Episode Transcript:
Christina Chartrand (00:38)
Hi, this is Christina Chartrand and welcome to LIFE Conversations. I'm very excited today. I need to share a little information about this guy.
He actually spoke at our Senior Helpers Conference last year and was a huge hit. We got a lot of really great feedback. I don't know, Matt, if you knew that.
But I would like to welcome everyone, Matt Thornhill. He is, I like to call you, I don't know if I should be saying, but he's kind of a guru in the senior space. And so I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna like, I don't know if anybody said that to you before, but I'd like to see your thoughts. Like how in the world did you get from, what you did before, kind of the traditional office type job until what you're doing now.
Matt Thornhill (01:29)
Oh, well that question could take, I don't know, 40 years to answer. Because I have had a 40 plus year career in advertising and marketing. And basically the consistency is I have been studying consumer behavior since I got out of college. And the consumer I've been studying for most of that time has been the baby boom generation. Because back 40 years ago, they were that 18 to 49 year olds.
And then about 20 years ago, they started turning 50. And now they're all turning 60 this year. The last Boomers turned 60. So I continue to be focused on all things really related to Boomers and their consumer behavior. And as my career has evolved, obviously, I'm now looking at, well, how are they going to impact growing older in America? How are they going to change and transform what it means to be older in America?
And what does it mean for products and services? What do they need? What do they want? What are organizations and companies and marketers doing to reach them? Short answer is they're ignoring them, but that's a different issue. So that's, I wouldn't say I knew that this was gonna be my path, but clearly by just being focused on understanding consumer behavior and focused on that generation, it's become my path.
Christina Chartrand (02:35)
Mm -hmm. So tell me a little bit about consumer behavior because I was actually kind of thinking a little bit about that. What are some of the trends that you're seeing right now?
Matt Thornhill (02:57)
Well, you know, the one that we've been hearing for probably the last 10 years or so is that Boomers are changing what it means to be older. You've probably heard the expression, you know, 60 is the new 40 or 50 is the new 30. And that's actually malarkey. What we've done is we've made 60 to the new 60. We've changed what it means to be 60 and now 70 and 75 and soon to be 80. If you had asked me, I don't know, 15 years ago that Bruce Springsteen would sell out a one man show on Broadway when he's in his seventies. I would have said, no, he's born to run. He'll be, he won't be doing that, but he's doing it. And you know, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson are on the road. They're going to be in my neck of the woods in the next couple of weeks. It's like, and they're in their eighties and nineties.
Christina Chartrand (03:35)
Mm -hmm. I just saw Billy Joel and Sting. Man, they look great. They were awesome.
Matt Thornhill (03:48)
There you go. So this idea that you get to age 65 and you're done was an idea that the prior generations had. And the reason they had it is because they had a lifespan that they thought they'd live to be about 75. So you quit at 65, you spend five years traveling maybe with your spouse or partner, and then five years playing with the grandkids. And then you get the call of the great beyond.
But that's not happening now with the longevity bonus, with the pharmaceuticals that can help you manage chronic conditions, with organizations like Senior Helpers that can help you kind of manage your life, even if you're losing some of your physical abilities and your daily activities of daily living you need help with. We're living longer. And that living longer now translates the generation that started that was the generation before ours, before the boomer generation, who, in fact, I'll tell you a story.
My father -in -law lived in 94 and he used to tell me when he was in his 90s, it's like, man, if I'd known I was going to live this long, I wouldn't have quit at 65. Well, here I am 64 and I have no plans to retire because I've got, you know, maybe 20 years, maybe I can make it to my mid 80s before I really need to slow down. I mean, but why slow down now? So that's the big kind of consumer trend, I'll say, that's going to shape our society and culture for the next 20 years or so.
Christina Chartrand (04:54)
Uh huh. Yeah.
Matt Thornhill (05:15)
This, this it's okay to be old is what it comes down to.
