'Agenda' no longer on the agenda for merged age charities

What a difference a week can make. On the 21st October I wrote that it looked likely that amalgamation between Help the Aged and Age Concern would result in a new charity called Agenda.

Today a spokesman for the charity said: "We are now finalising our new brand name after consultation with our partners and older people - as yet there is no final decision, but we have rule out Agenda as a name for the organisation."

I can only assume the response from the partners and older peeople to the name wasn’t that good.

This is the trouble once you start searching around for a new name. One thing you can be certain is that you will antagonise a lot of people. Either they don’t like the name, don’t see why a new name was necessary and/or are horrified by the costs.

Message to the Marketing Manager at Agenda/Age Concern/Help the Aged you have my sympathy.Dick Stroud

Elderhostel makes a fascinating marketing case study

Elderhostel is a US travel and educational organisation for older adults – you might have guessed the travel part from the name.

The organisation is going through a massive upheaval, caused by falling numbers of customers. As the graphics shows, numbers of people signing up for courses have been falling and the average age of travellers has been rising, It is now 73 years old up from 68 a decade ago.

What has Elderhostel been doing wrong? I have no idea about the quality of its courses and holidays but these would not seem to be the problem since it appears to have a very loyal customer base, which ironically might be part of the problem.

My guess is that problem results from the company pursuing a strategy of age-cohort marketing. What I mean by this is that it retained the basic proposition that appealed to its initial customers and maintained that, pretty much unchanged, as the age cohort aged. Of course the world has changed and the new cohort of customers has very different values and emotional drivers.

The same problem exists in the UK with Saga that was totally appropriate for the 50-plus of two decades ago but finds itself grasping for relevance with today’s older consumer. I suspect it has done a better job than Elderhostel of adapting.

So what is Elderhostel doing?

Changing its name to Exploritas, a word created by brand consultants to combine "explore" and "veritas” - the Latin for truth. No many people know that!

Remove its age restriction. No longer do you have to be at least 60, now anyone 21 or older will be able to participate.

Adopting digital stuff. The group’s Web site will include social networking to help travellers better connect before and after trips.

Elderhostel ended its 2008 fiscal year with a loss of almost $9 million.

What lessons can we learn?

1. Companies always put off making the hard decisions. The longer they put them off the harder they become. I bet the guys at Elderhostel have been talking about this age-cohort issue for years, but never got around to doing anything about it.

2. Crisis forces change at the very worst time to create and adopt a new strategy.

3. Balancing the transition is going to be incredibly difficult. On one hand you have the unknown, of how the new market positioning will work, on the other; you have the known that a lot of your existing customers will be incredibly annoyed.

Will it work? It all comes down to timing. Will the new strategy produce benefits before the results of abandoning the old one takes them down?

My guess, knowing none of the details, is that the chances of success are very slim. Dick Stroud

Europe is a costly place for older Americans

Brent Green has an excellent, firsthand experience, of the costs involved in holidaying in Europe. His conclusion – it is expensive!

When you factor in the cost to fly to Europe, suddenly, a “reasonable” European vacation can easily require not $5.00 but $500.00 per day. Brent’s conclusions: “There are many reasons why Europe is so alluring to Boomers.” Dick Stroud

RIAS provides good reasons to target the 50-plus

As can be seen from the above chart (taken from the RIAS report “Still giving at 50”) there are lots of tangible (and profitable) reasons to treat the 50-plus as target consumers – like they spend more money than their children and grandchildren. Dick Stroud

Americans and Europeans have lost the ‘luxury’ habit - not so in Asia

Since the 50-plus are (were) big purchasers of luxury goods this is of interest.

Gucci Group, the luxury-goods company has announced that acquisitions are part of its long-term strategy and will focus on Asian expansion for a “long time to come”.

Gucci’s head honcho said : “The U.S. and Europe “is where we have seen the biggest change in consumer behaviour, eighteen months ago, people were happy and wanting to have products that showed more the brand name and logos, let’s say, slightly more ostentatious.” Not so now.

Apparently it is only a rumour that Gucci is launching its own designer version of sack cloth and ashes. Dick Stroud

Boomer domains

Try and find a .com domain containing the word boomer. You will have problems.

We all know the definition of a boomer – born between 1946 to 1964.

