There Is No Such Consumer as “55+”

Older consumers have spending power yet they're still underrepresented. And in trying to ditch one stereotype, are advertisers simply creating another?

Picture someone aged over 55 in an advert.

What do you see?

For years, advertising's depiction of older people has been criticised for relying on familiar stereotypes: grey hair, retirement, vulnerability, declining health, perhaps a grandparent or someone needing help.

There has been a growing and very welcome conversation about changing that.

But look at some advertising today and another familiar character has emerged.

They're still grey-haired. But now they're smiling broadly while cycling along a beach, hiking through beautiful countryside, doing yoga or enjoying an impossibly picturesque retirement with their equally healthy partner.

We've moved from grey-haired, vulnerable and frail to grey-haired, smiling and super healthy.

Clearly, the latter is a more positive representation of ageing. But have we actually solved the problem or have we simply replaced one stereotype with another? And perhaps the problem starts even earlier than the creative. Perhaps it starts with one of marketing's most convenient demographic labels: 55+.

The “+” is doing an extraordinary amount of work

What exactly does a 56-year-old have in common with an 86-year-old?

Maybe plenty.

Maybe very little.

Yet marketing frequently places both within the same demographic category.

We wouldn't dream of creating an 18–48 audience and assuming that everybody within it had broadly similar lifestyles, finances, health, family circumstances, interests or purchasing behaviour. But 55+ can effectively do exactly that — and it doesn't even have an upper limit.

This isn't a new criticism. In 2022, an IPA article on marketing to the over-50s argued that brands should stop considering this audience as “one vast group” and instead recognise different cohorts with distinctive behaviours, attitudes, needs and goals. It also cited research suggesting that up to 85% of older consumers felt advertising wasn't relevant to them.

The IPA itself proposed breaking the audience into narrower age groups rather than treating 50+ as a single market. So the conversation has been happening for some time.

But perhaps we haven't gone far enough.

Maybe we need to lose the “+”

Age can absolutely be useful marketing data. For many products, age and life stage can strongly influence need, behaviour and propensity to buy. But if age matters, surely we should interrogate it properly.

Instead of simply 55+ perhaps we should begin by considering cohorts such as:

50–60 | 60–70 | 70–80 | 80+

We're not suggesting these should become a new industry standard. Nor are we suggesting everyone within each ten-year band suddenly becomes alike. Quite the opposite. The point is to illustrate how extraordinary it is to regard everyone beyond an arbitrary birthday as one audience.

Someone in their mid-50s may have children living at home, a mortgage and another decade or more of their career ahead of them.

Someone in their mid-60s might be running a business, approaching retirement or several years into it.

Someone in their mid-70s might be travelling extensively, exercising regularly, caring for grandchildren, volunteering, working or caring for a partner.

Someone in their 80s might be living independently, socially active and financially comfortable. Another person of exactly the same age might have significant health or mobility needs.

Chronological age tells us something. It doesn't tell us who somebody is.

And don't turn four age groups into four new stereotypes

Breaking 55+ into narrower cohorts is only the beginning. Because otherwise we risk making exactly the same mistake again.

We could decide that 50–60 means working and affluent; 60–70 means recently retired and travelling; 70–80 means gardening and grandchildren; and 80+ means healthcare and mobility, and in doing so we've simply replaced one box with four.

Real audiences don't work like that.

There are people in their 80s running marathons and people in their 50s living with significant disabilities.

There are wealthy 70-year-olds and financially stretched 60-year-olds.

There are digitally confident 80-year-olds and technophobic 55-year-olds.

There are people working into their 70s and people retiring in their 50s.

Homeowners and renters. Married and single people. Grandparents and people without children. Gym members and people who hate exercise. Adventurers and homebodies.

That's what diversity actually looks like.

Age segmentation should therefore be the beginning of understanding an audience, not the end of it.

An enormous audience that still isn't properly represented

This matters because we're hardly talking about a niche consumer group. Older consumers represent a substantial proportion of the UK population and considerable economic power.

Research highlighted by the Centre for Ageing Better found that, despite people aged 50+ accounting for almost 40% of the population, only 29% of TV advertisements featured characters aged 50 or older.

More recent research suggests the issue hasn't disappeared. In 2025, the Advertising Standards Authority commissioned one of the most significant recent pieces of UK research into how older people are depicted in advertising. The research included qualitative work alongside a nationally representative survey of 4,306 UK adults. Its findings were striking:

• 44% of UK adults believed older people were either underrepresented or not represented at all in advertising, particularly in categories including fashion, beauty, technology and household goods.

• And more than a third, 35% believed older people tended to be negatively stereotyped in advertising.

• Perhaps most importantly, respondents wanted to see older people portrayed as individuals and wanted advertising to reflect a diverse range of later-life experiences.

That's an important distinction. The demand isn't simply: “Put more older people in adverts” it's “Show more of the reality of being older.”

That's particularly surprising when you look at spending power

Underrepresentation also makes questionable commercial sense.

Older households hold a substantial proportion of Britain's wealth.

The latest ONS Wealth and Assets Survey data reports that median household wealth peaks among households where the household head is aged 65–74, at £502,500.

That's not the same thing as saying every person over 65 is wealthy, far from it. There are significant inequalities within older age groups, and wealth is not the same as disposable income.

