I’m a kidult now: tracking youth via the ‘not youth’ Adam Ferrier
If you’re reading this you work in advertising and marketing. These industries sell products by turning them into brands. We do this by finding out and reflecting what people want, or as we say ‘need’, and embedding this ‘need’ in a communications message. Most people’s ‘needs’ include the need to be more beautiful, the need to be more popular, the need to be cool, the need to be adventurous, the need to be happy and, most prominently, the need to be young. As a culture, being young, staying young or at the very least maintaining a youthful attitude are paramount.
Selling to the youth market has been the subject of marketing rhetoric for the past 50 years. However, only a small percentage of the population is actually ‘young’. So what is the impact on the rest of us living in a consumer culture where the prevailing societal message created is stay young and be happy? And how do we as marketing/advertising professionals cope being in a youth-obsessed industry within a youth-obsessed culture?
This series of articles will focus on Not Youth Culture. What is it like for the rest of us who are not in the magic demographic (18-29ish with a ‘beautiful looking’ filter)? What is the impact on youth culture and what lessons can we apply to brands not directly targeting the revered ones?
I’m in my early 30s. An age when people want to hang on to youth, yet are forced to recognise the natural and irreversible aging process. The result is what has been termed ‘kidults’. That is, adults who wear Stussy and Mooks to work, play PlayStation, take drugs and generally skylark like they did in the youthful times of old.
What’s it like being a kidult? Are we sad-looking folk trying to hang onto youth, or alternatively are we having the last laugh expressing what we want without giving a fuck?
One thing is certain—age determining ‘appropriate behaviour’ is losing saliency as a concept. It is no longer age that determines how we act, but rather our interests and attitudes. The obsession we have created about youth has, for many, freed us up from the prescribed ‘stages-of life’ formula prevalent for so long. We are freer to hang onto the values of youth; non-conformity, impulsiveness, challenge and hedonism… all the good stuff! And to this point I guess we are all benefiting from the societal mandate of ‘be young, it’s more fun’.
However, it comes at a price, and it’s not without effort. Take music for example. Getting older, the radio station just doesn’t quite make sense. “Why does Triple J sound foreign? Why don’t they play a good selection of music like they used to? Why do I have such difficulty identifying which bands are playing which songs. Why does the Big Day Out line-up get worse every year?” It used to seem so innate before—you just knew who was in and who was out. You didn’t have to try and keep your ear to the ground—it was just stuck there.
What are the implications of this? Make it easy. Identify that your targets may aspire to be young—but they are not so intrinsically involved in youth culture. Give us easy how-to steps. Celebrate the fact that your ‘youth target’ is now possibly aged between 18 and 45, and on this point develop and research concepts using inputs from older people. Above all else have compassion for those of us who have recently slipped out of the prized zone. Don’t isolate the would-be youth with high disposable incomes.
PS. I wouldn’t be seen dead in Tsubi.
Adam Ferrier is a consumer psychologist working as a strategic planner at Saatchi & Saatchi. He writes about brands, people and contemporary culture.