Recently I was sitting at my computer, supposedly writing a report, but desperately looking for displacement activity. I wondered who owned the domain 46to64.com.

You will never guess - Nobody. Not for long! Dick Stroud

Property slump costs pensioners £220bn

I have been having a late spring clean of my desktop and come upon a pile of stuff I should have blogged about but never got the time.

This is a nice factlet to slip into a presentation.

According to propertyfinder.com (not exactly the statistical gurus of the UK) pensioners have had £220bn of their wealth wiped out in the past year as a result of the housing crash.

Even though they make up less than a sixth of the population, they own a third of the country's property by value. The total value of pensioner property in England and Wales has fallen to £800bn.

Retired people own half the property by value on the south coast and even more of the equity.

The UK's top "inheritance hotspot" is Christchurch in Dorset, where pensioners own 54% of the property stock by value.

Even if these figures are a tad wrong it illustrates the importance of the retired to the dynamics of the property market and the important of the dynamics of the property market to the retired. Dick Stroud

Rejuvenating Ageing Research - a new report

A UK organisation called the Academy of Medical Sciences has published a report called Rejuvenating Ageing Research that warns that unless the UK establishes a cadre of top scientists, doctors and engineers dedicated to tackling the problems of old age, the country could lose this what momentum it has trying to grapple with the problems of an ageing population.


This looks to be a detailed bit of research so it will go on the pile of "To Read". Once read I will comment more. Dick Stroud

Italy tops the list of Creators

Recently I wrote about the tool that Forrester provides to enable you to find out how many of their social media types exist by age, gender and country – this link gives a definition of the different types.

I have just come upon a link, from earlier in the year, that provides a nice graphic showing a European overview.

True to form, the Italians are big at being ‘Creators’. Dick Stroud

Physiological ageing = Business opportunity

The Mayo Clinic has an excellent summary of all of the nasties that occur once the 50th birthday has gone. WARNING – reading this could make you seriously depressed.

There is not many physical things that go on the blink other than the:
Cardiovascular system
Bones, muscles and joints
Digestive system
Kidneys, bladder and urinary tract
Brain and nervous system
Eyes
Ears
Teeth
Skin, nails and hair
Sleep
Weight
Sexuality

Still reading? OK, now for the good news. This chronic degeneration in the physical being is a fantastic opportunity for marketers. Just think of all of the things that older people have to buy to try and keep this tsunami of physical decay from engulfing their lives.

Technology Review has an interesting article about one of the higher tech opportunities. Firstly, there is Microsoft Healthvault, described by MS as:” a way to store health information from many sources in one location, so that it’s always organized and available to you online.” Allied to this are companies providing monitoring equipment that take your vital signs and automatically update your online health record. Tanita is one of the companies providing MS compatible equipment.

The cynic in me wonders what happens if the vital signs are indicating all is not well - do you get an e-mail and/or a text to tell you to get to the nearest A&E department. I can just see the expression of disbelief from some tired over-worked nurse as you brandish your mobile with the text alert – “this patient is gravely ill – This message was automatically generated by MS HealthVault.”.

Sorry, I digress. Seriously, physiological ageing and all it entails is a multi billion dollar business. I get the feeling that for most mega companies it is one of those interesting niches. Before long it must move into the mainstream. Dick Stroud

Lots of talk about "olderpreneurs"

I don’t particularly like this name but it is one that seems to have stuck. It refers to older people (probably the 50-plus) who start their own business, either for fun or necessity.

For years I have been barking on about the importance of this group of people for marketers because they need products and services and in my book that is an opportunity. Few organisations have picked up on this fact.

This article from the Guardian provides some useful background.

Last week I met some of these people when I presented to a meeting organised by PRIME about the basics of marketing. It was good fun and made me even more convinced that this is going to be a growing market.

If you want to see and hear what I was saying then you can download this podcast. For some strange reason it (the podcast) has taken an aversion to Mosaic browsers so you will need to use MS IE or Chrome. Dick Stroud

Web site usability mistakes

Jakob Nielsen has been documenting the “10 worst web design errors” since 1996. Sadly some of the problems are still unresolved.

