50-Plus Marketing

Well done to the Bookbite team

2010-02-08T14:32:00.000Z

A while back I spent some time working with the people behind a campaign to encourage older people to join book clubs and to write their own books. I have never really understood why by the name of the project is Bookbite.

Considering the very short time and limited budget they had to get the project airborne I think they have done a good job. The BBC certainly thought they had. Dick Stroud

Business of Ageing conference in Dublin

2010-02-08T14:26:00.000Z

On March 3, I will be speaking at a conference in Dublin called Business of Ageing.

In addition to the conference web site you can get some good background information about what is happening in Ireland, with regard to the 50-plus, from this excellent article that was published in The Sunday Post.

Naturally, I am going to say it was an excellent article since it has lot of quotes from me! Dick Stroud

Mobile apps for Boomers

2010-02-08T09:14:00.000Z

A month or so ago I launched a test blog that was dedicated to all things to do with mobile apps and older consumers.

I have made a few tweaks, and still have a few more to make, but this is near to the finished format. So as the domain says apps4boomers. Dick Stroud

50-plus web site for sale – one careful owner

2010-02-05T06:47:00.001Z

I was vaguely aware of The Silver Surfers Guide web site. It was one of the many sites that appeared like a fresh crop of mushrooms during the period when people thought that all you had to do was put '50-plus' or 'Boomer' on a site and zillions of people would come clicking.

Well the site is up for sale. Here is what the blurb says. The website provides good returns from online advertising and other revenue streams, such as its incorporated over 50's dating site.

The dating site alone currently generates in the region of £5000 per annum, with sufficient refinement of marketing this figure could be much greater. There is genuinely no limit to the potential scope for this business, particularly for someone keen to move towards the increasingly more popular social networking arena. The business started trading in November 2008.

Trading was temporarily suspended between January 2009-August 2009 due to site redevelopment and recommenced in August 2009.

Turnover during the 9 months of active trading is £27,388.34 ex VAT. The site averages 12,000 unique visits every week and approximately 30,000 page impressions.

By my calculation this means the site is making £0.045/unique visitor. Mmmm

Full marks for the guy/girl for trying to sell it at this price. My bet is that they would be open to offers. Remember the old saying: "Buyer Beware". Dick Stroud

AXA launches motor insurance brand with 'pavement rage' ad

2010-02-04T18:48:00.000Z

AXA is launching a £10m marketing campaign to support the launch of its new direct motor insurance product targeting older drivers. This is AXA’s first foray into the direct insurance. Previously it had focused on the broker market.

I am quoting from Brand Republic that: “AXA Car Insurance will target older drivers who feel they are not catered for by other brands, by offering them a 90% no claims bonus.”

The TV ad shows pedestrians bashing into one another on a busy city-centre
pavement. A voiceover then states, ‘You wouldn't behave this way on foot, so why would you when you are driving?'

The tagline for the campaign is: ‘AXA drivers get up to 90% discount on their car insurance. Disrespectful drivers don't.'

In parallel TV celebrity Charley Boorman (who you might ask is he) will front a PR push, including a website inviting consumers to air their views on the state of behaviour on the road today. How weird.

As you will see from the ad, the big punch line for Axa is - Redefining Standards. I mean, that is going to really get grampa out of his seat and punching the air.

Some obvious observations. This is a covert campaign that selects the older age group on the basis of their long driving record without a claim. I can see the strength in that argument. So unlike RIAS there is no mention of 50+ or anything to do with age.

But, my hunch is that by making the creative so confrontational – literally – the message about 90% discount is going to get lost. I am still thinking about attractive oriental looking lady, the short guy and the lunatic looking women.

And, one thing that older people (who I wonder do they mean as older) tend not to like is confrontation and aggression (yep, I know a bit generalisation). I think a lot of people will have switched off their engagement with the ad before it gets the thing that really matters – money off their insurance.

I guess the smug looking George Clooney lookalike is the visual anchor to the 'older' person.

Sorry guys. I reckon it’s a lemon. What do you think? Dick Stroud

Are you a digital adult or digital novice – Wells Fargo has the answer

2010-02-01T10:40:00.000Z

Wells Fargo has been doing some research about digital literacy. Apparently we all fall into one of three groups.

