BBC is focusing on a fickle group instead of fastest-growing audience

On Wednesday 26th April I posted an item titled: Bizarre logic. This was about the BBC’s decision to focus its energies, and its licence payer’s monies, on the 'youth market'.

It is a classical case of an organisation that finds that it is “losing the youth market” and concludes that it will effectively ignore its existing customer base (the 50-plus) and change itself to be more attractive to a group of people whose numbers are in decline. The logic being that if we don’t get them now they will be lost forever. How does Mr Big at the BBC intend to capture the UK’s callow youth. Simple – spend bucket loads of money and try to get the BBC to compete with some of the smartest Web 2.0 companies in the business.

It is astonishing that the CEO of the BBC can make this imbecilic mistake. Come to think of it, it is not that amazing.

I decided to put finger to keyboard and as a result this letter was published in yesterday’s Financial Times.

Sir, Your article "BBC warns of 'big shock' as it signals shake-up of website" (April 26) explains the BBC's intention to work harder to reach younger audiences. To achieve this goal the corporation intends to change its programming and increase spending on interactive technologies. These plans are very commendable but ignore a couple of basic facts.
The over-55s watch approximately twice as much TV as the young. Because of population ageing, the numbers of over-55s are rapidly increasing, matched by a decline in the number of younger people. Rather than adapting to the requirements of its largest and fastest-growing audience, the BBC is focusing on a declining and notoriously fickle group, the young.

The fact that 95 per cent of the BBC's employees are below 55 might explain this logic. Dick Stroud

Baby Boomers and Seniors Are Buying Cities

You have got to give this company full marks for coming up with a eyecatching headline: Baby Boomers and Seniors Are Buying Cities.

The press release tells us that: Your city may be sold. The Boomers and Seniors World Network is expanding to better serve the Baby Boomers and Seniors in local markets. Our goal is to have a Boomers and Seniors City Site in every city in America.

Mr. Eulenfeld, the company’s CEO explained that the Baby Boomer and Young Seniors market place is exploding across the nation. Every major company in America is spending millions on marketing to the Boomers on a national basis. Well that is news to me!

Mr. E goes on to say:

“Boomers and Seniors need to know what is going on in their own backyard. We are going to localize the Boomers and Seniors marketplace for the benefit of consumers and marketers with our city sites. Every city website will have its own distinctive style and look with emphasis on the community. Each Boomers and Seniors City will have a real estate directory, financial directory, pharmacy, dating site, travel agency, medical directory, and a medical discount plan etc ……………….

Go and have a look at the company’s web site and you will see a perfect example of how not to create a web site for the 50-plus. Let’s hope the business model is more robust than then web site. Dick Stroud

A little test

This is really aimed at visitors from the UK although some of the company names will be familiar to other readers.

Some fascinating figures recently came to light about the numbers of people, over the age of 55, employed by UK companies voted "the best to work for” in a Sunday Times survey.

What percentage of the workforce do you think are aged 55 and older? Answers in the next blog posting

Deutsche Bank
Barclays Bank
Thomas Cook
Microsoft
Volkswagen Group UK
Vodafone
Ernst & Young
Morgan Stanley
Mothercare
KPMG
Nationwide
The Carphone Warehouse
BBC

Dick Stroud

A little test - the answers

How well did you do?

Deutsche Bank – 1%
Barclays Bank – 3%
Thomas Cook – 3%
Microsoft – 1%
Volkswagen Group UK – 5%
Vodafone – 3%
Ernst & Young – 2%
Morgan Stanley – 0.4%
Mothercare – 5%
KPMG – 3%
Nationwide – 6%
The Carphone Warehouse – 1%
BBC – 5%

Astonishing. Dick Stroud

Bizarre logic

Yesterday the BBC announced its vision of the future when it launched its report “Creative Focus”. In the BBC’s own words:

Creative Future has been an extensive cross-media, audience-focussed project involving hundreds of people across the BBC and key external partners.

Its aim - to produce an editorial blueprint for BBC programmes, content and services for the emerging on-demand world over the next BBC Charter period.

This isn't about new services but a fundamental look at the creative challenges ahead with audiences in an on-demand environment that goes beyond current broadcasting models.

All well and good you might think. When you read the details of the press release you find a different story. The logic goes something like this:

1. The future is all about ‘technology’. Multiple platforms, and all of that sort of stuff. Incidentally the BBC has already announced that it wants to have its own search engine and media player so this is a great way of justifying the expenditure.

2. Young people don’t watch much TV. The BBC thinks it is because: “The audiences of tomorrow gets too little of real value from the BBC”. The BBC’s conclusion - it must ‘engage’ with them and reflect their lives better.

3. So in a world that is getting older the BBC decides to focus its attention on the young. Just one sentence in the “Creative Focus” report recognises that the world is aging but then spends the rest of the time saying how it will cater for the young.