This is Nielsen's latest list – all of which are bad news for the 50-plus:

• Bad Search
• PDF Files for Online Reading
• Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
• Non-Scannable Text
• Fixed Font Size
• Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
• Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
• Violating Design Conventions
• Opening New Browser Windows
• Not Answering Users' Questions

This is another of the great man’s newsletters about the importance of the first 11 characters of Web links. On the basis that people scan rather than read, we are probably only going to see the first 11 characters. These initial characters should contain the important information about the link. For instance Barclays Bank scored well for the link "New custome" whilst Directgov "Working whil” failed. I dare to think how my Web links stack-up if this rule is applied.

I am very fond of the term – the devil is in the detail – it certainly is when trying to get the best out of Web sites. Dick Stroud

Oxo expands from 50-plus to toddlers

For years, whenever journalists were writing about products that were designed for older people you get bet your boots that Oxo would be in the list – probably at the top.

It sounds is if the company is doing rather well and is expanding from its niche in housewares products and moving into office supplies and products for babies and toddlers.

I am sure the company would not say that it targeted the older market but that its products were created around universal design principles. Whatever, it seems to have worked. They even feature in Business Week. Dick Stroud

The Google Phone marketing campaign

Chuck Nyren has an excellent blog posting about the marketing campaign for the Google mobile phone. It is age neutral but there are a few buts. Dick Stroud

The birth of the “Cautionary Generation”

This blog posting by Jay Suhr makes a great deal of sense in which he tries to answer the question that fascinates me: “is the recession a defining moment for our consumer-driven society.” If it is, what impact will it have?

The conclusion he reaches is that the Boomer, Me, X and Millennial generations may have morphed into a new “Cautionary Generation” that saves that is committed to using less that now associates the amassing of stuff with the loss of financial cushions, secure retirement or the ability to pay their mortgage.

Even though there is much talk of green shouts, he believes that many people are still bracing for another unexpected dip.

He thinks that those who feel they survived are likely to go into an aggressive form of preventative maintenance, with no back sliding on bad spending habits. He thinks that people have learned that they can do without and live happily. They’ve rediscovered coupons, soup and board games. They’ve learned the discipline of thinking twice, three or four times before making purchases. They’ve learned to research and shop and bargain.

I agree with much he says and what is for sure, few brands have got their head around what implications these changes have on the way they interact with consumers.

A very interesting posting and one that it is well worth reading.

I like the term “Cautionary Generation” but feel there are probably more descriptive and memorable ways of describing today’s consumers. My favourite is the “Tightrope Generation”.

This is not an age based generation but includes anybody who is working. If you are in work, then life aint too bad. The instant you slip off of the employment rope then your world can implode. Difficulty getting reemployed (especially if you are 40+), probably with a reduced salary and a period of no income when the bills, especially credit card payments, keep coming.

Keep balancing and you are fine – slip and you are history.

Any other ideas for a generational name? Dick Stroud

Ageing in place comes of age?

Business Week special edition about “Ageing in place”

The Ageing in Place blog has some interesting comments about the story.

It is not the content that matters, although that is important, it is that Business Week thinks this is an important enough subject to devote so much space. As the blog posting says: “a market undescribed doesn't exist.” If this is a market that interests you then both the blog and the Business Week articles are a must read. Dick Stroud.

Charities giving by the 50-plus is vitally important

As the chart shows, unless charities capture the older giver they are toast.

If you are in the Charity Business then this is a must read analysis of who gives - more importantly who does not.

The ‘high roller’ givers constitute a disproportionate amount of total giving. This research suggests that those aged 65 and over are most likely to be higher-level donors (10%), followed by 45-64 year olds (9%), 25-44 year olds (7%) and 16-24 years olds (2%).

The research I conducted with Mature Marketing showed that 50% of the 50-plus had reduced their charitable giving by an average of 50%. Worse still, if you don’t keep this group as regular givers you are likely to miss out on their legacy payments.

Number one priority for the charities is to make sure their marketing to the older age group has adapted to the changed behaviour created by the recession. My bet is that most of them have yet to get the message. Watch out for redundancies and mergers as charities fight to keep going. And this is all before we see the swinging reductions in public expenditure.

Rough times ahead in the Charities Sector. Dick Stroud

What is it that happens to politicians?

This has nothing to do with the 50-plus marketing - it's a personal gripe.

I have had personal contacts with two of the people in the UK news.

Ages ago, at the dawn of time I did IT marketing consultancy projects with a guy call Steve Timms. He was bright and a thoroughly decent guy. He was also somebody with political ambitions.

