My self-esteem is set to plunge

If you want the easy version of this story then read this article. If you want the paper upon which it is based then make a large pot of coffee, take a deep breadth and click here.

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has a paper with the enthralling title: “Self-Esteem Development from Young Adulthood to Old Age - A Cohort-Sequential Longitudinal Study.”

So here is the bottom line.

Self-esteem follows a quadratic trajectory across the adult life span, increasing during young and middle adulthood, reaching a peak at about age 60 years, and then declining in old age. No cohort differences in the self-esteem trajectory were found.

Women had lower self-esteem than did men in young adulthood, but their trajectories converged in old age. Whites and Blacks had similar trajectories in young and middle adulthood, but the self-esteem of Blacks declined more sharply in old age than did the self-esteem of Whites. More educated individuals had higher self-esteem than did less educated individuals, but their trajectories were similar. Moreover, the results suggested that changes in socioeconomic status and physical health account for the decline in self-esteem that occurs in old age.

The important bit as far as I am concerned is marked in red. The next time somebody tells you that Baby Boomers are somehow from a different planet to their parents you should shove this paper under their nose.

There is a big, big but with this research that this identified in the closing paragraphs.

Ethnicity, education level, socioeconomic status and health were of particular importance in explaining the life-span trajectory of self-esteem. These factors might causally influence self-esteem and, thus, are potential sources of self-esteem. This is a mightily long winded way of saying that we might have a chicken and egg situation. What comes first, a person’s high social economic status or their high self esteem?

Answers on a postcode to the authors of the paper. Dick Stroud

Many Happy Returns 1940s

Sarah Reed deserves to succeed with her Many Happy Returns 1940s product that is a box containing images from the most formative adult years of people aged around 70 years and older – the 1940s.

The box contains 26 large size cards with photographs of everyday items and subjects from the decade, such as playing in the street, the journey to school, washday, and so on. Each card has a brief description and a few questions to provide background and help get a conversation going. The cards are designed for use in any order, to be shared one-to-one, or in a small group.

The word ‘passion’ is over-used but in Sarah’s case it means what it says. She really does care about helping people with dementia. I do hope things are going well. Dick Stroud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marketing and selling technology for ageing in place

Laurie Orlov’s excellent blog contains an interesting item about: “Marketing and Selling Technology for Aging in Place.”

There is no doubt about it; this lady is making the ageing in place technology area her own domain. Good stuff.

I am not going to try and summarise this post since it contains a lot of detailed stuff. If you are interested in the ageing in place world then you should read it – if not, then I am sure you have lots of other things to be doing. Dick Stroud

Intel Reader – this has lots of potential

I am not going to waste the words explaining this device – just look at the video.

If you have $1,500 you can buy yourself one of these Intel Readers. Somehow I doubt if Intel will sell too many, but I doubt if that is the point of the project.

Just imagine this technology embedded in smaller, multi-purpose devices, like mobile phones. It is not beyond the wit of man to see the thing becoming part of your reading glasses. A fascinating development. Dick Stroud

Warm up before sitting in front of the TV

I am receiving more and more press releases that are related to the 50-plus in the hope I will write about them. Sometimes they are fascinating, sometimes dull and sometimes they just capture my imagination. This one plopped into my inbox this morning.

Here is a direct quote from the release.

More People Between 35-55 Experiencing Joint Pain From Video Games

34.7% Increase in Flexcin Arthritis Supplement Due To Popularity of Today’s Interactive Video Games

Flexcin International, Inc., a natural supplement company reports a rise in the number of older people using its arthritis relief supplements because of increased video game use. Approximately 16.8 percent of its customers are under the age of 30, but the company has noticed a growing trend of older people seeking joint pain treatment after playing video games and electronic gadgets.

That’s amazing. Heavens knows if it is true but I do know that my chiropractor tells me that he is now getting a steady stream of people with aches and pains having had a workout on a Nintendo Wii. Full marks to Flexcin for thinking outside the box with this story. Dick Stroud

Ageing in place products and the market

This is an account, from the Ageing in place technology blog about the annual American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) conference, that brought together 9000 attendees and 425 exhibitors.

The blog posting contains lots of references about new products targeted at the ageing in place market plus insights into the marketplace for such products. I found this comment very interesting.

Vendors compete with inaction, not each other. One vendor speculated that all of the technologies represented at the show together represent at most a 5% adoption rate among the populations they could serve. And that's probably just in the US. The biggest competition for all of these vendors is inaction and lack of awareness.

