Guests Nicole Munsey and Dana Keilman, co-founders of consumer insights consultancy Morning Light Strategy, discuss the largely untapped potential of the 50-plus market, which they characterize as “The NextGen Consumer.” Debunking common myths and misconceptions about this audience, Dana and Nicole explain how their research identifies extended ecosystems of family decision-makers, the relevance of emerging trends such as AgeTech, and their new partnership with AARP.
Episode Transcript
Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS:
Nicole Munsey: 50 plus doesn’t mean boomers anymore. And I think we all need to adjust that mindset accordingly, right? Gen X is now over 50. I’m a Millennial, and I’m going to be over 50 in eight years. And that’s going to have a lot of implications.
Dana Keilman: Because of lower birth rates and longer life expectancies, it means that as we continue to get older, we’re all contributing to the growth of the 50-plus demographic, whereas the growth of the 18 to 34 is really staying flat.
Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS: fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. US consumers aged 50 and over are a powerful economic force, contributing trillions of dollars to the economy each year. Yet despite their substantial spending power and resilience through economic fluctuations, marketers often overlook this demographic. With a spending power expected to triple by 2050, the 50-plus market presents significant opportunities for brands to connect with a loyal and increasingly digitally engaged audience. It’s estimated that only 5 to 10 percent of marketing budgets are currently devoted to targeting consumers over 50. Yet, as older generations continue to adopt online shopping, for example, the potential for brands to reach this market is also growing. Today, I’m joined by two experts who are on a mission to help brands understand and effectively engage consumers aged 50-plus. Nicole Munsey and Dana Keilman are co-founders of Morning Light Strategy, a consumer insights consultancy specializing in this market. Dana is the company’s CEO and an experienced researcher, innovation consultant, and strategic planner. Prior to co-founding Morning Light Strategy, she served for 15 years in leadership positions at Ipsos, guiding clients in making data-driven decisions for business growth. Nicole is the president of Morning Light Strategy and previously held leadership positions at Ipsos and Catalyx, overseeing client relationships and developing research strategies yielding insights to inform marketing and innovation decisions. To discuss the untapped potential of what they’ve dubbed “The NextGen Consumer,” I’m delighted that Nicole is joining us today from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Dana from Chicago, Illinois. Dana and Nicole, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS.
Dana Keilman: Thank you.
Nicole Munsey: Thank you.
Adrian Tennant: Dana, how did you and Nicole meet and what led you to co-found Morning Light Strategy together?
Dana Keilman: I have known Nicole for about 18 years. We started working together at Ipsos and through a variety of different positions, her career took more twists and turns than mine did. She went off to some different places and did some different things, but we kept intersecting again, coming back together, working on different projects, working with different clients on the same team. And I had been thinking about just what’s going on with the aging population and with caregivers, and had mentioned it to Nicole a couple of times. And finally, she said, “You know, if you want to do it, let’s just do it. I’ll do it with you.” And so then that really changed my mindset on whether or not I might actually have the courage to start an agency, because with Nicole as a partner, that put a whole new spin on it, and it seemed much more feasible.
Adrian Tennant: You and Nicole recently gave a presentation at the Insights Association called The Next Gen Consumer: Why the senior consumer is the shiny new thing. So why are consumers aged 50 plus the shiny new thing?
