Time to read the tea leaves

It’s that time of year where you cannot open a newspaper without reading predictions for 2010 and rationalisations of 2009. I thought that enough had been written about 2009 but it might be interesting to speculate about the coming 12 months – from the perspective of the things that will be important when marketing to older people.

So what issues will keep the 50-plus marketer awake at night in eager anticipation or dread? My top five – not in any particular order are:

Technology 1. The combination of smart new mobile hardware and operating systems, 3G, GPS, motion detection, zillions of data feeds, speech and character recognition all tied up in a bow using apps development toolkits makes for the most exciting thing since we typed our first http://www. 2010 will be the start of era of 50-plus apps that will create fantastic new marketing opportunities.

Technology 2. Web video is still on a rapid upward trajectory. In 2009 it went from being something of a novelty to a media format that all web sites had to consider using. 2010 will see the use of Web video as an effective format to communicate with older consumers, really come of age (excuse the pun).

Technology 3. Social networking is here to stay but is becoming something of a bore. Back at the beginning of recorded time e-mail was exciting and something worth talking about – not any more, other than to moan about the time it consumes. I reckon that generic social networking sites are going the same way. The higher income 50-plus pretty much mirror the usage patterns of the Web. Sure they will retain their Linkedin and Facebook accounts but so what?

Advertising. For years I have been saying that: “this is the year when advertising becomes more age-neutral.” Why break the habit of a lifetime and say it again. Honestly, I do detect that the message is slowly getting through that advertising creative has to expand outside its Yoof-centric ghetto, if for no other reason than the barrage of news that shows the levels of youth unemployment – boomerang kids, dependence on “bank mum and dad” etc etc. Yoof is having a tough time and has lost its lure for advertisers. This brings us to the number one issue.
The really biggie.

The Recession. The perilous state of the economy in the UK, much of Europe and the US is scary. 2010 is going to be a turning point – unfortunately I am not convinced that it is turning in the right direction. At best it will be dreadful. At worst – you don’t want to know. If you want the gory details then have a read of Robert Peston’s 31st December blog. Peston is the BBC’s head economics journalist.

One thing for sure is that for marketers, willing to think outside the box and have the guts to take chances, there will be lots of opportunities for relieving the 50-plus of their hard earned cash.

Happy New Year. Dick Stroud.

Ford’s ad tells a lot about its view of older people

Full marks for Ford for paying some attention to oldies, however, its choice of ads tells a lot about how it positions the older age group.

Early in the year there was the ad about making hill starts easier with the “Hill Assist” feature. In the most recent copy of Saga there is the above ad to ensure the poor old sods don’t stick petrol into a diesel car, or visa verse. It is not as if this is a new feature – it was launched in 2005.

You can just image the scene in a Ford marketing communications strategy meeting when they are trying to think of all of the features of their cars that might, in their view, be appropriate for older people.

Let’s hope 2010 is going to see a few more inventive ideas than we saw in 2009.

I am feeling in a particularly generous mood so I will give Ford some free consultancy. Cripes, in the company’s current financial state I doubt if they could afford my fees.

If you want to develop a feature that would guarantee you a surge in older customers then create something that makes it easier for older, like the 50-plus, to drive at night. Crack that one and you will see the customers come in their droves. Dick Stroud

Why is corporate and brand euthanasia so unpopular?

Not a 50-plus specific subject.

This is an excellent blog posting by Idris Mootee about why we make assumptions that it is the management team's responsibility to extend or prolong the life of companies and brands, even if they have few reasons to exist. Instead of wasting resources and energy to save a company or a brand, shouldn't we take whatever assets that are of any use and redeploy them?

This is a subject I have thought about over the years but not as succinctly as the author of this blog, who has also produced a thought provoking presentation about the lurch of business towards the East. For me, this issue, that impacts us all, is summed up by these two slides. Excellent stuff. Dick Stroud

The BBC and the Church of England have one problem in common

These institutions are different in many ways, most importantly being that the BBC is reasonably popular and is funded by a mandatory tax. The Church of England is in decline and has to appeal to its followers for its funds.

The National Centre for Social Research is publishing research in Jan that describes a large proportion of Brits as the “fuzzy faithful” who have a vague belief in God but do not necessarily belong to a particular denomination or attend services.

Just 50% of Brits now call themselves Christian, down from 66% in 1983.

The proportion of Britons who say they have “no religion” has increased in this period by 12%. Non-Christians, including Muslims and Jews, now represent 7% of the population, up from 2%, 25 years ago.

The steepest fall was among those who say they worship in the established religion. The Church of England, is down to less than a quarter of population (23%).The study suggests that the decline in faith is largely attributable to children no longer being brought up in a particular religion. The research found that two non-religious parents successfully transmit their lack of religion. Two religious parents have roughly a 50/50 chance of passing on the faith.