The UK has just the same problem. There is a need – no doubt. There are products and services that can greatly assist older people wanting to remain in their homes and get the maximum from life for as long as possible – no doubt. Do older people, or their children, know about these products, do older people know about the concept of “ageing in place” – almost certainly not.

One huge marketing opportunity with an equally daunting marketing challenge. Dick Stroud

Vision and ageing

After cognitive decline, the physiological effects of ageing on eyesight are, in my view the most important for marketers to understand. Let's be honest, it is a subject that most marketers don't ever think about. This video makes a start to explain one facet of the problem - the decline in the eye's ability to distinguish colour contrast. This article provides a much more detail explanation of the subject. Dick Stroud

Kimberly-Clark and Walgreens try and understand the older consumer

It looks as if Walgreens, the US drugstores, is beginning to take the impact of the ageing population a bit more seriously.

This is taken from an article in the WSJ – sorry subscription

Some senior Walgreen executives have been getting a feel of what it is like shopping with poor eyesight and gloves that simulate arthritis. The program is run by Kimberly-Clark. How interesting that it a supplier of products that is taking the lead with this.

One of the changes that Walgreen intends to make is to install call buttons near heavy merchandise like bottled water and laundry detergent in some stores. It also will put magnifying glasses on store shelves and make its aisle signs clearer.

The WSJ makes a very strange statement: “Industries throughout Western Europe and Japan have been adjusting to accommodate aging populations” – not as far as I can see.

Lee Memorial Health System provides the kit of stuff that enables young people to see and feel the world as an elderly people perceive it. Cardboard glasses in the kits simulate common vision impairments including glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration and yellowing of the eye lens. Large rubber gloves simulate the limited manual dexterity brought on by arthritis.

Kimberly-Clark introduced its elderly-shopper training for developers and marketers working on its Depend brand.

It appears that half a dozen retailers have participated in the program over the past two years.

Not surprisingly the guys at Walgreen found it difficult to read the small copy and that yellow labels disappeared against a bright yellow background and that many older shoppers couldn't distinguish between green and blue. Spending a few hours talking to older shoppers would have saved them going through this process. I guess there is nothing like experiencing it yourself to make it real.

Great to see a consumer goods company and retailer taking their older consumers seriously. Dick Stroud

Rejuvenating Ageing Research - a new report

A UK organisation called the Academy of Medical Sciences has published a report called Rejuvenating Ageing Research that warns that unless the UK establishes a cadre of top scientists, doctors and engineers dedicated to tackling the problems of old age, the country could lose this what momentum it has trying to grapple with the problems of an ageing population.


This looks to be a detailed bit of research so it will go on the pile of "To Read". Once read I will comment more. Dick Stroud

Oxo expands from 50-plus to toddlers

For years, whenever journalists were writing about products that were designed for older people you get bet your boots that Oxo would be in the list – probably at the top.

It sounds is if the company is doing rather well and is expanding from its niche in housewares products and moving into office supplies and products for babies and toddlers.

I am sure the company would not say that it targeted the older market but that its products were created around universal design principles. Whatever, it seems to have worked. They even feature in Business Week. Dick Stroud

Ageing in place comes of age?

Business Week special edition about “Ageing in place”

The Ageing in Place blog has some interesting comments about the story.

It is not the content that matters, although that is important, it is that Business Week thinks this is an important enough subject to devote so much space. As the blog posting says: “a market undescribed doesn't exist.” If this is a market that interests you then both the blog and the Business Week articles are a must read. Dick Stroud.

Older consumers get the healthy eating habit

A US research company has published a report about the trends in healthy eating.

It costs lots of dosh so I have only seen the scraps of information issued the in press releases.

The bottom line seems to be that “healthy eating” is present for all age groups but the most likely consumers are older people.

I guess it is summed up by this statement: "Consumers seem to understand that healthy eating promotes healthy aging. So as consumers age, healthy eating increases in importance.”

If you have deep pockets you can buy the research from here. Dick Stroud

Disabilities and the 50-plus

As a rule I don’t like the automatic association of older people with the disabled. It really gets up my nose the way that OFCOM groups the two together.

However, I found this article and the links it contains to be of use. Undoubtedly, the graph of boomers/50-plus with disabilities is set for a steep rise over the coming decades so the sooner companies understand the implications of the physiological effects of ageing the better. Dick Stroud

The Active Aging Community Center

Thanks to Claudine Aherne, a specialist in active ageing, for sending me details of AACC, an online community for researchers and practitioners working in the active aging field. If you are interested in this area of business then it is definitely worth a visit. Dick Stroud

Challenges for the pharmaceutical industry

How about being a marketer in this industry and working in Japan.

