M&S is right to put over-60s out to grass
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To London’s Royal Festival Hall and last week’s AGM for Marks & Spencer. Publicly listed companies like M&S have to allow their shareholders an annual opportunity to ask questions of the board and generally make a nuisance of themselves. And the M&S event did not disappoint.
Mid-way through proceedings, 75-year-old widow Hilary Roodyn rose to her feet to challenge the assembled M&S leadership team on their targeting strategy. In a brief address that brought rapturous applause from the 2,000-strong crowd at the AGM, the retired sculptor and mother-of-two said: “I feel you are missing a trick. You are not catering for the over-60s”.
“Demographically,” Ms Roodyn continued, “We are growing and if you go on a cruise you’ll find a lot of us golden oldies wanting to wear pretty dresses. But we want to be covered up.”
It was Kate Bostock, the M&S executive in charge of general merchandise, who drew the short straw of trying to placate Ms Roodyn with an answer. Bostock admitted that the retailer could do better. “We try very hard to cater for our over-60s ladies, but there is plenty of room for improvement” Bostock offered.
I disagree. I think M&S are pretty much playing a perfect game at the moment by not catering to the over-60s. It’s exactly what any self respecting fashion brand should be doing if it wants to continue to thrive on the high street.
Fashion, you see, is a cold-hearted game. You hope to attract the teenagers, to make money from the 20-somethings, and to have a final fling with the middle-aged. But as soon as the consumer passes the dreaded threshold of 60 - it is time to wave goodbye.
Not because 60-year-old women are unattractive (of course they are ravishing), but because of the unavoidable realities of fashion. A 60-year-old consumer is a bad targeting choice for three simple reasons. First, even the most active 60-year-old woman buys fewer clothes than when she was 30. So she is worth less.
Not a problem you might think - why not target both the 30-year-old and the 60-year-old segments? Alas, fashion does not work that way. Daughters rarely want to wear the same brand as their mothers. The dynamics of the female fashion market mean that you either go after the young or the old. So you must target the young because they are worth more.
And finally, and most poignantly, older consumers have less lifetime value than their younger peers. Literally.
Add it all up and it’s pretty clear that M&S has to do everything in its power to stop wonderful women like Ms Roodyn buying their clothes. If it doesn’t do that the brand risks getting old with its clients and dying with them too.
M&S is not unusual in that, at 127 years of age, it is now older than any human on the planet. Many brands have outlived the original clients that first patronised them. But this presents a very peculiar problem because to survive, every fashion brand must, at some point, detach itself from its original target segment and move backwards to younger, more attractive segments. It has to keep doing this in order to continually stay alive across the centuries. To not regularly rejuvenate one’s target market would be to risk commercial failure. Death by brand loyalty!
At some point a decent marketer has to decouple from their loyal, but ageing customer base and make a concerted attempt to lose the mothers in order to recruit the daughters. That means an incredibly nerve-wracking period in which marketing is attempting to switch off its traditional clients, while simultaneously attempting to turn on new customers.
It isn’t ageism. It isn’t disrespectful to the older segments of society. It’s just business.
And British business is particularly vulnerable to growing old and dying with its consumers. Laura Ashley, Mary Quant, Daks, Aquascutum, Rolls Royce… I could go on. We British have a proven record of creating incredibly hot brands and then letting them gently cool as they age gracefully with their original clients.
As marketers, we must always serve the brand before the consumer. Some customers are bad for business no matter how elegant, impassioned or loyal they appear to be. Marketing is not sales. In many cases, marketing is exactly the opposite of sales.
Fashion marketers have a duty to their brand and to their shareholders to constantly use the marketing Ps of price, promotion, place and product to stop older consumers from buying the brand and thus encouraging the next, more valuable generation behind them on the demographic conveyor belt of life to buy into the brand in their place.
I have no idea whether Kate Bostock was simply patronising Ms Roodyn last week at the AGM or whether she was genuinely sorry that M&S was not doing more for the over-60s. I hope for the sake of the other shareholders in the room last week, it was the former.
