The UK’s changing pattern of charitable giving

The results of the 2005/06 Charities Aid Foundation survey of individual charitable giving in the UK are now available.

In previous years, older age groups have given more to charity per person than younger ones. However, this year there has been a noticeable increase in the average gift size of younger donors, perhaps reflecting a higher level of civic awareness inspired by high-profile emergency appeals. Whether this is a genuine change in the underlying trend or a short-term variation is not yet clear.

Another explanation for this change in giving could be that younger people have been targeted more than the old and hence it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe older people are becoming more cynical about the effectiveness of charities and are giving less. Alternatively, older people might have less money to spend. Who knows? Dick Stroud

Urgent – find us some Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is a mass phenomenon, concludes a survey conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton. The survey claims that 41% of UK Internet users already use Web 2.0 sites, to interact and participate with others in a massive worldwide community of users.

Web 2.0 is defined as applications that enable Internet users to exchange and process information, generate user content and the use of entertainment media through new channels

The report concludes that Web 2.0 usage is prevalent across all age groups and both sexes. I quote.

“Contrary to popular belief, this phenomenon is not just a ‘young male’ trend, people of all ages, both male and female are using these sites”. Although newer sites still have predominantly young user communities (50% of MySpace users are under the age of 25), a significant proportion fall into the older 35-49 age bracket (24%). The more established the site, the more balanced the age group using it – 25% of Amazon users are over the age of 50. Over time, sites such as MySpace and YouTube are expected to see a similar adoption trend.

I think that about says it all. Dick Stroud

Chickaboomer - weird - very weird

Marty Davis is, supposedly, a former network radio and TV news anchor who is in the boomer demographic. She has created Chickaboomer that is web site with four blogs. That’s about it for the facts, the rest defies description.

Words like weird, strange, freaky are the first things that come to mind, when attempting to frame something approaching a description of the site. I won’t waste any more time – just click on Chickaboomer.

How refreshing that a liberal dose of humor is being injected into the dusty world of Boomers.

Who really is Marty Davis? For UK readers of the blog I can announce an exclusive – she is the Stig! Dick Stroud

‘Cosmetic’ 50-plus products

No I am not talking about cosmetics, as in obscenely expensive lotions and potions, but the products that wrap themselves in a “50-plus” title but are really just the plain old product with a new name.

The Sunday Telegraph (sorry no online version) investigated the way that many UK banks are offering “50-plus” accounts.

On close (well not even close) inspection they are no more than the banks' standard product with a bit of 50-plus spin.

Abbey is the latest bank to offer such an account. The rate of interest it offers is lower than piles of other banks. This is shoddy marketing. Dick Stroud

This is worth 2 mins of your life

This has absolutely nothing to do with the 50-plus, other than this group do tend to be more concerned about the negative aspects of technology as a means of monitoring their behaviour.

This is the preamble from the ACLU web site.

In a new online video unveiled today, the American Civil Liberties Union takes a break from its serious side to illustrate how new technologies and weak privacy laws can be used to reveal sensitive information about a person involved in even the most mundane of business transactions, including ordering a pizza.

OK, make sure that your speakers/earphones are working and sit back – it takes about 2 mins. Click here - then worry. Dick Stroud

Another insurance company specialising in the older customer

The insurance industry has definitely woken up to the advantages of the older customer. Caoga.com is a nicely constructed web site for the older Irish person. I like the imagery. Dick Stroud

'Ageless Award'

You have to give it to Nintendo, they really have ‘got it’ - the ‘it’ being the opportunities of the 50-plus market. Most companies have the occasional project to try and hone their marketing materials to attract older customers but few take it really seriously. Nintendo is one such company.

This press release explains how the company has made awards to the 100 individuals, whose ages range from 54 to 104 who personify the term "ageless."

How do you go about finding such people? Nintendo worked with the Grandparent Marketing Group who conducted a nationwide search. The press release lists the winners.