Digital Adults - people who use advanced online tools for daily tasks, interaction and entertainment

Digital Novices - people with a general understanding of online tools who use them to manage basic tasks, but don’t interact with others online or manage complex tasks on the web

Digital Teens - who fall in between novices and adults?

In the UK we have 10,000,000 people who are not connected to the Internet. I guess they are Digital Babies?

The “Adult Group,” digitally speaking, is not twenty-somethings but thirty-somethings. While twenty-somethings led in the use of advanced online tools for entertainment, with such activities as watching television online and social networking, thirty-somethings are more likely to use advanced online photo and video technologies, career networking services, and financial management services.

A similar pattern emerges with banking and managing finances online.

The survey apparently shows that Youth is loosely correlated with digital adulthood and that digital sophistication generally declined with age.

This is all interesting stuff but it totally ignores the main thing that determines the type of Internet use – education. This applies to all ages.

I suspect this PR research is more to do with getting people to the Wells Fargo site, to find out their digital age, than to extending our understanding about the segmentation of Web use. Dick Stroud

Blame it all on your dad

2010-02-01T08:35:00.004Z

This amusing article appeared in in the Sunday papers about a hapless Yoof who blames his workless plight on “the boomers”. A bit like wasps, every year we get a swarm of these articles, all whining about the same argument.

This sentence gives you a feel for what is to follow: “a university-¬educated man shouldn't experience this (unemployment). I amassed student debt in the belief that graduation would be followed by a huge bubble bath filled with sexy young jobs and beautiful, cigar-smoking status symbols.Not joblessness.”

Words like naïve, fool, dimwit and cretin start forming in my mind. Words like certifiable half-wit start forming when you then learn that our “university educated man” has a journalism qualification from Darlington College. That is not Darlington College Oxford or Cambridge it is Darlington College Darlington.

The article then moves on to the blame game.

"People are feeling incredibly angry," Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, told me. "They have debts in excess of £20,000 after being told they would get a job at the end of their degree and earn more money. Instead they're just heavily indebted."

The anger is due to intergenerational unfairness. Baby boomers had free education, affordable houses, fat pensions, early retirement and second homes (150,000 at the last census).

This emotional waffle is not worth the time rebutting. During one of the previous bouts of Booomer bashing I had a letter published in the FT that provides some of obvious responses. This might be on subscription only.

In February, David Willetts (a senior and very bright Conservative MP) has a book being published called "The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And Why They Should Give it Back”. One thing is for certain; his arguments will be worth the time understanding. I suspect I may not agree with him but you can be certain they will be marshalled with precision.

Do we have a problem with youth unemployment – absolutely? So somebody must be to blame, mustn’t they? The reasons we are where we are results from a much more complicated set of interactions than our chum with his 2:2 in journalism is likely to understand. That fact alone is part of the problem.

Let me give you an example. Every month the Office for National Statistics publishes a detailed analysis about the employment scene in the UK. Every month there is one section of the analysis that always seems to be ignored by the media. I quote from the January bulletin: “The number of UK born people in employment was 25.31 million in the three months to September 2009, down 457,000 on a year earlier. The number of non-UK born people in employment was 3.68 million, down 45,000 from a year earlier.

Look at the way the recession seems to have had a disproportional impact on the UK’s indigenous population compared to those not born in our shores.

Maybe, just maybe, part of the explanation for our journalistic chum’s plight is the 3,680,000 people who now work in the UK who were not around when his dad was looking for a job. Secondly, maybe, just maybe, this group have a better work ethic than a lot of my fellow Brits.

Belive it or not, I do feel sorry for this guy and those of his generation, but trying to apportion blame, in this crude idiotic way will not help him one jot.

If you have stuck with this stream of consciousness then there is one 50-plus marketing message to take away. Is it better to spend your marketing bucks targeting our Darlington College graduate or his parent’s generation. Dick Stroud

Apple iPad for boomers and seniors? Could be!

2010-01-30T10:57:00.000Z

Having read the press report about the iPad the thought that went through my mind is the title of Laurie Orlov’s latest blog posting

We are not alone – this guy in Australia had similar thoughts

Let’s not forget that Steve Jobs is 55 so maybe his design priorities are now inclining towards the older end of the age spectrum. He is not exactly at the "pipe and slippers" stage but not that far away.

