Gap to Close Forth & Towne Stores

Gap has announced plans to close its Forth & Towne division, which catered to women ages 35 and older, saying it would instead focus on turning around the company's struggling flagship and Old Navy brands.

Forth & Towne was launched 18 months ago in New York and Chicago. Locations in Houston, Atlanta, Seattle and across California followed over the past year. The chain has 19 locations, and Forth & Towne President Gary Muto once said he planned to have 25 stores by the end of this year.

Gap said it will close its Forth & Towne stores by the end of June.

It is difficult to know what lessons to learn from this venture. Last year sales at Gap stores in North America, open at least a year, fell 9%, while at Old Navy that figure dropped 10%.

Gap has said that the problems with the main rump of the business are demanding their full attention. In addition, Forth & Towne was not "demonstrating enough potential" as a long-term investment.

"There's so much to fix in the core business," said a senior analyst with Forrester Research. "I think it would've been a management distraction to keep going with Forth & Towne."

So was it a bad idea – was it badly implemented – was it a sacrifice for the greater good of Gap. I guess we will never know.

You can read more about this in Forbes and Advertising Age. Dick Stroud

Another ad with a 70-plus

Match.com is targeting single boomers the fastest-growing subscriber age group. The company says that since 2000, the number of boomers is up 350% to 1.7 million – that is 11% of its membership.

A current TV ad for Match.com features a widowed New York woman age 71 whose Match.com logon is DanishBeauty22 and who now has her own blog. Dick Stroud

The last generation of fit grandparents?

Men and women in their 60s could be the last generation of fit grandparents, according to a survey from Saga Insurance.

The UK’s grandparents are spending around 40 hours a week gardening, playing sport, walking cleaning and doing home improvements.

Up to 70,000 also continue enjoy swimming, squash, indoor bowls, tennis and badminton for more than ten hours each week.

And more - around 670,000 - enjoy over ten hours of outdoor sports such as golf and crown green bowls.

This contrasts to the plague of obesity that is infecting the yoof. This eight year old weighs 90 Kg and is the centre of an argument of whether his parents are inflicting child cruelty. Sadly, there are a lot more like him. Dick Stroud

Another ‘exclusive’ discount for the over-50 (ish)

Amongst the pile of stuff that fell out of my Economist magazine this week was this item from Standard Life.

Good to see that one of the stalwarts of the British Finance industry is targeting the 50-plus. Not the most eye-watering creative I have ever seen but it does the job. Dick Stroud

Media for life’s next chapter

Welcome to a new marketing venture serving companies targeting the 50-plus.

50+Digital’s mission, according to its launch press release, is to provide “Media for life’s next chapter.” The company will develop, launch and operate advertising-supported consumer and business-to-business media properties for interactive and print media.

The company’s first venture is a blog covering business trends in the 50-plus market, including marketing, media, financial services, real estate, health care, lifestyle and demographic trends.

It is great to see more companies targeting the 50-plus market. Dick Stroud

Advice for the over-50s travelling abroad

The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office has measured an upsurge in the cases of over 50s needing consular assistance – that is code for getting themselves in a mess and needing help from the local government official.

Over 50s now represent 35% of people making all trips abroad, and new research reveals that nearly 70% of them say they are more adventurous with their trips now than ten years ago. Over a third have visited more than 20 countries and almost a fifth have taken part in adventure activities like bungee jumping or abseiling on recent holidays.

“In our recent research we were surprised to discover that a massive 65% of over 50s didn’t take out travel insurance,” said a government spokesman. “In addition, nearly half didn’t research their destination and only 27% made a note of their credit card number.” Good grief, make a note to make a note of my credit card numbers!

Full marks to the UK’s Foreign Office for joining forces with Lonely Planet to launch ‘World Wise’, an advice book aimed at older travelers. Dick Stroud

Multigenerational toys for grandparents

The importance of grandparents was evident at this year’s Toy Fair in New York.

Head honcho of marketing at Sababa Toys said: "Marketing to grandparents is huge .. Grandparents are young - they have a lot of money - a lot of time - they are online and want to spoil their grandkids”.

