Bitter. Cutting. Penetrating. Raw. Numbing. Biting. Nope, for once I am not talking about the fall-out from my esteemed editor’s Birthday Weekend, although as I am sure you can imagine it was a pretty messy affair.
I am actually referring to the great British weather, of course, which has caused a right old kerfuffle here among the Southern Softies.
Up North, we normally take these things in our stride and sometimes we might even put a jumper on – it is January, after all. Down here, I have seen people dressed in less for a trip to the North Pole.
Even the Metro newspaper got in on the act by claiming that the Met Office had issued a weather warning that the UK would be “double-fisted” by deadly snow and ice. Cue a swift response from the meteorologists to confirm “needless to say, this isn’t a term we’d use to describe the weather”.
Double-fisting or not, I do actually have some good news to impart as apparently this Christmas was “less lethal” than most, with a 21% decrease in the number of registered deaths compared to last year – even McKelvey survived another year against the odds.
You see, though more people tend to die of heart problems during Christmas week than at any other time of the year, this year there were “only” 7,447 deaths in England and Wales over the festive period, compared to 9,517 in 2022 and a five-year average of 8,228.
It may explain why new official figures show the UK now has the highest-ever number of centenarians in history, with a 5% rise in men living to 100, meaning the total number has more than doubled since 2002.
But, what, as ever, I hear you ask, has all this got to do with marketing?
Well, naturally, it is top news for brands which target older consumers; not only are fewer of them dead but more of them are living longer.
So, forget Gen Alpha, Gen Z and Millennials, they haven’t got two ha’penies to rub together. The so-called Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers are the real opportunity.
However, beware the linguistic dangers lurking in your content marketing strategy. While older people are obsessed with the great British weather, they baulk at the very mention of “deadly snow and ice”, and, whatever you do, don’t even think about the telling them that there’s a “double-fisting” on the cards…
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