Eye candy branding where process trumps empathy

When branding is demoted to becoming a “tick in the box” marketing task you know things are going badly wrong. I have just read a couple of articles that present different of explanations of what’s wrong with today’s branding and brand management.

The “Beyond Mad Men” article in brandchannel proposes the argument that today’s brand management isn’t a million miles away from the world portrayed in the TV series Mad Men. As a great fan of the series I think that the advertising industry is now a secondary to the personal sagas of the employees. Other than the contempt that agencies have for their clients I don’t see too many similarities to today’s agencies.

McKinsey takes a different line of argument. In classical McKinsey style it has lots of nice charts.
The article “A new world for brand managers” argues that CPG companies have created fragmented, overlapping structures that have tied up brand and category managers and others in key coordinating roles, crimping their vitality and value creation potential.
This chart gives an interesting insight (click on the image to see an enlarged version of the chart). Today’s brand managers have lots (maybe too many) technical and functional skills and not enough communicating and direction setting ability. That has a big ring of truth. This is summed up with the: “don’t bother me with the brand strategy argument I need to implement a social networking thingimijig.”

This brings me to the logo of Wiltshire council. I live in Wiltshire which is a really nice English county. Recently I needed to communicate with the council “Where everybody matters” and discovered it employs a “black hole” principle to residents’ communications (i.e. communications go in but nothing comes out). In all honesty, I doubt if Wiltshire is any worse than other public sector organisations where the term “customer service” is a politically incorrect phrase and never discussed – certainly not implemented.

At some point in time, somebody in the council must have gone through the process of ‘branding’ and out popped the pleasant green logo and the meaningless term “where everybody matters”. My fear is that there are more private sector companies than we would like to admit that employ this simplistic/mechanistic approach to branding. Somehow I reckon Don Draper would have come up with something a tad more inventive and meaningful. Dick Stroud

How not to do political marketing

A couple of hilarious things have occurred this week that illustrates that Labour’s grasp of marketing is about as bad as its grasp of running the country. This is nothing to do with the 50-plus and is all to do with the UK. A real Sunday morning type blog posting, something of a rant.

So far Gordos performance on YouTube, answering the questions, posed by Saga, about the concerns of the 50-plus, hasn't exactly been drawing in a flood of viewers. A grand total of 365 views to be exact. Subtract the 100+ or so that will have come from Brown’s PR contingent, Saga and his civil servants then you end up with a couple of hundred.

I just cannot listen to the guy. But that’s a personal thing. I think it is safe to say that Gordon has not gone ‘viral’. So much for the power of social media affecting the voting decisions of the 50-plus or any other age come to that.I expect that this of posting of Brown’s video will probably double the number of viewers. Good grief what am I doing?

In the same week as the video, Labour released its advertising intended to hammer the Tories. Being an inclusive bunch of guys they held a competition that was won by one of the million+ media studies graduates that we have in the UK.

Unfortunately, this character missed out on the lectures to do with advertising. The result is an ad that draws a comparison between David Cameron with Gene Hunt, the star of the TV series, Ashes to Ashes, that is set in the 1980s.

The only problem with the choice of character is that most people think he is just the right sort of guy that is needed to sort our the low-life that infects the streets and his politically incorrect style plays well to great sways of the voters. Not only this, but Labour launched the campaign in Basildon, where Essex man rules and used Tweedledum and Tweedledee - better known as Miliband Brothers,  two of the geekist members of the Labour party. Failure compounded by failure. Amazing.

Somehow I think this campaign will disappear into the sunset just like the attempt to bring Tony “so what is wrong with being orange” Blair back into UK politics.

I promise not to write too many of these parochial type postings. Honest. Dick Stroud

The BBC has gone Boomer crazy

“The richest, most powerful generation that ever lived is embarking on a comfortable retirement. But why does it feel like they've pulled up the ladder with them?”

Here we go again. The BBC churns out yet another poorly researched, poorly written pile of XXXX. I have a phrase in mind for XXXX but I will leave that to your imagination.

The author (above photo) has a book coming out in the next week or two called It’s all their fault. I doubt for one minute that the guy actually believes all this nonsense and that it is a great bit of publicity to sell the book. The trouble is that there are plenty of oiks who will gobble up all of this manufactured generational spite. Still it is nice to know that very few of them will have the wit or energy to get to a polling station at the general election. Dick Stroud

More Boomer bashing nonsense

Newsnight is (was) a respected BBC news insight programme. A couple of days ago it had a Boomer bashing fest. Matched in verbal combat were representatives of the angry young and the smuggish old. Neither did themselves in credit.

I have written about this stupid argument a number of times, most recently in the context of a silly article in a UK Sunday paper.

David Willetts, who does have a lot to contribute to this subject, had to condense the complex subject of intergenerational equity into half a dozen short sentences.

The spokesman for Yoof was a particularly annoying plonker (pictured) who wants to position himself as Mr Young and Angry. His only contribution was a couple of dumb soundbites that he endlessly repeated about the unfairness of having to pay for a university education unlike them (the boomers) who had it all free of charge.

Have a listen to this short sound clip from the programme to get a feel of the tone. If you have nothing better to do you can listen to the whole thing (22 mins).

A plea to the BBC. This is an important subject that should not be treated in this daft manner. The guy from Citywire seems to agree with this view. Dick Stroud

What’s a fair wealth distribution?

I have written on a couple of occasions about the issue of intergenerational fairness. The last time was in response to a particularly daft article in The Observer.

Once I can get some time I want to read David Willett’s book, The Pinch, that is all about this subject. Yesterday, the author was speaking the LSE about the plight of younger people and their inability to mirror the wealth of their parents and grandparents.

The graphic is taken from this session.

A question that I wish somebody would answer is if the wealth distribution is unfair – what would be a ‘fair’ distribution?

Of course I don’t expect anybody to answer this question, so let me ask a harder one. If there is zero inflation then you probably could hazard a guess at the answer, unfortunately inflation varies and nobody living to day has a clue what it will be in five years time.

So, let’s say we have period of very high inflation (yesterday UK inflation hit 3.5%). When I was 26 the UK inflation rate hit 25%. An older person, who has not source of income and is dependant on their wealth to fund the rest of their life, was seeing it evaporate in front of their eyes.

So I ask the question again, considering that nobody has the foggiest idea what inflation will be in the future – what is a fair distribution of the wealth today. Dick Stroud

Blame it all on your dad

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

Why COP15 was bound to fail before it started

This has absolutely nothing, well a smidgen short of nothing, to do with the 50-plus.

You may have noticed that there has been a bit of shindig going on in Copenhagen called COP15. It hasn’t gone well and is likely to go even worse once a few days of perspective are given to the events.

Let’s forget the scientific arguments about climate change and just consider the event and why it has been such a monumental mess. Let’s look at it as cool, clear-headed marketers.

Just think; the organisers were given unlimited funds to mount an event that would result in an ‘agreement’ to do something about the amount of nasty stuff we pump into the atmosphere. You are guaranteed the attention and overwhelming support of the media and political class. How can you fail?

What was the story line the organisers were hoping would unfold? I reckon it goes something like this – meet in a ‘clean’, neutral, ‘nice’ place (Copenhagen) – invite everybody who has a view on the subject (excluding those who disagree with the climate change orthodoxy) – have lots of time and space for people to meet and express their views – slowly build to a crescendo and conclude with the world’s leaders arm in arm, perhaps shedding a tear, saying that the planet is safe in their hands. What a lovely story that was doomed before it started.

OK, smart alec, what would you have said if the organisers had asked your advice?

1. You cannot mix a show-piece world uniting event with the eyeball-to-eyeball tough negotiating necessary for the half a dozen people who really matter to come to an agreement.