What better way of appealing to this group than re-launching toys that will be familiar and engender sentimental memories with the grandparents and appeal to the nippers.

So you have toys like the

Chatter Telephone: Introduced in 1962, the Chatter Telephone was designed with a rotary dial to teach children how to dial a phone. Today's Chatter Telephone makes children smile just the same with eyes that roll up and down, and a dial that rings. This friendly phone is being re-introduced for a whole new generation of children to enjoy!

For the older grandparent there is

Snoop 'n Sniff that was introduced in 1938 as "Snoopy Sniffer," this charming pull-along pup found a home with over five million families. Now the long black and white hound is being re-introduced for a whole new generation of children to enjoy!

There is Dr. Duck (Introduced in 1931) and Bouncy Bee (Introduced in 1950) and so on and so on.

I suspect that little Jonny and Jill would much prefer to have Samsung’s latest Black Carbon mobile rather than a weird looking phone from pre-history but who can tell? Since the grandparents are buying the thing for themselves, as much for the kid, does it matter? Dick Stroud

P&G's acquisition of MDVIP - interesting idea

P&G recently announced acquisition of a stake in MDVIP, in which physicians keep practices small and focus on preventive care for fee-paying patients

Coca-Cola Co. this month bought Fuze Beverage, extending the beverage maker's line of drinks with Fuze juice and tea brands.

Johnson & Johnson Co. has also been active, obtaining cardiac stent maker Conor Medsystems and the consumer health products business of Pfizer Inc. in recent months.

P&G's chief executive explained the rationale for this purchase as giving his company "the time to learn; it gets us in early in the formation of the new category or segment."

At the heart of this interest in health related products and services is simple demographics and economics. More old, more healthcare spend. Simple as that.

MDVIP's founder said that he sees the P&G investment as a catalyst to keep building his business: "We think they are bringing a world of knowledge to us... they are masters of scaling and branding." The trick is applying all this global marketing power and not suffocating the entrepreneurial spirit that created the company in the first place. Dick Stroud

RIAS gets a new agency

I bet the staff at Watson Phillips Norman are celebrating having just won the £10m customer acquisition and retention and brand development account for over-50s insurer RIAS as sole agency.

RIAS, established in 1992, has been leading the way (after SAGA) in capturing the over-50s insurance for home, motor, travel and pet insurance and now has over 880,000 customers.

It will be interesting to see how the RIAS brand develops – well at least we know who to blame or congratulate. Dick Stroud

Boomer food

A Reuter’s press release claims that: “Food manufacturers and retailers are recognizing that they need to go after aging U.S. baby boomers who have money to spend and time to shop”.

Some of the companies who are turning their marketing budgets on the 50-plus are:

Kraft - who calls consumers 50 years and older the "liberated boomers." (give me a break) has products such as a South Beach Diet line and Crystal Light drinks and of course the company's mainstay products such as macaroni and cheese. (Sounds as appetizing as a baked brick). Soon to hit the supermarket shelves will be its Bistro Deluxe line ("a sophisticated Mac & Cheese experience with unique ingredients that appeal to an adult palate"). This makes the brick sound appetizing.

Unilever - has its restaurant-style line, Bertolli Dinner for Two

Sara Lee - hits the floor running with its ready-to-eat meals such as Jimmy Dean sausage sandwiches and skillet meals.

Wild Oats Markets - is a company that thinks it is well placed to cater for the boomer with its range of natural and organic foods, also has gluten-free, sugar-free and diabetic products.

Ken Dychtwald (“the man”) is much quoted in the press release. Why do I think he hasn’t been trying the delights of a skillet meal or a ‘sophisticated’ Mac & Cheese experience, washed down with a mug of Crystal Light.

This food sounds dreadful. I can only assume that these global food giants have concluded that one of the physiological effects of aging is the complete loss of taste and smell. Dick Stroud

Tomorrow belongs to someone else

Yesterday’s FT article by Philip Stephens was about the problems facing yoof. Mr Stephens is a bit of doom and gloom merchant but there is some truth in his observations. (Sorry, it is subscription only).