Dana Keilman: There are a couple of reasons for that really, but part of being a shiny new thing is looking at something differently or perhaps something that’s been there the whole time that people really haven’t paid that much attention to. And in either case, it’s true for the 50-plus population. The two reasons are the size and growth of the population. Right now, the consumer segment of people age 50-plus in the US is actually bigger than Millennials and Gen Z. It’s also growing faster. So right now, there are 40 million more Americans age 50-plus than there are Americans age 18 to 34. And it’s interesting to know that in a few years, somewhere around 2030, we are projected to have more people in the US over age 65 than under age 18, which has never been true in our history as a country. If we look at the US population of people age 50-plus, it would actually be the 13th biggest country in the world by population numbers, 120 million, which is amazing. And it’s not just a Boomer phenomenon – so, it’s not that this is just a blip or a temporary trend. Because of lower birth rates and longer life expectancies, it means that all of us, as we continue to get older, we’re all contributing to the growth of the 50-plus demographic, whereas the growth of the 18 to 34 is really staying flat in terms of population growth. And then the other aspect in addition to growth, which is related but it’s separate, is this is who really has the spinning power. So the 50-plus demographic accounts for over twice the spending power of the under-35 age group. So it’s a big growing population that’s worth a lot. And up till now, this population, the older consumer, has really not been a primary focus for a lot of manufacturing companies as they are creating CPG products and really understanding the consumer. But it’s worth doing. This population is a whole set of unique needs and life stages that brands can address.
Adrian Tennant: Nicole, what are some of the most common myths or misconceptions you’ve found marketers have about the 50-plus consumer market?
Nicole Munsey: There’s a few, and I’ll just give you a couple of my “favorites,” quote unquote. I think one of the most common misperceptions that people have about this market is that they don’t use technology. The number of times that we’ve had clients say, “Well, I don’t want to try to interview people that aren’t even on the internet”, or “I don’t want to try to reach people that aren’t even online, that don’t have a smartphone, that don’t have a tablet.” And I think that’s a myth that persists over time but continues to be not true and getting less true by the day. We know that people age 50-plus, they do have smartphones. The rate of smartphone usage on a regular basis for 50-plus is about the same as it is for those age 18 to 49, which is to say about 85 percent are using them on the regular. Same goes for social media, streaming, smart TV, laptop, tablet. That’s a myth that persists that is simply not true. Another one that we hear a lot is that, “Well, older people don’t spend as much as young families.” Right? Like, “We’ve got to focus on the young family. That’s where the volume is in my category,” – especially for CPG categories. But again, that’s not always true. We’ve got the data to show that in a lot of categories, older people are not only buying them, but they are spending more. And that’s everything from cleaning supplies to sweets, to dairy, to audiovisual equipment. These are all categories where older consumers are actually spending more in the category than the 18 to 34 consumer. The third one I’ll give you today and possibly my favorite that we hear a lot is that, “Well, it’s a naturally shrinking population. So it’s not worth pursuing,” which is a very polite way of saying, “Well, they’re going to die. So why bother?” Right. “It’s an old consumer population.” And that’s not true for a couple of reasons. One, Boomers may shrink over time, right? There will be fewer Boomers next year than there are this year, but the age 50-plus consumer will continue to grow. It’s just that it’s no longer just the Boomers, right? It’s Gen X now. Soon, it’ll be Millennials that are 50-plus. So that demographic of 50-plus is going to continue to grow exponentially over time, much faster than that of the younger population. But the other thing that bugs me about that is, you know, when you think about longevity these days, the average lifespan in this country is mid-70s, which means you’re saying, “Well, now that I’ve turned 50, I am no longer relevant because I might die in approximately 25 years.”
Adrian Tennant: That’s very dark, Nicole. Well, I think you’ve given us some hints, but I mentioned in the intro that only an estimated 5 to 10 percent of marketing budgets are typically devoted to targeting consumers over 50. So why do you think brands and marketers often overlook this audience?
