When Tricia Cusden took the stage at the Later Living Conference a few weeks ago, she caused a stir. A trailblazing businesswoman, Cusden set up a successful health and beauty brand for ‘older faces’, aged 65 herself. Now in her 70s, Cusden is larger than life, and she’s here to tell the retirement living sector that they have their audiences all wrong.

Cusden’s chief complaint is what she refers to as the ‘ghettoisation’ of later living options – that is, the tendency to lump older people together, separate them and cut them off from society. She raises issue with the ‘infantilised’ environments of retirement homes, where older people live in overly protected, unchanging spaces: they’re safe, but they’re boring. In short, Cusden will not be moving to a retirement village any time soon.

Understandably, many of the day’s other speakers were fast to defend the sector. Cusden’s comments were deliberately provocative, and on many fronts do not chime with the experience of respected retirement brands. Retirement living is a successful and growing industry; there is clearly a large market for the ‘infantilised ghettos’ that Cusden describes. Cusden is simply not a part of the target audience.

But by defending the sector in this way, are we missing an opportunity? In fact, are we missing an essential call to action?

One of the most striking differences between Cusden’s presentation and the presentations of others, was Cusden’s use of the first person. She spoke about what ‘I want’, what ‘I need’ and what ‘I like’. Being that bit younger, however, many other speakers spoke about older people as ‘them’; what ‘they’ want, need and like. When Cusden’s autobiographical comments didn’t fit with the other speakers’ perceptions of their audiences, the defence was easy: Cusden simply isn’t part of ‘them’.

The tendency towards ‘othering’ older people in this way – and in some cases stereotyping them – is dangerous. It’s true that in many ways, Cusden is atypical. Not many 65-year-olds build successful, industry-leading start-ups. In other ways, however, Cusden speaks for a large portion of the older market: she values her independence and autonomy; she wants new experiences and a changing environment; she hopes to stay fit, healthy and active into her later years. Put simply, she’s a normal human being – she just happens to be a bit older.

Indeed, this was the argument of our own Director of Strategy, Crispin Reed, who took the conference stage to discuss the dangers of stereotyping. As he argued, humans are naturally wired to stereotype, and this tendency is particularly strong in our perceptions of older people. Culturally, we find the prospect of ageing scary, and this encourages us to take mental shortcuts when thinking about older people. It is easier to assume that old people are a single, homogenous group – defined by nostalgia and inactivity – than it is to fully engage with the complex realities of ageing.

This is also compounded by the fact that – unless we are ourselves old (and when do we become ‘old’?) – we have no experience of what being an older person is actually like. On the other end of the spectrum, when creating products and building brands for younger people, it’s easy to draw from our own bank of experience: we can simply ask, what would I have wanted? Indeed, instinctive autobiographical insight is a small but important part of many brand strategies. This throws the language of ‘them’ and ‘they’ into sharp relief. When it comes to older people, instead of wondering what they want, we should be asking ourselves, what will I want when I’m older?

Individual experience is the engine room of brand. So when the likes of Tricia Cusden speak out, it’s essential that we take heed. Not because Cusden is the sole voice of all older people – in fact, because of the opposite: because she is one voice among millions. Like any group of human beings, older people are all different, with vastly different wants, needs, desires and drivers. It is true that there’s a large and growing market for the style of retirement living that Cusden so detests. However, it’s also true there are opportunities outside of this model. Opportunities that could meet the so-far unmet needs of large swathes of the older population.