There is a fine line to walk when coming up with such an award since it could be perceived as patronizing and demeaning. I exaggerate but - “Hey look the guy is 75 years old and he can still use a knife and fork “.

It looks to me that Nintendo has got it about right in using the award to illustrate the uselessness of age as a proxy for behaviour.

If Nintendo is looking to do the same thing in Europe I can nominate the first winner.

Ian Woodall has led four expeditions to Mt Everest and reached the summit on two occasions. In April 2007 he is returning to Everest to firstly bury three bodies lying just below the summit and then, at fifty years and nine months of age, to attempt to become the oldest person in the world to climb Everest without using supplementary oxygen. Now that does deserve a prize. Dick Stroud

Factlet of the week

A survey of internet bankers by Lloyds TSB (one of the large UK banks) found that over two thirds of people used online banking in 2006 – up from just one in five a year earlier.

Over half (57%) of the 2,005 respondents reported turning more frequently to the internet when banking and only one in ten (11%) said they never managed their money online.

The research showed 70% of over 50s claiming using the internet was their favorite way of banking. Younger people aged between 18 and 25 were the least likely to conduct their finances on the web, with over a third (36%) preferring to use telephone banking or visit their local branch. Dick Stroud

Which Generation V are you?

Another week another silly name. This time it is Generation V, a mystical group that have been identified in the research labs of Yankelovich Inc.

The Vers are a sub-sector of the Boomer population who rank physical and mental vitality above wealth, professional achievement and social status. That probably means they haven't been able to achieve the later so they rationalise the former as being their life goals (perhaps a tad cynical?).

The dreaded “survey” (this time of 1,001 Americans between the ages of 42 and 60) showed Vers have distinct characteristics with 96% saying they like to stay active and vital and 89% claiming that having good health and personal vitality is most important to them.

The Vers are the first in the line for buying nutritional supplements and seeking out health information and making it part of their wellness regimen.

OK, get the message “V” for vitality.

There is such competition for silly names that somebody has beaten Yankelovich Inc to the name Generation V.

Go to Google and key in "Generation V" and you will find a site talking about Generation Vegan.

Go to Wikipedia and do the same and you will find the thing defined as Generation Virtual.

Look if you are going to use a silly name at least have the decency to make sure somebody hasn’t beaten you to it! Dick Stroud (Generation Idle)

Lawyers do have a sense of humour

This has nothing to do with the 50-plus. It is an article (In MIT Technology) proving that some business people (lawyers no less) still have a sense of humour. This an edited version.

A Vancouver-based blogger has put up a one-page site, GetAFirstLife.com, that imitates the look of SecondLife.com but promotes a real-life existence where you can work, reproduce and perish -- all for free.

The site includes a logo that's a modified version of Second Life's with a link. In most instances this behaviour invites a “cease-and-desist letter” - the type of things lawyers send threatening lawsuits if a site doesn't pull down objectionable material.

Ginsu Yoon, a lawyer for Second Life, did contact the blogger with the legalese of a standard nastygram -- Internet slang for a cease-and-desist letter -- but went on to say that ''your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected.''

The letter even gave the blogger a ''nonexclusive, nontransferable, nonsublicenseable, revocable, limited license'' to use the modified logo on T-shirts he sells.

The owners of Secondlife.com wrote: “We are well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception.''

Brilliant. Dick Stroud

Radioboomer – don’t make it difficult

Welcome to the Radioboomer Website, at Radioboomer we play all the Big Hits from the 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s you can now enjoy all those great Boomer Oldies playing 24/7. Radioboomer will feature Australian and international artists! Sounds like it is worth a listen.

Instead of providing the sound feed with the usual Windows Media Player or Real Media options I am presented with the dreaded “You require a FREE plug-in”. At this point a good proportion of the potential listeners will click away and never know what joys Radoboomer provides.