You would think that all would be rosy because of the country's fastest, although healthiest, ageing population, but no.

Government policy requires drug prices to be cut once every two years, as part of drive to combat escalating medical costs. In 2006 and 2008, average price cuts were 6.7% and 5.2% respectively. In addition, the health ministry has a target to increase the use of generic drugs – copycat versions of patented drugs – to 30% by 2012, up from today’s 16%.

I reckon there are a lot of governments watching how things work out in Japan since all of the developed world has the same problems.

The financial pressures of the ageing population added to the residual effects of the credit crunch will change the rules of engagement between industry and Government. Certainly in the drug's industry. Dick Stroud

Deprivation makes a big difference

This is a great example of the fallacy of talking about ‘averages’.

In the UK the disability-free life expectancy, for a man aged 65, in the least deprived living conditions, is just under twice that of his peer living in the most deprived conditions. The difference for women is slightly smaller.

The healthy life expectancy for a man in the most deprived conditions is 35% less than for one in most affluent. Significant differences.

This data is for 2001. From what I can see the gap has not narrowed, if anything it is wider.

If this sort of stuff interests you then go to the ONS web site and download this document
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

New online seminar about 50-plus marketing

My thanks to John Rae (CACI Ltd), Sarah Robson (Millennium), Stephen Croncota (Haggar Clothing), Janet Kiddle (Steel Magnolia), Gill Walker (Evergreen), Chuck Nyren (Consultant) and Arjan in’t Veld (Inthefield) for contributing to Henry Stewart's online seminar about the: “Latest thinking in marketing to the older consumer”.

What seems like a lifetime ago, Henry Stewart asked me to contribute and edit this series. The gestation period may have been long but the result has been worthwhile.

Sorry folks but this is not free content. You can get a feel of what it is all about by looking at the above link. My thanks to everybody who helped with the content and production of the seminar. Dick Stroud

The pluses (and negatives) of being 50-plus

Back in February I was sent a copy of The Rainbow Years: The Pluses of Being 50+, a book by Barrie Hopson and Mike Scally.

We are now into April and the book remains unread. Pressure of work and all of that stuff...

Last weekend I had an old friend staying who started to read the book and kept reading. If it had this effect on Robert then it must be doing a lot of things right since he is the sort of guy who gives short shrift to waffle and psychobabble.

As he departed I thrust the book in his hand and asked him to write a short review - this is what he said.

Written largely in the format of a workbook, it follows a path of individual life review and assessment - a personal SWOT analysis, supported with helpful articles and anecdotes to encourage clear and informed future life decision making for those traditionally approaching retirement.

However, as one actually in the target age group, there is much to be commended in this extension to the Rainbow theme. Firstly there is the purely practical discipline of the section by section approach. After all, few of us really plan beyond the immediate arrival of an event, and many stop full time work honestly admitting that they really don’t know what they are going to do.

Preparation provided by employers in the past is increasingly rare, and with job continuity so much less secure than it was, opportunity for detailed planning is limited and unguided. Consequently whilst I can see the described process forming a framework for seminars and group approaches, the Rainbow workbook is more likely to come into its own as a personal tool for those aware that they should be planning for change, but lacking support as to structure.

The authors however, go beyond the pure retirement consideration. It references directly the massive change in prospective longevity combined with improved health. It focuses the mind on the range of alternatives other than moving from work to retirement in one fell swoop. Discussion identifies the wealth potential in over 50`s, yet is sufficiently up to date to note the life inconsistencies between capital wealth and pension income over a possible non working period of 40 or 50 years.

The authors suggest a future “norm” of a “mixed activity” which could contain traditional or charitable work, pure recreation, physical and mental stimuli, continued over many years.

The essential difference which they highlight in this “third age” is the matter of choice. Never before has a generation been so placed as to be able to decide their later life balance, or to have so long to regret a lack of planning. No longer driven by necessity to absolute ambition and earnings to the detriment of other things, but aware that only so much golf or so many holidays are possible before frustration kicks in, the new over 50`s may have the same opportunity to shape their future as they had at 20, largely without the same fear and pressure, but potentially with the same anticipation and satisfaction.

To be recommended to anyone over 50 needing to reshape their future, to any prospective retiree stumbling myopically into the future, and even to those already retired, but honest enough to admit that they are not enjoying life as they might have hoped!