2. You are never going to get 193 people/countries to agree to anything of any substance so don’t try.

3. One of the three main players (Obama), perhaps the most important, was powerless to agree to anything of any substance so don’t ask him to do so when you know he can’t.

4. If you believe climate change is serious then the event must be serious and not something that was a mix between a May Day demonstration and a music festival.

5. Make it short and sweet. The longer it goes on the more chances for failure. Two weeks should have been 3 days.

6. Be careful who you invite. There were 45,000 invited to attend the conference at least 5% (some would say 95%) were going to be nutters.

7. Make sure the high profile people involved are serious and credible. The chief G-77 negotiator is from that hell hole Sudan where the UK Foreign Offices says “the security situation is unstable, banditry is widespread …..” What message does that send?

8. All the set-piece sessions were bound to turn into an opportunity for world ‘leaders’ to grandstand for the benefit of their domestic audience (yes that means you Mr Brown).

The list goes on and on and on. And now it is over and the UN Secretary General welcomes the climate deal in Copenhagen as an "essential beginning". So if 45,000 people, £130,000,000, 10 days can only reach a beginning one wonders how much an end will cost.

It is going to take a long time for the climate change campaign to recover from COP15 if indeed it ever will.

Nearly forgot. I did say that this post had a smidgen to do with the 50-plus. The abiding memory of this event were young people haranguing each other and the world ‘ leaders’. That is when they weren’t rioting or dressing up as polar bears. In practice the age group that is most concerned about climate change is the oldies, not the young. There is only so far the 50-plus are willing to look kindly on youthful enthusiasm, energy and sensibilities before it morphs into something darker like youth naivety and stupidity. Dick Stroud

I own up - I am anti-slippers

Looks like my mockery of the Warwickshire Slipper Brigade and its inept campaign to stop the over-50s falling over has truck a raw nerve. Having looked around a little further I found Richard Littlejohn’s hilarious article about this nonsense. That’s it. No more commentary or comments on this subject and no I don't want any slippers for Xmas. Dick Stroud

Alienate, annoy, frustrate and infuriate all in one go

Somebody in s Warwickshire County Council sat down and thought: “What can we do to really get up the noses of the over-50s - let’s create the gold standard for pissing off the oldies”.

Either this is the explanation or the Daily Telegraph has mistaken the 5th December for the 1st April.

It would seem that deep in the bowels of the council some twerp decided to promote a service to allow “older people” to bring in their old slippers and replace them with a pair of new ones that will cut the risk of them falling over.

Not only did the council alienate, frustrate, annoy and infuriate its older tax payers it wants to charge them a fee of £5 for the fitting session. For this princely fee they are presented with a brand spanking new pair of the Velcro fastening slippers and advice on how to don them and avoid accidents around the home. You know, the advanced stuff of not lifting your right and left foot at the same time.

So there you are, if you want the “best how not to deal with the over-50s” example of the year you need look no further. Dick Stroud

Bluffers guide to communications and behaviour change

Oh no, the UK Government has discovered the ‘science’ of behavioural change.

It is an amusing and costly phenomenon that the government discovers the techniques of business at a time when business has kicked them out and moved on.

For the past decade or so we have had a government machine that has been driven by multiple ‘targets’ long after the technique was rejected by the business world.

Now the Government has discovered the ‘science’ of behavioural change and thinks this is the best way of getting the recalcitrant population to do as it bids. To help the hapless marketing agencies, in particular advertising, it has launched its 101 primer on the subject. This is what it says about the publication.

Within government, we are continually seeking new and better ways to communicate with citizens to encourage positive behaviour change. With this document, we hope to provide those working in government communications with an update on some of the latest thinking about what drives human behaviour and to launch the debate as to what this means for our approach to communications, from strategy development through to evaluation. We see this as the first stage in an ongoing dialogue.

We look forward to working with you to continue developing and delivering communications that are informed by both a deep understanding of the behaviour we seek to influence and the rapidly changing communications landscape.

Mark Lund, Chief Executive, COI

If you're not from the UK you might wonder what the COI does. Here is its “About US”.

COI works with government departments and the public sector to produce information campaigns on issues that affect the lives of every citizen - from health and education to benefits, rights and welfare.

The bottom line is that during 2008/2009 it spent £540 million of taxpayer’s dosh.

Shall I tell you what will happen next? Every agency will get hold of a copy of the document and ensure that their pitches for government business are festooned with behaviour jargon. They will abandon their native cunning and creativity and start adopting the “5 step approach”. Out the window goes inventiveness in comes systemisation. Call me a cynic of what!

A good place for UK Government to start would be to ensure that its communications are vaguely understandable by the human race. I just came upon this prize example of Government speak.
The cultural sector that we refer to is an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, inter-genre collaboration, which encompasses policymaking, intercultural dialogue/cultural relations, creative cities/cultural planning, creative industries and research & development.
OK, to be honest it is from a quasi-Government organisation, but you get the message. Or maybe you don’t. Dick Stroud

Age Concern + Help the Aged = Age UK

Let me get this right. Back in Feb 2009, when Age Concern and Help the Aged decided to merge, they registered the new charity, under the legal name of Age UK and then announced they were launching a rebranding exercise to come up with a puker new name.

Corporate Edge, the branding consultancy was hired and money spent. Nobody knows how much but it is thought to be less than £100,000.

Today, 10 months later, the charity has decided stick with the name they first came up with. Now call me an old cynic, which I am, but I bet my boots that the reason they have taken all of this time to come back to where they started is that they couldn’t agree with any of the alternatives.

I have nothing against Age UK; it is a perfectly decent and acceptable name. As I said in a previous post, the one thing that was certain, was that the new name was going to contain the word ‘age’. This constraint means there are not that many alternatives. Apparently a couple of the names that didn’t make the grade are Agenda and Age Matters.

Maybe I am being really dumb but the names of the two organisations had a meaning. Age concern – pretty obvious; Help the aged – pretty obvious. What significance and meaning does ‘UK’ in Age UK add?

I wonder if Corporate Edge will use Age UK as a reference client? I guess the selling pitch would go something like this: “ Age UK were so impressed with our work that after 10 months they rejected all of our brand name suggestions and used the one they came up with in the back of a taxi..”

Enough, enough, the deed is done, the name is in place. Best wishes to Age UK. Dick Stroud

What is it that happens to politicians?

This has nothing to do with the 50-plus marketing - it's a personal gripe.

I have had personal contacts with two of the people in the UK news.

Ages ago, at the dawn of time I did IT marketing consultancy projects with a guy call Steve Timms. He was bright and a thoroughly decent guy. He was also somebody with political ambitions.

Starting in local government he moved up the slippery pole and eventually got into parliament as a Labour MP.

It was not surprising that he did well and found himself in demand being one of the few Labour MPs who had worked in business and one of an even smaller group who knew anything about IT.

Why am I telling you this story?

Well in the dying days of the Labour Government, Steve is Minister for Digital Britain. The name says enough, doesn’t it? After 12 years in power Steve’s bosses have discovered this “digital stuff” and much to their amazement discovered that the UK doesn’t rank much above the level of a Third World county in the quality of its digital infrastructure.

What bright idea did they come up? Honestly, I am not joking, this really is the truth. They are going to tax everybody in the country with a broadband connection 50p a month.

Steve is doing the media rounds, telling anybody who will listen that the “broadband tax” is to raise £175 million to fund “high speed networks”. Of course nobody believes him and sees it for what it is: another way of screwing tax out the poor saps in employment. It is just like the days when Brits had to pay tax on windows and more recently there was a tax on mobile phones. Like all of the “Green Taxes” it's just another way of plugging a massive budget deficit.