Not only are the numbers of parishioners in decline but they are more likely to hold onto their hard earned dosh. Churchgoers are currently donating £520m whereas the desired figure is in the region of £860m.

One thing the BBC and Church of England have in common is the age profile of their ‘audience’.

As can be seen from the Tearfund analysis, churchgoers are old and getting older. The pretty graphs can be downloaded from the WhyChurch web site.

Whilst the over 65s make up just one in ten of the population, they account for nearly a third of the BBC's audience and they watch and listen to a lot more programming than younger people.

So there you are - your audiences are slowly fading away (dieing), what do you do? The knee jerk reaction is to make your core proposition more ‘friendly’ and attractive to younger people. But here is the rub, by doing that you risk alienating your existing older, committed audience. This is a classical marketing problem.

How well both organisations are tackling this conundrum is an open question. The BBC has a lot more opportunities to direct its programming down age specific channels, but even here it seems embarrassed to have an aggregate older audience. When you visit the section of its web site that is about its audiences it recognises those who are retired and the next youngest age group is ‘Families’ that it seems to define as being people in their 30s.

This Xmas I have been really surprised how many of my friends and acquaintances (in their 50s and 60s), who have been lifelong churchgoers have decided not go to a Xmas service. They all state the same reason. I paraphrase the message: “Their local vicar has dumbed down the service to make it appeal to Yoof.”

As an atheist I cannot give a first hand opinion, but my occasional dealings with the church make me think that it has fallen into a terrible trap of trying too hard to make ‘accessible’ its preaching that simultaneously turns off its older parishioners and appears meaningless and insipid to its targeted younger audience. The Church of England should make 2010 the year of age-neutral religion. So end the sermon. Dick Stroud

When Brand Names Go Bad

This blog posting is not specific to the 50-plus.

During my career I have been involved, a number of times, in trying to devise new brand names. It never ceases to amaze me how much time companies spend on this activity and how introspective and complex they become. This year I written a lot about Age Concern/Help the Aged long and laborious journey to come up with the name AgeUK

I guess it is an age old question that is not often asked and very rarely answered: “What comes first, the successful brand name or the successful product?”

Tom Parrette, Director of Verbal Branding at Addis Creson, a Berkeley-based strategic branding firm had a good go at answering this question. This is what he had to say.

There’s one indisputable truth about brand naming: your name is only as good as your company, product, or service. Consumers rarely invest in something based solely on the perceived quality of its name. They invest in a product’s or brand’s reputation. Names can influence purchase decisions, but they don’t unilaterally prevent or guarantee them.

Which leads us to the phenomenon of brand names that go bad.

In the 1950s, a top US automaker decided to elevate one of its existing brands to the level of luxury car, creating room for a new sub-luxury brand. The company did its due diligence and came up with a plan. The brand would represent a new business division. It would place the parent company in a parity position with other major US automakers.

The car launched with significant fanfare. But in just a few short years, the party was over. The company was Ford, and the brand was Edsel—a name that has become synonymous with colossal public failure. Speculation as to why the Edsel failed is endless. But one thing is fairly certain: it wasn’t because of the name alone. If that was the case, then brands like DeSoto, Chrysler, Buick, Cadillac—names that are no more or less odd-sounding than Edsel—would have failed just as quickly.

Consumer research done after the Edsel proved unpopular revealed, among other things, that the name was a problem. That’s a bit of a post-rationalization. What’s more likely is the car was a flop and took its name down with it. If the car had been a popular success, the brand name would be upheld as an example of how an unusual family name (Edsel Ford was the car’s namesake) can have breakthrough brand significance and stimulate record sales.

To this day, innocent brand names can go bad because of product shortcomings. Take the recent example of Microsoft’s operating system. Over the course of just a few decades, the company has achieved record-setting equity in Windows, which today is a household name. It’s a technology standard. No one pointed out that actual windows get stuck, can shatter, and offer a limited view of the world outside. The operating system worked, and so the name worked.

Until Vista came along.

It’s easy to imagine the scene at Microsoft corporate headquarters when the Vista name was under development: “We need a name that families with Windows, but takes it to the next level. This is a technology innovation, not just an operating system. It has to be aspirational yet approachable. It has to convey possibility. It has to accommodate future product developments. The name has to signify the next thing in PC-based computing.”

Fair enough. Vista might be somewhat expected as far as Microsoft brand names go, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the name. It has positive connotations. It implies expansive view and freedom. It broadens the range of possibility established by Windows. But the product itself has not been the success Microsoft hoped for. In fact, it’s been the source of significant consumer dissatisfaction. And the name Vista has come to stand for the operating system’s shortcomings.