Here are a few extracts from his article:

Britain's baby boom generation is gliding gently towards pampered retirement. The children of post-war prosperity have never had it so good. Alas, the same cannot be said with any certainty of prospects for our children and grandchildren.

During the post war period kids access to education was widening. Society would be ever more mobile. Children would naturally rise above the social class of their parents.

And now? Insecurity and inequality are the modern condition. Globalisation and its associated tumultuous advances in technology have generated huge rewards for the educated, the industrious and the fortunate. The gains, though, are unevenly distributed and obviously so. Economic insecurity is ubiquitous.

The most visible inequalities are horizontal, or intra-generational.

Half of Britain's £6,000bn of financial wealth, he points out, is in housing. Who owns it? The baby boomers. What is more, they bought their property cheaply and then saw their borrowings written off by high inflation. Half of the rest of this wealth lies in funded pension schemes. The beneficiaries? A post-war generation that now intends to exchange the security of jobs for life for over-generous retirement incomes.

Perhaps the ultimate selfishness has been the baby boomers' reluctance to disturb their present enjoyment by having enough children to sustain the population.

Talk to young people and you can sense the resentment. There is, I think, something else. For all that the baby boomers grew up in the shadow of the cold war, they were confident that the world belonged to the west. That has changed. Power is shifting to Asia. Tomorrow, in other words, belongs to someone else in more than one respect. That will be hard. Dick Stroud

Equity Release in the US

This is a detailed research report from Fidelity Research Institute that analyses the US housing market and the future of equity release (reverse mortgages).

If you are interested in real estate or the future of funding retirement then this is worth downloading. The bottom line message is - housing is a bad bet as a retirement asset. Dick Stroud

Costly, confused, in crisis

An £8 million pound launch could not hide the dichotomy of purpose that has marred Heyday’s fortunes. Headline from Marketing magazine.

Since its launch I have been commenting about Heyday – Age Concern’s 'young-old' brand. This week Marketing had a full page article about the problems and why they occurred. Not a happy story. This is a scanned PDF of the article - not the best of quality. Dick Stroud.

Greening The Greys – dreadful report title

I encountered this research a few weeks ago and published a blog item. The slant then was that the over-50s are sceptical of climate change.

The final report is now published and the ‘conclusions’ are finding their way into the mainstream press. In many ways this is report is a microcosm of the whole climate change debate.

A report, with a lot of fancy graphs, is created with the main conclusions based upon a ‘model’ – in this case the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Resources and Energy Analysis Programme.

The headline conclusions are then picked up and reported, in an uncritical way, by the general media. The reason for the lack of objective reporting is that most mainstream journalists are scientifically-challenged (understatement) and also anything to do with climate change is beyond criticism.

A few things concern me about this report.

1. The research didn’t take account of the geographic spread of older people (i.e. far more are based in a rural and suburban than urban areas). This changes their need for car transport. To provide an accurate comparison the researchers should have compared the carbon consumption of rural 30 year olds with the rural 50-plus. Also cities have a higher ambient temperature which reduces the need carbon used in household heating.

2. Older people are more likely to have larger properties, with all of the implications this has on heating and lighting etc.

3. No consideration was given for the way that older people consume carbon on behalf of their children and grandchildren (i.e. kids not leaving home until much later and the amount of time that grandparents spend looking after grandchildren).

4. The report used a measurement of carbon efficiency (kg/£/capita) which is misleading since older people (75+) spend a disproportional amount of their total incomes on heating/lighting. The true comparison is the total amount spent on heating - not as a proportion of total income.

5. The research didn’t appear to take account of the carbon that employers consume on behalf of their employees. Since there are a lot less 50+ in employment than 30 year olds that is an important factor.

6. The attitude to climate change section didn’t compare the results with those of younger people. So how much more sceptical are the oldies than their kids?