What is so sad is that Steve is a decent guy, who really was in politics for the right reasons and who is bright enough to see this idiot tax for what it is. So he ends his political career, peddling a lie. The poor guy will not be remembered for the decent things he did but as somebody who sold out and supported something he must know is wrong.

Another person in the news is Baroness Scotland, who is the UK’s Attorney General for England and Wales. She is effectively the UK’s top legal person. Her misdoings are personal – claiming to much personal expenses and employing an illegal immigrant.

I don’t know the Baroness but I was at school with two of her brothers. She is one of twelve children. The Scotlands were an amazing family. Not just that there were so many of them but they were exceptional honourable kids. I know that sounds crazy, but even at the age of fifteen, you knew there was something deeply good and honest about them. And could her brothers play cricket!! Her parents must have been exceptional.

All these years later and the women stands on the edge of political oblivion and is widely ridiculed by the press and even her own political colleagues. Somewhere along the line she lost the plot

These are just two of countless stories of where politicians start off doing the right thing and end up with their moral compass smashed to pieces. How sad for them. How sad for us. Dick Stroud

Death of the final salary pension scheme

Understandably, the young think pensions are a complex and boring subject. Not so when your age begins with a 5 or a 6.

One of the top four, maybe the most important, factor affecting the ability of older people to keep spending is the size of the private pension. The state pension, in the UK just about buys the absolute essentials of life; the private pension enables people to live.

The pension that pays the most and has the least risk for the individual is the final salary pension. No worry with this type of pension about the chaos in the stock market, the payments just keep coming, irrespective of what is happening in the world.

There are now only three companies left in the FTSE 100 that provide this type of scheme for new employees - Cadbury, Diageo and Tesco. You don’t need to be a genius to calculate the 97% don’t.

If you add up the total deficit of all of UK FTSE 100 pension schemes you come to an astonishing figure of £96 billion - more than double the amount time last year. The deficit in all of the company schemes is now above £200billion with 88% of the country's 7,400 defined-benefit pension schemes facing a shortfall.

It is not surprising that PricewaterhouseCoopers found that only a quarter of employers offering final-salary pensions intend to keep the schemes open to existing members

A decade ago it was the general view that the UK had one of the best occupational pensions schemes in Europe. We Brits carped on about the fact that we had more money saved in pension schemes than all the rest of Europe put together. What a difference a decade makes.

What went wrong? Back in 1997 the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer was a certain Gordon Brown who stopped companies getting tax relief on their pension fund’s investment income. This meant that it became increasingly costly to provide high grade pensions. Result. Companies started closing the schemes. Compound this decision with the decline in the value of the stock market, which is showing a negative real return over the last decade, and you can see why corporate pensions are in such an unholy mess.

If things weren’t bad enough, Gordo, now the Prime Minister, changed the tax treatment of pension plans again, by reducing tax relief for top-rate taxpayers.

Why am I telling you this, other than a tad of personal annoyance? Each age cohort reaching retirement will be materially less well-off than the previous one. Worse than that, to provide even a basic level of pensions, consumers will be forced, via taxation, to increase their contributions. Remember, money paid to pension funds doesn’t buy flat screen TVs.

I nearly forgot. None of this applies to Government workers, who continue to receive the Rolls Royce of pension schemes, paid for by the poor saps in companies.
Dick Stroud

Wrinklies aren’t worth it

There was an article in The Sunday Times with the above title. You won’t find it on the newspaper’s web site, using that name, since it has magically changed to: “Ageing is an ugly business.” I guess somebody thought they had better tone down the sarcasm. Amusing.

The gist of the article is that people become less productive as they age, but are paid more, which is daft. Conclusion, age discrimination is OK. I am not going to get stuck into this argument, but I would like to point out the nasty habit of journalists selectively quoting academic research .

I suspect the journalist (Emma Duncan) did a quick scan of the articles, selected the bits that she thought supported her arguments and ignored the rest.

The two papers she quotes are: “When does age-related cognitive decline begin” by Timothy Salthouse. The paper does indeed suggest that cognitive abilities start declining from our mid- twenties onwards. What it doesn’t deduce is the extent to which the rate of decline is relevant to how people complete their work related tasks. It most certainly doesn’t make any attempt to balance the rate of decline with the amassing of experience that results from ageing.

The other paper is: Age and Individual Productivity – a literature survey. A few things about this study. Firstly it is old – August 2003 – and a lot of the research that it quotes dates back to the early 1990s. A lot has happened since then.

Secondly, it is what is says, a literature survey, not a research study. For instance, the journalist quotes one of the research studies that studied the output of jazz musicians, painters and novelists in the 20th century and found that male musicians peaked at 30 and male painters peaked at 40.

From this rather abstract bit of research Ms Duncan makes the mental leap and concludes: “Older workers are not as useful as younger ones. Discriminating against them therefore seems perfectly reasonable to me.”

This is a nasty example of lazy journalism portraying itself as a serious article. Not good.

There is an article to be written on this subject but my guess is Ms Duncan is not the person to do it. Dick Stroud

Good intentions makes good PR but don’t change the world

If you are busy and don’t have time to read something that is only tangentially related to the 50-plus marketing then farewell and have a good day. If you have a minute or two and are interested in reading a few more of my moans about the UK, then thanks for hanging around.

The “bottom line” is this; over the past decade “doing things” has been replaced by an endless stream of consultations, initiatives, enterprises, action-groups, commissions and all sorts of expensive bodies that generate words but no action. To feed the government’s need to be seen to be doing something, a whole parasitic industry of agencies. NGOs and consultants has exploded to generate the impression that things have or are about to change. Let’s be honest, over the years I have worked on this type of Government related work so I am not blameless.

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean. Back in early June it was announced that the government was going do something about the “Digital Divide” – the great unwashed who don’t pay broadband bills. With a great fanfare it was announced that one of the UK’s most charismatic entrepreneurs was going to help tackle this problem. Older people were specifically mentioned as a group who would benefit from her work. I wrote about this at the time.

A month passes and we learn that this objective has been dropped and that the focus of her attentions will be poorest 6 million people in the UK – obviously this will include a good number of the old. In truth it doesn’t matter a jot since the chance of her having any impact, with a budget of £2 million and working part time, is next to zero. The point is it generated a slew of headlines that gave the impression that something was about to happen when nothing could be further from the truth.

Another example. This week we read the headlines:” Urban allotments, reading groups and computer training for the over 50s are just some of the good practice initiatives detailed in a new approach to public mental health.” You might be mistaken for thinking that hordes of over-50s were about to start reading books on growing potatoes, checking the weather forecasts on the web before descending in their legions on a carpet of allotments that will magically appear across the country. No. Wrong. This is all part of a “consultation process” (i.e. it wont happen).

This farce reminds me of the line in Evita: “As soon as this smoke from the funeral clears, we're all gonna see, and how, she did nothing for years! You let down your people, Evita.” Substitute “British Government” for ‘Evita’ and you have the state of UK Ltd in one. OK, moan over, onwards and upwards etc etc etc.

Another aside. Is this cynical and defeatist attitude one of the negative effects of ageing or one of the benefits of having been around to see so many of these initiatives come to nothing? Dick Stroud

The biggest Ponzi scheme of all time

There’s lots of stuff being published about Madoff and how his Ponzi scheme was the biggest of all time. He might have burnt through 20 Billion, some say 50 Billion, whatever, it's a big number.

Compared with the UK Government, Madoff hadn’t got past page one of the Idiots Guide to Ponzi schemes. He was an amateur, not even worth a footnote in the history of Ponzis.