This report is a great version of an organisation that knows what it wants to do and then retro-fits the arguments to justify (not very well) its previously made decisions. For non-UK readers, the people who pay for the BBC are its viewers, they don’t have any choice, and the majority are over the age of 50.

I nearly forgot - 95% of the BBC's employees are under the age of 55 years . Dick Stroud

A Boomer fest

If you want to overdose on Boomer stuff then tune in to MSNBC.

Today the subject is cosmetics tomorrow sex and then inheritance, brokers and technology. I doubt it too much new light will be cast on the subject but it is good to see the subject getting so much attention. Dick Stroud

Keep Methuselah generation happy and productive

This has nothing to do with marketing. It is a good old fashioned gripe!

I guess over the years I have got used to all of the daft terms that are mandatory accessories to articles and conferences about older people. I have even been known to use a couple of them myself (Grey and Silversufers).

I have just read an article in today’s FT, by John Philpott, the chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, titled: Keep Methuselah generation happy and productive.

The article doesn’t add much to the sum knowledge of mankind, so I wouldn’t race to the newsstands to buy a copy of the FT. But why use such a stupid name? It is possible that the title was not his own, but chosen by the FT, in which case, sorry John.

If the article was about a group of people with a racial, gender or sexual orientation it would not bestowed with an equivalent name, so why do it about older people.Dick Stroud

That makes two of us

Good to see another company becoming an interactive agency for the mature market.

Immersion Active is a Maryland (US) based interactive design and marketing firm that has recently announced that it is concentrating on marketing to 50-plus audiences with services specific to that market.

The more companies in the market and shouting about the need for companies to take account of older audiences, when designing and operating online channels, the better. Dick Stroud

Older women in films

Why can older women appear in strong and positive roles on television but rarely do so in feature films? And what does this say about a society that allows men to grow old (dis)gracefully whilst women simply disappear?

If you are interested in the issues of older women in film and media have a look at this event being run by the British Film Institute. Dick Stroud

Nothing to read during the Easter holidays?

If you are wondering how you will fill the next couple of day’s holiday then I have the perfect solution. Two fantastic reports for you to read. Well maybe not to read cover-to- cover but certainly worth downloading and adding to your reference collection.

65+ in the United States: 2005 published the U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration. 254 pages of everything you could possibly want to know about the US’s older population, and more.

Ageism in America. Published by the Anti-Ageism Taskforce at The International Longevity Center. 122 pages of facts, examples and anecdotes about ageism in the US.

I will not even attempt to summarise either of these two documents. Just download them read for yourself.Dick Stroud

Growing old in style is getting expensive

Reuters has just published this article.

It looks like there is good money to be made in providing “assisted senior citizen” communities.

Sunrise Senior Living, the biggest U.S. operator of assisted and independent senior citizen communities, predicts 15 percent to 20 percent growth in earnings per share for 2007, and said that he could sustain that growth for the near future.

"We see ourselves having a mid- teens growth rate," said Klaassen (CEO and joint-founder), who began the company with his wife in 1981 at the age of 23. Revenue at Sunrise grew 26 percent to $1.8 billion in 2005, while net income rose 57 percent to $80 million.

Aging baby boomers and an elderly population in the United States make for a lucrative potential market. So-called assisted and independent living models, which provide meals, help with everyday tasks and some medical care, have become a more popular alternative to nursing homes, analysts said.

The average costs for a one-bedroom unit in an assisted living facility in the United States rose 7 percent in 2006 to about $33,000 a year, compared with a 5 percent rise in 2005, according to Genworth Financial.

Sunrise is marketing to retirees who are even wealthier, with average yearly costs to residents now about $48,000 a year. "Even the top 60 percent of America can easily afford private-pay senior living," Klaassen said. "Many people are moving in with incomes of only $15,000 to $20,000, but they are tapping into their net worth" - in most cases, the value of their homes.

Sunrise is also growing abroad, with operations in the Britain and Germany. About a third of the company's new constructive starts are in Europe.Dick Stroud

US advertising thinking older?

“Flower Power in Ad Land” is the title of this article in the New York Times - you might need to have registered with the NYT for this link to work.

It seems, so the article claims, that advertisers of automobiles, financial services and packaged goods are reconsidering their fixation on youth.

"Those wishing to be successful in the market can't ignore the boomer numbers, the wealth and spending power they have" said Pat Conroy, vice chairman and national managing principal for the consumer business practice at Deloitte & Touche.

Pat reckons that marketers will thrive by "appealing to the possibilities that lay ahead for them". The article goes on to list a few of the current ad campaigns with an older focus.

Toyota Highlander, which shows boomers whose nests are emptying... "For your newfound freedom".

Ameriprise Financial is all about...“invoking a much more robust conversation from an emotional perspective"

Olay (Procter & Gamble) ... "it's less about actual age and more about how a woman sees herself."