Starting in local government he moved up the slippery pole and eventually got into parliament as a Labour MP.

It was not surprising that he did well and found himself in demand being one of the few Labour MPs who had worked in business and one of an even smaller group who knew anything about IT.

Why am I telling you this story?

Well in the dying days of the Labour Government, Steve is Minister for Digital Britain. The name says enough, doesn’t it? After 12 years in power Steve’s bosses have discovered this “digital stuff” and much to their amazement discovered that the UK doesn’t rank much above the level of a Third World county in the quality of its digital infrastructure.

What bright idea did they come up? Honestly, I am not joking, this really is the truth. They are going to tax everybody in the country with a broadband connection 50p a month.

Steve is doing the media rounds, telling anybody who will listen that the “broadband tax” is to raise £175 million to fund “high speed networks”. Of course nobody believes him and sees it for what it is: another way of screwing tax out the poor saps in employment. It is just like the days when Brits had to pay tax on windows and more recently there was a tax on mobile phones. Like all of the “Green Taxes” it's just another way of plugging a massive budget deficit.

What is so sad is that Steve is a decent guy, who really was in politics for the right reasons and who is bright enough to see this idiot tax for what it is. So he ends his political career, peddling a lie. The poor guy will not be remembered for the decent things he did but as somebody who sold out and supported something he must know is wrong.

Another person in the news is Baroness Scotland, who is the UK’s Attorney General for England and Wales. She is effectively the UK’s top legal person. Her misdoings are personal – claiming to much personal expenses and employing an illegal immigrant.

I don’t know the Baroness but I was at school with two of her brothers. She is one of twelve children. The Scotlands were an amazing family. Not just that there were so many of them but they were exceptional honourable kids. I know that sounds crazy, but even at the age of fifteen, you knew there was something deeply good and honest about them. And could her brothers play cricket!! Her parents must have been exceptional.

All these years later and the women stands on the edge of political oblivion and is widely ridiculed by the press and even her own political colleagues. Somewhere along the line she lost the plot

These are just two of countless stories of where politicians start off doing the right thing and end up with their moral compass smashed to pieces. How sad for them. How sad for us. Dick Stroud

A youthful online Readers Digest?

I reckon the Readers Digest must have had more press coverage in the past month than for last couple of years. First the company sought bankruptcy protection, then sold its list of members and now is looking to revamp its global online activities to, in the words of the FT: “to attract a younger audience to a brand suffering from its associations with doctors’ waiting rooms and elderly readers.”

Why does this send a shudder down my spine? I can smell the work consultants a mile away.

“We were the Google News of the 1920s. We were the original aggregator,” said, the newly promoted general manager of readersdigest.com. I can just see that phrase: the Google News of the 1920s, on a PowerPoint slide, stimulating a lot of nodding heads from the RD audience.

The FT goes on to say:

Starting with the Netherlands and China, where a redesigned website goes live this week, the group is planning to replace a patchwork of international sites, each designed separately by local teams and carrying a different selection of content, with a single, coherent platform.

I sort of understand why it is launching in Netherlands because of the very successful Yours magazine that is targeted at the older market. Why China?

How is the business going to make money? Advertising and sales of books and CDs – NO charging for content - that's what they say.

Can you believe it, there is even work going on for an application for Apple’s iPhone. More sensibly there will also be a version for Amazon’s Kindle.

I totally agree with the comments about this venture in BrandChannel

RD's biggest hurdle is the brand's staid reputation. While its brand equity shouldn't be discounted -- they maintain mass audience appeal and name recognition -- it may take more than nifty customization tools to give the aging publisher its Fountain of Youth.

It is a pity that RD only decided to drag its web presence into today’s world when the magazine failed. Methinks there were internal battles between the online and print. Let’s hope they haven’t left it too late.

Above are the today’s US and UK web sites. As you can see, totally different. I bet they use different content management technologies and construction technologies. Dick Stroud

Older consumers get the healthy eating habit

A US research company has published a report about the trends in healthy eating.

It costs lots of dosh so I have only seen the scraps of information issued the in press releases.

The bottom line seems to be that “healthy eating” is present for all age groups but the most likely consumers are older people.

I guess it is summed up by this statement: "Consumers seem to understand that healthy eating promotes healthy aging. So as consumers age, healthy eating increases in importance.”