But that's another reason why lumping everybody together is so unhelpful.

The commercial significance of older consumers is substantial, while their individual financial circumstances vary enormously.

So why would advertisers want to treat this huge, economically important and highly diverse population as one homogeneous audience? And why wouldn't we want them properly represented in mainstream advertising?

From invisible to stereotyped

Representation, however, isn't solved simply by putting more grey-haired people on screen.

Research from the University of West London, highlighted by the Centre for Ageing Better, analysed 6,228 prime-time television commercials broadcast across ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. It identified recurring ways older people were depicted. Among them were the “Golden Ager” — young at heart, attractive, health-conscious and physically active, and the “Perfect Grandparent”, smiling, healthy and enjoying family life.

And herein lies an interesting problem. For years, the industry has quite rightly been challenged over depictions of older people as frail, vulnerable, lonely, technologically incompetent or dependent. But in trying to correct that stereotype, are we swinging too far in the opposite direction?

Meet the new stereotype

You know the image.

Silver hair.

Immaculate activewear.

Bicycles.

A beach.

Possibly some linen.

Almost certainly a great set of teeth.

The implication is well-intentioned: “Look! Getting older doesn't mean slowing down.” And that's absolutely true for many people, but not everybody.

The super-fit, affluent, endlessly positive “Golden Ager” can become just as much an advertising shorthand as the frail pensioner it replaced.

Positive representation isn't necessarily the same thing as representative advertising. And there's some interesting evidence demonstrating exactly why.

Older people really are becoming more active

This is where the issue becomes particularly nuanced.

The growth in active older consumers isn't an advertising invention. It's real.

Research published by the Centre for Ageing Better's Age Without Limits campaign in July 2026 highlighted a record 10.5 million people aged 55+ who are active for at least 150 minutes per week. So there is clearly a substantial and increasingly active older market.

Yet the same research found a disconnect between those consumers and the advertising aimed at the. Among 55–64-year-olds, 49% said that few or no gymwear brands fairly represented their age group.

That's fascinating. Here is an audience actually participating in exercise and potentially buying the products associated with it, yet many still don't feel represented by the advertising.

So simply replacing images of older people sitting in armchairs with pictures of older people running marathons isn't the answer.

An 77-year-old runner can just be a runner

Perhaps this is where creative representation needs to evolve.

A 77-year-old who runs shouldn't always need to be portrayed as inspirational because they're 77. They can just be a runner.

Likewise, somebody with a disability shouldn't automatically appear only in an advert for mobility products, healthcare or later-life services. They can be buying a car, choosing a sofa, booking a holiday, changing broadband provider, ordering a takeaway, or doing any of the other completely ordinary things consumers do.

Age doesn't always need to be the storyline. Sometimes genuine representation means allowing older people simply to exist within advertising in exactly the same way younger people do.

We don't need a better stereotype. We need fewer stereotypes.

That's perhaps the real lesson. We shouldn't respond to decades of depicting ageing through vulnerability and decline by pretending later life is universally affluent, active and carefree. It isn't.

Nor should we shy away from showing disability, declining health, loneliness or financial difficulties simply because those images don't fit a positive narrative about ageing. Those are real experiences too.

The objective isn't to make a 58 year old look 40. It isn't to make ageing look relentlessly aspirational. And it certainly isn't to pretend the challenges associated with ageing don't exist.

It's to show more people and more realities. Show the healthy 80-year-old. And the 58-year-old living with a disability. Show the affluent 70-year-old. And the financially stretched 60-year-old. Show people working, retiring, exercising, travelling, caring, dating, learning, struggling, succeeding, socialising and simply getting on with everyday life.

In other words: Show people.

Better audience planning should lead to better representation

There is a connection here between media planning and creative.

If the media brief begins: “Target: Adults 55+” it's perhaps unsurprising if the creative brief starts imagining a generic “older person”.

But ask a better question: “Which people over 55 are we actually trying to reach?”

and the brief starts to change.

Perhaps the advertiser actually wants financially comfortable people aged 60–70 with an interest in travel. Perhaps it wants homeowners considering major renovations. Perhaps it's looking for active consumers across several older age groups. Perhaps it's targeting people approaching retirement rather than those who have been retired for 20 years. Perhaps age isn't actually the most important characteristic at all.

Modern TV and streaming advertising increasingly allow advertisers to combine age with factors such as geography, household composition, interests, affluence and other audience characteristics. That means we can be far more intelligent about who we're trying to reach than simply ticking the 55+ box.

And once we understand the audience more accurately, the creative can reflect them more accurately too.

There is no such consumer as “55+”

The debate around how marketing treats older consumers isn't new. The industry has been talking about ageism, underrepresentation and simplistic demographic grouping for years. And progress is being made.

Moving away from portraying ageing purely through frailty, dependency and decline is unquestionably positive. But we shouldn't stop there. Because swapping the vulnerable pensioner for the eternally youthful silver-haired cyclist isn't genuine diversity. It's simply a different stereotype.

Perhaps it's time to retire the idea that 55+ describes an audience. Break it down when age is relevant. Then look within those age groups at lifestyle, wealth, health, interests, behaviour, family circumstances and needs. And make sure the people who appear in the advertising reflect that same diversity. Because a date of birth can be an extremely useful piece of data. It isn't a personality.