RIP, the teenager.

That’s because, according to Higham, the teenager with their unique traits may have died: “The grey consumer, the older consumer, is behaving like we traditionally think of as the teenager, to some extent. And teenagers are starting to behave like the grey consumer.”

And the consequence of this increasing fusion and confusion, Higham believes, is that age will become increasingly irrelevant to marketers.

The Evidence
Politics, ideology and general attitudes to life are some areas that Higham believes best illustrate this stereotype reversal: “Teens are becoming more sensible and serious, and conservative and traditional. Whereas the older consumers are still quite hedonistic and into rock ‘n roll.

“If you look at it from a generational point of view, you’ve got baby boomers, and to some extent generation X, who’ve grown up with the idea that there is a right and wrong, the idea of idealism, the idea that you either support the left or the right, that there’s something that drives you emotionally or spiritually or morally other than purely money.

“We have a generation that’s growing up who’ve never experienced any politics apart from the politics of spin…who’ve grown up without this idea of organised religion…we are starting to see these kids saying we want the traditional things, marriage, religion.”

That said, a penchant for retro fashion, tastes and ideology is hardly new. So is this cyclical or a long-term trend?

Lifestyle, Not Lifestage
Higham clearly views this as an evolutionary trend.

For one thing, he thinks that societal values are changing as affluence spreads and materialism becomes less influential in our lives: “I don’t think the younger generation has that kind of ‘keeping up with the Jones’ thing as much…that’s almost being forced upon them [by the older generation]…Teenagers don’t really care about products so much, e.g. getting an iPod, it’s what you do with the them.”

This apparent quest for meaning and true fulfilment, rather than superficial consumerism, seems to parallel the proliferation of brands aiming to bring meaning into peoples’ lives (e.g Dove). Thereby suggesting that people increasingly long for ‘interesting’ over ‘ostentatious’.

And just as Hollywood taps old TV series when original movie ideas are thin on the ground, Higham believes that people are apt to do a similar thing in the search for interesting ideas and pastimes. But rather than do this because it may be fashionable to go retro, he believes the motive is a genuine quest for inspiration: “The boomer generation were the first one to really kick away the idea that you should respect your elders, because they grew up in a generation whereby you should respect young people was the mantra…the ‘millennials’ is the generation that really will respect elders more. It’s one of the more conservative, traditional traits…they’re getting interested in older ways of doing things, making things in wood and knitting!”

In short, people have more ‘freedom’ to do what they want to do, be who they want to be, beyond the constraints of age or other categorisations: “There is a kind of ‘tribe lite’. That you can be a punk one day, a chav the next, into hip hop the next and into grime (music) the next. It’s almost like trying on different fashions but it’s not the [standard] sort of tribal thing.”

The internet has arguably played a significant role in hastening this trend. The pace and nature of innovation has inspired more personalisation, resulting in people increasingly seeing themselves as an individuals rather than a consumer type. And the significant use of the internet now for social networking, and ability to quickly find groups or niche media/content of common interest (e.g. blogs, video, podcasts), ultimately enables them to cater to their specific tastes irrespective of age, location, or background.

Where Next?
The implications for Higham’s observations are naturally significant.

Strategically, he believes that marketers need to rethink their preconceptions of different age groups: “[The political parties] are saying the way to engage young people is to do lots of very media friendly things or do lots of things on the internet, because all that issue stuff, all that ideology stuff doesn’t work. Rubbish! The way to engage young people is to talk ideology.”