I continue and get to the next step where I find a message explaining how the ‘upgrade’ works and then I spy this sentence: “The plug-in is free of any spy-ware or ad-ware but it may use some of your available upstream bandwidth while you are actively connected only”.

No thank you very much. Why when loads of other Australian radio stations can broadcast their radio over the web in the conventional way does Radioboomer make it so difficult. Dick Stroud

The Year of the Silver Foxes?

Three over-50 actresses (Helen Mirren, Dame Judi Dench, and Meryl Streep) will be battling it out for the Best Actress Oscar. Some bright spark has come up with the name to describe this season Oscars as: "The Year of the Silver Foxes."
This article gives the full array of comments about this older actress phenomenon ranging from:

"This is a milestone that shows to everyone ... that the best of filmmaking has nothing to do with ageism"

“The crop of good films last year was slim – and that forced the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences to stretch a bit"

Mmmm I wonder? I doubt if the film industry has suddenly seen the follies of its ways but equally Hollywood it is not immune to the slow grinding roll of the changing demographics and economics. Dick Stroud

Who knows - who cares

People aged 16 to 24 are the most likely to participate and fastest to respond to mobile phone surveys. The study (by Lightspeed Research) found that 39% of 16 to 24 year olds responded to their survey, compared with just 17% of over 55s.

Older respondents had higher incompletion rates for mobile surveys, with 47% failing to answer all questions, compared with just 14% for under 25s.

Here are some explanations for these results:

Younger people have less to do and are happy to while away some time answering a survey

The subject of a mobile survey is more appropriate to younger people (almost certainly so) and hence attracted a higher response rate

Younger people have a higher threshold to boring, inane and pointless survey questions

Since their parents are picking up the tab for their mobile phones, younger people are not so conscious of the costs involved in completing a mobile survey.

Who knows what the right answer is? Who cares? Dick Stroud

A strange ad from Dove

Dove has gone to great lengths to try and breakdown the stereotypes of beauty. Their first ad and PR campaign was absolutely brilliant. I used it as an example of innovative thinking about age neutrality in my book.

I was really surprised and mighty disappointed to see their new advertising and the supporting web site.

Dove is conducting a beauty survey that claims it is open to all ladies aged 18-65+. You would not think so from the ad – would you? Go and look at the web site – same conclusion.

This ad has ‘teenagers only apply’ stamped all over it. That’s absolutely fine but don’t claim you are conducting an inclusive (by age) beauty survey and that you are all about “real women”. Dick Stroud

Great piece of age neutral advertising

Sometimes companies are lucky in choosing the right person to sponsor at the right time.

Land Rover (a car manufacturer of 4X4s) supported Zara Philips, who won the World Champion 3 day eventing (horse jumping) competition. The other thing about Ms Philips is that she won the BBC sports personality of the year. One final thing – she is the Queen’s granddaughter. Now that is a sure way of attracting a lot of publicity.

A company could have all this good fortune and still screw-up its advertising. Land Rover (bravely in my view) came up with this ad. Miss Philips sits in a long mud-splattered Roberto Cavalli dress with a plunging neckline under the headline "Beautifully Poised". A great bit of age neutral advertising. Dick Stroud

More about social networking

Newsweek has an article about the way the 50-plus have miraculously discovered the joys of social networking.

Now here is a factlet for your next presentation: “1 million of the more than 215 million social networkers regularly active today are older than 50.” Who says so? A report from Deloitte (not yet available). The same report, so Newsweek says, forecasts the numbers to increase to 20 million.

I would think that my piece of wet seaweed (English slang for a tool to guess a number) is as good as Deloitte’s and a 0.5% share of over-50s users is way too low. Don’t believe all you read, even from swanky consultancies.

Yet another Factlet: Deloitte's study predicts that baby boomers, unlike those of the MySpace generation, will be willing to pay subscription fees for sites that offer the tech support, services and privacy they desire”. You can sense a palpable increase in the entrepreneurial interest in the 50-plus and social networking as people read these words.