Mark Ritson is an associate professor of marketing, an award winning columnist, and a consultant to some of the world’s biggest brands
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Readers' comments (11)
Anonymous | Wed, 20 Jul 2011 3:46 pm
i like what you're saying Mark. There's something else in here, maybe - big brands shape the landscape. What a 60-year old thinks a 60 year old should look like is influenced by dominant forces in the market. I suspect that that older ages haven't been successfully targetted by M & S marketing. Perhaps some channel-specific work would win through.
Chris (aged 47 and a half, wearing 3 items by M&S today).
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Anonymous | Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:25 am
What an odd comment?! Did you read the article (which I thought very interesting by the way)? Perhaps some over-60s focused 'channel' targeting would lose the youth market; that's the whole point.
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Neil Hopkins | Thu, 21 Jul 2011 3:29 pm
Mark
Please could you explain your comment: "Marketing is not sales. In many cases, marketing is exactly the opposite of sales."
As far as I was aware, the whole point of marketing is to create sales. To connect consumer with product in an effective and cost-efficient fashion.
I'm not quite sure whether I've misunderstood/misread your comment - if you could elaborate I would really appreciate it...
On a secondary point, I believe that I read a statistic somewhere about the UK demographic being divided into 60+ and under 16s and the majority segment in the very near future (sorry to be so vague - I really can't remember where I read it).
So if M&S don't give the 60+ credence now, aren't they potentially storing up issues for later?
Thanks
Neil
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Neil Hopkins | Thu, 21 Jul 2011 4:07 pm
Update on my previous comment - the statistics I referred to aren't quite right, but the demographic projections can be seen here : http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=8519
(First pdf file 2018 stats make interesting reading but the ones I was thinking of look more like 2023)
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Anonymous | Thu, 21 Jul 2011 4:37 pm
Well that was an article treading on dangerous ground. At the very least a bit odd. Surely there is room for marketing to both young and old within M&S - it's essentially a 'department' store so it's audience is broad. I also understood that the 60+ audience were set to outstrip the youngsters in the coming years so it may be a bit risky wiping out such a large batch of potential customers.
I just hope we don't reach the day (which you seem to be suggesting is on it's way) when those over 60 are forced to visit Oxfam for second hand clothing as most retailers stop selling anything age appropriate on the high street.
I'm about 20 years away from being 60 - goodness knows what I'll be wearing by the time I get there!
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Sheamus J Maher | Thu, 21 Jul 2011 5:47 pm
Oh Dear, Oh Dear! Mr Ritson, frighteningly consultant to "some of the world’s biggest brands" offer a solution that defines in a blinkered traditionalist manner exactly why brands die – not why they survive. His solution is the equivalent of appointing a new brand manager every 2 years with a new strategy, each strategy diametrically opposed to the last, but each promising the earth to management until the brand is dead. The poor professor clearly either does not or has not understood the strength of aspiration in business and confuses high fashion (which M&S is not) with trends (that M&S rides). Trends appeal across the ages,- to a pre-teen child the marketer – (with discretion) offers aspiration to be a teenager, to a twenty something the sophistication of youth, to those in mid-life crisis around 40 – 60 the opportunity to aspire to the performance of being thirty something and to the 60+ the opportunity to create their style in the current vogue. Not unsurprisingly, neither mature women, as a rule, wear cotton elasticated knickers nor do men of a similar age retire into long johns. They wear current “trend” styles and invade Glastonbury, I had not noticed that Glastonbury was weakened by the presence of the mature population. M&S is a modern mass universal brand – coming cold to the market do you imagine you could market butter and bras in the same brand environment? Wake up and smell the new world Mr Ritson – the art of M&S management is not easy and they cannot please all the people all the time, but they can and should span the ages and survive – especially with the changing demographics of the retail market place.
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Fatmir | Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:20 pm
As always, Mark brings interesting marketing points in his article. Another good article which raises many arguably points. Firstly, it is argued that the marketing drives revenue and marketing is more than sales, more than advertising, and more than other marketing mix. Furthermore, marketing should be responsible for creating products that meet customer needs and wants. Whereas, sales is least effective or and efficient parts of the marketing mix. However, it is believed that sales are a marketing responsibility. Marketing’s job is to demonstrate to the sales people where to walk and arm them to sell. Moreover, marketers usually educate and advise sales people, about the market place and customer’s needs. Finally, as for market segmentation, for one thing it can be easily argued that smart marketing start always with smart segmentation. I fully agree with you that Marketing is not sales but Marketing supports sales doesn't it Mark?