I can think of lots of reasons why the iPad will not work but I would love the job of positioning it to the older market.

Somehow I doubt if older people were high up on the list of targeted sectors but Apple might be in for a shock. Cannot wait to see a demographic breakdown of the sales figures at the end of the first year. Dick Stroud

The increasing attractiveness (commercial) of Boomer women

2010-01-23T11:36:00.000Z

As if you don’t already know, wealthy Boomer women are underserved by retailers and suppliers. This short article from Brand Channel, reiterates this point, plus adding a couple of new insights. The basic tenet of "think old, think female" is always worth reiterating. Worth a quick scan. Dick Stroud

Dell advertisements in Saga

2010-01-23T11:21:00.000Z

Unlike most people, when I receive a magazine, I am more interested in the ads than the editorial. This applies even more so to Saga. This is not a reflection on the quality of Saga's writing but it more interesting, for me at least, to see who is advertising what and in what way.

To the best of my knowledge I spied the mag's first Dell ad, and from what I can see, it is pretty much age-neutral. Maybe they have increased the font size a bit but it looks the same as those in any other mag. If I find any major differences I will blog again about the subject. Dick Stroud

Data on household expenditure tells a lot of stories

2010-01-23T11:01:00.000Z

I am never to sure about the accuracy of these stats, but they are the best (in terms of quality and breadth) that you are going to get in the UK. You will find it tucked away amongst a sea of other stats in this report from the Office of National Statistics.

What grabs your attention?

Why do the 30-49s spend 5 times more on ‘other’ than the 75+?

The spend of the 30-49 and 50-64 year old is not that much different (other than ‘other’)

The high percentage spend of the 65-74 year olds on recreation and culture

The almost constant percentage spend on restaurants and hotels for all of the ages up until 65+

The 50-64 year olds having the highest absolute spend per person.

All good factlets for a presentation and to justify the importance of the older market. Dick Stroud

A very sad tale

2010-01-23T10:50:00.000Z

This has absolutely nothing to do with 50-plus marketing. It is not a gripe. To be honest I don’t know what it is.

A while back I wrote about the way that politicians lose their way and quoted a couple of examples of people where I had connections from the past.

Yesterday, an old school friend of mine became the first MP to be punished by being stripped of his £65,000 ‘pay-off’ when he leaves the House of Commons at the end of this parliament. Harry Cohen and I were always a million miles apart politically but we were good mates at school.

He went his way and via the route of working in local government then as a councillor and then to become the local constituency MP. We haven’t spoken for years, although I have followed his escapades as an increasingly left-wing Labour MP.

And now it has come to this. The abiding memory of Harry will be the speech, of apology; he is being forced to give to House of Commons, the loss of the £65,000 and the everlasting digital content describing him as the worst example of greed that has pervaded the UK political class.

In so many ways I have a sense of self satisfaction, as somebody who has grown tired of hearing the self satisfied clap trap of the liberal classes who espouse high moral ideals whilst practising the same, or lot worse, venal habits as the rest of the population.

I am sure there are numerous lessons to be drawn from the morality tale of Harry Cohen, but right now I feel very sorry for the guy. Don't get me wrong, he has got what he deserves. Believe me, the young Harry of 1960 would have demanded a far worse punishment.

If there is a 50-plus message amongst these ramblings it is that this generation is at a time in life when their chances of changing how they are perceived is fast receding. Other than the public humiliation aspects, Harry is in the same position as anybody else. A sobering thought. Dick Stroud

The cost of long term care something we would prefer to forget

2010-01-22T08:16:00.000Z

You cannot blame Jo and Jolene public for putting their head in the sand and ignoring how the hell they will pay for their long term care. The Government has been doing it for the past few decades so why should its citizens be any different?

This item is from an online Independent Financial Adviser publication and spells the problems and the opportunities to the Finance Industry.

The marketing issues that have to be overcome are considerable. Most people reckon they have paid enough tax over their lifetime and hence the state should pay for their care. Most people don’t want to plan, 5 years into the future, let alone 50 years. Forgoing life’s pleasures today, for a better standard of care home, is not something to excite your average consumer.