For the adventurous amongst you go to Google and press ‘Groups’ rather than using the default ‘Web’. Key in something like “over-50s” or ‘boomers’. You have just discovered the world of Newsgroups. There are 30,000+ of these groups that discuss everything you can possibly think of – the technical to the obscene.

Newsgroups were one of the first applications developed using the Internet, after e-mail. We are talking many decades before the Web was born. Today’s boomers were the founders and users of newsgroups. As much as every generation likes to think the things they do are unique they are often only a technical improvement on something that has gone before. So it is with social networking. When you deconstruct all of the nonsense that is talked about Web 2.0 it all comes down to creating some good (and some bad) ways for humans to communicate – that ain’t new. Dick Stroud

Strange bed mates

A couple of days ago I posted the new Stannah Stairlift ad which first appeared during Coronation Street – the UK’s most watched TV programme (11-12 million viewers).

I had another look at the ads that accompanied it during the advertising timeslot. They were a very mixed bunch. The New Magazine ad (see below) was one of these ads.

I would like somebody in advertising to explain to me how an ad for a stairlift can appear in an adjacent spot to one for a noisy youthful magazine. Strange stuff this advertising. I reckon the choice of timeslot has more to do with rolling dice than audience analysis. Dick Stroud

New Mag ad

Eating for Two keeps running

Pillsbury was one of the first food companies to understand that changing demographics affects cooking/eating requirements.

The Cooking for Two campaign has been running ever since I started this blog. I keep getting the e-newsletters and the food still looks as unappetising and unhealthy as it did at the beginning.

Either this marketing pitch is still working for Pillsbury or the company’s marketing inertia lets it just keep churning. Dick Stroud

Where have all the Generation X volunteers gone?

VSO (it was known as Voluntary Services Overseas) has a problem, or so it thinks it has. The average age of VSO volunteers is now 40, rising from 38 last year, and 33 in 1990.

The agency has reported a dramatic decrease in the number of professionals under 50 volunteering.

In the past five years the number of over 50s volunteering with VSO has more than doubled, from 21% in 2000, to 52% today. Yet the number of professionals volunteering overseas in their late 20s, 30s and 40s is steadily declining.

What the article doesn’t make clear is if the ‘problem’ is because more over-50s are volunteering or less of their children have the volunteering spirit. VSO was one of those things that most students in the 1960s considered, did nothing about, and now (having paid the mortgage and ditched the kids) fancy doing.

It should be no surprise to VSO that this is happening. It is worth noting that the over-50s are the fastest growing sector of the volunteering holiday market. Dick Stroud

Boomer health mistakes = marketing opportunities

This is a must read article in Forbes about the mistakes that Boomers make about their health. I am sure the content has more to do with producing a readable article than being a piece of academic research, but I suspect the findings are not that far off the mark. Make sure you have a look at the mini slide show. Dick Stroud

MAC taps into consumer desire for realistic role models

Well that is what the headline of the article said about MAC’s decision to use Raquel Welch as a new ‘icon’.

The company said it started the ‘Icon' range in order to pay tribute to the many cultural icons. Welch was selected by the company as the fourth icon due to her ‘international film star status' and for her representation of ‘the diversity of ethnicity in terms of her heritage'. Come on MAC, who are you kidding?

Now Raquel Welch might be many things but ‘realistic’ is not one of the words I would use to describe her. I thought she was more ‘realistic’ in Planet of the Apes. Dick Stroud

A prestigious looking magazine

New Outlook/Nouveaux Horizons is a 50-plus lifestyle magazine that is part of Sears Canada's loyalty program (formerly Mature Outlook) – good idea to change the name!

The program is available to Sears customers over the age of 50, and is designed to drive purchases at Sears stores and with Sears’ partners, as well as develop customer loyalty. It is published four times per year.

It is an interesting concept that Sears is now extending to the under-50s. Dick Stroud

Less ‘anti’ more ‘pro’

Who said words don’t matter?

