I am not my father: Why Indian brands need to move with the times

Conversations with friends and family, watching parents and grandparents deal with the difficulties of aging, and my own experiences raising a young boy have made me think about aging as an individual and as a consumer.

My father was just over 40 when the Sensex crossed the 5,000-point mark for the first time in 1999, thanks to the victory of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP. More recently, when another BJP-led government was in power, the Sensex shot up to over 75,000 points. The market value difference between my father’s middle age and mine is more than 15 times. But there is more to it than just numbers.

He had much less disposable income than I do today, and while our needs overlap to some extent, my wants are very different. Some of my basic needs did not even exist when my father was in his 40s. We got our first communication device in the form of a landline connection from MTNL (a state-owned Indian telecommunications company) in our family home around 1992.

My father was 37. At the same age, I couldn’t live without being constantly connected to the world via a smartphone.

It is obvious that by the time my son is 35/40 years old, there will be an even greater shift in technology, behavior and culture.

In the time between my father’s fatherhood and my own, the marketing world largely failed to update its understanding of midlife.

They don’t understand me and prefer to resort to definitions that would be more appropriate for my father’s generation. Most established brands that traditionally appeal to this age group are desperately trying to rejuvenate themselves. Most emerging brands are finding that Gen Z offers more bang for their buck in the short term, and the older Millennials are losing commercial appeal to marketers. And that’s a huge, untapped opportunity.

Let’s call them Generation OM (a subgroup of Millennials) over 40, with a lifestyle more associated with people in their 30s. They live their lives to the fullest and still try to improve themselves. They want more experiences and have the means to fulfill their ambitions in installments.

(PS: Om is also my son’s name)

Some facts about Gen OM

• By 2024, about 30-35% of Indians will be between 45 and 65 years old.

• The average age in India today is 28.1 years, increasing year by year, and will reach 38.1 years in 2050.

• Generation OM has high disposable income and high aspirations. We spend much more on our living expenses and ambitions than my father and Generation Z did.

• But that’s all just the what and the how. The reason brands ignore them is because of some beliefs that companies find hard to let go of or update.

Old habits are hard to break (and hard to change)

Recently, Shantanu Deshpande (CEO of a modern Indian men’s grooming brand) in one of his viral videos talked about how Bombay Shaving Co. started making blades/razors for an older age group but then realized that it is much harder to move them away from the brands they have associated with.

I belong to the “older generation” – a proud OM.

If someone were to manufacture and market razors for me in the same way they did for my father, Shantanu’s observation would explain why the world is the way it is. But my personal care needs are much more complex. In my early “middle years” I was introduced to a variety of grooming/personal care products designed to help the terribly dehydrated skin of an office worker who drinks far less water than he needs. And that’s just one example.

Rather than changing old habits, adopting new behaviors and cultural discourses could yield better commercial results. Bombay Shaving Co. could expand its customer base rather than leaving us ageing oldies with rickety old razors and brands that still portray a “clean shave” as the only sign of professionalism/classiness/service etc.

The young are ahead of the curve: India has skipped computers on a large scale and gone straight to smartphones, making the transition to the digital universe much faster than most other developed countries. Generation Z was born into this handy digital India.

Brands have tried to keep up by targeting young people with transition videos, podcasts and weird filters, but the assumption here is that 40-year-olds are lagging behind, watching NDTV (one of India’s most popular TV channels) on YouTube and liking Facebook posts. (Side note: even my dad watches vertical videos now, but only on Facebook. I’m more of a shorts guy though.)

There is no doubt that Gen Z, India’s first digitally native generation, is a more innovative user of digital media. However, they are also super-fast, making a lot of noise while grabbing attention at lightning speed.

With such a loud digital presence, they drown out almost everyone else, causing brands to have blind spots towards the “middle-aged” audience who will actually pay serious attention to you if you can meaningfully help them navigate this rapidly changing world they’ve been thrown into rather violently.

Catch them young

For a long time, the motto was to catch children young because then you might be able to milk them for longer. But given the increasingly complex behaviors that come with age, this seems to be an overly simplistic philosophy. If this were true, then as a customer of Pampers (the diaper brand) I should buy the same brand for my son and my grandfather. But that doesn’t happen in real life, does it?

Although I have questioned some long-held marketing beliefs, the future is not bleak for us. There are categories that have established themselves, such as gin, snacks, personal care, etc.

All of these players are taking advantage of a macro trend: the increasing shift from collective purchasing and consumption behavior to individual purchasing and consumption behavior.

I sincerely hope that Generation OM will see more nuanced brands and marketing, somewhere between the geriatric “Revitalizing Capsules” and the yuppy “Mango Butter” lip gloss.

Remember, you and I are not our parents.

We have much more information, access and disposable income.

As consumers, we are much more complex.

We are far less satisfied.

Prashant Kohli is National Head of Digital at Leo Burnett India.