Last year, automaker Dodge launched an electric version of its popular Charger muscle car. The company had just one problem, according to GSD&M CEO Lee Newman: Its customers didn’t want it.

The company didn’t rest on its laurels. Instead, it worked with the Austin, Texas-based agency to create an advertising campaign aimed at the “elephant in the room,” that the company’s customers were hesitant to embrace an electric version of their favorite gas guzzler.

“We’re building electric vehicles to save our planet, to save it from all these suit-wearing, pencil-pushing swamp rats, putting their uncalled fingers in our business, trying to neuter our muscle and soften our name,” boomed the commercial’s narrator. “They want an electric car, we’ll give it one so f–ing loud and mean, they’ll sh-t their ergonomic desk chairs.”

Senior living operators could learn a thing or two from that process, according to Newman. Although the senior living industry has vastly different kinds of customers than Dodge, older adults can be just as skeptical of senior living communities as the carmaker’s “brotherhood of muscle” is about cars.

Like Dodge, senior living operators can change their messaging to address their respective elephant in the room, the fact that older adults don’t always want to move into senior housing, Newman said.

Part of that can be attributed to the way the industry is marketed, according to Dr. Joe Coughlin, director of MIT AgeLab. Changing technology and new resident expectations are two forces having tectonic effects on senior living, and as they shift, that will create a new landscape for operators.

Although that’s a challenge, that also presents an opportunity for senior living operators willing to change their messaging and market to a new customer base.

“Senior housing today is having a moment. You are in transition,” Coughlin said. “You now have an incredible driving demographic force, if you harness and understand the underlying numbers and … anticipate what they may want to excite and delight them with something they never really needed or wanted,” Coughlin said.

Senior living competes to define old age

Senior living operators’ main customers are older adults, but they are not the only ones marketing to them. Across multiple consumer industries, companies including Delta Airlines and Marriott are giving older adults a glimpse of their possible golden years – and it’s not moving in a senior living community.

At the same time, older adults can get much more of what they want at home than they could just a decade ago thanks to delivery apps and other various tech. Coughlin had previously calculated that if older adults stay at home for just six more months, it could erode senior living business to the tune of billions of dollars.

“I want you to understand something every other industry and every other market is now looking at your customer,” Coughlin said. “Virtual assisted living is your new competition.”

Customers of today have many consumer options at their disposal, from fitness to health care. If senior living can’t match the appeal of those services, they risk turning off customers before they even walk through the door.

“Even the best, most profitable, high-margin businesses in senior housing right now are continuing the story that was created in the late ‘50s: … time to do what you want, freedom, leisure, recreation,” Coughlin said. “We certainly have far better architecture … but we haven’t created a narrative that’s more aspirational.”

He urged operators to think beyond their immediate customers and to “rethink” the role of senior living altogether. Instead of leaning on traditional marketing tactics, operators can go back to the drawing board and offer their prospects a new value proposition.

“Are you a provider of community and care? Yes. Are you a provider of amenities, which is the new active adult thing? That’s where things are growing greatly, yes,” he said. “It’s no longer simply being a provider, but a platform of services – branded experiences – under one roof for everything.”

Creating aspirational messages like Target

According to Coughlin, there is a lot the industry can learn from Target. Within its retail locations, Target assembles many different brands under one roof, from coffee brand Starbucks to resort-wear maker Lilly Pulitzer.

Companies like Target and Kohl’s have positioned themselves as the destination for “getting something that’s affordable and yet aspirational” for all ages.

“They can take what normally are looked at as either upscale or relatively affluent brands … , and curate it into their property,” Coughlin said.

Following this example, Coughlin believes there are opportunities for the senior living industry to shift from a provider of community, care and amenities to become more than a senior living community.

“Why should I have your coffee if I can have Starbucks Reserve?” he said. “Why should I not have a pop up of Ben and Jerry’s at least once a week? Do I really need programming from a generic physical fitness program, no matter how beautiful the place, when Equinox is right down the street and they can come to me?”

He added: “How about telemedicine offered by Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic or Mass General Hospital? These are all things that the consumer already knows they can access in the comfort of their own home.”

From a marketing perspective, these kinds of experiences need to be built before they can be advertised, Newman said.

The answer to these challenges is going to lie with deep levels of personalization through services, according to Coughlin. While technology is going to continue to augment these expectations, it’s not going to replace the need for the human touch.

“It does not replace the need for real humans that truly care about an individual, but it augments that experience. And that will be the expectation,” Newman said. “That will certainly be mine. I know it already is with my parents.”

When it comes to changing the overall view of senior living, Newman believes there is opportunity for the industry to truly capture the imagination of what life can be when living in a community and what a life lived well in a community can mean emotionally, though he has yet to see it through marketing and messaging at this point.