Boomer-Friendly cars

Businessweek has an article about Boomer friendly transport. It includes some of the old chestnuts - Nissan’s "aging suit" to help its designers experience the trials and tribulations of ageing.

General Motors is adding features such as blind-spot monitoring and lane-departure warnings – I wish it would install these features in its vans and lorries!

Apparently GM is working on "vehicle-to-vehicle" communications that could warn a driver that cars in a line several cars ahead are applying their brakes. GM is also making more widespread use of simpler features like larger, more legible numbers and letters in its instrument panels.

The most obvious problem shouting out for some smart techy to solve is the hassle of night driving. Some high-end luxury cars from Mercedes-Benz and BMW already have features but it sounds like it is at an early stage of development.

The article contains a lot of other examples of things that are going on or planned for the future. It is also worth listening to the podcast from the American Automobile Assn. published about its report "Smart Features for Mature Drivers".

It is good to see that the car industry is beginning to wake up to the opportunities of making age-smart cars. Dick Stroud

Demographics of your YouTube video watchers

Ever wondered who on earth is watching all of those YouTube videos you have uploaded? Now you can.

What a great feature. The above shows the demographic breakdown of the views of two ads on my YouTube channel. Lots of young guys watching the beautiful M&S models. A much more mature group of females watching the Dove Pro.Age ads. Dick Stroud

TV ads from the US

Many thanks to Rick for sending me the details of some finance related ads currently running in the US. All of them will be targeting an older audience.



Something weird has happened with the voice sync on this ad – you can see the real thing on the company’s web site



Other versions of the ad are available on the web site. Know anybody like this?

I was unsuccessful in locating the ads from Axa Equitable but you can get a feel for the style by visiting the Web site that is also using the creative (an interesting development that you will see a lot more).

As always, comments welcome. Dick Stroud

AdAge takes an interest in the UK

It is not often that AdAge comments about the UK, not often it comments about UK agencies and never (I think I am right in saying) that it comments about a UK agency, which is yet to be launched, that will focus on the 50-plus (or as tgi50 likes to say the “50-just”). I have already commented about tgi50.

It just shows you the power of the personal brand. The founder is Robert Campbell who was the co-founder of London agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe. After the sale of the business he became vice chairman of Y&R Europe, Middle East and Africa and then VP at McCann Erickson for the same region.

Well done Robert. No beating about the bush - I am jealous! Dick Stroud

Doom, doom and daft names

If you believe the media and “research shows PR” then all ages of Europeans are in financial meltdown.

In the UK, Liverpool Victoria (finance company) has done some research and found that 66% of over 50s fear they face an impoverished retirement. Conclusion they should save more – guess what, LV provides saving products.

In today’s Observer there is a report about the young in Spain, France and Italy who are: “facing a lifetime on low salaries with unrewarding jobs, forever poorer than their parents.”

Of course there is an element of truth in both conclusions but you need to dig a lot deeper into the numbers to find what is really happening. Far deeper than you will find in a Sunday newspaper article or a corporate press release.

Other than banging on about the dreadful state of the world these extracts have another thing in common. The both employ a GAUADN (Get attention by using a daft name). So in the case of Liverpool Victoria it is the 'Face Retirement Earnings Doubts' (Freds). In the Observer it is “Baby Losers”.

OK, OK, OK I know it is all about getting attention. But surely the world has moved on and there are more sophisticated ways of doing it! Dick Stroud