Clearly the book worked for Robert. If you are interested in the 50-plus market then the book provides you with insights into the options, decisions and the range of emotions swelling around in the heads of your target customers. Sounds like a good buy to me. Dick Stroud

The Hospitality and population ageing

This is the first time I have seen anybody give any thought to the issue of how hotels, in this case the vast hotels in Las Vegas, will need to adapt to an ageing population. Some of the issues it identifies:

• long walks between parking areas and rooms
• long lines at check-in
• rooms too crowded with furniture
• large heavy doors
• loud music in the restaurants
• trouble with round doorknobs
• slick or overly textured flooring
• small or hard-to-find light switches
• poorly lit stairways

The list goes on and on…

The person who has been researching and talking about this subject is Jeffrey Catrett, dean of the Les Roches School of Hospitality Management. Well done. I just hope the hospitality industry starts listening. Dick Stroud

New BBC series about ageing in different parts of the world

The BBC World Service is broadcasting 4 programmes about how ageing varies around the planet.

This is the programme blurb.

Our world is ageing rapidly. By 2050 more than 1 in 5 of us will be over 60. For the first time in human history there will be more over 60s than children under 15.

Most of the world's older people live in developing countries. Yet definitions, expectations, and the problems of old age are changing rapidly. So what is it like to be old in today's world?

In this four part series we meet Third Agers from four continents to find out.

Download the podcast and have a listen. Dick Stroud

Sandwich generation + Credit crunch = Babygloomers

The Daily Telegraph has researched a sample of 1,800 people and discovered that 8% were giving their parents cash. From this it has deduced that: “More than three million people have to help their parents financially as the savings crisis engulfs a generation of Britons”.

Then the argument makes a bit leap of logic to conclude that the reduction of interest rates has meant that a lot of older people are having financial problems that their adult children have to solve. In addition, the same parents have to fund their children.

Bottom line the Sandwich Generation have always had a rough time of it but the financial chaos has made it a lot worse.

I doubt if the Telegraph’s research holds up to much scrutiny but the conclusion is probably right.

What the newspaper didn’t go on to say, as it should, is that this situation creates a horrible multiplier affect if the person in the middle of the sandwich looses their job. It doesn’t just impact them but their kids and parents. What a sorry state.

During these troubled times it is too easy to end a blog post on a negative note. Some companies keep on prospering - especially those that rely on the one thing that never changes - physiological ageing. The division of Smith & Nephew, with the marvellous name of ‘Wound Care’ that makes artificial hips, and stuff like that, is performing well. Dick Stroud

Age friendly supermarkets

Many thanks to Martijn de Haas for telling me about this video of a senior’s supermarket in Germany. It might be a couple of years old but the issues it covers haven’t changed – they have got a couple of years older.

Hopefully somebody from Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose or Asda is reading this blog. Dick Stroud

Feeling old

This video, from the Wall Street Journal library, shows what GE Appliances is doing to make physiological ageing a reality to its young designers. Talking to some older people as well might be a good idea?

Still, it is step in the right direction when companies demonstrate they are are taking these issues seriously. Dick Stroud

Britons' attention span 'slumping'

I think this might win my prize for the year’s most useless bit of ‘research’. I would have thought that Lloyds TSB would have something better to spend its Government bailout funds on than surveying a 1,000 adults to see if their attention span had decrease compared with decade ago.

The conclusion is that it has decreased, especially amongst the young. The average span appears to have fallen from 12 minutes to five minutes and seven seconds now. Apparently the over-50s awareness and ability to recall everyday events was far better than their kids.

What a load of rubbish. If you are going to believe anything to do with cognitive functions I have a look at this recent posting. Dick Stroud

Marketers must learn not to distract

In Sept 2008 I wrote about a research study from the US showing the connection between the two models of cognitive ageing. In my layman’s terms, the inability to filter out distractions and the slowing processing speed.

Some further research has just been published that adds a bit more insight into the subject. For the scientists amongst you the research paper can be found in this edition of the Journal of Neuroscience: A Neural Mechanism Underlying Memory Failure in Older Adults.

The research team asked young and old people to attempt a memory test while in a scanner showing which bits of their brain were working.

The older subjects did worse at the tests, and their brains responded more to the background buzzing and banging from the scanner itself.

This distraction can be both sound and vision, where older subjects were more likely to focus on the landscape in a picture rather than the figure within it or on the background noise not the main tune.

The researchers found that when both the old and young volunteers failed to remember a face, there was less activity in the hippocampus, as might be expected.
However, when the older subjects failed, there was also increased activity in two other parts of the brain, the auditory cortex and the pre-frontal cortex, which are responsible for processing signals from the external environment.