Dove’s “Pro-Age” aims to put a more upbeat spin on the traditional "anti-" used to describe anti-aging products. It will target pre- and post-menopausal Boomer females, or women who might be growing age-conscious.

The new Dove line and surrounding communication will be the first time Unilever "addresses menopausal women, but in a very positive way" – so says Dove’s Marketing Director.

This is an ambitious product launch with fifteen SKUs in the Pro-Age line hitting the stores at the same time.

Of course the new products must have some wonder new ingredient - alpha hydroxyl acid – and new packaging to distinguishable itself from traditional Dove products.

It will be interesting to see the advertising. Dick Stroud

Stannah hits the TV with new campaign

It is not that often that the leader article in Marketing magazine is dedicated to a new advertising campaign – even more exceptional is when the campaign is about stairlifts.

Stannah is in the enviable position of being integrally associated with stairlifts. I have no idea what their market share is but it is big. If somebody needs (note I did not use the word ‘wants’) a stairlift then I cannot imagine that Stannah doesn’t receive a call asking for a brochure.

Unfortunately, Stannah has taken become the archetypical “old people’s" brand and receives all the sniggers and jokes that accompany such products. I am sure there is some deep psychological reason why this happens, but I will leave my armchair psychologist act until another day.

The point of this rambling post is that Stannah is spending a bag full of money, has used a top London agency and launched a new advertising campaign. What follows is one of the new ads. You can look at two to other examples Ad 1 Ad 2.

You can compare these ads with an earlier campaign (see the second video). What do you think? I give you my views a bit later. Dick Stroud

Stannah Stairlifts - new advertising campaign

Stannah Stairlifts - old advertising campaign

Lessons from Australian radio

Vega95.3FM is an Australian radio station that was launched in 2005 aiming at the Baby Boomer market (whatever that is).

Things have not gone to plan and the size of the audience is well below expectations.

Vega has just launched a new promotional push with the campaign line: “Vega variety 70s, 80s and the best new songs". The station’s marketing manager said: "The next step in our marketing campaign, the most recent of which was communicating the message of 'Vega variety'”.

When you cut away all of the marketing speak it seems to me that Vega has ditched its tight focus on Boomer issues and music and gone for a 70%: 30% mix of 60s/70s music: contemporary music and style.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is that Vega has discovered that there is a limited market for Boomer ghetto music and the whilst your over-50s have a fond affection for music from their youth the still enjoy some of the music their kids are playing. This lesson is not confined to music - it applies to most products and services.

Whilst the web site breaks a lot of the rules of design for older people it is pretty good and it is certainly worth spending a bit of time listening to the station. Dick Stroud

cRANKy

The recent press release from Eons says cRANKy is a: “New 50-plus boomer search engine emphasizes simplicity, relevance and peer reviews over volume.”

The next day I spotted a couple of blog postings that are not too complimentary about the idea of an age related search engine. For instance:

The language is a little condescending in my opinion, constantly referring to the different needs of the 50-plus market. Different needs? Give me a break. I don't like to "wade through millions of search results" either.

Then there is somebody who was annoyed at terms like “Age-relevant” and associating the word cranky with the 50-plus with the implication that anyone 50 or over is too far gone to be able to handle 'normal' search engines.

My take on the thing is a bit different.

First things first – the rationale for cRANKy is all about getting people onto the eons web site and getting them to come back. It is all about differentiating eons from the other 50-plus sites that are springing up like mushrooms.

The real question is does cRANKy deliver on its promise and if it doesn't could it have a negative effect on the user’s opinion of the company?

For it to work the consumer benefits equation must show that losing the mega search capacity of Google is more than off-set by a demonstrable improvement in the quality of the search results and the scoring by fellow cRANKy users.

The first of these benefits of cRANKy is very difficult if not impossible to prove.