The article in the Sunday Times by Dominic Lawson spells out the unbelievable mess the UK is in because of the ageing population and the unwillingness of the Government to have done anything about its consequences other than make matters a hell of lot worse.

Mr Lawson quotes a European Commission report, about The Sustainability of Public Finances, dated 2006 (yes 2006) that said:

The United Kingdom has been placed in excessive deficit procedure and the European Council has recommended that the United Kingdom bring the deficit below 3 % of GDP by the financial year 2006/07 at the latest.

As a result of the weak fiscal position in recent years, the debt/GDP ratio has risen by around 5 % of GDP in three years, to 42.8 % of GDP in 2005 (42 % for the financial year 2005/06).

Do you know what the debt/GDP ratio is now? Come on have a guess. You won’t believe it? Trust me it is a big, big number. OK, double the figure in 2005 and add a bit (87%).

Lawson goes on to say that the IMF says that the

Fiscal headache of the credit crunch is as nothing to the migraine which, absent a change in policies, is about to pulverise us: it states that in the period between now (yes, that is 2009) and the middle of the century, the fiscal impact of the credit crunch will be about a tenth of that caused by the demographic crunch.

Let me spell this out for you. The Ponzi scheme we have been living through over the past couple of decades, but especially since the mid 1990s, has been paying Jo Public a ridiculously large amount compared with the money contributed.

Everybody has been living in Alice in Wonderland. The Government was able to position itself as the wise investor and manager of the nation’s wealth and Jo Public has done pretty well with zillions of new jobs created in the Public Sector and a continuous stream of initiatives, interventions, and policies to make everybody feel happy.

It was all a sham. Just as the credit crunch caused Madoff's scheme to collapsed so it has with UK New Labour Ltd. The scheme is collapsing in front of our eyes and guess who is going to pick up the tab. Jo Public, Jo Public’s kids and their kids. What a mess.

Marketers need to start preparing for how the will exist and thrive in a low growth, austere economy. Better start today. Dick Stroud

Self indulgent twaddle

This is mainly a gripe/moan but there is a serious point about the idea that there are collective generational attitudes.

Today the WSJ has an item titled: “Boomers to This Year's Grads: We Are Really, Really Sorry” in which it lists some of the comments being made at US graduation events. Obviously, the article is going to be selective in the quotes it uses but the message it conveys is one that keeps popping up in the US and to a lesser extent in the UK. These quotes give you a feel for the sentiments:

The collective advice for the class of 2009: Don't be like us (Boomers).

We have been self-absorbed, self-indulgent and all too often just plain selfish.

The grasshopper generation, eating through just about everything like hungry locusts.

We have limited the potential of future generations by burdening them with our poor choices and our unwillingness to make tough ones.

Most of the speakers were from the world of politics, academia and the media (i.e. the ‘chattering’ class).

One contributor to the article said about this collective spasm of self-flagellation: “You think about what an apology does, it allows you to maintain the moral high ground."

Here is how I see it.

Firstly, this bunch of worthies has the arrogance to think they can make pronouncements about “their generation”. Wrong. The belief that you can extrapolate your own attitudes and beliefs to the rest of the planet, because they happen to be born at the same time as you, is plainly daft.

Secondly, these self appointed generational spokesman (I specifically mean ‘man’ not spokeswomen) inhabit the small enclave of people that are continually represented in the media. The more they appear, the more they appear, the more their views of the world are taken as ‘fact’.

Finally, this group share a common trait. They rarely allow reality to encroach and influence their ‘ideals’. What I mean by this is that 30-40 years ago these same people would have been nattering on about whatever the ‘radical’ issue of the day happened to be. They started with unrealistic ideals and are astonished they haven’t been attained. As they push their zimmer frames around they will still be blathering on in the same way.

Lesson for the day. Marketers must look beyond the media pronouncements about generational issues – and any other issue come to that. Dick Stroud

Is it surprising that UK pensions are in such a mess?

This has nothing to do with marketing to over-50s. It is a simple but heartfelt moan.

We all know about the financial issues of the ageing population and the impact of the recession on pensions. There are no simple answers.

The “big issues” are simple to understand but beneath them is a complex web of factors that takes time and intellect to understand.

Following the recent convulsions of the Government we have had our 11th minister put in charge of UK pensions. The previous incumbent (anybody remembers her name) was only appointed in October 2008.

It is not surprising that the situation of the UK’s pensions is in such a mess. On average ministers spend about 12 months in the job. That’s even less time than your average brand and marketing manager! Dick Stroud

Even more about the recession and the 50-plus

Today’s FT has an article about the “increase in part-time pensioners”. What it is really about is the need for older people to keep or restart working to make ends meet. Here are a few of the tasty bits of information

• Norwich Union said it had seen nearly a 50% per cent increase in people taking income from their pension while leaving it invested in the stock market, compared with a year ago. It believes this is evidence that more people are phasing their retirement.
• Scottish Life and Standard Life are seeing more people than usual were phasing their purchase of an income from their pension.
• A report on the impact of the recession on older workers, to be published next week by Help the Aged and Age Concern, will show 60% of the 50-plus may have to work longer than planned because of the downturn.
• An economist at Architas, Axa's fund management company, estimates that people will have to work a further six years on average in order to have the same level of income in retirement they would have had before markets crashed.

Of course none of this applies the public sector workers who receive their pensions irrespective of what happens to the economy.

Unbelievably, one of the reasons why people in the private sector will have to work longer is to enable government employees to retain their ludicrous pension rights.

If you detect a note of anger/contempt/envy/disgust, you are right! Dick Stroud

The impact of our ageing population cannot be ignored

This is a personal gripe with zero use to your 50-plus marketing.

Today’s Guardian has an article with the above title that is all about the work of an organisation called 5050vision that has developed a plan for the North West of England to help it with the challenges of an ageing population. You can download the document that contains loads of data about ageing related issues facing this part of the UK. It is a very nice looking document. I would think it cost a few bob to produce.

Unfortunately, if I were a 50 year old living in the North West I doubt if I would take much comfort from knowing that the report recommends that the five partner organisations (Northwest Regional Development Agency, NHS North West, 4 North West, Government Office North West, DH North West) should:

• commit to the incorporation of the Framework in new Regional Strategy
• recognise the combined effect and interdependent relationships of housing, economy,
• endorse the interim arrangements proposed to allow for a leadership, governance and implementation process to be secured in order to support the delivery of the outcomes set out in the Framework and deliver stakeholder engagement (detailed in section three p. 46)

As the UK faces at least a decade of stringent cuts in public spending the chance of any of this gobbledygook ever seeing the light of day is remote – to put it mildly. This document and its jargon ridden recommendations is a microcosm of what is wrong with the UK.

A lot of no doubt well intentioned public sector workers producing acres of waffle riddled text that is all about extending and justifying a costly bureaucratic machine that delivers very little to the people who actually need assistance – in this case the 50-plus. Dick Stroud

The hogwash of generational differences

Black people behave like XX, White people like YY, Latinos like ZZ and the Chinese like a combination of XX+YY+ZZ. Rubbish you say and you would be right.

How about Muslims behave like AA, Christians like BB and Jews like CC and Taoists like a bit of this and a bit of that. Rubbish you say and you would be right.

So why do people keep trying to make massive generations about how Xers, Gen Yers, Millennials and Boomers behave?

Crude stereotypes about race and religion often chime with out prejudices but sensible people dismiss them as simplistic and more dangerous than helpful.

So when you see a table, like the one above, breaking down the behaviour of the US workforce into a few snappy sentences then your warning bells should start ringing.

Have I heard some old guy whining on about how in his day things were done like XYZ – of course I have. Maybe there are few more of them around then there should be, but please don’t apply this conclusion to 76 million Americans.