L'Oréal Paris... "the new attitude about aging."

It’s reassuring to know somebody in Madison Avenue understands the reality of today’s aging population. Dick Stroud

Travel gets the online message (maybe)

Some news about e-mail and the 50-plus
Holiday company Warner Breaks has appointed an agency to handle its email direct marketing campaigns for the over-50s UK holiday market. "Email is an important part of our online marketing activity for 2006, expected to generate over 10% of our online sales." Only 10%. Seems a conservative target.

World class web sites?
Tourism Ireland is promoting Ireland as a tourist destination, through a new global presence.

Kieran O'Hea, internet manager at Tourism Ireland, said: "Our objective is to create a web presence that is 'best in class' in the tourism sector."

Kieran, I have to tell you that the current version of the site is definitely not ‘best in class’. Let’s hope the site is the ‘before’ and not the ‘after’. Dick Stroud

Still reading a newspaper? You must be 50-plus

Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group, told a cable industry conference that the audience for Disney and others was changing. In particular, she said, studies showed that 40 per cent of the eight-to-27-year-old audience came home after school or work and used between five and eight devices, many at the same time, before going to bed. Wow. The secret is out. Loads of 8-27 year olds are using their feet to make mobile calls!

“Forty per cent of baby boomers go home and watch TV,” she said. Boring olds sods.

A similar message appeared in this article that talks about newspapers migrating online.

According to Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell "the basic trend is unmistakable. We've seen in our own survey that the average age of a daily reader is 55 years old, and the group with the strongest preference is 50-plus, while the strongest preference for online editions, as well as online news aggregators, is 25-34." Dick Stroud

Retirement - world, life, age, futures, help, today……..

I suspect we are going to see zillions of magazines, web sites, newsletters trying to engage the incredibly diverse bunch of people called the 'retired'. Here is an example of what we can expect. Dick Stroud

Revlon targets older women to boost sales

It seems that as part of a turnaround effort, Revlon, the New York-based cosmetic company, is turning to the “older women”. The company has just unveiled its biggest launch in more than a decade, Vital Radiance, a line of makeup formulated for older women.

The article in Business Week explains that:

Largely forgotten as Revlon and other competitors such as L'Oreal SA have focused on age-defying beauty products for women in their 30s and 40s, the segment is becoming a hot new opportunity. Female heads of household over age 45 account for about 69.3 percent of cosmetic purchases at mass retailers, according to data supplied to Revlon by ACNielsen, a market research company.

L'Oreal, whose Age Perfect collection is aimed at the younger boomer, is slated to introduce this fall a cosmetics and skin care collection exclusively marketed to women in their 50s and 60s. Meanwhile, Procter & Gamble Co. which has an age-defying beauty line called Cover Girl's Advanced Radiance, is studying the older market, according to Dr. Sarah Vickery, a senior scientist at P&G's cosmetics division.

OK, so it looks as if the older woman has finally stirred marketers into action. What will be the catalyst to do the same for the older man? Dick Stroud

Ignoring Boomers is Billion-Dollar Mistake

This article appeared in AdAGe.com.

Ken Dychtwald told a roomful of media buyers and marketers that marketers should target the 40-to-60 year olds.

“As an outsider, I see a situation where the boundaries and lines of demarcation don’t effectively line up with the new market opportunities and lead people to mistakenly believe it’s a snapshot of the marketplace,” he said. Instead of buying on 18-to-49s or 25-to-54s, try looking at audiences in segments of 18-to-39, 40-to-59 and 60-plus, he suggested and “you’ll get a look at a landscape that’s breathtaking.”

“Here’s the good news and bad news,” he said. “Lifelong brand loyalty is disappearing.” The presentation was sponsored by Viacom’s TV Land, which is touting its ability to reach boomers while many other cable networks -- Lifetime, TBS, TLC and A&E -- have tried or are trying to age down.

According to network executives, about 70% of its audience is within the boomer demo. “If you did an intersection of boomers, ages 40 to 60, and then 25-54, our sweet spot is the intersection of those groups,” said Karen Bressner, senior VP-ad sales for the cable network.

Mr. Dychtwald said so many media are missing the mark by cultivating an “overwhelmingly strong interest in youth.” Youth, he said, is not where marketers will find the growth, money and consumption. The 40- to 60-year-old age group comprises $2.1 trillion in spending power and they are leading spenders in categories such as movie tickets, computer hardware and software, cellphones and home electronics. Dick Stroud

Must have own teeth

If you are in the least bit interested in the 50-plus market then make sure you watch this BBC Panorama programme. It will only cost 40 minutes of your life. It is a good trade, as the programme gives an excellent insight into the issue of age discrimination.

Normally Panorama programmes can be a bit on the heavy side but this hits just the right tone. For non-UK views, some of the references are UK only, but the programme's core message is valid worldwide.

