There was a time when the marketing industry assumed that life events were relatively simple, straight-forward and the model that we followed was fairly predictable. We assumed that people tended to leave school, get married, have children, bring up those children, they leave home and then we retire and take a cruise. At least that’s the dream…
Our ‘traditional’ life stages are now skewed and are evolving at lightning speed. The stereotypical view of a heterosexual married couple with two children is evaporating and we now have over three million families in the UK that do not fit in that box. For example, we have seen a rise of 56% in households that have more than one family in them. There are 15% more lone parent families. Same sex couples with children are on the rise, with 14,000 of them in the UK.
Our research around life stages doesn’t end there either. 23% of us never expect to get married, whilst 17% of us never expect to buy a property. We’re starting our first job later, having our first child at an older age and, perhaps alarmingly for current parents, we’re not moving out of our parent’s home until the age of 25.
For brands and marketers this means that we can’t assume that we’re going to experience those traditional life events at the same stage and time that we once expected.
What can brands do to adjust to this? Read more in our whitepaper here.