Christina Chartrand (05:15)
I can see that. Right. And I guess it's what you're saying. It is. And it's okay to, it's okay to, if you really enjoy working and you love it and you're contributing, like I feel like now, I mean, I, you know, an executive of a company and I keep thinking I will retire here. This is what I'll do, but I'm not retiring now. I love what I do and I'm 59. I know there's a lot of women who I have many women friends who don't do what I do these days. They're getting excited for their first grandchild and all of that. But me, I'm like, no, this is what I find, this what drives me every day. It drives me every day is my work. I really am proud of all the things that I've accomplished up to this.
I totally see that and I feel like what you're saying is we're going to see more and more of that. We're going to see more people not just saying, okay, because there's no pension anymore. That's gone, right? Right? So it's your pension is your 401k and what you're saving it for living longer and people are going to are going to keep doing something, right? Are going to keep in these jobs, which, you know, it's interesting to think about what that's going to look like, you know, as you know, how seniors are going to continue working. And is it going to affect, like if you just want a job, you want something to do, is it going to affect some of those jobs that normally younger people would do? You know, or people, I don't know.
Matt Thornhill (06:50)
There's actually two demographic realities that we that are kind of coinciding. One is since the birth control pill hit the market in 1965, we have not been making babies like we made back during the baby boom. We went from having four kids to having 2 .1. And that's about the replication rate of a population. We're now actually below that. We're like 1 .7. So we're we don't have an abundance of younger people to kind of step in and replace this baby boom that's stepping aside at this stage of life. We have kind of the same numbers of each year. We have about four million people reaching age 18. We have four million people reaching 30. We have four million people reaching 50. We have four million people reaching 65. It's the same. It's like this on the population pyramid, if you will. So we don't have enough young people. Secondly is the fastest growing segment of the workforce, because if those numbers aren't growing, you know, the workforce eventually is going to stay the same. And the only place it's going to grow is if we keep older people in the workforce longer. And 20 years ago, the year 2000, the percentage of the workforce who was 55 and older was one in seven. So, you know, you you riffed them, you got them to retire early, you got rid of them because they were just one in seven. Today, they're one in four.
Christina Chartrand (07:54)
Mm -hmm.
Matt Thornhill (08:12)
One in four of the workplaces already over 55. So you can't afford to have them go because I don't know, what do they have? Experience, knowledge, institutional, you know, property, intellectual property about the company in their head. You can't, you shouldn't let them walk. So what we're going to do is have to figure out how do we continue to tap into this workforce at a stage in life where they're ready to actually slow down.
Christina Chartrand (08:23)
Right.
Matt Thornhill (08:38)
They don't want to work 40 hours a week, perhaps. They don't want to work 50 weeks a year. So how do you do job sharing? Basically, a question I will ask audiences when I'm in front of them, businesses, I'll say, I'll explain the numbers to them. And I'll say, how many of you have a strategy for finding, keeping, and retaining workers over 55? And no hands go up. And I'm like, OK, then that's on you. Because that's where the growth is going to come. It's not from more 18 -year -olds or more 25 -year -olds. It's going to be from keeping your 60 -year -olds in the workplace or your 65 -year -olds even.
Christina Chartrand (09:13)
That is really interesting. I think that I'm amazed by that. And I feel like that is something important for all businesses to be thinking about and for also for people my age, our age, to be speaking up and saying what we want, right? Because...
Matt Thornhill (09:30)
Mm -hmm.
