Excitement Or Peacefulness?
Here’s a brief article at Engage: Boomers that once again reminds us as marketers/fundraisers to think carefully about our audience and put ourselves in their shoes.
Brent Bouchez, principal in a firm that focuses on messaging to the 50+ universe, cites a Stanford Graduate School of Business study on age and happiness, which found — not surprisingly — that happiness has different associations for older folks than for younger ones.
He writes:
“The study found that people in their 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s tended to equate happiness with excitement. As in “I’m so excited, I’m starting a new job” or “I had such a great weekend, I went to the wildest party with a rockin’ DJ.”
On the other hand, people in their 50’s and beyond equated happiness with peacefulness. As in “I had such a great weekend, my wife and I had the house to ourselves, just the two of us for two straight days.” Or “My new role at the company makes me feel like the years of hard work are really paying off.” Or “Sailing makes me happy because it’s just me and the ocean.”
Excited.
Peaceful.
Two words that would most definitely change the direction of the advertising if either one was included in a creative brief.”
How right Brent is. As a commenter on his post says: “No matter what – marketing is still saying the right thing to the right audience.”
Sounds obvious, but still too often honored in the breach. Try sitting down and writing a 100-word or so narrative profile of your core donor. Not enough time … try a list of adjectives. Is that the person you current fundraising messaging truly addresses?
Tom
One response to “Excitement Or Peacefulness?”
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Mr. Bouchez article is very interesting and applicable, however he does make a mistake when he say people make decisions using their brain…we all know decisions are made from the heart, emotions.