When will Web and print designers start to understand these cognitive effects of ageing and ensure they construct as quiet and distraction free environment. It is a no, distraction free, brainer. Dick Stroud

Many Happy Returns 1940s

How the young and old communicate can be difficult. It can become near to impossible when the older person has dementia.

Sarah Reed believes that there are some simple tools that can ease this process. Rather than the child (or parent) sitting with the older person, wondering what the hell to talk about, with somebody with little short term memory and who is isolated from contemporary life, there is now a very simple product that can bridge the generational and mental divide.

Sarah’s new company ManyHappyReturns has created a box set of photos with accompanying stories that will be familiar to the older person and provides young people with the context and questions to stimulate a conversation. It is a blindingly simple product but so often they are they best.

I think it is a great idea and is a product that has evolved from somebody with firsthand experience of bridging the divide to somebody with dementia. I do hope it goes well.

Sarah has a really interesting blog that echoes my of my own ideas - naturally I think it is interesting! Dick Stroud

Reading this guy’s exploits makes me feel shattered

I received a press e-mail today about the exploits of Charlie Engle and Marshall Ulrich, who have just completed running from San Francisco to New York.

Marshall is a sprightly 57 year old and has already completed:
- 116 ultra marathons averaging over 100 miles each.
- 12 expedition length adventure races, including all nine Eco Challenges
- Reaching the summit of each of the world’s highest mountains

Wow. Next time some idiot starts talking about the 50+ as if they are one step away from the grave tell them to read about the exploits of this guy. What an amazing thing to do. Dick Stroud

New retail concept - the Brain Store

As the name suggests, the Brain Store is a retail outlet for products that stimulate and strengthen the brain. The press release says.

Our message to you is “outsmart your age” and our mission is to help you succeed, and have some fun while you’re at it.

I really like the company’s web site that contains photos of the business founders, who look anything but the forgetful types.

It could be an interesting concept to franchise.

A couple of the thoughts that went through my head whilst looking at the site (well the two I can remember) :

1. I wonder how much of the business will come via the site rather than through the door.

2. I wonder what the age profile of the customers will be? My guess is younger than older.

I wish them well. It will be fascinating to hear how it does. Dick Stroud

Distraction is an ageing problem

This blog posting is a bit “hard going” but the conclusions are massive for Web design and older audiences. I have used a lot of the original text from this article.

Research, conducted by University of California, Berkeley in 2005 discovered that the brain's capacity to ignore irrelevant information diminishes with age (i.e. getting distracted when looking at the wall of faces in a crowded room when trying to find a long-lost friend). And, to enhance relevant information - such as the face of a new acquaintance met during the search for the old friend. This process is known as top-down modulation.

In the 2005 study, younger and older adults were given a visual memory test in which they were shown sequences of images (sets of two faces and two scenes), told to remember a specific category, and then asked to identify an image from that category nine seconds later. Using magnetic resonance imaging they found that the neurones of the older participants (ages 60 to 72) responded excessively to the images they should have ignored, compared to the younger adults (ages 19 to 33). This attention to the distracting information directly correlated with how well the participants did on the memory test.

The same team has recently concluded another study using a technique (EEG) that measures the speed of neural processing, to examine the relationship between this inability to ignore irrelevant information and another leading hypothesis about cognitive ageing, the brains decreasing speed to process information. According to this latter theory, if information is not moving quickly onto the brain's processing channel there is a backup of data that delays information processing that disrupts memory formation.

The new study, involving the same visual memory test used in the previous research, revealed that both brain processes - the capacity to ignore irrelevant information and the ability to process information quickly - diminished with age and, in fact, worked in tandem.

The older participants in the study had trouble suppressing unnecessary information, but only because the speed with which they processed the irrelevant data decreased.

The study showed that the brains of older adults have a deficit in suppressing irrelevant information during visual working memory encoding, but only in the first tenth to two tenths of a second of visual processing.

Moreover, despite the ageing brain's ability to suppress extraneous information in the ensuing milliseconds, the memory deficit persists so that the interference by irrelevant information apparently overwhelms our limited working memory capacity. It is like a computer dumping too much information into the memory cache.

Nobody knows why these changes occur. Let’s hope somebody discovers the answer and so we can do something about it!

I am about to make a horrible non-scientific leap of logic. To me, as an ex-scientist, these results shout out the need to reduce the amount of distraction we put onto web sites that are being used by older people.

To give a young web site designer a feel for what is going on when an older person tries using a web site that is littered with distracting functionality. Have a go at this test.Plug in your iPod, select a track you have never played and start memorising the lyrics. At the same time start a Skype chat with a friend and simultaneously start searching for the cheapest place to buy your next holiday in Patagonia. Difficult or what.