Christina Chartrand (09:30)
You know, it goes back, you know, is some part of it virtual? You know, is it that job sharing, which I think, you know, could, you know, and I do think technology plays a bigger role now that you're able to, because my word for guilt like this, my word for 2024, I pick a word, you know, every year is balance this year. Because I, you know, so much traveling and so many things that I'm doing that I really need want to find time for me and find time for balance to enjoy my family and the things that I do on a daily basis, day to day versus just constantly being on the go. So, well, we'll see. We'll give it a shot this year. I want to talk, because you were talking about the consumer behavior and some of the things that I've begun to see or the things that I notice are one visual advertising so visually advertising something for a senior and I even go back and look at some of the things with senior helpers, you know with kind of the sad senior with the old hands, you know next to somebody else taking care of them, right? And how that doesn't even look like you like why you're looking at a photo like that and then I'm also looking at things like compression stockings like Lately I've seen compression stockings that have like the fun colors on it. Right? With, you know, where just like fun socks are versus the plain all white you know. So, you know do you see that there the market is beginning to change in order to advertise to that to the 60 year old plus generation?
Matt Thornhill (11:04)
Well, I hope so. I mean, I haven't seen the compression socks, but I love that idea. There's no reason not to be joyful that you have found a product that's going to enable you to kind of live life better at this stage of life. A big issue, and it's been true for 60 years, a big issue in the marketing and advertising world is that the people that are creating the ads are young. They're in their 20s and 30s, maybe into their 40s.
And by the time you're in your 50s, you're usually not in advertising anymore. You've kind of grown tired of it. And the 30 and 40 year olds, smart as they may be, they can do the research, they can have the focus groups, but I got to tell you, it takes one to know one. You know, I didn't know what it was like to be 64 until I got to be 64. And yet when I was a young advertising guy in my 20s, I remember trying to do ad campaigns for people in their 50s who I thought had one foot in the grave.
Christina Chartrand (11:50)
Mm -hmm.
Matt Thornhill (11:58)
And it's like, no, I'm playing pickleball this afternoon. I don't have any feet in the grave. I'm still active and got plenty to do. And that mindset of, "Well, we need to help fix aging." You know, "Aging is a disease that we need to cure." That mindset shows up in products and product advertising often for older adults. So the ones that don't have it are the ones that I guarantee you there's older adults who are involved in making those campaigns, or advising them on those campaigns and say, "Hey, wait a second, we are still alive and vibrant and have energy and excited about what's next. So how are you going to speak to me where I am in my life?" And again, a 30 year old, you can't even imagine that you're going to have a vibrant life at 64. And a 64 year old is like, what's wrong with you? And that's exactly what we have.
Christina Chartrand (12:45)
Exactly. No, and I see that all over the place. So, you know, I live in Florida and though there are some places that really advertise to the pickleball, you know, happy hour fun, you know, lifestyle, there is still constant advertisement out there around the poor, sad senior who's feeble and needs help, you know, and it's just, yeah. And I do think that needs to change. And you're right. There needs to be, you know, 60 year olds on advertising teams to help identify that to not because I you know I find it insulting actually I find the word 55 plus community insulting, you know? So, tell me about Openly Gray
Matt Thornhill (13:33)
Okay, Openly Gray is a nonprofit advocacy group that I started three and a half years ago now. And it was really came out of the issue that I saw a couple of trends. One trend is that Boomers kept getting older. So they were becoming the older adult. The second trend is we make fun of older adults.
And I mean, we, I mean, our entire culture makes fun of older adults. We've never had an Eastern mindset where, you know, you always, the cartoon was always going up a mountain to see the wise monk in Tibet. And you, you were subservient to them and you, uh, uh, follow obedient to them. And, you know, that culture actually doesn't exist in the East anymore, but it never existed here. Well, older adults were disposable, you know, they could no longer work.
the farm or work in the factory. So we had to kind of put them to a side. And that and then along came retirement communities. It's like, oh, look, we can even house them over here. And kind of the last great ism that's acceptable is ageism, where we can make fun of older adults. And there's a whole group of folks who've come out with Boomers and others who've reached this stage of life and said, OK, we've got to stamp this out. We've got to we've got to be anti-ageist.
