Are you over 50? Please complete a short survey about advertising - £150 voucher to be won NOW CLOSED

[PoppyMumsnet]

This survey is open to all UK MNers over 50.

We want to know your thoughts about advertising - in particular how advertisers could improve in their marketing to people over the age of 50.

Everyone who takes part will be entered into a prize draw where one winner will receive a £150 voucher for the store of their choice (from a list, includes Amazon, M&S, Debenhams and lots more!). All data is confidential.

Here's the link: www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NJX3YMZ

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!

I emailed HQ about this survey yesterday regarding some of the questions and the unavailability of a N/A answer to some of the questions . It was extremely patronising . I couldn't complete it and I'm glad I'm not just the only one moaning about it .

Done, but talk about stereotyping!
the survey is far worse at thinking all over 50s are one group than most adverts!!

When asked about why I liked particular adverts that were targeted at "me" - I answered John Lewis (as the first one that came to mind) because "they're not using age in their targetting" .

I'm a person, not a number an age.

Could have done with a "I don't give a toss about the use of the phrase anti-ageing" as I'm happy to ageing happen when it wills.

Asking for age of children would have been better. It did make me momentarily guilty that I'm not spending all my money on children/grandchildren.

I'm 50, battling with periods, school age kids, full time job. In fact I'm doing not exactly what I was doing 25 years ago. My life is still the same so I don't want ads showing me flouncing round a garden centre in a pink bodywarmer discussing funeral plans and free biros.

My main beef is that I'm no longer represented in advertising for ordinary' non age related stuff. Youth and sex sell products and services I suppose.

You're mugs for cooperating with this survey if you don't agree with it.
MNHQ is disgustingly ageist. We've pulled them up on it plenty of times but they keep taking the money
MN pulls in (I believe) £7million in advertising per annum so could afford to turn this crap down but they don't.
The product needs to stop filling in these surveys!

F**s off. Spent time filling everything out and it won't submit
I don't think about funeral plans. I will be dead and the woman in the advert needs to spend her money on a new kitchen than a funeral plan. Also I know too many people who have been scammed or ended up with less than they thought when it comes to pensions despite going without for many years. And as for fashion why are the only women that represent the 50+ grey haired.
That's what I wanted to say but it obviously didn't like my replies.

There is no choice for someone who doesn't work but isn't being a parent or looking for a job.

Kids are at Uni so I don't spend much time parenting ....

Hello

Sorry about the questions that assumed respondents necessarily had grandchildren etc. CariGransnet herself is in her early fifties with a primary school-aged child and lots of us at MNHQ are heading towards 50 or waving at it in the rearview mirror, so we do know the experiences of women over 50 are tremendously diverse and that retirement and grandchildren isn't anywhere on the horizon for a lot of women in this age group. (We also know that retirement and grandchildren are life events, not signifiers of a decline.)

We're doing this survey in a bit of a rush and adapted a Gransnet survey for Mumsnet users - not quite well enough, in retrospect. Sorry.

@Floralnomad

I emailed HQ about this survey yesterday regarding some of the questions and the unavailability of a N/A answer to some of the questions . It was extremely patronising . I couldn't complete it and I'm glad I'm not just the only one moaning about it .

Apologies Flora. We can't add extra 'not applicable' codes to the survey now, but (for anyone else struggling) you can skip any question in the survey and still submit your response.

@SandyDenny

Does anyone think of themselves as an "over 50"?

It seems that you are reinforcing some kind of artificial category of woman, no one in my circle around my age would consider themselves defined by their age.

Why does the survey have an age bracket of under 50 - I hope you don't put those ones in the prize draw.

We're trying to find out (fairly clumsily, it seems) what a big group of women over 50 feel about women over 50 being lumped together - so we sort of had to lump them together to find out. It's a conundrum.

No, people under 50 won't be included in the prize draw. There are always a small number of respondents (in any survey) who fill it in despite not meeting the conditions stated up front, so we have to ask those questions to double-check we're hitting the right people (and carefully remove the responses of those who don't).

Obviously we are VERY GRATEFUL to everyone who fills in our surveys even if they don't always read the preamble very carefully

@dubdub17

I completed the survey but like pps, as I was typing in my email, screen switched to 'thanks for filling survey in etc'.

Mumsnet HQ - is there a glitch here? How will they know my email address?

I'm afraid the word is it must have been a glitch - apologies dubdub - if you can bear it you'll need to fill it in again

Roman - you should have got the message by now that women over 50 don't like being lumped together - we've told you often enough!! So stop these patronising surveys and bin Gransnet

50 seems so arbitrary. What magical thing happens at 50? Do we all march off to buy Tena Lady?

Roman = Rowan

Honestly I couldn't be arsed completing it

For some reason my thoughts have returned to this on and off over the day. Am I correct in thinking that it is MN that wants ideas on how to market to the "Over 50s" so that they can then sell this concept to advertisers? If so, I'm really intrigued to know why or who has come up with this as a concept. What is the thinking behind it? Why "Over 50s" as a demographic? What is it that enough of them have in common, do you think, to make them a homogeneous market?

Genuinely interested.