age – which will be especially important as the number of people who are either past or approaching the age of 50 tops 50% of the UK population within 20 years.

Up to the age of 30, Edgar said, most people perceive themselves to be older than they are. After 30, the perception reverses, and people consider themselves younger. At 70, she said, a person might feel that they are only about 58 years old.

But people of all age groups can either feel young at heart or old at heart, and this is how the BBC recently looked to segment TV viewers, to work out what types of programmes appeal to people of various ages – both actual and perceived.

The broadcaster’s head of research David Bunker is clearly a convert to the idea of perceived age and its usefulness for things like programme development and scheduling. “It tells us something more insightful than ‘That person was born 30 years ago’,” he said.

But what of those people born less than three decades ago. Are they ‘the Con-Demmed Youth’? That was the question posed by Nicola Turnill and Andreas Thorslund of Dipsticks Research (with ‘Con-Demmed’ being a play on the cynic’s favoured shorthand for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government).

They had prepared their own segmentation of the 18-24 year-old demographic which found wide attitudinal differences – again underscoring the limitations of age in understanding people’s attitudes and behaviours.

Research uncovered a group of “go-getting”, ambitious females; a “passive massive” happy to go with the flow of life; and “cotton wool kids” cushioned by the wealth and support of their parents. They also identified a growing number of people defined as “shundergraduates”: the happiest group by far, who shunned university education (hence the name) but are in full-time employment and married, perhaps with kids.

And then there is the “minimum rage” group: an underemployed, unhappy bunch who lack ambition and drive. This is a group the media love to make us fear, especially during last year’s outbreak of rioting. Turnill and Thorslund didn’t say so, but one can’t help but feel that these are the real condemned youth – in the true sense of the word.

Finally, turning to the topic of beauty, Karen Fraser of Credos and Elizabeth Fagan, executive marketing director of Boots, talked about how the retailer had adapted the campaign for its No. 7 brand of cosmetics to address a growing frustration among women at the ‘fake’ photoshopped beauty often seen in advertising.

Fraser, a recent Research interviewee, drew on the results of Credos’s Pretty as a Picture study, which you can read more about here.

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