The report does contain some interesting stuff and asks some worthwhile questions but it appears a bit thin on academic rigour.

The report’s recommendations are simplistic. These are the generic motherhood statements that could have been written before the research started.

Government should:

• invest in increasing the energy efficiency of the UK housing stock

• invest in high quality public transport systems

• reverse the current trend which is for motoring costs to go down in real terms while public transport costs go up

• introduce German style packaging and packaging waste tax to encourage manufacturers to reduce the amount of packaging they use.

7/10 for presentation. 3/10 for academic rigour and original thinking. Dick Stroud

Older women in films

If you live in London and are interested in the 50-plus and films then have a half day holiday and come to a discussion and presentation exploring the history of older women in film and the modern day scarcity of roles for older women in feature films.

There are some really excellent speakers including Tony Carr, director of Matcine, Jean Rogers, Vice-President of Equity and Holly Aylett, Vertigo Magazine. All of this plus the screening of the file Bread & Tulips.

Interested? Then call the Ritzy booking office on 08707 550 062.

This is being staged by the British Film Institute who has done some great work in understanding the role of older women in films. With luck, one of these ladies (Helen Mirren) will soon be collecting an Oscar. Dick Stroud

Another good ad from Dove

On the 7th Feb I posted a blog item about the new Dove Pro Age product launch with the TV ad.

This ad is running in parallel, promoting Dove’s existing product line.

Both ads, plus all of Dove’s other marketing activities, are focused around its Campaign for Real Beauty. This is working a treat and creating a pile of press coverage to enhance the visibility of the ads. Very, very smart marketing. Dick Stroud

Relationship between catalogues and Web sites

The Royal Mail have done some interesting research into the ability of catalogues to enhance the value of goods that people buy using the Web.

Click on the image to see the graphs. This shows the uplift created by catalogues analysed by age and annual spending. The big differene is in the 40-49 year age group. Dick Stroud

Grown-up enough to become an entrepreneur

Nearly half the US’s self-employed workers—7.4 million—are boomers (U.S. Department of Labor). This figure is expected to climb as people retire from one career to start another, lose their jobs or simply want the independence and flexibility of working for themselves.

"I am willing to bet that over the next 10 years, entrepreneurship is going to increase for people 50 and older, and especially for those 65 and older," says the head of research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation, which advances entrepreneurship in America.

This article from AARP gives good background to the subject.

This situation is exactly the same in the UK.

Let me give you a tip that is a sure-fire-winner; services supporting 50-plus start-up businesses and franchise companies are in for a boom time during the next decade. You will see a lot more companies like bizstarters hitting the streets. Dick Stroud

Web tips for the 50-plus

The guys at Immersion Active (US) talk a lot of sense about how companies should adapt their Web presence to best respond to the aging population.

This list of ten tips for creating a 50-plus friendly Web presence is worth a look. Dick Stroud

Saga about to change ownership?

In 2004 Saga was bought for £1.35bn by Charterhouse Capital Partners, a private equity group, in a deal that netted the founding de Haan family a nice little nest-egg of £1.2bn.

Since then not much has happened. The radio stations were recently sold and there has been a wholesale change of management. Otherwise it looks like business as usual. Same ‘old’ Saga.

In the last few days there has been a rumour that the company is either about to be sold or floated. The figure of £2.0 bn keeps being mentioned.

Maybe the rumour has been triggered by the merger between MyTravel and Thomas Cook. Maybe Saga’s management have had a long look at the business and decided to cut and run?

Why the company should now be worth 50% more than Charterhouse Capital Partners paid for it is beyond me. Dick Stroud

Stannah advertising 2/2

Stannah’s newspaper advertising 1/2

This Saturday’s Telegraph (one of the UK’s most popular newspapers, especially with the 50-plus) contained a full page ad from Stannah, the stair lift people.

Most of the page was white space, with a stair lift in the left hand corner and the imagery shown in this and the next blog item.

It doesn’t work for me. Would the copy and imagery make me pick the up the phone, as is clearly the intention? Note the telephone number extension to track the calls from the ad.