Strangely, part of Microsoft’s strategy to address the problem was to launch a campaign in which the name Vista was replaced with “Mojave” in focus groups. Users were introduced to the capabilities of Mojave, then told it was actually Vista. This was the “Mojave Experiment.” The operating system was, in essence, given a different name to represent its positive qualities. Rather than improve the perception of Vista, the campaign created a two-headed monster, each head with its own name. You never saw the operating system at work in the TV ads, making the situation seem slightly implausible—and adding to the perceptual divide between the names.

The problem is not the product, it’s in users’ heads, according to Microsoft. But Vista continues to be unpopular, as evidenced by users who are voluntarily downgrading to the more predictable Windows XP. A bad product by any other name stinks just the same. I guess all hopes now reside with Windows 7

In the end, even the best names can suffer the same fate as the products they stand for. No brand name has ever concealed product failure. Consumers just aren’t that naïve. So when it’s time to name your product, remember that success doesn’t just come in linguistic terms. If the product succeeds, the right name will more than likely succeed, too. Dick Stroud

Fitness for the 60+

As the volume of incoming e-mails reduces I am finding the opportunity to delve into the bottom reaches of my Outlook inbox that I haven’t seen for ages.

A long time ago I was contacted by the publicist for Carole Carson with details of her list fitness trends for 2010. Until I visited Carole’s web site I hadn’t realised that her focus is on older people.

I really liked the Web site. It is simple and easy to use.

No doubt there are, or soon will be, a lot of the 50-plus thinking that the New Year is a time they must: “get a grip on their weight."

Fitness will increasingly be a big issue for older people, which means lot of opportunities for smart marketers. Dick Stroud

Do 60% of older women really want electronic gadets for Xmas

According to a poll, conducted by Logitech, of 1,500 over 50s women, it appears that 58% want items like iPods, MacBooks and laptops for Xmas. I can find no trace of the research on the Logitech web site so you will have to take their word for it. Of course you don’t know how the questions were asked and what other options were given. Maybe a MacBook sounded a better option than having Xmas lunch with Mr & Mrs Brown. Who can tell?

Anecdotal evidence suggests the overall gist of the conclusion are right but I would be surprised if nearly 60% of older women have a tech gadget at top of their Xmas wish list. Dick Stroud

Recession what recession – Xmas spending as usual

The guys at Vox Pops have issued a free video showing interviews with people talking about their spending intentions this Xmas. I hope the companyt doesn’t mind but I have added it to YouTube because I thought it contained some interesting messages.

First things first – it looks like these interviews were being carried our in a reasonably prosperous part of the UK so I don’t think we can draw any countrywide conclusions, however, it is interesting to see the way that the over-50s respond.

In the main it doesn’t appear as if the recession will be changing their Xmas spending behaviour one jot. You wouldn’t think the UK had any recessionary problems. I think that Vox Pop’s video research is a first rate way of conveying market insights providingso much more than a sheet of statistics. Dick Stroud

No more milk top rage

Universal design doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

Since their introduction, trying to pry the top from a milk carton has been challenge in dexterity and finger strength. I dare to think how much milk, and probably blood, has been spilt as older people give up and start hacking at the top with a knife.

Add a simple tag and all is solved. Why has it taken so long to happen? Probably because the designers of the pack were young, didn’t eat cornflakes and liked their tea black. Dick Stroud

Why COP15 was bound to fail before it started

This has absolutely nothing, well a smidgen short of nothing, to do with the 50-plus.

You may have noticed that there has been a bit of shindig going on in Copenhagen called COP15. It hasn’t gone well and is likely to go even worse once a few days of perspective are given to the events.

Let’s forget the scientific arguments about climate change and just consider the event and why it has been such a monumental mess. Let’s look at it as cool, clear-headed marketers.

Just think; the organisers were given unlimited funds to mount an event that would result in an ‘agreement’ to do something about the amount of nasty stuff we pump into the atmosphere. You are guaranteed the attention and overwhelming support of the media and political class. How can you fail?

What was the story line the organisers were hoping would unfold? I reckon it goes something like this – meet in a ‘clean’, neutral, ‘nice’ place (Copenhagen) – invite everybody who has a view on the subject (excluding those who disagree with the climate change orthodoxy) – have lots of time and space for people to meet and express their views – slowly build to a crescendo and conclude with the world’s leaders arm in arm, perhaps shedding a tear, saying that the planet is safe in their hands. What a lovely story that was doomed before it started.

OK, smart alec, what would you have said if the organisers had asked your advice?

