LSN : Daily Signals : Foresight Friday: Pavan Bivigou, senior foresight analyst

Saga Holidays campaign challenges assumptions on over-50s travellers

You’re Not Wrong by Saga, UK

UK – Saga Holidays, the British travel company for the over-50s, has launched a television campaign that aims to challenge perceptions about the types of holidays people over 50 enjoy. The ad, entitled You’re Not Wrong, is part of Saga’s Tailor-Made Travel campaign and follows actor Nicholas Farrell on a range of adventurous trips where he pokes fun at assumptions that over-50s want sedate breaks.

‘Saga Holidays. What springs to mind?’ asks Farrell. ‘Experience tells me you probably think we’re constantly stopping for tea. It’s not entirely unfair,’ he continues as he carefully cups a bowl at a Japanese tea ceremony. ‘As Saga continues to operate as a champion for people over 50, we are taking this opportunity to bust open the myths associated with our audience,’ says Saga’s Group chief customer officer Stuart Beamish.

Today the over-50s are a complex demographic that includes Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers. When thinking about how they consume there is room to do more than bust ageist myths. Ageing is changing and many over-50s have little interest in countering outdated perceptions; they are focused on pursuing the experiences that make sense to their lives.

Strategic opportunity

Get curious about the ways in which consumers don’t conform – both to expectations and to demographic stereotypes

Foresight Friday: Pavan Bivigou, senior foresight analyst

The Future Laboratory team offer an end-of-week snapshot of the topics, issues, ideas and virals that we’re all talking about. This week, LS:N Global’s senior foresight analyst Pavan Bivigou shares the AI achievements, good bots and bears on her radar.

: Anything you can do AI can do better. Its accomplishments this week include: passing an MBA exam at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, collaborating on a fashion report for Vogue, and lighting up the stage at The Grammys

: What’s the deal with jokes in the metaverse? Nothing, Forever’s premise was promising an endless AI-generated episode of Seinfeld. But unfortunately, robots are as capable of cancel-worthy comedy as humans

: The end is nigh for Twitter bots after Elon Musk announced he’ll soon begin charging developers to access Twitter’s API. Time to check in on your favourite bots before they quit – these are mine: @eatwellbot, @moonshotbot, @tinystreet, @SpaceLiminalBot, @tinycarebot, @sikenpoems, @everygoodfella

: Thankfully Neil Mendoza’s army of spam bots are sticking around

: Whether you believe its existence is a symptom of social media addiction, cultural fragmentation, that it is Gen Z’s own art form, or a manifestation of the generation’s loneliness, the Dada-esque absurdism of #CoreCore is making TikTokers feel everything and nothing

: This bear stumbled across wildlife monitoring equipment in a Colorado park and did what every warm-blooded mammal with a front-facing camera does. She took selfies: 400 of them!

Carolina Carballo for The Future Laboratory

Quote of the Week

‘People rolled their eyes and said: ‘It's impossible’’

Professor Winfried Hensinger, Sussex University, UK, on his team’s quantum computing breakthrough, which holds the potential to solve at speed some of the most important problems for industries and society

Stat: The US ad landscape lacks cultural relevance

Quilt

US – Brands attempting to reach very large consumer pools in audio ads might be playing a losing game, according to new research comparing the effectiveness of general market ads with more targeted and culture-specific ads.

The Challenging the ‘One & Done’ Approach study, commissioned by podcast advertising company SXM Media, surveyed how different ads land among multicultural podcast listeners in the US. The findings reveal that general market ads don’t resonate with this audiences – such ads generate a 13% brand favourability lift among the general population, compared to a 4% lift for multicultural listeners.

The report suggests that in order to drive the levels of connection and affinity, boost brand awareness and convert new consumers, brands should avoid surface-level and overly general cultural references in favour of well-informed and culture-specific messages. Kara Manatt, executive vice-president of intelligence solutions at Magna, elaborates: ‘As long as the spots ring true and do not fall to stereotypes, brands that create advertising for specific, diverse communities will reap positive outcomes across favourability, preference and relevance.’

With audio’s recent revival, brands should see these findings as an opportunity to tap into niche audiences and deepen the bonds by exhibiting cultural relevance.

Strategic opportunity

Culture-specific ads are perceived as more entertaining and relatable, and ultimately more impactful. To successfully reach and engage multicultural audiences, brands should consider choosing specific content over one-size-fits-all campaigns