Lies, statistics and ignorance

In a time of financial crisis, only an organisation like the UK's TUC (The Trades Union Council) could come up with such a daft idea as "Work your proper hours day". The fact that trades unionism in the UK has almost disappeared from the wealth creating sector but is still rife in the public sector probably explains such idiocy.

Anyway, enough of my personal likes and dislikes, the lead story for this day of "non-action" is that older people work more unpaid time than other age groups.

The convoluted way that these numbers are calculated has to be seen to be believed. The chances that the base data is correct is zilch. A classic case of having a rotten product (the idea) and trying to sell it with dodgy numbers. Having said that, it got a lot of press coverage, without anybody questioning the numbers.  This a a reflection on the poor quality of UK journalism than the truth of the argument. Dick Stroud

JWT interviews Lori Bitter

JWT had the importance of the ageing populace as one of its 10 Trends for 2012. This week the company's web site featured a discussion with Lori Bitter, an ex JWT employee (JWT once had a dedicated part of its business for older consumers- JWT Boom - shut in 2009 )  who now runs  Continuum Crew, a marketing consultancy focused on consumers age 40-plus, and Crew Media.

I wonder if JWT wished it hadn't closed down its specialised agency? Who knows? Dick Stroud

Cosmetic "over-50s" branding

I have long been annoyed by the ham-fisted way in which a lot of companies, particularly in the Financial Services, think that all they have to do to appeal to an older consumer is call the product grey, silver, 50+, 50-plus or some other age tag and adorn the advertising with a couple of happy looking older people - job done - targeted the older person.

OK, you might change the wording a bit and maybe even add a few special features (like a free alarm clock) and you can palm-off your standard product, maybe even the least financially attractive, as something that will catch the eye of the older person.

A nice article in the Scotsman points out the nonsense of this strategy both for the company but particularly for the consumer. Dick Stroud

P&G decides to exclude 25% of it consumers

To be honest P&G didn't exactly say that it wanted to jettison a quarter of its potential customers but that is the result of its marketing strategy.



Marketing has a story about P&G's plans to slash its marketing budget by $1bn (£0.63bn) by switching to more 'efficient' and lower cost digital channels. Along the way it intends to release 5,700 jobs - including marketing roles - from its global workforce in the next 12 months.


P&G is a smart company and so it will know the statistics that approx a quarter of the UK's adult population (more in other countries) are not active users of the Internet. So in one fell swoop they get excluded. Of course the majority of these are in the older demographic so perhaps P&G doesn't think they are worth the hassle? Dick Stroud

Older consumers and their buying power - its all about pensions

Marketers wanting to understand what will happen to the spending power of older people should get a grasp of what is happening to their pensions - they might also learn something about their own plight when they  hit retirement age - if that even exists in the future.


The INSEAD web site has a very fact filed and informative video interview with Monika Quiesser, Head of Social Policy Division at the OECD. In six mins she gives a very good overview of what is happening in Europe.


I do wish INSEAD would wake up and smell the coffee and allow their videos to be embeded. It would drive much more traffic to their web site.


The interesting take for me from what she said was the the old fear of pensions sustainability (i.e. can the state afford to pay them) is receding only to be replaced with the fear that their levels will not be sufficient to keep body and sole together. Of course this ignores public sector pensions that exist in an Alice in Wonderland where you can keep paying them irrespective of what happens (it is called printing money). Dick Stroud