New media, new commodification, new consumption for older people

Abstract

This paper intends to explore how the commodification of items linked to assisted living for older people educate the rest of the population to aging issues, especially when people are staying at home. We will work on the popularization capacity of advertising and commercial discourses in this respect. Classical ads, advertorials, common mass consumption promotional leaflets and catalogs, along with the uses of new media and online shopping enable the massification of a consuming class of elderly people. Advertising acts as information-education for the general audience, preparing younger senior to accept more easily assisted-living goods and even encouraging them to change their habits in advance. This is particularly obvious in marketing and off and online media productions that use three main communication strategy to reach baby boomers: 1/address to the main population in order to reach baby boomers senior working sometimes on taboo facts linked to aging, 2/work on offer and messages addressing a double target (young senior and their parents) or 3/changing the representations of old people in communications by promoting a new stereotypy of “longer young seniors” or “silver generation”.