If you have deep pockets you can buy the research from here. Dick Stroud

Jakob Nielsen's September Alertbox contains some pearls of wisdom, as usual

Nielsen's summary of the article says:

Users hate change, so it's usually best to stay with a familiar design and evolve it gradually. In the long run, however, incrementalism eventually destroys cohesiveness, calling for a new UI architecture.

He is absolutely right. Why Web designers are impelled to look for clever new ways of doing things, to confuse the site users, never ceases to amaze me.

Older web site users are really happy with the familiar. Unless your changes add tangible value to the user - don’t bother . Dick Stroud

'Agenda' is likely name for merged Age Concern and Help the Aged

A spokesman from the merged charities confirmed that Agenda was under active consideration. "It is being looked at and staff have been consulted on it," he said. But no final decision has been taken yet.

The article then went on to say that brand consultancy Corporate Edge was hired in January to create the new identity. Chris Wood, its chair, said older people's needs would be central to the branding strategy.

The final sentence made me rock with laughter: “The merged charity's spokesman said it had so far paid Corporate Edge less than £100,000.”

How long is it going to take some wag in the press to work out that this exercise has cost about £17,000 per character. If you take out the word Age, that had to appear in the new name, then the new characters “nda” cost £30,000 each.

I know, I know , I know that is not how branding exercises work but for the sake of the charity I just hope the press understand that, especially if the launch is laced with rumours of job redundancies and cuts in services.

So let’s also hope the press office is up to all of these angles and has its strategies in place to douse them before they gather pace and ignite into a major story.

Agenda.com, agenda.co.uk, agenda.org.uk are all sites that are registered but not being used. Let’s hope that one, or all of them, is owned by the new charity. Dick Stroud

UK older people’s day

Not long to go and the UK has a day aimed at me. I have to be honest with you to say that I have only just found out, nobody invited me along or told me about it, but I should be ungrateful.

The web site says that: “Full of Life is a celebration of the opportunities, achievements, and aspirations of older people and their contribution to our society and economy.”

Thanks for thinking about me. Dick Stroud

RIAS adopts a new theme for its advertising

In the past RIAS has very successfully pursued a simple style of advertising with a single message: “If you are 50-plus you can get your insurance cheaper at RIAS.”

The result has been that RIAS is now a major player in the UK insurance market. There is nothing like a simple message.

This month the company has launched an integrated campaign to move things to a more sophisticated (aspirational) level. The message now is: “You are 50-plus, you contribute a lot to the economy and you have lots of life left to do extraordinary things”.

First came the PR campaign. This was a classic “research campaign” aimed at generating press comment. It is a nice bit of research and definitely worth downloading.

Then came the new ad and press campaign.




Overall, I reckon they have done a pretty good job.

I don’t particularly like the ad, but readers of this blog will know I have an aversion to water being used in the context of illustrating the vigour of age – a purely personal thing.

As always, I welcome comments from the marketing titans that read this blog. Dick Stroud

Is the wisdom of crowds for the gullible?

A lot is made about the importance of word-of-mouth as a means of informing the decisions of older consumers. The connection is often made between WOM and the user generated commentary that litters web sites from delighted or aggrieved purchasers.

An academic in Portugal (Vassilis Kostakos) has been digging around in the voting patterns on Amazon, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and the book review site BookCrossings.

He and his team looked at hundreds of thousands of items and millions of votes across the three sites. In each case, they found that a small number of users accounted for a large number of ratings. For example, only 5% of active Amazon users cast votes on more than 10 products. A handful of users voted hundreds of items.

If you have two or three people voting 500 times," says Kostakos, the results may not be representative of the community overall. He suspects this may be why ratings often tend toward extremes. I reckon you are right!

One of the suggestions, accompanying this research, is that the number of time a person has voted/commented should be shown (assuming this is technically possible). Sounds like a good idea.

I guess we all know that whenever we see a “research result” that results from some informal online poll that the answer must be skewed because the types of people that respond to such things are not ‘normal’. Good to see some research that proves that’s true. Dick Stroud

Everywhere I look I find phones for oldies

I open the Spectator (UK magazine with a 50-plus biased readership) and what do I find? The magazine's shop is selling the Doro “Big Button “phone.

A couple of minutes later I come upon the Emporia.