Funnily enough the crude stereotype that I hear mostly applied to the young, by people I encounter, is that they are so conservative, risk averse and unwilling to think outside the box.

However, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to apply that to all young people. Pity the author of this article didn’t have a bit more sense. Dick Stroud

A graphic that says it all

This has absolutely nothing to do with the 50-plus.

Today that FT has a feature about the impact of the recession on UK employment.

The above graphic says it all. The only thing in the UK that grew in the last half of 2008 was Government. During 2008, public sector employment increased by 30,000 (5.78 million) whilst private sector employment fell by 105,000. What a terrifying fact. Dick Stroud

Using Facebook and knickers to combat extremists

This has nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with the 50-plus. I read about this use of Facebook and thought YES what a marvellous thing.

The Facebook group was founded in protest after the Sri Ram Sena attacked several women in a pub in Mangalore last month. Apparently this group object to young ladies drinking and I am sure a pile of other things as well.

The gentleman of Mangalore hadn’t reckoned on the reaction of the journalist Nisha Susan who said: "Most of us are just regular people. We decided to give the Sri Ram Sena attention, but not the kind they want."

Rather than a petition or some other useless venture, Nisha asked her supporters to send in pink knickers, which it will post to the Sri Ram Sena on Friday. The group is up to 20,000 the last time I looked so it could result in a large bag of knickers.

I am sure it will not make a jot of difference to the religious bigots but it is one hell of a good idea. Go and have a look at the The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women. Dick Stroud

Heyday R.I.P.

Heyday is no more – it has ceased to be - it has expired and gone to meet its maker – it is bereft of life!

The final nail in Age Concern’s venture was thumped home by the Charities Commission. The press release announcing its demise doesn’t make happy reading.

The full report is now available on the Charities
Commission site - not for the faint hearted.

The commission accuses the charity’s trustees of falling short of expected standards and said its 34-strong board (that is thirty-four) was too large. No kidding.

"The trustees are unable to demonstrate that they exercised a sufficient oversight and critical challenge in making relevant decisions against a clear and robust risk framework."

The commission questioned whether there was enough evidence of a need to justify setting up Heyday and also raised doubts as to whether the Heyday activities were clearly charitable. Well one thing that is certain is they behaved as a not-for profit.

Finally, the Commission said the trustee’s decisions should have been made in a transparent and "informed manner". Clearly they weren’t.

What the Charities Commission doesn’t appear to have done is highlight the catalogue of basic marketing errors that Heyday’s management made from day-one.

Should you want to read the sad catalogue of errors you can follow them on my blog. Here is a selection of the comments.

The venture is born on the 16th December 2005.

1st Feb 2006 the first problems become apparent

30th May 2006 – Heyday sort of launches. My comment at the time: "Having blown its launch budget the best they could come up with was a message on the Web site saying that the real site is coming “in June”. It wasn’t until the end of June that it finally launched."

The mistakes kept on coming until on 7th Feb 2007 the organisation was folded into Age Concern.

Gordon Lishman, the director general of ACE, who retires next month, said: "I accept my full share of responsibility for the failure of Heyday to meet its objectives." He goes on to make that statement we hear after every child’s death in local authority care: “staff and trustees were committed to learning the lessons from its failure.” As you would expect there have been no resignations at the charity.

What really, really infuriates me about the Heyday mess is that there are thousands of poor souls working at the sharp end of this worthy charity, trying to do the best they can on limited funds and watching £22 million of costs for only £0.7 of membership fees. They must be livid and deservedly so.

Fortunately the one lesson that Age Concern has learnt is to get a new Chairman and MD who have the task of repairing the mess left behind by their predecessors, whilst guiding the organisation through the current economic ills. I wish them the very best of luck.

For non-UK readers of the blog you might be wondering why there is a dead parrot
attached to the Heyday logo. Don’t worry it is a long story. Dick Stroud

Generational generalisations

We live in volatile times. It is reassuring that some things stay constant.

This blog posting titled Boomers Out Cuspers in could as easily been written in 2000 as 2008/9. OK, the names would have changed but the sweeping generalisations would have been the same. You can bet your boots that the instant somebody starts make sweeping statements about tens of millions of people that they have disengaged brain from fingers.

I wont bore you by reproducing too much of the posting but this gives you a feel: “After strutting and tub-thumping and preening their way across the high ground of politics, media, culture and finance for 30 years, Baby Boomers have gone from top dogs to scapegoats in barely a year.”

The blogosphere is full of wierdos and nutters with opinions about all sorts of stuff but this is from somebody who should know better.

If the Xmas holiday is getting too much for you and you want some amusement then read the article in the Examiner that refers to posting. The author of the posting is a Marian Salzman, who is chief marketing officer and a partner at Porter Novelli Worldwide a company that “captures and intelligently influences conversations that matter”. I hope Ms Salzman’s Boomer aged clients appreciate her comments in the light hearted, end of year joking spirit they were intended. Dick Stroud

“Older and Disabled People”

I remember when Ofcom first announced that it was grouping “older and disabled people” into a single group as deserving of a special representative that I wrote a blog posting saying that I thought it stank of the stereotyping. For a quasi-government agency it should know better. Clearly it doesn’t because it has just appointed a somebody else to this role.

The explanation might be that Ofcom is bit short of funds and so has to group special needs groups together. Somehow I doubt they would have dared grouped ethnic minorities and the socially deprived.

Practically it doesn't make a jot of difference what they do since the committee only meets four times a year. Looks like it more an exercise to be seen to be 'inclusive'' rather than being serious about the issue. Dick Stroud

Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (2004-2007)

Firstly, thanks to Martijn de Haas for telling me about this survey.

You can download from the site a thumping great 180 pages of report that from first glances looks interesting. Another one for the pile: “must read”.

It appeared that you can get access to the data behind the report findings. Methinks that is something that could be useful, especially since being a EU taxpayer I have directly contributed to the funding of the research.

After a tortureous process of downloading a form and then having to fax or post (yes you are reading correctly) back to Share I get an e-mail telling me that I can’t have access.

Would you believe it - the data is only available to academics. Since another part of my life is as an academic I asked again and was told that this would be OK but: “Let me stress again that the data may only be used for scientific purposes and not for commercial reasons.”

What world do these people live in? Dick Stroud

Czar for the elderly

Sorry but this is a bit of rant with zero marketing content.

On waking this morning and reading the newspaper I felt a happier and a relieved person. I think not.

The Daily Telegraph tells me that: “Joan Bakewell (sorry Dame Joan Bakewell) will "put a spring in the step of the elderly”. Her new role in life is to champion the rights of pensioners and the benefits of active living.

Quotes from the Government press release says that Bakewell will not be content simply to comment on policies affecting her generation, but also wants to “celebrate the achievements of older people” and help the middle-aged to prepare for decades of active living. What drivel.

I have absolutely nothing against Dame Joan, who has always come over as a reasonable sort of person. I am sure she will approach the job with the best of intentions.

But, and as usual there is a whopping big but, Joan has as much understanding about the needs, thoughts and emotions of the UK’s elderly (whoever they are) as my cat. Dame Joan is the archetypal media friendly personification of the ‘elderly’ as you can hope to find. She is chattering class ‘establishment’ to her finger tips. This doesn’t make her a bad person, but somebody with experiences and opinions a million miles from a pensioner in her native Stockport who has to eek an existence on the meagre state pension.

This is the worst sort of token politics.

If the women is serious about the job, I suggest she decides to live for a few months on the median income of her age cohort and then let’s hear what she has to say about active living and fulfiling lives. Dick Stroud

I.O.U.S.A - a larger version of I.O.U.K

A new film, in the Al Gore format, is causing something of a stir in the US. This snippet from the web site (and the video) gives you a flavour for what it is about.