Right now there are too few web sites with peer scoring to know if it is useful. Yesterday’s most popular search term on the site was “brain builders” and I could only find one review on any of the sites in the search list. Even the good old stable term of ‘sex’ only came up with one reviewer of the top listed sites.

The future will be about “interest related” searching – trust me. My bet is that cRANKy might have hit the market a bit too early to succeed. Secondly, the basic assumption that being 50-plus means that you share a common base of interests/opinions with your peers is (in my opinion) flawed. Time will tell who is right. Dick Stroud

Where goeth Baby Boomer Portals (BBP)?

I have just read that after launching in September of 2006, Baby Boomer Web community SecondPrime.com, has begun its search for first round 'angel' funding to finance its complete build-out. The portal targets Internet users age 55-plus.

SecondPrime.com hopes to attract Boomers and ambitious seniors with a focus: "not on obituaries and legacies but on starting businesses, travel, education, volunteering, vitality and personal connection”.

For anybody thinking of starting or funding a BBP – sorry I couldn’t resist the acronym – I have a few questions and assumptions for you to ponder.

1. Read the early history of the Web and you will see portals, of all shapes and sizes were a big thing. They lost their investors a lot of money and few exist today – why is that?

2. But the numbers are huge. Zillions of Boomers with Trillions of dollars and all you need is .0001% of their spend – how hard can that be?

3. Isn’t the future of the Internet all about Web 2.0 stuff and social networking? Surely if that is combined with the millions of technology literate Boomers must create a winner?

4. The business model is simple. Relatively inexpensive Web site + plus Boomer related content (most of it free) + chance for people to chat and exchange ideas. This generates a flow of Boomers who are just waiting to click on the advertising and affiliate deals. Result - you watch the money come rolling in?

5. The Web is about scale or niche – what type of portal do you have?

6. The Web is a big noisy place. In words of one syllable how are you going to get your voice heard when the size of your communications budget is paltry compared to the big brands (see yesterday’s post about P&G)?

If you have answers to the questions and still think BBPs are a good idea then remember that most of them will fail – do you feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk. Dick Stroud

New social networking report from Pew/Internet

What do the 50-plus’s children and grandchildren get up to when the locked away in their bedrooms fused to their PCs?

The new Pew/Internet report (US) gives you a good idea. Like all Pew’s research it is worth reading.
Dick Stroud

Gap on the block

Poor old Gap looks like it might sell itself. This is the essence of the article in BusinessWeek. It would be a great shame if its Forth & Towne brand were to be scrapped. It is a brand with real style.

Perhaps if Gap had moved a bit earlier and with greater commitment, like Marks and Spencer in the UK, and focused on the older audience things might have been different. Dick Stroud

P&G catches the social networking bug

Social networking, in all its different guises, is where brochureware Web site were a decade ago. It’s a ‘must have’ that no self respecting CEO could be without. So it is that Procter & Gamble has decided to get itself involved with all of this Web 2.0 stuff.

An excellent article in Technology Review explains that P&G hopes to gain insight into consumer habits and interests from online forums for women to tell their stories and learn from each other about issues such as breast cancer and careers and for people who want to share their entertainment views.

"This is not about selling products. It's about better understanding of consumers and learning about their needs and habits. The more we learn about these consumers, the more it will allow us to create better products for their needs.”

It would take a cynic not to congratulate P&G for adopting this ‘listening’ attitude. People's Choice and Capessa are not bad web sites. There are only a zillion lookalikes, but P&G has deep enough pockets to shout about them and attract an audience.

Right at the end of the article comes the statement that shows that P&G, for all of its marketing reputation, has still a lot to learn.

The two sites both target 18- to 49-year-olds.

Surely P&G must understand that the subjects covered by these sites will engage a much older audience? Clearly not. Dick Stroud

Eons 50 Plus Boomer Online Trends For 2006

Eons has been analysing it web stats and published some interesting insights into how people used their web site during 2006.

