Longevity: Western brands are selling years in good health, not youth

In marketing, longevity is the promise of a longer life in good health, not simply a longer life. According to WHO, in 2023 people worldwide lived 73 years on average, 63 of them in good health. L'Oréal, Nestlé and Centrum built new products on that gap in 2025–2026, and in a 2025 McKinsey survey healthy ageing was a priority for up to 60 percent of consumers in the four countries studied.

What is longevity?

In plain words, a long life. The thing is, nobody wants to buy a long life.

Everyone wants to buy the years in which they can still walk up to the third floor without a lift. Scientists call them healthspan: the part of life lived in good health.

WHO has done the maths. Worldwide we live 73 years on average, 63 of them in good health. That leaves ten years in which a person is being treated instead of living. Those ten years are what brands now want to make money on.

Which Western brands have moved into longevity?

All the ones that have a research department and a marketing department.

In June 2025 in Paris, L'Oréal presented Longevity AI Cloud, a system that analyses more than 260 biomarkers of skin ageing. In March 2026 Lancôme launched Absolue Longevity MD in the US, a cream with urolithin A, an ingredient known until then from supplements.

In February 2026 Nestlé introduced Nestlé Vital drinks for middle-aged and older people, first in Latin America. In August, Centrum added an Age Defy line for 35+ to its Silver vitamins for 50+.

Thirty-five. At that age you used to buy your first flat. Today you buy your first anti-ageing vitamins.

How much is the longevity market worth?

Nobody knows. Seriously.

Market research firms value it for 2025 at between USD 21 and 32 billion. Each counts something different: one supplements, another diagnostics, a third therapies. The Global Wellness Institute does not separate out longevity at all. It puts it into personalised medicine, worth USD 147 billion in 2024, and adds honestly that what companies offer often runs ahead of the science.

And when AARP writes about the “longevity economy”, it counts something completely different: the entire economy of people over fifty in the US. That is trillions of dollars, more on which in the glossary entry longevity economy. Whoever puts both numbers on one slide gets a pretty slide.

What are brands learning about the 50+ consumer along the way?

That they do not want to be reminded of their age.

McKinsey calculated that people over 58 make up 35 percent of adults in the US, but only 28 percent of wellness spending. And McKinsey itself advises against selling longevity products with a “feel younger” slogan, and in favour of answering a specific need.

I couldn't agree more. Don't promise me I'll be twenty again. I don't want to be. Back then I had neither cash nor sense.

Promise me that in ten years I'll walk up Kasprowy Wierch, a peak in the Polish Tatras, on my own two legs. That I'll pay for.