Web 2.0 technologies are a joy to use but also make it very easier to build sources of distractions into our Web sites. If we want to make life easier for older people we need to start de-cluttering the experience of using web sites. Dick Stroud

The first study (October 2005) can be found in Nature Neuroscience
The second study (Sept 2008) is called Age related top-down suppression deficit in the early stages of cortical visual memory processing (Adam Gazzaley plus lots of other clever guys).

There’s life in the old girl yet!

The first sentence of the UK’s Marketing Week magazine says it all.

As Madonna will attest, being over 50 does not mean automatic entry to the world of OAPs. But marketers still treat maturer consumers as a homogeneous group, without need for segmentation.

What is really depressing is that I have been reading this type of statement - not about Madonna – but about the 50-plus - for the past 5 years.

The article goes on to say.

If you believe once you hit 50 it's a life of support tights, blue rinses and knitting you are very much mistaken. In fact, it's more extreme sports, sex and shopping.

I do find it amusing, the sound of amazement that somebody aged 50, still has enough of their physical and mental facilities to live a fulfilling and interesting life.

Surely marketers are not that remote from reality? Personally, I think it is sad that Madonna thinks the only way she can compete is on the same terms as a thirty year old (i.e witness the ultra fit body etc).

You have to congratulate Madonna's PR machine for positioning her as the figurehead of for the "50-plus and still going" 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

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

Ageing suits

These have been around for ages. Ford was using one over a decade ago.
Good to see that the idea is still developing and being used by Nissan. Dick Stroud

Retire and play more golf – maybe not

According to an article in the New York Times the total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000 (according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association).

More troubling, if you are in the golf business, is the fall in the number of people who play 25 times a year or more. This has gone from 6.9 million in 2000 to 4.6 million in 2005.

The disappearance of golfers over the past several years is part of a broader decline in the US’s love of outdoor activities — including tennis, swimming, hiking, biking and downhill skiing.

Their has been expectations for a golf bonanza, paralleling Baby Boomer retirements, that has led to what is now considered a vast overbuilding of golf courses. Between 1990 and 2003, developers built more than 3,000 new golf courses in the United States, bringing the total to about 16,000. Several hundred have closed in the last few years.

The article gives lots of explanations for golf’s problems. I suspect that it simply a change in fashion. In the past the theory was, retire and improve your golf handicap. Life is no longer like that and instead of stopping work and settling down into a long slow round of golf ending on the final tee beside heaven’s gate, older people have far more adventourous ideas. I wonder what this means to the raft of golf-centric retirement villages that are planned to open? Dick Stroud

Bravely going where no man (person) has gone before

Brother and sister plus father with dementia. Doesn’t sound a laugh a minute. This is a subject that is very close to the hearts of many of the 50-plus. At one level having to deal with the practicalities of ageing and difficult parents at another, staring at one’s own future? The Savages (the surname not their predisposition) is a new film on release (or just about to be released) in the US. Anybody seen the film –comments?

In a minor way the UK's longest running radio soap opera, The Archers, has been covering a similar subject. All a bit "too close to the bone". Dick Stroud

Getting grandpa wired

The FT is still a subscription publication so I am not sure how long this article will be accessible.

As the name suggests it is all about technology and the old. Not their use of the Internet but the supportive technologies that enable them to “age in place” (i.e. remain in their own homes).

The above video is from the Center for Ageing Services Technologies. It goes on too long and could be cut in half to still convey the same messages but it does show what is already possible.
As the article says.

The goal is to enable the elderly to live safely and independently at home for longer. For their adult children, the point is peace of mind.

I think the benefits of the technology for the kids are probably more than for the parent. It is all about minimizing the ‘guilt’ of not being able to physically do more to help the aged parent.

From a marketing point of view it is clear to me who the customer is for these technologies. Let me give you a clue – it is not the parent.

A couple of the companies mentioned in the article are Grandcare and AttentiveCare. Worth checking out the products and services they provide. Dick Stroud

Best places to retire

Following the previous item about the most age-friendly cities. This is what the 50-plus is being told are the best places to retire US News and International Living.

I have my doubts about this and the previous type of analysis. I suspect the ‘winners’ are those who make the most noise in promoting their age-friendly credentials rather than necessarily delivering on the promise. However, from a marketer’s perspective this is what this audience is being told. Dick Stroud

“You know you're old when…………”

Guy Kawasaki writes a very interesting blog called: How to Change the World – a practical blog for impractical people.

In a recent post he explains.