For ages nobody was interested in the half blind, clumsy fingered 50-plus and now everybody wants to get in on the action. Dick Stroud

Reader's Digest puts its database of 2 million active readers on the market

Who would have thought it - all those avid readers can now be purchased via MediaLab.

The data consists of subscribers to the magazine, as well as buyers of books and products (e.g. books and DVD's). You can even buy the details of competition entrants.

The file's demographics are ABC1 aged 40+ with an average household income of £23k per annum. They are mainly empty-nesters who own their own home. You can even segment the data by age.

The question, the really big question is - are your potential customers likely to read the Readers Digest? Dick Stroud

Usability evaluation of three social networking sites

It is a long time since I have looked at the SURL (Software Usability Research Laboratory) web site.

This organisation does some fantastic Web site usability research.

The item that caught my eye was the analysis of MySpace, Facebook and Orkut.

It is impossible to summarise this research in a few pithy comments but basically the results showed problems related to confusing terminology, inadequate feedback and error messages, and poor link location. All of these impacted user performance and satisfaction.

These are the bottom line recommendations on how to improve the overall use of social network sites:

1. Use consistent and familiar terminology.

2. Provide a brief explanation for terms that are unique to the site (e.g. PhotoCube on MySpace, Testimonials on Orkut, Boxes on Facebook).

3. Provide sufficient feedback to the users. Too often the users repeated failed actions simply because they were not sure if the system had performed their initial task.

4.Improve link placement. Uploading a profile picture, finding the chat link and looking for the Settings option should be easy tasks to perform and should be placed within easy view of the user on the profile homepage.

These comments apply to all ages but particularly the 50-plus. Dick Stroud

Ancestry.co.uk launches TV push aimed at over 45s

Ancestry.co.uk, the website that enables people to discover their ancestors, is to launch its first ever TV campaign next week.

The campaign will feature a 30-second brand ad targeted at the website's core audience of ABC1 adults aged over 45. The creative will also be used online and offline in print campaigns.

The ad is built around a 'then and now' scenario, depicting people in period dress waiting in modern day settings to be found by their living descendants.

The ads will air on a mix of terrestrial and satellite stations and are designed to build awareness of the company’s brand.

According to ancestry.co.uk, it has grown its subscriber base to more than 200,000 members since 2004. Dick Stroud

The good old recession and the 50-plus

I have already referenced that I was talking at a conference in Switzerland about “Mature Marketing”.

You can now see and hear what I was saying by downloading this Flash version of the presentation. Enjoy – probably not the right word. Be worried – probably more appropriate. Dick Stroud

The perils of hosting content on third party web sites

As usual, a fascinating posting on the UseIT web site. This is not specific about the 50-plus, but if you have any responsibility for web content then you should read.

Most of the article is about the risks you take when your video hosting is a third party, like YouTube, because they control the thumbnail of the video presented on your web site.

It is a subject I have never considered before but when you look at the examples it is blindingly clear how the usability of the site can be degraded. Dick Stroud

Twitter more popular among over-50s than the young

Twice as many 50-64-year-olds than 18-24-year-olds in the UK use Twitter, according to research from Nielsen Online. The 50-64-year-old users account for 22% of the entire Twitter audience, compared with just 11% of 18-24-year-olds.

The biggest share of the audience is 35-49-year-olds (33%), followed by 50-64-year-olds (22%) and 25-34-year-olds (22%). A year ago the share of 25-34-year-olds using the site was 5% higher.

So have the young seen the futility of Twitter and the old just keep at it because they think it is cool and easier to use than texting, or is there really some value in microblogging. Right now my vote goes to the young. Dick Stroud

Mercedes thank for this wonderful ad

In one fell swoop, Mercedes has produced an ad that satisfies both of my rants about creative not recognising the recession and not appealing to an older consumer.

The copy, the imagery, the concept and the music – in my book – are terrific.

The ad starts by establishing the pressure and hassle of today’s world and then gives three beautiful word sketches from Danny Glover, Philip Glenister and Christian Slater of a time past when life was just right.

As an old friend, who has a real insight into the power of words said: “real class.” Dick Stroud

US politics breaks along demographics lines

Views about how members of Congress should vote on the forthcoming Healthcare Reform Bill provide a fascinating insight into how the attitudes of Americans divide along demographic lines.

This research from Gallup shows a big division by gender, income and age.

