By Rebecca Chandler

I joke with my dad that it seems he retired to play with his Mac, his iPad and his iPhone. He still goes fishing, but I'm not entirely joking.

He doesn't have cable and watches TV on Hulu and Netflix. On any Saturday night, he's air streaming a Grace Potter & the Nocturnals concert video while he cooks dinner. He loves live music and checking out the newest restaurant and he's campaigning for the new Ipad for Christmas. My dad will be 75 December 2. His mother is 95, active and healthy and still drives herself to work 3-4 days a week. There are many ways in which my family is not normal, but mostly, it's because we refused to be defined by our age.

In marketing, we tend to define our audiences first by age. After all, we have clear definitions with set standards and best practices for marketing to their interests. Millennials, Gen X, Baby Boomers, the Silent Generation (this is where my dad falls) and the Greatest Generation. There's a formula to follow, dammit.

Marketing to Millennials is a hot topic right now. After all, they make up a third of the world's population. But, they also range in age from 18-34. I was a parent at 34 and practically a child at 18. A one-size-fits-all campaign to cover these different life stages hardly makes sense.

Instead, what if we marketed to groups based on their passions and interests, and not their age? What would we discover? That my dad is in the market for a new iPad? That my grandmother is up on the latest fashions? That my 30 year-old brother has developed a taste for classic cowboy crooners Gene Autry and Marty Robbins?

The recent "2016 Communications Trends Report" from Hotwire suggests that the days of targeting based on age are dead. Instead, "the brands who target audiences based on mind-set and certain values will come out on top." Behavioral targeting is not new, but the ways we define our customers based on their tastes and passions is evolving.

If you knew more about who valued your product or service, you could create a stronger bond with your current customer and open the door to new customers you never considered. After all, age is just a number, right?