Other than these factors it is a pretty straightforward marketing challenge. Dick Stroud

Kim Walker’s SilverTips newsletter is always worth reading

2010-01-19T07:15:00.000Z

If you are not a regular reader of Kim’s blog about all things 50-plus in the Asia Pacific region then you can catch with his thoughts in the monthly newsletter.

Here are a few of the topics covered:

Movies and Music Learn To Profit from the Boomer Market
Thailand Identifies Senior Tourism Opportunity
Microsoft Forecasts the Needs of Baby Boomers; Report
Australia's Telstra Reaches Silver Online Users in New Campaign
P&G Rethinks Strategy to Reach Older Consumers
Asia's Silver Elites Show Their Spending Power

That should be enought to wet your appetite. Dick Stroud

Growth in ‘ethnic minorities’ an effect of ageing

2010-01-18T06:34:00.000Z

An article in Adage - A Primer on the New America for CMOs – contains a fascinating factlet.

80% of people age 65-plus is white non-Hispanics. But just 54% of children under age 18 will be white non-Hispanics. It looks almost certain that White non-Hispanics will account for fewer than half of births by 2015. In 2010, Hispanics are the US’s fastest-growing and largest minority (50 million people).

Only two in three babies born in England and Wales are white British.

If you add geodemographics to the mix you find that England, and I am sure the US, is a patchwork of high density ethnic minority/younger and white/older geographic areas.

The bottom line of this is that when marketers think about the differences in their approach to marketing to older and younger people they should also include the ethnicity factor. It means that older age group is more homogenous then the young. Now that is a sentence I never thought I would be writing. Dick Stroud

Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in

2010-01-16T08:36:00.000Z

The ‘they’ in this case is the recession. Data from Pew Research shows the impact of the recession on the young people and especially where they live (back home).

Just get your head around this fact: “13% of parents with grown children say one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year.” That is a big change in the dynamics of the household and they way it operates and purchases.

Overall, the proportion of adults ages 18 to 29 who live alone declined from 7.9% in 2007 to 7.3% in 2009. Similar drops in the proportion of young people who live by themselves occurred during or immediately after the recessions of 1982 and 2001.

The current decline has been particularly steep among young women; the proportion who live by themselves fell by a full percentage point to 6.1%. Among young men, the share living on their own fell 0.2 percentage points to 8.4%, a statistically insignificant change.

While the recession has touched Americans of all ages, it has been particularly hard on young adults. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a smaller share of 16- to 24-year-olds are currently employed—46.1%—than at any time since the government began collecting such data in 1948.

That’s terrible, but putting the social implications to one side, marketers must understand the implications on the priorities they give to the generations. Yoof seems to me to be going down the list. Dick Stroud

Let’s be really retro and buy a newspaper

2010-01-15T06:28:00.000Z

Research from Adweek is bad news for the long-term health of the Newspaper Industry.

Daily newspaper readership skews heavily toward the older age groups. Almost two-thirds of those ages 55+ (64%) say they still read a daily newspaper almost every day. Younger Americans read newspapers less often. Less than one-fourth of those ages 18-34 (23%) say they read a newspaper almost every day and 17% in this age group say they never read a daily newspaper.

The possibility of charging a monthly fee to read a daily newspaper’s content online suggests that it is unlikely to work. Three quarters of online adults (77%) say they would not be willing to pay anything to read a newspaper’s content online. Among the minority willing to pay, one in five online adults (19%) would only pay between $1 and $10 a month for this online content and only 5% would pay more than $10 a month.

The article includes research from Boston Consulting that comes to a similar set of conclusions.

In some ways this makes things easier for advertisers since the printed newspapers will become the sole preserve of the older person. I guess we will have to wait whilst the newspaper industry goes, what looks like futile efforts, to attract a younger readership and admits to the inevitable. Dick Stroud

Do you have an iPhone and want to follow my Blog/YouTube/Twitter postings

2010-01-14T09:53:00.000Z

Thanks to some great work by the guys at MotherApp I am the proud possessor of my own iPhone app. If you want to view it you MUST have iTunes installed and to use it you need an iPhone or iPod touch.