I feel that in this and in the television ads (covered in previous blogs postings), Stannah is being so ultra cautious that it runs the risk of melting into the background. It will not cause any ripples but maybe not that many new orders.

Advertising is such a subjective thing that I would welcome comments from the readers of this blog. Dick Stroud

Another AARP ad

This is my final AARP post of the weekend and features the campaign called “Future Champions”. As AARP says: “children deliver compelling messages about the state of healthcare and financial security. The multigenerational focus in this new campaign reinforces the Association’s Divided We Fail coalition”. As I said about the previous AARP ad – this is ambitious stuff. I hope for AARP’s sake it is not a step too far too quickly. Dick Stroud

AARP – how the world has changed

I received one of the AARP’s numerous e-mail newsletters and the first article I see is about mobile fitness electronics.

I didn’t know that Nike and Apple have teamed up to offer a wireless transmitter you insert into your Nike running shoe which syncs with your iPod nano to announce your distance, pace and elapsed time.

Nor did I know that you can program the music to increase your pace. The transmitter can also sync up with the NikePlus website so you can see the results of your workout and monitor your progress.

It suddenly struck me that I was reading this on the AARP web site and reminded me of a new Veer image of the 50-plus. More my style. Dick Stroud

Multigenerational AARP

The need for health; financial security, to contribute or give back to society, for community, to stay connected to family, friends/social networks and the need to play and enjoy life. These are the five 'needs' that AARP’s new advertising campaign is aiming to address. There is even a spanking new logo to emphasize the new multigenerational AARP.

Out goes the AARP=discounts, in comes AARP=help save the planet for your grandchildren. Ambitious stuff.

This ad (What We Do We Do for All) uses birthday celebrations to show the many facets of our members and future members in an energetic, engaging way, and signals the evolution of today's and tomorrow's AARP. These are AARP’s words not mine. What do you think? Dick Stroud

Grabbing Older Consumers via Cellphone

This is the headline of an article that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal. If you are quick (next 3 days) you can read the article – after that it goes into the WSJ subscription only locker.

It contains some interesting examples of how US companies are putting their toes in the water of using mobile phones as means of reaching older consumers.

First a few facts. Forrester Research believes that only 3% of consumers trust mobile advertisements. Additionally, only 33% of mobile users aged 45-54 use any form of messaging, compared to 76% of users between ages 18-24.

The Californian mobile-entertainment firm Limbo 41414 seems to be doing good business by partnering with big name brands.

Companies like Hearst's Redbook magazine (average reader is a woman in her mid-30s to mid-40s). Soon the mag will be launching a mobile sweepstakes game. Redbook hopes the sweepstakes games will boost its profile with its readers and provide a new source of ad revenue, through the sale of sponsorships for the sweepstakes.

A few other examples of Limbo’s clients are Bravo (the NBC Universal-owned cable network), Lifetime Television show (average viewer is 48 years old) and Procter & Gamble with its Max Factor brand.

I suspect that Europe is a little further ahead than the US in the use of mobile to reach the over-50s, but not by a great deal. Dick Stroud

Media agencies are better than their clients

Yesterday I posted details about the lack of over-50s working in the media industry (3.9% of employees are 50-plus).

Just in case some of their clients are feeling smug about this age profile, here is the number of employees, aged 55-plus, in the following companies.

Deutsche Bank – 1%
Barclays Bank – 3%
Thomas Cook – 3%
Microsoft – 1%
Volkswagen Group UK – 5%
Vodafone – 3%
Ernst & Young – 2%
Morgan Stanley – 0.4%
Mothercare – 5%
KPMG – 3%
Nationwide – 6%
The Carphone Warehouse – 1%
BBC – 5%

Source: Sunday Times “Best Companies”

It is good to know that our society is age-neutral.Dick Stroud

Yoof rules in the media agencies

What percentage of people in media agencies is 50-plus? Think of a small number and reduce it. The answer is 3.9%. There are only 11.5% of people who have reached their 40th birthday.

