Letter to the FT

I thought Dan Robert's article - see the next post - deserved a letter to the FT. I bet they don't have the courage to publish it!

Dear Sir
Over the years I have read many articles about the 50+ and have concluded that most of them follow a definite pattern. Today’s offering by Mr Roberts (The Ageing Business) is a perfect example of the “identikit article”. There are normally seven components.

1. Begin with an eye-catching and amusing example of a company adapting their products to cater for older customers. In this case it's Ferrari who have “enlarged the space available for a driver's spreading backside, and sparing his knees”. This is the hook for the article’s graphic: a large picture of a Ferrari and an Elderly People road sign.

2. You must get Saga into the article as soon as possible. Normally it’s a mix of facts and mockery like: “A recent issue of its magazine contains adverts for Bose hi-fi equipment and the Mazda MX-5 alongside pictures of stairlifts and corn-plasters. Mr Roberts did well and got the Saga-hit in very early.

3. Now is a good time to introduce the marketing guru. Simon Silvester (Young & Rubicam) is a good standby and you can devote a few paragraphs to his article "You're Getting Old - Europe's Demographic Problem Is Your Marketing Problem".

4. At this point introduce some doubt about the truth of the marketing sage’s conclusions. A good way of doing this is to note the high use of the Internet by the over-50s. This ploy also enables the term “silver surfer” to be quoted, which is mandatory in any article.

5. To fill out the space on the page and make the article look pretty you should add a couple of graphs or matrixes that are difficult to understand and if possible give conflicting messages.

6. Enough of this light-hearted marketing banter. This is the place in the article where the social implications of the aging population should be discussed. Demos’s report about politics and the aging populations is a perfect choice.

7. You are nearing the end and it up to the writer to decide their own conclusion. Mr Roberts used a few quotes from another marketing guru that said absolutely nothing.

Finally you must finish with two or three memorable sentences and if possible include the over-50s supposed heroes, Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton. End with a good quote. Mr Roberts chose “Grey is the new black, perhaps? “

There you are 2500 words before your first cappuccino.