And there's anti-ageism campaigns all over the place. And I looked at them and said, that's great. That's a great part of what needs to be done. We got to see it, point it out and say, no, that's wrong. Just like in the fifties, we saw the signs that said white onlys entrance and said, no, that's wrong. We got to stop it. So we need people to point it out. But I saw that there's another side to it because that the whole anti -ageism thing is all about what I'm right and you're doing something wrong and I'm gonna point out what you're doing wrong and it almost comes across as angry old people saying get off my lawn and I thought wait a second the reality is is some of this ageism in fact a lot of this ageism is how we think and treat ourselves as we get older I mean have you ever been at a birthday party with someone who's turning in their 50s or 60s and there's black balloons and there's you know You're over the hill and all of that. We've been doing that forever well, that's what we have to stop. We have to stop being acting ashamed of our age and life stage just because we've gotten to be 65 and older. You know, I think back to when I was a kid and I was, you know, 12 years old and I'm hanging out with a group of eight -year -olds, I would be bragging about the fact that I'm four years older than them. I'm five years older than you, Christina. You know, I've been around the earth five more times. I've seen five years more stuff than you have.
Christina Chartrand (16:07)
That's true.
Matt Thornhill (16:15)
So don't you think bad about me. I feel sorry for you. You haven't experienced as much life as I have. So it's that attitude shift that I want to encourage Boomers and older adults themselves to embrace. And Openly Gray is not a term I came up with. Some women on the Internet who decided they didn't want to color their hair started doing it. But the more I thought about it, the more I said, why can't that just be the name of a movement where we kind of do what openly gay did for the gay population, which is to say, we're coming out of the closet.
We're gonna pronounce who we are. We're gonna proclaim who we are. We're gonna be proud of it. And you're gonna have to accept this. So that's what I'd like to see older adults do. It's like, I'm not ashamed of my age. I'm gonna embrace it. And I know, growing older, it's not a problem. It's not a disease. It's a blessing. I mean, the fact that I'm gonna have a longer life.
Christina Chartrand (16:48)
Right.
Matt Thornhill (17:13)
You know, the more life I can put in my years, the better. So that's the idea behind Openly Gray.
Christina Chartrand (17:17)
Yeah. I mean, I like it. I honestly do. And I think it's great and I joined and I'm now a part of it as well. But I think for it to happen is, yeah, you're right.
Boomers are gonna have to get out there and say it, but I also feel like hopefully it'll be loud enough for advertising to see it and for young people, right, to begin to understand it. I do think there's some teaching and for younger people learning from older people, they're like they're wiser, learn from them, but I do feel that there's still such a stigmatism or stigmatism around the way someone visually looks, right? And that's why I like the Openly Gray and you know, because just to, I agree to, especially so hard for women to embrace their colors, the color of their hair. But I'll tell you, there is more makeup, moisturizers injections that are out there, that it just puts you in this place to feel like, feel bad about getting older. It's hard. It's really hard. So there's a lot of big changes that need to make.
Matt Thornhill (18:23)
Yeah, and this is not about your hair color. This is about your attitude. I don't care if you color your hair or not. And if you want to use the tools and technologies out there to make yourself look as good as you can at your age, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think were doing what the prior generation did, which was to freeze their face in time. Like the Chers of the world, it's like, okay, she's not aged since she was 35. What's going on with that? And she's like 78 or almost 80, I think. So there's some of that that I think that Boomers are accepting. It's okay to grow older. It's okay to have some wrinkles and it's okay. You just want to look the best you can at the age you are. And that's the Openly Gray mindset.
Christina Chartrand (18:56)
Uh huh. And express the way you are. Right. And embrace it. Embrace the way you
Matt Thornhill (19:20)
And accept the way, yeah, yeah,
In this enlightening episode, Matt Thornhill shares how Baby Boomers are transforming the perception of aging and the importance of combating ageism through the Openly Gray movement. His insights provide a fresh perspective on aging positively and advocating for older adults. Stay tuned for part two of this conversation, where Matt will discuss his Cozy Home Communities project and the importance of community as we age. Stay connected with LIFE Conversations with Senior Helpers for more insightful discussions on senior care.