Across Age of Opportunity, Prolific North and HUB have explored how brands can better understand older customers, represent their lives and earn their trust. To conclude the series, HUB co-founder and chairman Chris Hudson draws on the agency’s experience to explain how marketers can turn those insights into better creative, stronger campaigns and customer experiences that deliver…
Sometimes the best advice is the simplest advice, and that can easily be applied to “over-55 marketing strategies”. My advice would be to stop overcomplicating it.
Most marketing agencies and departments spend hours trying to crack the code of the 55+ customer. From tweaking fonts to over-segmenting the audience, a substantial part of the UK population is analysed like an alien species that suddenly completely changes when they reach their 55th birthday.
At HUB, we spend a lot of time with these mature markets. The most valuable lesson we’ve learned isn’t something complex to do with algorithms or some data-centric strategy, as important as these things can be as part of the wider picture. The lesson is quite simple. People don’t change who they are just because they turn 55. They don’t want to be spoken to differently, and they definitely don’t want to be patronised.
If you want to know how to market to this demographic successfully, stop looking around at your competitors and look at the brands that actually command trust.
The M&S blueprint
Look at the BBC, Marks & Spencer, John Lewis, or Boots.
M&S aren’t sitting in creative meetings asking, “How do we make this coat appeal specifically to a 62-year-old?” They know a huge portion of their customer base is over 55, alongside plenty who are under that age range. Yet, they don’t change their tone of voice, alter their brand identity, or stick huge text on their homepage to target older buyers. They simply focus on quality, trust and design that works.
The numbers back it up. YouGov’s 2026 Best Brand Rankings put Marks & Spencer first in the UK, with John Lewis fourth and Boots ninth. These are brands with broad appeal across generations.
The BBC doesn’t redefine its editorial style or redesign its website as soon as an older user goes to check the news. Good user experience is universal. In the digital world, larger typefaces, clear contrast and straightforward site navigation don’t just help older audiences; they make it easier for everyone.
The moment a brand tries too hard to pander to age, it loses. Mature consumers have spent decades learning what they like and being spoken to in a certain way. Condescending, corporate fluff won’t cut it. They’re looking for respect, authenticity, and clear value. Just like every other consumer.
The mirror test
There’s a really important part of human psychology that we all know but rarely acknowledge. Nobody feels their age. What’s more, nobody wants to feel their age.
I’m 59, but in my head, I’m 39. If I see an ad featuring a model that looks older than me, my immediate reaction would be to reject that product. “That’s too old for me”.
Research by the ASA into the depiction of older people in advertising, published in 2025, found that 44% of UK adults felt older people were either underrepresented or not represented at all in ads, with over a third, 35%, feeling that older people tended to be negatively stereotyped.
We’ve proved the importance of this time and time again during HUB’s creative testing. When we deployed younger models and creatives that matched the sleeker product design for brands like CareCo, engagement soared. They introduced carbon fibre options to their scooter range, so we pushed modern CGI to give the product a high-tech feel in ads. We didn’t treat them as ‘just another mobility scooter for the elderly’; we treated them like premium, modern products. The result was that they became best sellers.
So the lesson here is to match the audience’s self-image and not their birth certificate.
Breaking the denial period
At HUB, we have extensive experience in the mobility sector. The single biggest barrier to purchase in this market is the denial period.
Whether it’s a riser recliner chair or another mobility aid, the period between a consumer needing one of those products, or at least benefiting from it, and buying it can span years. People don’t want to admit that they need support. Once again, this comes from psychology; it feels like acceptance of growing old.
A study led by UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that women were less likely to use mobility aids despite greater need. The researchers highlighted stigma, cost and product design as possible barriers, although the study did not establish why participants were not using them.
I saw this with my own mum, who finally agreed to get a mobility scooter a month before she passed away. This denial can rob people of years of independence.
And funnily enough, the most common phrase our clients hear from customers is “I only wish I’d done it sooner.”
The real job of marketers here is to break down that denial period and replace stigma with something aspirational. Focus groups might tell you what execution works, but to get real insights, you need to speak to real people. Customer stories are the greatest form of truth-telling. “Don’t just take our word for it” is the way to build that emotional connection.
It’s also important to connect the functional features of a product to emotional benefits. Take a riser recliner chair, for example. A customer doesn’t buy a riser recliner just because they want a motor to help them get up. They want it to help them effortlessly rise and greet their grandchildren when they visit. The benefit extends beyond the chair itself to the independence and connection it can help preserve.
Impact at every touchpoint
It’d be too easy to treat media planning for older demographics as an exercise in print and daytime TV buying. Similarly, relying heavily on Google or Meta algorithms that are still playing catch-up on how this audience behaves online can be risky. Algorithms can’t be relied on to know everything. In fact, they can still learn from us.
When I co-founded HUB, I did so with the knowledge that the different areas of marketing work better under one roof. With everything from strategy, creative, and content production through to paid media and data analytics in one place, we don’t waste time or budgets passing assets around, trying to figure out what works in silos. Instead, we can execute rapid, multi-channel A/B testing to pinpoint exactly what motivates customers.
One channel that does work particularly well for our clients is TV sponsorship. Older demographics watch a significant amount of television, and it’s a very trusted medium. But if you run the exact same TV sponsorship ident or 30-second commercial during every ad break, fatigue soon sets in.
The idents should be there to tell a story. You’ve got one hour to tell that story in eight different parts, so make the content varied and appealing to different needs. Then, use that content everywhere else. Add a photographer on-set to capture stills for press ads, film several 30-second spot TV ads and videos specifically for social media, and create dozens of copy variations that highlight different benefits.
If the end goal is to drive footfall to showrooms or physical stores, build them to match the leading high street brands. If a customer walks out of John Lewis and into CareCo, they shouldn’t feel a difference in quality. We’re often told that CareCo showrooms surprise people and that they feel in line with M&S in terms of infrastructure and investment. That’s vital for trust-building.
My final takeaway
Marketing to over-55s isn’t something that requires a separate rulebook; it just takes insight and experience.
Age isn’t a personality trait. Focus on life changes, solve genuine barriers to entry, speak with authenticity, and treat your audience with the dignity they deserve. If you speak to them as you’d speak to anyone else, really focusing on not being patronising and being authentic, then the market will follow.