Last night a cute blonde girl bought me a drink. However, she knew me because she’s my kids’ summer camp counsellor. This incident got me thinking about how you know you’re old—today is my 53rd birthday. So I decided to start a list: You know you’re old when…

It is worth looking at his list and the comments. Dick Stroud

Brain exercising gets scientific heavy-weight endorsement

Baroness Greenfield, a well known neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, is putting her name to a computer game designed to train the brain.

Yesterday at the House of Lords she helped to launch a new fitness routine (MindFit) to play on the insecurities of the masses - the brain workout.

The MindFit research, presented earlier this year at an Alzheimer's conference, is a double-blind clinical trial which suggests that computer-based training improves the brain functioning of the 50-plus population.

Baroness Greenfield, a director of MindWeavers (the company that licensed Mindfit) is an Oxford University spin-out company and works through collaboration with the makers CogniFit, based in Israel.

The world (or is it the word) is getting smaller

This article from the International Herald Tribune is the perfect Saturday morning read. It is funny about how it ageing and failing eyesight makes everyday tasks a major battle. It is serious about the way that suppliers of everything from mobile phones to packaging live in a world where everybody has 20/20 vision.

This statement sums it up – this is the point where you know you are living in a world that is not designed for you.

When Masello, 54, goes out to restaurants with friends, especially places with lighting that is easy on wrinkles but hard on vision, "it looks like an all-night study group," said Masello, a novelist from Santa Monica, "We're taking off our glasses and rubbing our eyes, hunching over the menus with puzzled expressions, signaling the waiter for flashlights and candles."

A couple of other interesting snippets that illustrate the business/marketing issues of making products useable for older people.

Cellphones are a particular problem. On most mobile phones, the text on the screen is not merely small; it is set against a busy background with a dull contrast. "My guess is they're thinking about teenagers who buy these things and use them a lot more than we do," said Paul Nini, a visual design specialist at Ohio State University. "Marketing considerations tend to outweigh user considerations."

This bang on. Make mobile phones useable by all ages and it causes product design problems in satisfying the insatiable desire to stuff more functionality into the handset to capture the young market. With one or two exceptions (e.g. Vodafone) mobile handset makers haven’t started to tackle this problem.

"There's a fight between bureaucracy's desire to put more information on the container and the size of type required to get it on," said Charles Bigelow, a professor of typography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. For example, the type size on a bottle of Aleve pain reliever, for instance, is 4.5 point.

Packaging is becoming littered with ‘warnings’ written in legalese, ‘ingredients’, requiring a doctorate in organic chemistry to understand and marketing messages in half a dozen languages. As a means of communicating with large numbers of consumers it fails.

Make sure you put ageing eyes on the agenda of your next marketing meeting. Dick Stroud

The Economist to launch downloadable audio edition

If you are like me and subscribe to The Economist you are likely to have a permanent feeling of guilt that you don’t read as much of its content as you should. A pile of the past week’s copies sit glaring at me until I pluck up the courage and put them in the refuse (sorry I should have said the recycling box).

Now I have even less excuse as the whole of the Economist is available for download. Yep, all 130 Mb of it.

What a brilliant idea. The Economist can now sell an audio as well as a magazine version and enable its customers to engorge themselves on its words of wisdom through another channel.

I suspect it is also a bright move when appealing to older people who still want the enjoyment of the Economist’s content but with the resulting eye-strain. My guess is that the Economist will be the first of many mags to go audio - and very soon video. Dick Stroud

“Research says” – don’t you believe it

A couple of bits of ‘research’ about the 50-plus have recently been published that the press have picked up chewed around, attached a catchy headline and blurted out.

Let’s start with the - “Grumpy old people can't help it”'

This is the title of an article on the BBC web site. Similar headlines can be found on countless other web sites.

The BBC tells us that: “Scientists have found, in a study by Washington University that found older people find it harder to understand jokes than students”.

Apparently, older adults, because they have “deficits in some cognitive areas” may have a harder time understanding what a joke is about

To add authority and gravitas to the conclusions we learn the results are published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

And so another “well known fact” passes into the archive of human knowledge. No doubt the headline will be re-quoted time and time again by journalists who haven’t the faintest idea how the research was conducted, what the results really said and what caveats encircled the conclusions.

Here are a couple of the questions used to in the research. See how you get on.

A business man is riding the underground after a hard day at the office. A young man sits down next to him and says, “Call me a doctor . . . call me a doctor.”

The businessman asks, “What’s the matter, are you sick?”

The young man says one of the following statements:

1. “I just graduated from medical school.”