Dana Keilman: Part of it is building on those myths and misperceptions that Nicole talked about. You know, people have come up with reasons why it does not make sense to focus on them when they’re innovating or when they’re spending their marketing dollars. But also, if you think about when advertising really came into its own as an industry, you think back to maybe the 1950s, and what people thought about at that point in time. One was how brands grow, which is if you get people in early in their life, they’re going to be a lifelong consumer. Therefore, older consumers aren’t worth as much because they don’t have as much lifetime spending ahead of them. And we know that’s not true. There have been various books and articles that have come out to disprove that – Byron Sharp’s is one of them. But also, if you still think about the early days of advertising, I love the picture, the mental image of the US population at that time as a pyramid, where you had quite a few younger people and then fewer older people. And not only were there more younger people in terms of numbers, but they also did hold more spending power at that point in time. Coming back from the war, the GI Bill, and some other things, they had more disposable income, whereas the older population had been through the Depression and had really lost their income, so they couldn’t spend as much. So it made a lot of logical sense, because of the population size and the spending power, to focus on the younger people. That’s not true today, but the view of who to target hasn’t caught up to what’s actually going on today. And so then you ask, “Well, why hasn’t it caught up? What’s keeping people from noticing what is out there in plain sight?” And part of it is systemic bias. There is ageism where we just heard what Nicole had to say and, you know, it can be a little dark to think about the end of life, but that’s not what we’re really talking about here. Here, what we’re talking about is people who are age 50-plus and they have a lot of life ahead of them. They’re very active, they’re very engaged consumers. One last thing I would say to explain why there’s not more focus on this: most of the people in the brand management or marketing roles within a manufacturing company – or perhaps in the creative roles at an ad agency – they tend to be younger, they tend to be 35 or under, and they can best relate to experiences they’ve already had. So they can relate to that 25-year-old who is getting their first apartment or, you know, going through those early life stages, getting married, buying a house, having a child, etc. And that’s a lot of the focus on life stage and consumer understanding. They really can’t relate to the 50-year-old who is thinking about becoming an empty nester, perhaps, and they have a lot more time now and disposable income to go out to dinner with friends or to travel or to do a lot of these things that are, again, engaging them in the economy in a very active way. But that’s not top of mind for a 35-year-old who’s creating the advertising plan.
Adrian Tennant: That’s very true. Nicole, your experience includes working with some of the largest market research firms, including Ipsos and Mintel. How is Morning Light Strategies’ approach to researching the 50-plus market different from other firms?
Nicole Munsey: I mean, just to put it bluntly, I think other firms are not researching the 50-plus market for the most part, unless clients are asking them, which is rare. As Dana mentioned, we’ve been in the research industry for over 20 years at this point. And I cannot recall a study that I led for a client that didn’t have an upper limit on the age range that we wanted to talk to. Now, sometimes that was 49, sometimes it was 55, sometimes it was 65, but it was usually cutting off around the 50 to 60 age range, and that’s just kind of the status quo. On the rare cases that you might have a client specifically interested in the older population, other firms might then include them. But when they do it, it’s just going to be simply like an on that group or a boost group. They can be included, they can get the people, but they don’t necessarily bring expertise or knowledge about them or a focus on them. So I think one, we obviously have a focus on that part of the population, but two, we can bring the expertise and the understanding about that market, combining not only our market research expertise, but also the network of longevity and aging experts that we work with so that when we’re researching them, it’s not simply a matter of sampling and just including them in the study,but it really is more about understanding, as Dana mentioned: What are some of those unique needs? What are the life stages? And what does that mean for you and your category? as well as how and when to incorporate the full ecosystem of decision-makers. As people get older, depending on the category, It may no longer be that they’re the only ones involved in making the decision. You might often have adult children in the mix, you know. For instance, my mother uses a smartphone, but I’m the one that decides what it’s going to be and buys it for her. So you start to have a different ecosystem of decision makers.
Adrian Tennant: Dana, could you share a couple of examples that illustrate how Morning Light Strategy typically works with clients?
