Decoupling your home from the delivery of products

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I get lots of PR companies sending me e-mails about products and services that they think I might be interested in blogging about.

Unless I can "get it" within 20-30 secs it will end-up in the trash box. You would be amazed how difficult some companies make for people to quickly understand their offer.

Anyway, I received an e-mail promoting Kinek. This is what it said and above is the video.

The life of a snowbird has its benefits, but the task of transporting belongings between summer and winter homes twice a year isn’t one of them. Send your stuff too early and it may sit on your porch, easy prey for “porch pirates.” Send it too late, and you have to live for a week or so without it. So it’s interesting to note how quickly Kinek is taking off in winter retirement destinations like Florida and Arizona. Kinek (kinek.com) – an alternate delivery service that offers secure retail locations to have packages shipped to (and stored in) from any source in the world – has established more than 100 “KinekPoints” in Florida in the last few years alone, and the number is growing fast (Kinek has more than 1300 locations across North America).

What a good idea. I wish there was a service like it in the UK. I am sure the main market is going to be the poor soul living in the city who is rarely at home, but I can see how it could appeal to an older age group. You could argue that if there is going to be a sizeable number of older people using the service then you might age-neutralise the video.

I wish more organisations would present their offer in such an easy to understand way. Dick Stroud

Communicating with seniors

I should spend more tim reading my Twitter traffic.

Somebody from Responsemine Interactive tweeted me and thought that I might be interested in one of their reports. Indeed I was and indeed it had the result of publishing the document because you are now reading about it.

I like this image since it summarises what I often start by telling clients.

The document contains some attractive graphics. Dick Stroud

Changes to Google's privacy policies

You must have noticed that Google's privacy policies are being changed/streamlined/integrated or whatever you want to call it. I know I should take more notice of this but I have to say I find the whole subject monumentally boring.

Laurie Orlov has done a good job of explaining the implications so if you want to understand what Google is up to then have a read. Dick Stroud

Lifetime mortgages - maybe they are the future

Because of the difficulty people have repaying their mortgage it is becoming necessary to extend the period of time that lenders will accept.

So for instance the National Counties will lend to a maximum age of 85, The Co-op and ING Direct will lend until a person is 75 years old.

So much for the idea that people are going to use their properties to fund their retirement - for many they will still be paying for them, well after they collect their pension.

This is not a good situation but of course it does present the Finance Industry with new product opportunities. If you think things are bad today then spare a thought for the average 40 year old. I expect that we will soon move to multiple lifetime mortgages (i.e. you pay them back over several generations). Dick Stroud

Importance of the Internet by country

The Fleishman Hill annual global Digital Influence Index study has just been published that looks at what consumers are doing online plus a pile of other things.


There is no analysis by age or lifestyle groups - the emphasis is on type/reason for Internet use and how that changes by country.

You have to wonder the usefulness of these numbers when we know that there will be huge difference in the behaviours within country.

Still it is always interesting to get an overview of what is happening. The above graphic shows the response to the question asking respondent to name the most important channel in assisting them make purchase decisions. Dick Stroud