Starting Over at 50 in Beauty

Posted on | April 15, 2009 |

By Carol Davies, Parther Fletcher Knight

In these precarious economic times, starting over at 50 brings to mind lost jobs, lost homes and broken nest eggs. When it comes to women and beauty, however, starting over at 50 means something altogether different. It means starting over with many aspects of their personal care routine and learning how to care for a body, hair, skin and face that are undergoing fundamental physical transformation - whether it’s hormonal, cellular or even plastic.

Today’s 50+ women are no longer a marketer’s deadbeats who never try new products, but a marketer’s dream. They’re in hyper-active trial mode, searching for beauty products, exercise regimes and nutritional solutions to help them correct the damage the first 50 years have done, prevent further damage and continue to look and feel like the 30-year-olds that live perpetually inside them.

Marketers should be advised that 50+ women seek formulas that cater specifically to their needs, whether it’s from brands that explicitly target 50+ women like Lauren Hutton’s Good Stuff cosmetics or that do it implicitly like Lancome’s Genifique Youth Activating Complex. But that’s not all these women want. Perhaps even more importantly, they’re hungry for information to teach them how to get the best results as they change and evolve.

Fifty is no longer the end of the beauty road for women - or marketers. Instead, at 50, a new age of trial and experimentation begins.

Carol Davies is a strategic consumer marketer with expertise transforming “aha” consumer insights into visionary and innovative business-building ideas. Carol is a Partner with Fletcher Knight