Dana Keilman: Something that Nicole and I both really enjoy on a personal level is understanding every situation as a unique situation. So rather than coming in with an idea of how we’re going to answer a question before we talk to the client, we want to really sit down and have a good conversation about what they know now, where they find themselves, what their challenges are, and some of the solutions that they have considered to their business issues. Not necessarily research solutions, but what are some of the different pieces of learning that they have explored to try to aid in their decision. So thinking about one particular case, we had a client who had something that he felt very strongly about and had already moved forward to a manufacturer. And he had a few thousand units that he had made. And he came to us when he wasn’t able to get traction in terms of sales. And as we talked to him, we identified a few key things that research could really help with. One was understanding his consumer, and he had somebody in mind who he thought was the ideal target person. And we challenged him because it wasn’t based on quantitative research. It was more of a gut feel. So understanding who that person is and what motivates them. Also the competitive set. So understanding what they’re using today to solve the issue and how his new product fit into that. In what ways was it better? In what ways did it maybe create some confusion? Were people unclear on how to use it or what it offered in terms of a benefit? And then he also had some distribution issues. He had picked a distribution place that was probably not well aligned with the buyer, the person who would be coming in, because this was a much higher price item and where he was positioned would have been more of an impulse purchase. So, helping him with all three of those, what he came to us with was a pretty broad issue of “I’m not getting traction in market. I’m not selling. And I don’t know what’s going on.” And so we helped him by identifying the target and talking through distribution, price point, and then also messaging. When we did that, we pulled in partners, and in this case, our qualitative partner, to be able to add more of a perspective into the research as well.
Nicole Munsey: One of the other ways in which we do work with clients, obviously, in Dana’s example, that was an end client who manufactures. What we’ve also found some use cases for is working with other agencies. So that might be your more generalist research firms, such as the ones that we’ve worked at before, where we come in as the experts on this population. Or we’ve worked with agencies where we come in as kind of a research specialist, either to help generate those foundational insights, help with message development, or to do creative testing or ad or brand tracking among the population.
Dana Keilman: Morning Light Strategy has a framework that we use to help clients think about how they could be successful among the 50-plus population. For example, one is What can they build? Can they come up with new product designs or enter a whole new category with their brand based on what the core competency is? What can they do to build for seniors? And there’s a wonderful example from the Consumer Electronics Show last year. The maker of Ray-Ban [EssilorLuxottica] came out with glasses that have hearing aids in the earpiece, and you know that’s something where they’re clearly building for seniors but it’s a brand that is very well known. You know the brand skews younger and the manufacturer has partnered with a company that is a specialist in hearing technology. Another piece of the framework is What can you modify for consumers? And Clear Blue, which is a P&G brand. Clear Blue just came out in November of last year and launched its menopause indicator to tell women what stage they are in their menopause experience. And so they just built on their existing technology for the Clear Blue pregnancy test. So it’s something that’s very familiar to women. And they were able to build a line extension off of it. And another [part of framework] one is Connect with. And Hoka is a wonderful example of connecting with consumers. It’s a running shoe, I should say. It was an entirely new brand designed by runners. And they realized they were getting some traction with the older population. Podiatrists were recommending it. And they embraced that. They went to where older people shop. They started selling in the walking stores and malls. They went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and really connected with that older consumer. And where they are today is on the feet of almost everyone. You go to a high school and you see the cross-country team or the track team, they’re wearing Hokas for sure. And then we know also the cleated athletes are wearing Hokas as a recovery shoe. And the last piece of our framework – which has been Build For, Modify For, Connect With – and then the last piece is Speak To. And that does get into really understanding how you can reach them and knowing where they are, you know, Facebook and then also some print and TV publications as well.
Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after this message.
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Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I’m talking with Nicole Munsey and Dana Kileman, co-founders of Morning Light Strategy, a consumer insights consultancy helping organizations better develop and market products and services for consumers aged 50-plus. Nicole, what are some of the key challenges for brands in effectively reaching and engaging 50-plus audiences?
Nicole Munsey: I think the biggest challenge continues to be today is that they’re simply not thinking about it. The first step is always admitting you have a problem, right? So step number one is to actually think about them first. Who are they? What do they need? And then that second step is really starting to understand them, I think, as people. And not just as old people. So who are they as people? People age 50-plus, that’s not a monolith. Just like we don’t treat everyone aged 1 to 49 as though they’re the same, 50 to 99 is also very different too along the way. So I think the second step is really to understand who are the different people that you need to reach for your brand, for your category, who within that large bucket of people are you trying to reach, what are some of their needs, what are their attitudes, what are their behaviors? Which requires research.