I wonder how the marketers in the Obama’s team are going to tackle this one. If they are not careful they are going to be left with their support only coming from young poor females.

It is difficult to know if these results are specific to healthcare or show a more generalised trend in the American electorate. Dick Stroud

Where marketing and employment meet

We know the population is ageing – no doubt – no debate.
We know that older people are going to have to work longer because of the recession – no doubt – no debate.

We know that the opportunities for employment are thin on the ground when you hit the big 50 (now it probably the big 40) – not much doubt – little debate.

So, if we know all of this stuff why are not more companies looking to sell products and services to older people looking to start their own business? Beats me.

The US has realised this market opportunity and you are now seeing lots of Web sites catering for this audience. This is the mission of WhatsNext.com - to provide information, inspiration and resources for men and women who want to change careers, find more fulfilling work or improve their work-life balance. All are welcome, but there will be an emphasis on those who are in mid-career or approaching retirement.
Chuck Nyren has written some good content about the company. Last week I was talking at a conference in Switzerland with Mark Miller, the Editorial Director. He is a good guy, so you can be sure the content will be excellent. Let’s hope we see these types of ventures in the UK. Dick Stroud

It is not a secret - we are in a recession

I am amazed how few companies are reflecting the fact that most people are, in one way or another, concerned about the recession.

OK, some people are doing well and some doing really badly and there are lot in the middle who don’t know which of these two groups they will join over the coming months.

Great to see that my chums in Holland who run a 50-plus agency are reflecting the reality. As much as I hate Web Intro pages I reckon this works. Dick Stroud

Not another beach photo

Maybe I am becoming obsessed with the obsession of newspaper photo editors to always select shots of oldies on beaches.

Here is another one from the Daily Mail that heads an article about the changing holiday habits of the 50-plus.

A nice quote from a TUI spokeswoman about the importance of the 50-plus to the travel industry: "They have steady disposable income and are somewhat recession-proof.” Yep, no doubt about that. Dick Stroud

ING ads – one for each age group

ING was one of the first financial services companies to use Web video. It was a simple application with "talking head" testimonials from each of the company’s target group of customers.

The new TV advertising campaign does very much the same thing. You have the young couple and the older lady.

These are the sort of ads that make you take notice, especially the one with the guy in bed when he learns that it is twins. How effective – who knows? Well hopefully ING knows. Dick Stroud

Women do sociable better than men - at all ages

Burstmedia has issued some research about the profile of social networking users.

Not surprisingly, younger use it more than old. More surprising is the high percentage of 65+ (I have my doubts). Women use it more than blokes, especially at the older end of the age spectrum. Dick Stroud

Disabilities and the 50-plus

As a rule I don’t like the automatic association of older people with the disabled. It really gets up my nose the way that OFCOM groups the two together.

However, I found this article and the links it contains to be of use. Undoubtedly, the graph of boomers/50-plus with disabilities is set for a steep rise over the coming decades so the sooner companies understand the implications of the physiological effects of ageing the better. Dick Stroud

A rant against technology vendors

I really enjoy reading Laurie Orlov’s blog (Aging in Place Watch). Her most recent posting really made me laugh. It begins.

This is a rant. I am tired of youth-oriented tech vendors with their back-to-school laptops. I am tired of how clumsy and non-intuitive most computing technologies are -- especially home networks.

I am convinced that vendors like Apple, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, and Microsoft must be populated with thirty-somethings who design products for themselves and their inner geek. (Gee, why have a device that can be plugged in and just works? Instead, why don't we just add these 14 configuration steps?). So it has always been thus and so perhaps will always be.

But with so many boomers who insist on staying put in their homes and who have more disposable income (even accounting for the recession assault on their portfolios) why not make and market home technology for them?

These are not the words of a techno phobic oldie but from a leading industry analyst who worked for Forrester Research. Keep it up Laurie. Dick Stroud

Growing Older in America

Growing Older in America by the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a serious bit of research. It contains 108 pages packed with research about all aspects of ageing in the US. It covers health, retirement, finance… all of the subjects you would expect.

Unfortunately, most of the research is 5+ years old but it is still worth adding to your collection of reference material. Dick Stroud

Another supermaket has a crack at the 50-plus finance market

Asda (the supermarket chain) has started selling over-50s life cover products and plans.