These and a load more facts about the demographics of the UK Advertising industry can be found in the 2006 census.

So, as the UK gets older the advertising industry gets younger. Wow. Dick Stroud

Baby boomers' lifestyle is being blamed for climate change

So reads they headlines. The article then goes on to say: “Yet‚ as governmental initiatives try to make people aware of the problem‚ the over 50s do not feel threatened by global warming”.

A bunch of academics have set up a research project (the Climate Talk project) to research the attitudes of the 50-plus towards ‘global warming’.

For US readers of this blog, the UK is currently convulsed in a period of self flagellation about the climate change and how everything from air travel to eating meat is destroying the planet.

I wonder why the 50-plus are taking this gung-ho attitude. Let me think aloud for a moment. Maybe it is that this age group has lived through other mega-scares, things like CJD (mad cow disease) that was supposed to be sending great swathes of the population bonkers yet failed to materialize.

Maybe, it is an instinctive reaction to the mob like reaction of the UK chattering class to climate change that is projecting the subject to religious like proportions. Or maybe, just maybe it is the knowledge that easiest way for academics to get funding these days it to tag “climate change” in front of their research. The Climate Talk project picked up £60,000 of cash I am sure could have been put to better use.

I had to laugh at the reporting of the item on theboomerblog (I blog I thoroughly recommend). The news item appeared between “Hefty cost no object for good night's sleep” and “Too young to retire...but (apparently) too old to be hired”. Maybe that says it all – who cares about global warming if you are an 50-year old unemployed insomniac? Dick Stroud

What interests the 50-plus?

This press release contains a list of top search terms from Cranky search engine. Read the article for a full explanation.

1. Jobs after retirement
2. Brain Builders
3. Body Mass Index
4. Reiki
5. Blogs
6. Arthritis
7. Travel
8. Homesharing
9. Online dating
10. Triathlon

Remembering the big, big, big caveat that Cranky web site users are a subset of the 50-plus age group – the results are interesting and amusing.

So what do we have? A slightly forgetful, unemployed, podgy, fan of alternative medicine, who likes travelling, is looking to squeeze some more money out of their home, disgruntled with their partner, likes wasting time using the Web and dreams of doing a triathlon. I know lots of people like that! Dick Stroud

Why 'Tagging' is so important

Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released a research report about Tagging. This is the process where we all add our classification to articles, sounds, videos and images on the Web. If you want your ad to get the most views make sure it is tagged as being the 'coolest' or 'sexiest' on YouTube.

The practice of encouraging people to tag content is becoming part of the viral marketer's toolkit.

The report contains an interesting breakdown of Taggers by age – there is only 8% difference in the propensity to tag over the 18-64 years spectrum. It also contains fascinating data showing the rising interest in web sites like Flickr and del.icio.us. Dick Stroud

Heyday folded into Age Concern

Poor old Heyday. Less than a year after the launch, Age Concern has decided to pull the plug. I don't think that is exactly how Age Concern would describe the situation - but that is what it looks as if they have done.

That must have been a horrible decision, since it has invested £8m in the new venture.

Heyday magazine, produced by Redwood Publishing, will continue for two issues on a smaller scale, before being retendered. Heyday had initially hoped to recruit 500,000 members by 2007, but has now revised the target to 50,000 by April.

'Heyday's core purpose is charitable and our board decided its activities sit best within Age Concern England,' said the spokeswoman. 'The new business plan reduces our operational costs in line with the pace in membership growth’. More accurately, the lack of pace of acquiring new members.

I am very sorry but not surprised. From the botched launch of the business it has always looked to be on rocky foundations. There were two fundamental problems.

Firstly, it didn’t know what type of organisation it wanted to be. Was it a commercial AARP type business or a younger version of Age Concern? Secondly, it was attempting to sell a service on the basis of age.

We might not have learnt a great deal about marketing, but it is pretty obvious that age is poor proxy for predicting behaviour and consumer needs. Trying to create a proposition that would appeal to the ultra heterogeneous 50-65 age group was next to impossible.

