A recent announcement at LeadingAge had us wondering: when did continuing care become a dirty word?
The proposed name change from continuing care retirement community to life plan community was announced at LeadingAge’s 2015 Annual Meeting and Expo. This announcement comes on the heels of the Assisted Living Federation of America announcement of a name change earlier this fall to Argentum, a word derived from the Latin word for silver. In all fairness, we can’t think of anyone who wants to be assisted with their living, especially baby boomers.
Speaking purely from a communications perspective, anything is better than “CCRC,” an acronym that is elusive to consumers. Admittedly, the outgoing President of LeadingAge stated that “the emerging generation of consumers didn’t recognize what a CCRC was.”
This is no surprise given that the senior psyche of the future is “anything but grey.” Meaning the old ways of connecting to them and to future generations of seniors through language, images and brand messaging will require a new approach and a new mindset. In fact, name changes aside, preparations are being made industry wide to accommodate the 70+ million baby boomers that will change aging services as we know it today. Their needs and expectations were derived from a lifetime of social reform and hard work. These new terms, including life plan community, are simply a better reflection of modern senior housing models and current trends in architecture, operations, programming, services and amenities.
Language evolves as a result of progress and new senior living models are better defined by wellness over care, health partners over health providers, patient experiences over patient satisfaction and so on. Use of dated language, i.e. continuing care, sustains not only inaccurate, but often negative and destructive perceptions, since words, terms and phrases form the basis of our ability to communicate. After all, there is a reason why the term lunatic asylum was replaced by mental institution and later psychiatric hospital: vocabulary affects our mindset.
We’re passionate about senior living. If you didn’t get a chance to stop by and meet us face-to-face at LeadingAge, visit our site to learn how we’ve made senior living marketing more colorful.
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