Yesterday, Asda launched its "Over 50s Life Cover" product, developed by insurance group LV= (the financial company with the daftest name in the UK).

The products will be available in-store, online and by phone.

LV= gets around, since it also sells its products via Intune – a finance portal it runs in conjunction with Help the Aged.

I guess you cannot have too many channels to market. Dick Stroud

Two bits of good news for the Finance industry – I think.

Firstly, nearly half of over 50s Isa savers plan to invest up to new limit, according to Legal & General. Not surprising considering the dreadful rate of interest on savings accounts that deduct tax.

Secondly, consumers aged 50 and over are most likely to use more than one credit card to manage their finances, with almost half admitting to using two or more. So says Saga. I like the use of the word ‘admitting’ rather than ‘bragging'.

I am not sure if there is a connection between these two factlets, but they might be useful at some stage for a presentation. Dick Stroud

Research about age and the US auto industry

The future of Detroit's automakers, even if they survive the current recession, looks grim.

Cohort analysis of 24 years of US consumer household data suggests that the younger the head of the household, the more likely it is that the household automotive fleet includes foreign automakers' vehicles. Furthermore, preferences for foreign vehicles increase slightly as heads of households age.

The demographic threat to Detroit's automakers is a serious piece of research by a group of guys with a wealth of understanding of the US auto industry. A really impressive academic paper., Dick Stroud

John Lewis has launched a new magazine targeted at 35-45 females +++

The press release says it is intended to also :"appeal to older audiences who share similar attitudes and outlooks on life and shopping, including empty nesters aged 45+, affluent couples aged 25-34 and affluent men aged 35-44.”

Nothing like focused marketing. Dick Stroud

How many ‘Creators’ in your target market

The above image shows Forrester’s analysis of the social media types of UK women aged 55+.

To make sense of the data:
These slides explain these of these groups (Creators, Critics, etc.)
The bars indicate the percentage of the selected demographic that is in each Social Technographics group.
The white marks indicate the same percentages for the whole population of the country selected.
The index indicates how the demographic compares to the population — a score of 100 means the demographic is the same as the population average.

Use the application to construct an analysis of your own target markets. Dick Stroud

Is social networking the new WOM?

We love it when the lowly consumer gets back at the big bad corporation.

Just look at the success of the “United Breaks Guitars" video on YouTube (5.4 million views and counting). Not bad for content that was posted on the 11th July 2009.

Of course the number of views is trivial compared to the viral effect of the video (like what you are reading now).

As we have seen in Iran, where there are zillions of disgruntled citizens going around with their mobiles videoing the awful violence of the fascist state, there are no hiding places.

In the UK there is great concern about the way in which older people are treated in care institutions and hospitals. This has extracted the traditional knee-jerk political reaction that will will result in a few committees and czars being appointed and no action.

What will get things changed is when hundreds, maybe thousands of people start posting videos of the terrible state of some of these institutions.

My guess is that combination of contributed content and ubiquitous video cameras will become a major force for change. Custome care departments beware. It cannot come too soon. Dick Stroud

Watch out kids your mom is listening

I assume this is a comedy – maybe not – maybe it is. This is the mother from hell. Dick Stroud

Luxury experiences not luxury stuff

Some new research has just been published by McKinsey about the decline in Japanese consumer’s seemingly insatiable appetite for luxury goods. Sorry, the article is subscription only.

Just look at the graphic showing the responses, by age, to the statement: “I prefer spending money on luxury experiences rather than buying luxury accessories, handbags, or apparel."

The over-55s is the group most likely to agree with this statement. Travel seems to be the main beneficiary of this shift from stuff to experiences.

I thought these were a couple of interesting quotes from the article.

The manager of a leading luxury hotel in Tokyo told us that the vast majority of his guests are Japanese, including many Tokyo residents: “A large part of our customer base is 35- to 55-year-old ladies with money, so we are going after the same wallets as the luxury manufacturers are.”

Meanwhile, luxury goods are losing their lustre. Across demographic groups, one-third of all consumers—and as many as 43 percent of those 55 or older—agreed that “owning luxury goods is not as special as it used to be.” Only 32 percent of the respondents said they were “very” or “somewhat” interested in luxury products, compared with 51 percent in the same survey in 2004.

I reckon this is a universal trend that isn’t going away, anytime soon. Companies had better get to understand what it means to their business. Dick Stroud