Adrian Tennant: Dana, what opportunities exist for brands to successfully connect with this market?
Dana Keilman: This is where there’s really good news because the opportunities are absolutely unlimited. Many companies, particularly those in CPG, just are not thinking about older consumers. But if they would stop, pause, and really start to understand who that consumer is, things like life events that they’re experiencing, the new needs that those consumers are encountering, which are both functional and emotional needs, the ways they interact with people around them, for example, adult children, just who they are as people. That opportunity right there would unlock so much in terms of ideation for new products. It would also inspire advertising. There are, again, so few companies within CPG who are focusing on this space. It really is a population that’s ripe for inspiration because you’re coming at a category from a different perspective. So that yields innovation. And then it also means that the competitive barriers to entry are relatively low. So if somebody is able to get there before their competition does, then they have a leg up in terms of both that innovation and the creative messaging around the older population, which often does inspire messaging and innovation to a younger population as well.
Adrian Tennant: Bigeye is an advertising agency, of course, and we get to work with a lot of CPG brands. Nicole, do you have any tips for developing creative messaging to resonate with 50-plus consumers – or maybe anything to avoid?
Nicole Munsey: Sure, I can give you a little bit of both. I’ll start with a few things to avoid. And actually, there’s a great report done by AARP around the portrayal of older adults in media that has a lot of good tips in it as well. But a lot of what you see out there that needs to stop. is advertising or messaging that either it dumps things down or patronizes them. You often see them portrayed in various stereotypical or overly medical types of settings. So in a lot of media portrayals, you see older people shown as dependent or disconnected. So they’re often shown at home or alone or with a medical professional when the reality is, as Dana mentioned, they have friends, they have a social life. Many of them are still working. One-in-three people in the labor force is 50-plus, but they are very rarely shown in any sort of a work setting, right? So in terms of, you know, some of those Dos is thinking about them beyond kind of that stereotypical old person mindset that people have. We could show them in work, you can show them using technology, can show them actively engaged with friends and family and their communities and hobbies. There’s a lot of ways to kind of bring to life in the same way that you develop creative messaging to resonate with people under 50. It comes back to understanding who they are. What are their needs? What are their attitudes? What are their behaviors? And I think one of the biggest things is also making sure that you are, in fact, speaking to them and not about them. I think a lot of times, especially around holidays, right, we tend to see advertising that may feature older people in it, and it often tends to be messaging that is heartwarming and “sweet.” And again, it shows them often in that stereotypical lonely, dependent kind of light. But those are messages that are really designed to talk to younger people, right? They’re intended as heartwarming messages for the audience there is actually younger people, not the older people themselves.
Adrian Tennant: Do you have any insights for media planners?
Dana Keilman: I do. A couple of things. First, do understand who the buyer is. So you want to clarify who that audience target is before you plan for media purchases. And while older people do buy products for themselves regularly, there often does come a time when somebody else, such as an adult child, might be making more of the purchase decisions. So we are talking about advertising to and communicating with older adults, but keep that in the back of your mind and just understand who you really are trying to reach with your messaging. And then secondly, know that many older adults are actually easier to find than Gen Z, for example. Older adults are streaming, they are online, they tend to be in many of the same places as Gen Z. But as a broad statement, they’re actually less fragmented. So thinking about digital media, we spoke with a client about his experience when he was at a mainstream athletic brand. And while their target was much younger consumers – they were looking for high school and college athletes as a key part of their target – they also did seek out older adults for advertising. And he said it was so much easier to reach them because their social media presence is less fragmented than Gen Z. So while they are accessing a variety of different platforms, you can still reach them, and in many ways more easily than you can younger consumers who tend to have more fragmented attention with different media sources.
Adrian Tennant: That makes a ton of sense. Nicole, we’ve established that this is not a monolithic group, but I’m going to ask you anyway: What emerging trends are you seeing among consumers aged 50-plus?