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Anonymous | Fri, 22 Jul 2011 4:20 pm
A great article with some strong marketing messages. There is no doubt that tough times like these require strong decisions to be made by business leaders when it comes to brand strategy. I do however feel that a truly excellent marketing director would not simply ignore such an important and wealthy customer base. If someone has taken the time and effort to make shareholders aware of a potentially lucrative segment of customers, then any astute marketer would surely view this as an opportunity, and not a dangerous threat, even if it does mean creating a new brand (separate to ‘theirs’) which utilises core M and S resources. It’s a classic example of marketing arrogance to preach and defend ‘their’ brand first, and then think later, as opposed to find a solution within the organisation’s wider commercial context and capitalising upon an opportunity. A clearly focused brand strategy does not have to clash with a potentially substantial business opportunity, and should embrace opportunities presented by passionate customers rather than ignore them. It might sound basic but mark ritson, for the sake of making an important and valid point, has forgotten that brands and entire businesses are nothing without their customers, especially such wealthy and empowered ones (From last week’s marketing week - “The over 50s outspend their under 50s counterparts by 20%. It’s also generally accepted that over 50s control 80% of the UK’s wealth...”).
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Heike Stein | Sun, 24 Jul 2011 1:52 am
Was Mark Ritson writing about the MENA region or the United Kingdom? Europe’s changing demographics provide us marketers with the wonderful opportunity to develop creative approaches and strategies which satisfy the wishes of a rapidly ageing population. AND: We simply cannot ignore the baby boomer/golden boomer generation (healthiest and wealthiest) in retailing incl. fashion. They tend to look, feel and act much younger than their parents did at the same age (on average 10-13 years) and have got, generally speaking, a higher life expectancy. I’ve received many complaints from the boomers re the UK fashion industry ignoring them. They want to look stylish, trendy and young (preferably not Lolita style). Are their key demands/requirements only the prerogative of the young? If properly targeted with inspiring (!) designs and appropriate sizes they would also be prepared to dig deeper into their pockets. For example, marketers in Germany have recognised the shift in demographics (plus the money making opportunities therein) and one can find various excellent and successful fashion brands, aiming specifically at the baby boomers/golden boomers or in Mr. Ritson’s words: the “should-be-(officially?)-out-to-grass” age groups. I’m a 52 years old trailing edge boomer and can happily confirm that I’m splashing out far more money on fashion now than I did in my younger years! It is highly unlikely that my purchasing behaviour will change when reaching the 60 years milestone in my life.
It is also blindingly obvious that the M&S department store retail concept caters to a diverse group of consumers from different walks of life. Suffice it to say that the desired young mature fashion range should reflect current trends and avoid stuffiness. We are talking about a generation that has experienced and/or was participating in the ‘60s and ‘70s cultural explosion. Re advertising, M&S appears to be on the right track with the usage of Twiggy as a baby boomer/golden boomer ambassador. BTW, the youngsters are pretty much used to their “cool and laid-back” parents nowadays.
Populous age groups cannot be condemned - targeting the “forever young” boomers (Blue Ocean Strategy?) is surely an integral part of the M&S retail strategy. It can be more lucrative (depending on the relevant marketing strategies/product choices, purchasing decisions etc.) than solely concentrating on a market riddled with competition s. high-street fashion chains targeting a predominantly young audience. Needless to say, I do not support the - unfortunately - widespread “baby boomers/golden boomers R.I.P.” idea. Stop the exclusion (discrimination?) of an overall mentally fit, vigorous, healthy and creative generation! It is arrogant and extremely short-sighted.
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Juniper | Sun, 24 Jul 2011 6:04 pm
I'm hoping this is just deliberately provocative and commentators are missing the point. Let's throw older people on the scrap heap, they are no longer valuable consumers, heck why allocate any resources to them at all when you think about it? Hasn't the Prof heard of "grey power" and an ageing demographic? Frankly if M&S took his advice on this they'd deserve a boycott. I can't see why ranges for different ages are problematic. M&S already caters for a range of ages...
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