Old people…
Old people: they like free carriage clocks and baths with doors in. But Reg Starkey, creative director of Millennium, an agency that specialises in marketing to older consumers, begs to differ. He features in an edition of the BBC series Why Should I Worry About?, talking about how ageing isn’t so bad. For the show, the agency created a fictitious campaign for a jeans brand targeting baby-boomers (matching his ‘n’ hers versions available, in true embarrassing auntie and uncle style), which has been mounted on the side of a London bus. Rumours that a press ad was junked because the focus group couldn’t find its reading glasses cannot be confirmed. Starkey has been on TV a lot recently, as the expert in marketing to mature consumers. He’s been on the BBC, Channel 4 and CNBC. Perhaps, rather than buying a fast car or running off with a younger woman, it’s his way of having a mid-life crisis. Or, as Pete Townshend so nearly wrote, “Hope I’m on Sky before I get old”.