Wake up, America! We're on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.

What you don’t get from this is the emphasis that the film places upon the costs of ‘entitlements’ (i.e. social security and medical care) and how they contribute to the financial problem.

It is not a great leap to go from here to “generational warfare” argument that we (the boomer generation) are leaving it to the young to pick up the tab (literally) for the care of parents and grandparents.

This has got my American friend Brent Green rather upset (understatement) and has inspired him to create a web site challenging the film’s arguments.America fiscal and balance of payment imbalance is massive. There is no room for Brits to get too smug about this - we are not far behind.The reasons why, and what to do about it, have similarities with the banal arguments that rage about the environment. I call it the "Xmas tree" phenomenon, where the tree represents the problem that can be dressed in many ways and with many guises, depending on your viewpoint.

Let me give you an example. The UK has a huge financial deficit. The supporters of the I.O.U.K argument will dress the problem in: “it is all the fault of the rich boomers, expecting the younger generation to keep working so that the oldies can live a fun filled 24/7 lifestyle”. The anti-war brigade will use a different set of arguments: “it is all the fault of Iraq, Afghanistan and the UK’s colonialist past that translates into mega defence weaponry systems costing a fortune. I have a different set of arguments: “it’s all the fault of the bloated, incredibly expensive and diabolically incompetent public sector”.

In truth, the tree is dressed with elements of all of these arguments, but as marketers we know that nobody listens to a diffused and complicated message. Dick Stroud

Packaging dyslexia

It goes without saying that Dove and its pro.age brand is a good thing. Love the ads, admire the guts for its radical product positioning etc etc.

However, from a functionality point of view, they don’t work for me. What I mean, in words of one syllable, is I don’t know the conditioner from the shampoo as I grope around in the shower.

OK, I know I could get glasses to wear in the shower, or increase the lighting, but for heavens sake I am not exactly blind and I cannot read the labeling. It is not surprising when you look at the poor colour contrast of the reversed out text.

Then a member of the Stroud household pointed out that it is easy to tell the difference. The Conditioner opens from the bottom and the Shampoo from the top.

Is this a male thing or just me but I didn’t know that. This packaging masterpiece completely passed me by.

There is a serious point, other than I will no longer smother my balding (bald) pate with conditioner, is that I reckon this packaging stinks. A plea to Dove. For people like me, with packaging dyslexia, please use good old fashioned readable text to say what is inside. Dick Stroud

Fiftyforward – what the hell is this site all about?

I have given up counting or visiting all of the “fifty something” sites that keep sprouting up. This week I encountered yet another that I thought I should visit - Fiftyforward.co.uk .

Now if you cannot work out what a site is about from its home page there is something really wrong. This site baffled me. Since it looked to be well constructed (technically) and had clearly had money spent on its construction I was intrigued to know who owned it and what they thought was its purpose. Next stop the “About this site” page. Then I discovered this. Wow.

Who the hell is Bfi? All was explained after a quick Google Search. I learned from a BBC report that an investigation by the House of Commons raised concerns about Learndirect's finances - and said Ufi's management and marketing costs, which take up nearly 30% of its budget, were "far too high". Damn easy to spend other people’s money. Looks like Ufi is still pursuing its profligate ways. Dick Stroud

Finerday has caught the Heyday bug

Back in late June I wrote about a new start-up called Finerday. It looked an interesting venture but I was worried that Age Concern was involved. This is the organisation best remembered for the Heyday disaster (search my blog for multiple references).

I warned them but the launch day, Friday, 4th July came and went and it is now the 19th July. As you can see, still not working.

I am sure (seriously hope) that there are lot of people working away trying to get the site launched. I wish them well.

How can Age Concern get is wrong twice? Well it looks like this accident prone outfit is at long last going to merge with Help the Aged, who seem to have got a winner with its InTune venture.

This is a plea from the heart to the guys at Help the Aged. Please take responsibility for all matters IT. You have been warned. Dick Stroud

Destroying customer care by the weakest link

In late June I wrote about my trials and tribulations dealing with BT and its lessons for improving customer care.

Here is how the story concluded.

The story so far – my BT broadband connection suddenly dropped to the speed of an arthritic snail – the nightmare of communicating with BT’s technical help desk was something that should be outlawed under the UN’s charter on torture – lots of lessons on how not to provide “customer care”.

New week, new dawn.

I will skip out all of the detail and get straight to the point. I had two visits from BT staff, both of whom would get 5 star marks as brand ambassadors. They were technically good, understood my problem and went the extra mile to sort out the problem. Who could ask for more? Result is I now have a faster broadband connection than before the troubles started.

The moral of this saga is this. A company can only maintain its brand reputation by ensuring the whole of its customer facing service is excellent. Most parts of BT’s customer care infrastructure is first rate but its reputation risks being destroyed by a manifestly weak, but significantly large, part of its support service.

I really hope somebody from BT reads this posting, for the sake of its two, and no doubt thousands of other, top class employees who sorted out my problem. Dick Stroud

The disaster that is BT’s customer support

I have always been pro-BT. I have never had any problems with my broadband connection and although I occasionally have issues with my WiFi services (OpenZone) these are always quickly resolved. Who could ask for more?

Several of my chums have had problems and have been forced into the grips of BT’s “Customer Care”. I think both have now recovered, but they keep recalling: “I thought I was losing the will to live” and “I am now much better for taking the Prozac”. I had always assumed that they exaggerated and were partly to blame. How wrong I was. How wrong I was.

As I started my quest to sort out the problem it quickly became apparent that it was going to be a long and depressing task. I had to get something positive from the experience so decided to analyse BT’s performance from a marketing / customer care perspective. In particular, what BT must do to improve things for its older customers?

For readers who want to know the nature of the problem, see the description at the end of this blog post – the problem is not the issue, but rather BT’s amazingly inept way of trying to solve it.

Don’t worry I am not going to give a blow by blow account – just the relevant stuff.

Once I realised I had a problem I did the usual thing - researched it using BT's web site and Google and sent an e-mail detailing the issue to the BT Broadband Technical Support team. Things were looking good. I received a rapid automatic response, logging the problem and providing links that might help resolve the problem. So far so good.

Less than 50 mins latter I get a ‘personalised’ response.

I am sorry to know that you are not getting the kind of connectivity that you expect from the broadband. I totally understand how important it is for you to have a stable and speedier broadband connection. I will assist you to the best of my ability to resolve your issue.
I would like to inform you that, I am sorry to know that you are not getting the kind of connectivity that you expect from the broadband. I totally understand how important it is for our customers to have a stable and speedier broadband connection.
These duplicated sentences are then followed by the 101 guide to troubleshooting a broadband connection.

No mention of the very specific questions I had asked. Not very impressed.

I reply saying that I have done all of these basic steps and will they please answer my specific question.

My e-mail is returned saying that BT does not accept e-mails with attachments. But all I done was to reply to their e-mail! The idiots were sending e-mails in html format that appeared to contain an attached that was then rejected when the customer responded.

Two more e-mail exchanges – no attempt to answer my question. And then the phone rings and a gentleman from India says he is phoning to help solve my problem. Well that is what I thought he said. After a 5 mins of a call, during which I must have asked they poor guy to repeat the last sentence at least 10 times it was clear we were getting nowhere.

We have 2-3 more calls and 4-5 more e-mails. All that is happening is the guy is going through a simple fault checklist, all of which I have already done. Enough is enough. I ask to speak to one of their technical people. After spending lots of time on hold we agree a time when the technical expert will call.

