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Rainbow Youth: designing, marketing and retailing to Europe’s new old

Over 60s in OECD countries account for half of all discretionary spending power, 75% of financial assets and 20% of the population.

Unlike their parents, who were finishing up at 55, the ‘Greys’ or ‘Rainbow Youth’, the focus of this issue, are just starting. Active, bright and youthful, they are setting up businesses, returning to college, working longer and avid purchasers of everything from adventurous holidays to financial services.

This generation, not the cash-strapped young, will revive and sustain Western world economic recovery - but at a price. Boomers are activists, and will flex their economic and political power at the ballot box. Industrialists and marketers have reacted slowly but ‘Greys’ are smart, media-savvy and ethically conscious. They also dislike campaigns aimed at ‘the old’.

Companies should realise this one-off opportunity. The generation that follows will be fewer in number, with less pension security and less inheritance. The boomers’ legacy will be to re-define the word ‘old’. Over the next 30 years, ‘old’will merely describe a period of time.