Nicole Munsey: Sure. And there’s a number of them that’s going to get interesting over the next few years, I think. And one of the biggest – and “trend” might not be quite the right word, but I’m going to use that anyway – one of the biggest trends is that 50-plus doesn’t mean Boomers anymore. And I think we all need to adjust that mindset accordingly, right? Gen X is now over 50. I’m a Millennial, and I’m going to be over 50 in eight years. And that’s going to have a lot of implications in terms of things like technology usage, right? So the 50-plus consumer is going to continue to get more tech-savvy over the years. And not just in terms of usage of smartphones or usage of tablets, but even as we look around at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, one of the biggest presences there was the AgeTech sector, because AgeTech is a huge growing sector as well. But I think what’s also going to be really interesting is that I remember when I started out in research as a young Millennial, right when everyone was clamoring about Millennials the way they are about Z nowadays. And that was when people really started focusing on corporate social responsibility and environmental responsibility, because all of a sudden, you had all these young people kind of yelling and screaming about it, and they were yelling and screaming about it all over the internet. Well now, those Millennials like me are on the verge of turning 50, and we’re still going to be on the internet, and we’re still going to be talking about everything we want to talk about. And so I think that some of the issues, challenges, and realities of being 50-plus are going to continue to get a lot more visible. For instance, I see a lot more conversations about menopause from consumers and brands on platforms from Facebook to TikTok to Instagram to LinkedIn. And that wasn’t something you saw five years ago. But as you get more Gen Xs and more Millennials kind of entering phases like that, they’re going to be talking about it. And just like with corporate social responsibility and environmental responsibility, they’re going to have an expectation that brands are going to engage in that conversation with them and that they’re going to be designing products and solutions for them.
Adrian Tennant: Nicole just mentioned AgeTech. Dana, you recently announced a partnership with AgeTech Collaborative from AARP. Could you tell us a bit more about that?
Dana Keilman: Yeah, it’s a very interesting organization. It is a collection, a collaboration of startups, and they are focused on helping people age better. There are a variety of different startups and needs that they’re meeting, but they have hundreds actually of startups. They have pitch events. They help people understand what they want to do and then clarify it to allow them to move forward to market. And they, through the pitch events, they also have an accelerator. program. And so the accelerator helps to provide more specific guidance and nurture a smaller set of the startups as they go through that journey from idea to launch.
Adrian Tennant: How are you involved in that initiative?
Dana Keilman: With AgeTech, we’re brand new to it. So, I’ll preface by saying that. But we are involved with talking with the different startups and understanding what needs and what frustrations they have experienced. You know, that really is something that we very much want to understand better. What are the startups experiencing? And as they’ve had this idea, so often the idea that they are building is a reflection of a personal experience they’ve had. For example, in caring for their grandfather, perhaps they recognize a need, which is very real and it’s very much there, but there’s such an emotional component to it. They’re driving forward with passion and with vigor. But, you know, if we think back to the example I gave earlier, they’re not necessarily thinking about classic go-to-market questions such as really defining and pressure testing. Who is the target audience? How big are they? How many people have this need? And to what extent does their solution offer a more viable opportunity as a solution for that consumer than other things on the market today? How should they price it is a big question that we know that they have. And then, where do they sell it? A lot of people are interested in developing something that may get funded by Medicare, for example, but that is very tricky. It has to be coded correctly, and it needs to go through certain steps to be approved. So our goal is to help with coaching and helping them through these different steps, really thinking through all aspects of the offer. So when they’re ready to go to market, they’re very ready, and they’re not taking two steps forward and one step back.
Adrian Tennant: I think you’re going to be a really valuable resource to that group.
Dana Keilman: Thank you.
Adrian Tennant: Nicole, in your presentation to the Insights Association, you emphasized focusing on needs rather than demographics to succeed with 50-plus consumers. Can you explain what you meant by that?