True to their word the call comes. A highly educated Indian lady then goes through the same 101 guide again and refuses point blank to answer my questions. From the discussion it is clear that she really doesn’t understand what I am talking about. After 15 mins of frustrating dialogue I suggest we call it a day. She then sweetly says: “is there any other problem I can help you with today”. End of call. Stiff Scotch - no water. Blood pressure gauge shows that all is not well. Decide to stop.

So what did BT do wrong – other the obvious of annoying me so much that I spent the time creating this post:

1. The process ignored the customer and only permitted them to respond to the pre-determined questions that were flashing on the screen in front of the call centre operative.

2. The process was amateurish. The quality of the text in the e-mails lacked any sense of understanding of the customer’s position and was often misleading/ambiguous. E-mails were generated in a format that was then rejected when the customer responded.

3. Lack of training of the operatives in how to speak on the phone to people who might have hearing issues – I would guess 50% of customers would experience problems hearing what was being said.

4. The text in the ‘help’ is laden with jargon and is ambigous

5. I would guess that the operatives were given little training in understanding BT’s product, which explains their total reliance on the pr-prepared scripts.

6. There was no process for escalating the call, when it was clear that the operative could not provide a satisfactory answer.

7. Perhaps it was just me, but I sensed the whole process was geared to find a possible problem that could be blamed on the customer. In my case, after the long talk with the technical expert her best advice was that I go and purchased a new cable.

How is possible for BT to create such a nightmare of a customer care operation? Well my suspicion is that in a booming market, that is not renowned for providing its customers with good care, BT has minimised the cost of the process and calculates that it is more profitable to lose customers than to increase the cost of care. What that says about BT and the value it places upon the value of its brand I leave for you to judge.

Technical note.
The problem I have (still not resolved) is that the IP profile for my broadband account has been reduced to 135 kbps – it should be between 4- 5 Mb. The result is my transmission speed is greatly reduced. I suspect that this was due to a major fault on the line but the same low IP profile remains in place even after the fault has been resolved. Hence when the line is tested it shows it to be working OK.

Would anybody from BT like to comment upon this mess? Dick Stroud

Accessibility but not for you

This incident really amused me. A very large global communications company recently presented at a conference about older people and proudly (with some justification) explained that they had created a booklet that was sent to all staff about how to deal with older people. A big round of applause.

I thought I would get a copy and see what it was all about. Much to my amazement I get a reply from the head of Corporate Responsibility & Accessibility saying that it is not available to people outside the company.

We are not talking about some top secret document – it was sent to all members of staff.

How about a bit more ‘accessibility’? I willn’t mention the company’s name in case they come and take away my satellite dish. There I go looking to the Sky. Woops. Dick Stroud

Saturday Gripe – waste of EU funding

My beloved European Parliament (I jest) has decided to assist older people to live more independent lives by agreeing to fund research into using technology such as the Web. You can read all about it in this release from Reuters (Thanks Chuck for telling me about the news).

The European Parliament has decided to spend $234 million in the next five years on a research programme called “ambient-assisted living”.

The mandatory quote that accompanied the press release: "We need to make the Internet more accessible and make training available and allow elderly people to stay socially connected and to perform daily activities which can be facilitated, such as shopping, paying bills and making appointments," said parliament member Neena Gill of Britain.

Ms Gill, who has been on the EU gravy train since 1999, is not exactly overbrimming with commercial knowledge or experience of technology or older people. Before becoming a politician her only work was running a couple of housing associations. Not exactly the most mentally taxing task.

So, before this ‘ambient-assisted living’ project disappears, never to be heard about again – other than to have relieved EU taxpayers of a sizeable sum of money – I thought I would have a look to see what it is all about.

First the positive news. The UK appears to have decided to stay on the sidelines. Let’s be thankful for small mercies.

Now the bad news. The spending jamboree recently kicked off with a conference, they always do. Lots of worthy speeches and death by PowerPoint. You can read about the details of the programme in this presentation.

If you ever wanted to know what is wrong with the centralised planning of the EU then read this presentation about the programme. The chart ‘explains’ what it is all about. Real "consultant speak" stuff.

As a rule of thumb the cost of administering these EU programmes is about 50% of the total budget, sometimes more. This pays for zillions of consultants, lots of meeting and progress reports and the overhead of EU bureaucracy.

The remaining 50% will be given to an assortment of companies and universities. The only companies that get involved in EU projects are those with the patience and central admin to fight their way through the mind-numbing form-filling that accompanies the funding. Companies that have this mentality are as entrepreneurial as over-boiled broccoli.

The universities that get involved are invariably from the second and third division who don’t have the academic strength to attract fund funds from the corporate sector.

Is it any surprise that nothing, absolutely nothing, of any good ever comes out of these EU development programmes? You might as well dig a hole, stuff it full of the $234,000,000 and set fire to the lot. At least it would keep somebody warm for a while.

Why does this make me angry? Firstly, as a taxpayer it is my funds that are being wasted. Secondly, there is a great need to understand how technology can be better be used to help older people, something this project is never going to deliver. Dick Stroud

A Saturday morning gripe – stereotype marketing

The UK’s Department of Work and Pensions is starting a scheme to encourage the older generation to make their views known to the government. It is part of the Generation Xperience campaign that is supposed to be all about celebrating age and all of that sort of nonsense.

What dimwit came up with the name Generation Xperience? To most people it means absolutely nothing or for those buffs in marketing refers to Generation X.

Next, the idea that Government wants to know the views of the 50-plus (or any other age come to that) insults the citizen's intelligence. Like all of the other ‘listening’ schemes it is nothing more than a sham to give the impression of consultation, or even worse the desire to ‘debate’, when in reality the Government will do what it intended to do in the first place. The only listening Government does it to the opinion polls and direct action.

Finally, the wording and positioning of the Generation Xperience is a classic example of all that is wrong with “stereotype marketing”. Don’t confuse me with the facts, I know what these 50-plus are like and what they want.

At least this campaign has one saving grace. It makes a good case study on how not to do it. This guy seems to agree. Dick Stroud

Only show the nice pictures

The over-50s in Britain are happier than at any other time in their lives. Well that is what a new report from the UK’s Government tells us.

This is a taste of what the research says (taken from the Telegraph).

A Government study suggests 50 is the new 30, with many who have passed their half-century feeling in the prime of life. Often dubbed "Gotys" - Getting Older, Thinking Younger - they are ambitious, financially more secure and less stressed.
Nearly one in six uses social networking websites and internet chatrooms, while emailing is becoming the norm.

Having paid off their mortgages and raised their children to independence, many are still enjoying robust good health into their 60s and beyond.These are the people fuelling a boom in the leisure market.

And so on and so on and so….

This ‘research’ is part of the Government's "Generation Xperience". The "what" campaign I hear you asking? Having spent a bit of time fishing around Government web sites I discovered a couple of places that pertain to be all about the ‘Xperience’. Site 1. Site 2.

The more I read of this campaign the more it looks to me as if it a publicity campaign by Government to try and convince the older voter why they should be grateful to them.

It has not exactly been making a great impact with the 50-plus industry in the UK. Today I was attending an event with one of the UK’s large suppliers of services to the 50-plus and out of the ten people I asked, only one person had heard of the thing.

I then discovered this blog posting that claims the Government spin machine is peddling a false view of old age and suggested that the PR company promoting the campaign was only interesting in portraying older people as happy and carefree. Organisations involved in the campaign have been instructed only to use promotional images in which elderly people look affluent and active.

Out go pictures reflecting the reality of life for many older people. In come photos with a youthful-looking couple laughing as they run across a beach, a woman about to work out in a gym, another woman happily gardening, a couple cuddling on holiday and a man enjoying a game of tennis. Here are the guidelines.