An exercise in vanity – probably. But I think it shows how simple it is for companies to add value to what they do and make it accessible via a mobile app. Cripes, if I can do it surely any company wanting to engage the 50-plus can do the same.

Final plug for the excellent work done by MotherApp.

I promise this is the last mobile app posting for a few days. Honestly. Dick Stroud

57 million iPhones worldwide = lots of 50-plus users

2010-01-14T08:38:00.000Z

Those of you who can remember the heady days of the dot.com era will know the name of Mary Meeker. She was guru, par excellence, about all things digital. Well she is still at it and has recently directed a study about the Mobile Internet for Morgan Stanley (Dec 15, 2009). She studied the rate of change spurred by the iPhone and all of the technologies and services it has spawned. Here is just one of her observations.

It took Apple 2 years and 3 months to reach 57 million users, compared to 5 years for Docomo to reach 40M, Netscape 4 years to reach 50M. The trajectory for Apple is very steep at this time. Smartphone, in aggregate, will grow from 288M in 2008 to over 1B units by 2013.

You can read more about this report on the MotherApp blog.

Two months ago, BusinessWeek called it the “App Economy”. Prediction is that there will be 300,000 apps on the Apple App Store in a year.

My friends and colleagues seem amazed that I am so excited about the potential of mobile apps. Hopefully these factlets help explain the reason.

Anybody who thinks this has nothing to do with marketing to the older consumer is crazy! Dick Stroud

Age Concern Liverpool is selling it experience

2010-01-13T17:14:00.000Z

To be more precise it is selling access to the 20,000 people on its Age Concern database. I thought that Age Concern had morphed into Age UK – maybe not.

Anyway, market researchers can gain access to this group of older people in the Liverpool area by contacting David Rowland at Age Concern Liverpool. Alternatively you can contact the guys at Generation Comms. This is a new consultancy set up to advise on marketing to older people.

This is what Generation Comms says about itself.

Generation Communications Partnership has been established by a group of seasoned professionals with a wealth of communication, PR, marketing and business strategy experience to help you to untap customer potential in the 50+ age groups.

It is always good news to see new agencies providing services to companies wanting to market to the older market. I wish them well.

This is the first time I have seen an Age Concern region go it alone and promote its local marketing resources. I wonder I this is the shape of things to come? One Age UK and zillions of Age Regions Dick Stroud

Gadgets for Getting in Shape

2010-01-13T14:22:00.000Z

Technology Review has an interesting item about the latest bits of technology that can help achieve/maintain fitness – something that is important to many of the 50-plus.

I have already written about serveral of these developments that are designed for smartphones.

The DirectLife product from Philips is the only one that is not developed in the US.

It is a pocket-sized plastic device that also uses motion sensors to measure a user's daily energy expenditure. These measurements are combined with the user's age, gender, height, and weight before being converted to the number of calories burned during each activity. DirectLife has to be worn in a user's pocket or around her neck, and the data can be uploaded to the Web by connecting it to a computer. Cost: $100.

I am sure we are going to see a lot more of these types of products hitting the market. Dick Stroud

Why mobile apps and older people are made for each other

2010-01-12T10:09:00.002Z

The first days of a New Year, in a new decade, demands a new blog. What better subject to blog about than apps - those bundles of functionality that are fast going to be the norm on our mobile phones?

The combination of smart new mobile hardware and operating systems, 3G, GPS, motion detection, zillions of data feeds, speech and character recognition all tied up in a bow using apps development toolkits makes for the most exciting technology breakthrough since we typed our first http://www.

As usual this new technology is seen as being only appropriate to the young, who are thought to be synonymous with early adopters. I am not so sure. Mobile apps provide companies with massive opportunities to provide benefit (in exchange for money) to highly targeted audiences.

We are not just talking about building ‘profitable’ apps but creating them to be bundled into the very core of other products and services.

In 12 months we will look at the today’s apps as primitive first attempts. For those of you who can remember, they will be like watching a data transmission using a 56k modem and thinking it was fantastic and couldn’t be bettered.