Nicole Munsey: Sure. A couple of things. I think one goes back to that point. It’s not a monolith. And there are more to consumers 50-plus than simply being 50- plus. Right? So they’re full human beings with needs, wants, desires, attitudes, behaviors, and opinions, making product choices and category choices just like anybody else. So simply lumping them into that kind of 50-plus bucket as though that’s the only defining variable kind of leaves a lot of opportunities on the table, we think. When it comes to specific needs, again, I think historically, especially in consumer products, there’s a lot of emphasis on some of those earlier life stages: the going to college, getting your first home, getting married, having kids, etc. But there are a lot of life stages that happen post-50, too. You’ve got kids moving out. Parents suddenly have more time, so that might change a lot of their behaviors, purchasing patterns, right? Kids are out of the house, more wine, more weed gummies. You have a lot of people moving homes, and that could be downsizing, that could be relocating, that could be moving into a retirement community. Could mean a lot of things, but there tends to be a lot of change and moving that happens. You also start to have people that might be balancing kids while also starting to caregive for their parents or other elderly people in their family. You have career shifting and retirement plans and changes. And so there’s a lot happening from the age of 50 and beyond, all of which comes with the need for, like I said, different habits, which leads to different sorts of product purchases, category purchases that we should be aware of. And then you do, of course, have some unique needs more specifically related to aging, right? So, as you think about things like the travel category – the travel category is huge in markets of 50+, but as part of that category, you do need to think about things like what does travel look like for individuals who have more limited mobility or who do have some physical needs? So there are some unique needs related to the age factor, but also simply unique needs that they have because they’re people.
Adrian Tennant: Dana, we’ve discussed the NextGen Consumer, so what’s next for Morning Light Strategy?
Dana Keilman: Well, we want to continue to grow our presence for sure. We want to continue to grow the partnerships that we have. And, you know, as we think about branching out further, we’d like to offer syndicated materials where we have some proprietary research and we can offer up reports that people can buy. We would love to perhaps be more involved with creating a think tank to focus on the 50-plus consumer from a business perspective. And there are a lot of ideas that we have for continuing to build this. At the moment, we need to focus more on shoring up where we are, working with clients, and building our reputation in that way.
Adrian Tennant: Well, you’re both off to a great start. If IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners would like to learn more about Morning Light Strategy, how can they contact you?
Nicole Munsey: So certainly on our website, www.morninglightstrategy.com. You can also find Morning Light Strategy on LinkedIn, as well as myself and Dana on LinkedIn. You can also engage with us if you’re part of the Insights community. We’re listed on the Insights Association PAIR directory, as well as Quirks. And as we talked about earlier, we’re also a business service that is part of the AgeTech Collaborative by AARP.
Adrian Tennant: Great. Dana and Nicole, thank you very much for being our guests on IN CLEAR FOCUS.
Dana Keilman: Thank you.
Nicole Munsey: Yeah, thank you very much.
Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guests this week, Nicole Munsey and Dana Keilman, the co-founders of consumer insights consultancy Morning Light Strategy. As always, you’ll find a full transcript of our conversation and links to the resources we discussed on the Bigeye website at bigeyeagency.com. Just select Insights from the menu. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Introduction to the 50-plus Consumer Market
08:33 – Marketing Budget Allocation for 50-plus Consumers
12:00 – Morning Light Strategy’s Approach to Researching the 50-plus Market
16:34 – Morning Light Strategy’s Client Engagement Examples
19:38 -” Cultural Intelligence for Marketers” Book Promotion
20:27 – Media Planning Insights
23:10 – Developing Creative Messaging for 50-plus Consumers
26:54 – Opportunities for Brands to Connect with 50-plus Market
29:08 – Partnership with AgeTech Collaborative from AARP
31:47 – Focusing on Needs Over Demographics for 50-plus Consumers
34:13 – Future Plans for Morning Light Strategy
35:28 – Conclusion and Contact Information