As you can see the approved images are marked with a large tick, while those to be avoided are marked with a cross.

This is a fantastic insight into the mind of Government and the way it attempts to suppress reality and promote an image, which is true for the few, but only a dream to the majority. What a bunch. Dick Stroud

Patronising piffle

This posting is partly a gripe and partly an insight into the UK media’s attitude to older people.

On Sunday morning there is a radio programme on the BBC that is a look-back at the week on what is supposedly the thinking man/women’s channel (Radio 4).

There is a short slot when a group of worthies/celebrities, or people selected for some other ‘talent’, review the Sunday newspapers.

During the previous week the UK’s press has been full of stories about how the media, in particular the BBC, has been misleading the public. Amongst many stories there was an item that revealed that a programme that purports to show a survival expert ‘surviving’ is actually shot a short walk from a 5 star hotel where the star of the show spends his time in the bar and jacuzzi when not giving the impression that he is in the depths of darkest Africa.

Have a listen (This is file in .wmv format).

As the sound clip starts the person selecting and describing the story is a long since forgotten children’s TV presenter (Janet Ellis). After she has mumbled on for a minute or two you next hear somebody who sounds as if she is both mentally defective and suffering from a speech impediment. Unfortunately, she is a senior Member of Parliament (Gwyneth Dunwoody) - a women with an ego only matched by her naïve stupidity.

Finally you hear the words of wisdom from Peter Bazalgette. This guy has made a fortune from flooding UK TV with programming that makes the Jerry Springer show look like a discussion between a bunch of Nobel Prize winners.

Just listen to the arrogance of it all. Just listen to contempt these people have for the poor souls who are forced to pay for the BBC.

Most importantly just listen to Peter Bazalgette’s attitude to older people who he thinks are too dim to understand the “Grammar of Television”. Unfortunately, the views of this guy are all too common throughout the UK media. Dick Stroud

A professional at work

This has nothing to do with the 50-plus but is about the art of verbal abuse.
For the last week it has been impossible to avoid the face of Alistair Campbell (Tony Blair’s Machiavellian Press Secretary) who has published his diaries.

He is the sort of guy who loves to be hated which accounts for his cheery countenance.

A UK food and TV reviewer, who doesn’t mince his words had a few choice ones to say about the TV programmes that accompanied the launch of the book. I just wish I could write like this.

One thing that’s rarely mentioned about Campbell is that before he was a crap press secretary he was a crap tabloid journalist, with a writing style best described as staccato brochure cliché. It sounded like a series of e-mails left by a bored and not particularly bright office boy to a girl he is trying to impress: long-winded on justification, shortsighted on observation. It was mawkish, belligerent, repetitive and wholly deficient of telling insight. There wasn’t a single passage that would have made you want to be there.

And with that Alistair looked even happier. Dick Stroud

The final word on Heyday – maybe not.

I have used this blog to post a lot of stuff about Heyday. Most of it, not very complimentary.

The first post was back in late 2005 when the news of the venture first started to creep out.
Worrying signs appeared in late May 2006. Being one of life’s really nice guys I wrote a post giving Heyday some free consultancy, pointing out some of the basic marketing mistakes they were making. Like all free advice, people don’t value it and Heyday continued along its muddled way.

By late June it was clear that it wasn’t going to work.

Age Concern has just issued a press release that tries to “draw a line” under the whole sorry mess. It is 600 words long and doesn’t contain:

A word of contrition

A word saying that the reason it failed was partly – probably mainly – due to the execution of the business launch.

No, what the press release tries to do is blame the failure on the unwillingness of the Boomer generation to engage with product. Unless the ‘product’ is understandable and desirable it will not work. Not for a 30 year old and most certainly not for the 50-plus/boomer generation.

I feel desperately sorry for the great bulk of people who work for and with Age Concern for seeing so much money poured down the drain so quickly and so needlessly.

The casual observer will look at the Heyday disaster and conclude: “I always thought selling to Boomers was hard work and a waste of time”. The truth is far more complicated and has much to do with a word starting with ‘inc’ and ‘etence’. Dick Stroud

Letter in the Financial Times

Saturday is the one time I allow myself to use this blog to moan/gripe. Last Saturday I wrote about Bigoted Boomer Bashing.

Much to my astonishment the Financial Times published the letter. It will be interesting to see what response it generates. Dick Stroud

$1,300,000,000 in digital technologies for Europeans to age well

It is Saturday – that means I can gripe.

Yep, you read the number correctly. $1.3 bn. This is what the press release from the European Commission has to say.

Responding to the needs of Europe's growing ageing population, the Commission has today adopted a European Action Plan for "Ageing Well in the Information Society". This Action Plan is accompanied by a new joint European research programme on information and communications technologies (ICT) targeted at improving the life of older people at home, in the workplace and in society in general. These new EU initiatives will contribute to allowing older Europeans to stay active for longer and live independently. Together they promise a triple win for Europe: improved quality of life and social participation for older people in Europe, new business opportunities for Europe's industries, and more efficient and more personalised health and social services.

I should be delighted. Firstly, because it is a signal of taking the 50-plus market seriously and secondly because it should lead to new businesses in Europe targeting products and services to the 50-plus. But no, joyous I ain’t.

Imagine taking a shovel, going to the nearest place you can dig a hole and spending the next 10 minutes creating a deep pit. Now take $1.3 bn in single dollar bills and put them into your newly dug hole. Take a match and toss it in the hole. Stand back and watch the lot go up in smoke.

Doing this you will have got some exercise and on a cold day something to keep you warm as the money went up in flames. That is a infinitely more benefit than will come out of this EU project. Why?

1. About half this amount will go on the internal admin of the scheme

2. Choice of projects will be on the basis of involving all of the EU countries rather than the ability of any of them to deliver benefits.

3. Academia will get the lion’s share of the funding with a pile of abstract and useless projects that are more concerned with keeping the academics employed and published in journals than in delivering value for money.

4. A few large companies, who have the bureaucracy to jump through the hoops that the EU will erect to getting funding, will get involved. They would have done the projects in any case but they might as well get taxpayers to fund their research.

5. A large contract will be placed with a consultancy to monitor and create endless content about the project

In 3-4 years time a stack of reports will be produced that nobody will read. Nobody will remember why $1,300,000,000 was extracted from European taxpayers and none of the ‘results’ will make one iota of difference to the life of older Europeans. Welcome to Euroland. Dick Stroud

BBC business coverage ‘not balanced’

This blog posting is something of a personal gripe and not directly connected to the 50-plus. You have been warned.

I have often thought that the single action that would have most impact on the health of the UK would be turn-off the BBC. This flip of a switch would have greater impact on reducing the collective blood pressure of Brits than all of the medications that they pop down their throats.

How can this be? How can this great British treasure; this broadcasting pearl amongst the media swine, be so detrimental to a nation’s health? Simple – ignorance and bias.

The BBC has its own take on everything from the Middle East to waste recycling. Long ago did it relinquish any claim to balanced reporting. The frustration this creates in large sectors of the population has now crossed the line from a mere irritation to being physiologically destructive.

What joy to read the headline in the FT saying the BBC’s business coverage is guilty of: “repeated breaches of its impartiality standards”, according to a report it commissioned. (The FT is subscription only).

A review by a former top adviser to the UK government concluded that a lack of knowledge of the commercial world among journalists and a preoccupation with the consumer perspective was seen to lead to unconscious “partial and unbalanced coverage of business issues”.
The tendency to adopt the consumer’s viewpoint led to coverage being framed as a “battle between ‘unscrupulous’ company bosses and their ‘exploited’ customers”, it said.

Will anything change as a result of this report? Nope. But it is still great to know that one’s personal irritations are well founded. Dick Stroud