So here we go. The blog is up and going. I would love to hear about any apps or features of smartphones that you think are particularly useful for older people or are intrinsically age-friendly. Enjoy. Dick Stroud

Music for oldies

2010-01-03T15:16:00.000Z

I should have made this ancient blog posting back in October 2009. Better late than never. Neurotic Media and CM2Oldies have launched iOldies online music and entertainment store that features over two million MP3s. This is the press release.

This site claims to be the only source offering the 50-plus Baby Boomers single downloads, entire album downloads, CDs, vinyl records (LPS), ringtones and “retro” DVDs in one “shopping experience”.

I have no idea how the range of music from this site compares to iTunes but it certainly is a more colourful experience to visit although not as easy to use and the background music sends me mad!

Unless the site has major advantages in terms of price and/or range I wonder why the Web literate Boomer would come here rather than where they buy their non-retro/nostalgic music? Whatever, I wish them well. Dick Stroud

Time to read the tea leaves

2009-12-31T17:57:00.003Z

It’s that time of year where you cannot open a newspaper without reading predictions for 2010 and rationalisations of 2009. I thought that enough had been written about 2009 but it might be interesting to speculate about the coming 12 months – from the perspective of the things that will be important when marketing to older people.

So what issues will keep the 50-plus marketer awake at night in eager anticipation or dread? My top five – not in any particular order are:

Technology 1. The combination of smart new mobile hardware and operating systems, 3G, GPS, motion detection, zillions of data feeds, speech and character recognition all tied up in a bow using apps development toolkits makes for the most exciting thing since we typed our first http://www. 2010 will be the start of era of 50-plus apps that will create fantastic new marketing opportunities.

Technology 2. Web video is still on a rapid upward trajectory. In 2009 it went from being something of a novelty to a media format that all web sites had to consider using. 2010 will see the use of Web video as an effective format to communicate with older consumers, really come of age (excuse the pun).

Technology 3. Social networking is here to stay but is becoming something of a bore. Back at the beginning of recorded time e-mail was exciting and something worth talking about – not any more, other than to moan about the time it consumes. I reckon that generic social networking sites are going the same way. The higher income 50-plus pretty much mirror the usage patterns of the Web. Sure they will retain their Linkedin and Facebook accounts but so what?

Advertising. For years I have been saying that: “this is the year when advertising becomes more age-neutral.” Why break the habit of a lifetime and say it again. Honestly, I do detect that the message is slowly getting through that advertising creative has to expand outside its Yoof-centric ghetto, if for no other reason than the barrage of news that shows the levels of youth unemployment – boomerang kids, dependence on “bank mum and dad” etc etc. Yoof is having a tough time and has lost its lure for advertisers. This brings us to the number one issue.
The really biggie.

The Recession. The perilous state of the economy in the UK, much of Europe and the US is scary. 2010 is going to be a turning point – unfortunately I am not convinced that it is turning in the right direction. At best it will be dreadful. At worst – you don’t want to know. If you want the gory details then have a read of Robert Peston’s 31st December blog. Peston is the BBC’s head economics journalist.

One thing for sure is that for marketers, willing to think outside the box and have the guts to take chances, there will be lots of opportunities for relieving the 50-plus of their hard earned cash.

Happy New Year. Dick Stroud.

Ford’s ad tells a lot about its view of older people

2009-12-31T10:05:00.003Z

Full marks for Ford for paying some attention to oldies, however, its choice of ads tells a lot about how it positions the older age group.

Early in the year there was the ad about making hill starts easier with the “Hill Assist” feature. In the most recent copy of Saga there is the above ad to ensure the poor old sods don’t stick petrol into a diesel car, or visa verse. It is not as if this is a new feature – it was launched in 2005.

You can just image the scene in a Ford marketing communications strategy meeting when they are trying to think of all of the features of their cars that might, in their view, be appropriate for older people.

Let’s hope 2010 is going to see a few more inventive ideas than we saw in 2009.

I am feeling in a particularly generous mood so I will give Ford some free consultancy. Cripes, in the company’s current financial state I doubt if they could afford my fees.

If you want to develop a feature that would guarantee you a surge in older customers then create something that makes it easier for older, like the 50-plus, to drive at night. Crack that one and you will see the customers come in their droves. Dick Stroud