This is how the BBC describes the programme.

They call it the "Vampire Theory". The idea that when it comes to the workforce, employers constantly crave the fresh blood of younger workers.

According to a recent study, ageism is the most common form of prejudice in the UK ahead of sexism or racism.

Panorama gained exclusive access to a comprehensive undercover project which reveals remarkable levels of discrimination against a job applicant on the grounds that she is considered too old at the age of 39.

. No, that is not a mistake, it does say ‘39’. Dick Stroud

Older men are boring – but older women..

I have just finished reviewing a book about “Marketing to Women” that tells me why men and women are different and why women are such important consumers.

I believe the proposition. I am sold on the idea. What worries me is the lack of evidence that is presented to substantiate the claim. I don’t doubt that it exists. I just wish somebody would write an article/book that really marshals the research/evidence together.

This following article is typical of the type that appears on this subject. Lots of arguments and quotes that all sound very plausible but light on evidence.Dick Stroud

Internet use in Europe

This report has just been released by the EU about “The Internet among individuals and enterprises”. It does not analyse its data by age but if you want an overview of what is happening across Europe, this is not a bad starting point.Dick Stroud

Trendwatching.com

This has nothing directly to do with the 50-plus. For the last year or so I have been receiving a newsletter from Trendwatching.com.

I don’t always agree with what it says but it always makes me think.

The most recent issue is about the implications and applications of the increasing transparency of information and its impact on private and public lives. Really worth having a look.Dick Stroud

Business Week - reaching out to an older crowd

Blatant self-publicity. I was recently interviewed by Business Week about the does and don’ts of marketing to the 50-plus. Dick Stroud

Retro cars are making a comeback

Nostalgia sells cars, or so it would appear: “A sentimental yearning for a fuzzily remembered past is universal but when it comes to cars, it's especially strong in North America”.

European manufacturers have retro-styled cars such as Volkswagen's New Beetle and the British Mini. Now the US domestic automakers have embraced the trend in their struggle to hold onto their shrinking share of the North American market.

General Motors displayed its Camaro concept at the Vancouver International Auto Show. A show car that evokes the classic 1969 Camaro Z28 along with DaimlerChrysler's Dodge Challenger, an evocation of the 1970 muscle-car icon.

"Baby boomers coming through the market right now grew up with those cars," says Frank Trivieri, general director of marketing at GM Canada. "It just brings back some very, very fond memories for a lot of people." And so the article goes on…..

My great memory of 1970s cars was the way they appeared to rust in front of your eyes. Hopefully this is one of the retro characteristics the manufacturers will drop. Dick Stroud

In debt? No pension? You're in club 18-40

Read today’s article by Will Hutton. Mr Hutton is the author of “The State we are in” and Chief Executive of The Work Foundation.

There is nothing new in this article but it adds a bit more weight to argument about the relative economic condition of the generations.

The report he refers to by the FSA can be downloaded from here.

The picture that Mr Hutton paints is bleak (for the under-40s) but is only part of a much grimmer economic picture.

Because of their high levels of debt it makes this generation (18-40) extremely susceptible to interest rate changes. If there were to be an increase in rates of 2% it would cause real pain to the household budgets of this group – marketers take note! A rise of 5% would create chaos. Marketers take even more note!

So what is the conclusion? The UK, and much of the industrial world, is locked into needing low interest rates.

You might ask the question of what happens if (when) inflation starts to rise at an unacceptable pace (as defined by individual states). The fiscal authorities are limited/restricted to the extent they can use interest rate rises as a weapon against inflation.

So what happens - please send your answers to this puzzle to Mr Gordon Brown, c.c. EU heads of state and b.c.c George Bush.
Dick Stroud

Eons - an indefinitely long period of time; an age.

Interesting name. The guy who founded the job search website Monster.com thought it was and chose it as the name of his new company.He has raised $10 million in venture capital for a new project called Eons, that will: “shape a new era of power and fulfilment and value at every stage of life, starting at 50."

Well I am all for power and fulfilment.

VCs, General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital have teamed up to provide funding for Eons.

Taylor (the guy from Monster.com) described Eons as a ''media company" but refused to provide details about what features and services it will offer. He wouldn't even confirm that Eons will be an Internet business when it launches in July

The article goes on to say:

But experts say there's a shortage of Internet resources tailored to the needs and interests of older people. Fox noted that many sites ignore the physical problems of older users -- using small type that they may find difficult to read, for example. ''We're dealing with people who are very Internet-savvy but are losing their vision," said Fox. ''In five years, we're going to have an even bigger group in that demographic." In addition, seniors need more sites that feature information of importance to them.

I agree with the sentiments but I do hope the founders of Eons realise there is a bit more to it than increasing the size of the fonts. It will be interesting to see what happens in July. But that is an eon of time away.Dick Stroud