2. “Yes I feel a little weak. Please help me.”

3. “My sister is a nurse.”

4. The young man pulls out a water gun and squirts it at the businessman.

So what is the correct humorous answer?

Easy? So what is the next humorous picture in the sequence – 1, 2, 3 or 4?



These little gems come from the “Joke and Story Completion Test (1983)” that was used to test the sample’s ability to understand humour.

Answers ‘1’ are correct in both examples.

I cannot believe that a bunch of academics, on the evidence from this research, could come to the conclusion that: “older adults have greater difficulty with humour comprehension due to age related cognitive decline”.

Why can am I so critical?

Firstly the magnitude of the scoring. The difference between young and old was 6% in choosing the ‘correct’ punchline and 14% when selecting the ‘correct’ cartoon strip. Even assuming this test is half decent that doesn’t sound like much of a difference to me.

The average age of the ‘old’ group was 78.3 years and the ‘young’ 19.8 years. I am amazed that the results are a close as they are considering the extremes of age.

As was pointed out by Dr Chris Moulin, a cognitive neurophysiologist at the University of Leeds: it was "entirely feasible" that people's understanding of jokes could change with age.

I think the most damning inditement of the research is the premise that there is a single ‘correct’ humorous answer. Like all of these types of tests there is the answer you think that the tester thought was correct and the one you prefer. I suspect some of the older people in the sample thought all of the answers were bloody stupid and started ticking like fury to get to the end and get their free cup of tea and biscuits.

The second example inverts the conclusions – “ Survey findings which show that the over 50s who grew up committing more to memory report better memory performance in many areas than those under 30 who are heavily reliant on technology to act as their day to day aide memoir.”

This startling conclusion came from a bit of research to launch Puzzler Brain Trainer Magazine. So what if young people can’t remember telephone numbers – I bet there are lots of other things that are important to them that they can remember.

Did the research look at the difference in memory of a 50 and a 20 year old who both use electronic diaries/contact lists to see if there was any difference in their memory capability – I bet it didn’t.

Academics are seeking citations and companies want PR by pouring out a stream of dubious research that the media is all too happy to gobble up without looking at the details and applying a jot of critical judgement. I suppose the only good thing is that most people don’t believe a word the media dishes out.

Since publishing this post there was a great article in the Telegraph, by a doctor ,making many of the same points but also pointing out what the article says about our attitude to age.

But that doesn't matter, because it's what it exposes about our attitudes to old people that is interesting.

It (the article) plays on the prejudices we have in Western society about older people. It's attempting to uphold a stereotypical view of the old: that they are grumpy, miserable and out of touch.

It is widely accepted in academic circles that you can prove pretty much anything that you want if the correct sample is selected, the right questions are asked and so on. That a particular piece of research is undertaken is, in itself, a reflection on society.

Dick Stroud

A knee to behold

A few of us with an interest in 50-plus marketing received an e-mail asking: “How does the aging of celebrities affect the psyches of the 'normal' aging population? Does seeing something like this make them feel better? Or worse? Curious on your thoughts”.

The celebrity in question is Melanie Griffith and the part of her anatomy, where there are signs of gravity winning the day, is her knee. In all honesty it looks like poor old Melanie has, in the words of my dear old mum: “not worn too well”.

Typical of the style of journalism of the publication (the Daily Mail) the article then goes on to speculate that Ms Griffith has been hitting the Botox and collagen, big time.

There is the unspoken sub-text in the article that runs something like – big celebrity – pots of money – too much SDRR – no amount of money can stop you looking old – Ha Ha.

So as a ‘normal’ aging person, with a set of damn good knees, how do I react? Looking at the question from a marketer’s viewpoint I reckon the following.

Of course there is not a single response – if you asked the other 20 million 50-plus in the UK you would get all sorts of answers ranging from a senses of unadulterated schadenfreude through to sympathy that her obvious physical ageing is paraded in the tabloids.

I would also guess that that because of celebrities’ remoteness from the lives of ‘normal’ people, few ‘normals’ see the parallels between their own ageing and that of person they only know through the TV and cinema.

Finally, I would think there is a huge difference in the response between older men and women. I think there is the L’Oreal group of women who spend time and energy trying to delay/halt/reverse physiological ageing. Then there are the Dove pro.age group who say: “there is nothing I can do to stop ageing but I will look the best I can for my age”.

From a marketer’s perspective this is a fascinating topic since it gets to the heart of how people view the ageing process and what (and how much money) they are willing commit to doing something about it. Thanks Laura for sending the link. Dick Stroud