I think the seeds of its failure were present from day one. The pace of Heyday’s demise was hastened by not very smart marketing and what appears as to have been indecisive management. Dick Stroud

Dove and L’Oreal - strange bedfellows

The advertising time slot when Dove launched its Pro Age campaign also contained this ad from L’Oreal. What a different approach! Dick Stroud

The new Dove ad campaign

This is in your face, no excuses, 50-plus advertising.

I think it is great.Dick Stroud

Best and worse performing online advertising technique

There is nothing startling about these research findings but it is interesting to see the results in black and white.

Look at the way that pop-ups and banner advertising are not seen as that much better than rented e-mail lists. Dick Stroud

New research from Axa

Axa has leaked a few of facts from its new international report about pensioners and is majoring on the headline: “Internet usage takes up more time than DIY/Gardening”.

American pensioners are the most Internet active the Spanish are the least.

I never think the absolute numbers in these types of reports are very reliable. It is the relative differences between activities that is the most interesting. Bottom line: pensioners are big users of the Internet. Dick Stroud

New Dove advertising campaign

Dove, the Unilever-owned personal care brand, is stepping up its controversial Campaign for Real Beauty with the launch of television advertising showing naked women aged over 50.

It is the latest twist in Dove’s long-running campaign, which claims to help women feel better about their bodies irrespective of age, shape or skin tone. The “pro-age” execution attempts to show that “over 50 is not over the hill”, according to Unilever, which claims it is “fighting back” against traditional images of beauty.

Unilever claims research it has conducted shows that up to 94% of women believe society should change its attitude to ageing. Nearly 90% of mature women think the media needs to provide a more accurate representation of their age group while 27% say traditional images of beauty leave them feeling invisible, says the company.

I will post an item containing the ad as soon as it is aired. Should be interesting. Dick Stroud

Some names don’t age very well

Because of the perceived stigma of the “elder” label, the venerable Elderhostel organization has adopted a new name — "Road Scholar" — for programs aimed specifically at baby boomers

The new Road Scholar clients have an average age 63, compared with 73 for the Elderhostel programs. I guess the plan is to slowly fade out Elderhostel.

This snippet of information comes from this interesting article about the changing travel habits of the 50-plus.

What I found interesting was to look at the web sites of Elderhostel and Road Scholar. Notice the differences?

You can see that Elderhostel has suffered from a terrible dose of “Web site creep”. This is the infection that lots of web sites contract and results in them becoming unstructured and messy as more and more content and links get added.

Let’s hope that the younger Road Scholar site has been inoculated from this horrible disease. Dick Stroud

The grey gap year

This amusing article in the Independent is about the trend for the 50-plus to pack their bags, trash their bank accounts, wave goodbye to the kids and take a year to travel the world.

As the article explains: Known, unflatteringly, to the travel industry as the "denture venturers" or the "Saga louts", there are an estimated 200,000 pre-retirement "gappers" in the UK. They spend around £5,000 per trip, totalling an impressive £1bn per year.

The other trend is for the same group to decide to buy a property abroad. It is thought that up to a third of the 50-plus have this in mind as a way of spending their cash.

I reckon buying shares in Kleenex is not a bad idea as a generation of kids weep, seeing their inheritance disappearing in far-off lands. Dick Stroud

Smooth - a word with many meanings

GMG Radio will rebrand its newly acquired Saga stations as Smooth Radio in the middle of March. Note: Saga is the UK’s best known 50-plus (some would say 70-plus) brand.

The press release says: “Significant marketing will be invested in the launch of the new brand as GMG re-positions the stations to offer greater appeal to a more mature audience”. I have not idea what that means??

When rebranding it is important to select a name with consistency of meaning. I am not sure that applies to ‘Smooth’. The dictionary definition of smooth comes up with:

level, even, not rough, flat; free from obstacles, unhindered; calm, serene, tranquil; polished, suave; free from lumps, having an even texture; mellow; glib, ingratiating

I wonder which of these words GMG Radio had in mind? Dick Stroud