You can download the press release from here.

I have experimented with converting the press release into a Google hosted video presentation – NOT successfully. It gives a feel of what the press release is about but Google’s video compression renders it useless. If you want to see a legible version of the video you can watch it from here.

Nearly forgot - what was the bottom line of the press release?

Boomers want to keep/get fit and travel. The number of members of the group for 50+ singles is eight times larger than the one for becoming a spiritual adult. Why does that not surprise me?

If anybody from eons reads this blog - why not release your next report in a video format and save me the time of creating one? Dick Stroud

Eons trends for 2006

Jogging for the brain

The article in Time says

Research show that seniors who practice cognitive exercises demonstrate improved memory, and video game makers can't wait to tap into that big baby boomer market.

If I was the head of marketing for a games console or programming supplier I would be thinking exactly the same thing. I would also be thinking about the analogy of the brain to when jogging and workouts became part of mainstream society – the “use it or lose it” mentality.

Today's 55 year old was 30 when Jane Fonda’s first video was released and 20 when Jim Fix’s “The Complete Book of Running” first hit the street. If they accepted the argument then, why not recycle the same selling pitch.

There is another take on this argument that Brent Green’s blog post eloquently expresses. Dick Stroud

Just dial 0845 600 5555

The Royal National Institute for the Deaf has provided this UK telephone service that gives a 5 minute confidential hearing test. To date, 300,000 people have taken the telephone hearing check.

Over 40% of people over the age of 50 have some level of hearing loss.

Much to my amazement (and my friends) my hearing is OK. Yet, I find that many of the people working at customer contact points, ranging from store checkouts to call centres, talk so quietly that I am forever having to say: “can you say that again”.

There is no doubt that the populations of Europe and the US are getting deafer. Few companies are adapting their customer contact points to reflect this fact. How big is the problem? The RNID believes there are 4 million people in the UK who could benefit from wearing a hearing aid, but who currently do nothing about it. Dick Stroud

The 50-plus like TV

Baby Boomers are willing to embrace and purchase today's emerging entertainment offerings, according to the findings in TV Land's Joy of Tech Study that showed TV entertainment is the key driver for Boomers adopting new media technologies.

This rather rambling press release gives some (not many) details of the research and its conclusions. It contains the mandatory catchy name (digital nest) and acronym (4Cs). Just to ensure it doesn’t stand out from the crowd the press release keeps referring to ‘”the research” but gives not indication how to obtain a copy. Finally, TV Land illustrates how important it perceives the research by not adding the press release to its web site.

Unless I am missing something the research concludes that – there are lots of Baby Boomers with lots of money and they are not techno-illiterates – they like watching TV and are willing to pay for decent programming and entertainment equipment. Now why didn’t they just say that! Dick Stroud

Time offshores the Baby Boomers

These comments appear in Patrick Thibodeau’s blog. He is a senior editor with Computerworld. It begins

In flipping through Time Magazine's Person of the Year edition over the holiday, I found only two people in its profiles of "the citizens of the new digital democracy" over 40 years of age. Most are in their 20s. Here are the ages: 20, 29, 22, 22, 35, 21, 34, 32, 54, 25, 25, 45, 21.

He goes on to describe how corporates view capability and creativity as being inversely correlated – especially in any profession that has ‘digital’ in its name.

He concludes his article by saying: “it's not hard to feel that an entire generation of older Americans is being offshored culturally; treated as irrelevant has-beens of a digital future”.

This blog posting is well worth reading. Dick Stroud

Boomergirl.com

Boomergirl.com - A classy new web site

When I first read the news item about “middle-aged women now have a web site they can call their own” I had my usual thoughts of - "not another one".

I still retain my doubts about the real level of consumer demand age portal web sites, but,if they are going to work they will be focused on women and will be professionally produced and will have content of substance.

Boomergirl seems to tick of these boxes. Have a look for yourself or watch the interview with the editor. Dick Stroud