Marketing retirement products to me? Get real!

As some may know, I'm in the business of marketing and communicating about superannuation - for those in foreign climes, a pension fund. In Australia, we run an interminable debate about what where sales end and financial advice begin, or is it vice versa? The upshot is that I spend most marketing days in some form of Clark Kent mode, unsure of when to leap into a phone box and emerge in my marketing Superman suit.

As I am looking increasingly like my target market with each passing year, it becomes apt to consider if some young Turk was going to market anything to do with retirement to me, how should they go about it?

This is the moment I become vulnerable and at risk of being encoded in some dude's data analytics package. As a target market, I look like this:

• Within a decade of retirement;
• Hate the whole idea of retirement;
• Could in theory afford to retire now, although facing off with an ageing feline over a bowl of tuna later in life might still be on the cards;
• Invest like a patron of Crown Casino;
• Enjoy German cars;
• Covet wines beyond my budget;
• Like soft adventure holidays with hot showers and feather pillows at day's end;
• Regularly retreat to my holiday home and go kayaking in the occasionally tame waters of Port Phillip Bay.
• Spend a lot of time getting over musculo-skeletal issues due to taking on  ridiculously complex and major renovating/landscaping projects.

In other words, living beyond my means and physical capabilities is the norm, not just an aspiration. This has huge implications for the retirement marketer.

First it means don't tell me that I want to slow down, leave work, put my feet up or spend endless, blissful days on the beach with sand between my toes. I know it's all crap and will never happen to me. And don't therefore use images of same, or words talking about spending 'quality time' with family, because:

1. My wife is, in fact, dreading my retirement even more than me; and
2. My teenage daughter is not far off driving her own chariot and getting as far away as possible with her contemporaries.

Accordingly, my current major project is building a decent sized shed down the beach house. Yes, at a push big enough to accommodate a bed and satellite TV!

So, if you're going to seriously market retirement products to me, understand the reality.