1. You cannot mix a show-piece world uniting event with the eyeball-to-eyeball tough negotiating necessary for the half a dozen people who really matter to come to an agreement.

2. You are never going to get 193 people/countries to agree to anything of any substance so don’t try.

3. One of the three main players (Obama), perhaps the most important, was powerless to agree to anything of any substance so don’t ask him to do so when you know he can’t.

4. If you believe climate change is serious then the event must be serious and not something that was a mix between a May Day demonstration and a music festival.

5. Make it short and sweet. The longer it goes on the more chances for failure. Two weeks should have been 3 days.

6. Be careful who you invite. There were 45,000 invited to attend the conference at least 5% (some would say 95%) were going to be nutters.

7. Make sure the high profile people involved are serious and credible. The chief G-77 negotiator is from that hell hole Sudan where the UK Foreign Offices says “the security situation is unstable, banditry is widespread …..” What message does that send?

8. All the set-piece sessions were bound to turn into an opportunity for world ‘leaders’ to grandstand for the benefit of their domestic audience (yes that means you Mr Brown).

The list goes on and on and on. And now it is over and the UN Secretary General welcomes the climate deal in Copenhagen as an "essential beginning". So if 45,000 people, £130,000,000, 10 days can only reach a beginning one wonders how much an end will cost.

It is going to take a long time for the climate change campaign to recover from COP15 if indeed it ever will.

Nearly forgot. I did say that this post had a smidgen to do with the 50-plus. The abiding memory of this event were young people haranguing each other and the world ‘ leaders’. That is when they weren’t rioting or dressing up as polar bears. In practice the age group that is most concerned about climate change is the oldies, not the young. There is only so far the 50-plus are willing to look kindly on youthful enthusiasm, energy and sensibilities before it morphs into something darker like youth naivety and stupidity. Dick Stroud

Marketing and selling technology for ageing in place

Laurie Orlov’s excellent blog contains an interesting item about: “Marketing and Selling Technology for Aging in Place.”

There is no doubt about it; this lady is making the ageing in place technology area her own domain. Good stuff.

I am not going to try and summarise this post since it contains a lot of detailed stuff. If you are interested in the ageing in place world then you should read it – if not, then I am sure you have lots of other things to be doing. Dick Stroud

Aging Puts a Wrinkle in the U.S. Marketplace

What a dreadful title.

The Nielsen Company is offering its end of year crystal ball gazing into trends to watch for the future. This one is about the impact of ageing.

It doesn’t contain any great insights. If you only have 5 secs to spare these are the things Nielsen predict for the future:

# Growth is Found in Less-Developed World
# The Share of Households With Children Decline
# Immigration and Ethnic Familes Fuel Growth
# Older Consumers Have New Needs
# CPG Spending Declines

As I said, nothing much that has not been discussed throughout the year. Dick Stroud

Don’t let them tell you that TV is going out of fashion

The latest data on multi-country TV viewing figures doesn’t support the view that watching the box is going out of fashion. You can read the long, long , long report from OFCOM “The International Communications Market 2009” if you have a spare week.

I wonder if the rise in viewing is explained by the increasing number of older viewers (i.e. it has nothing to do with the relative preferences for channels but a demographic effect). No idea. All is means is that throughout Europe, zillions of hours of time is spent watching the TV. Dick Stroud

Intel Reader – this has lots of potential

I am not going to waste the words explaining this device – just look at the video.

If you have $1,500 you can buy yourself one of these Intel Readers. Somehow I doubt if Intel will sell too many, but I doubt if that is the point of the project.

Just imagine this technology embedded in smaller, multi-purpose devices, like mobile phones. It is not beyond the wit of man to see the thing becoming part of your reading glasses. A fascinating development. Dick Stroud

A good Australian TV ad

Kim Walker has a good description and YouTube examples of Telstra (Australia's leading telco) TV ads that are targeting the granddad generation. The campaign centres on the theme 'Don't let your family grow apart'. Anybody from BT reading this blog posting? Dick Stroud

Not many mags have a readership of 35.7 million

The readership of AARP's magazine has grown in readership for the past 6 years and joins People, Good Housekeeping and Sports Illustrated as one of only four major mags to achieve growth in readership vs. Spring 2009. As magazines drop like flies this is pretty good going.

For the record, Saga’s readership is just over a million. I doesn’t take an intellectual giant to see that AARP’s penetration of its target audience, is an order of magnitude greater than that of Saga.

The organisation’s online property www.aarpmagazine.org also experienced tremendous growth, gaining more than 1 million Internet users.

I reckon the Xmas party at AARP will be a lot happier than in a lot of other publications. Dick Stroud

Who reads, listens and watches what?

I started to read the press release from Deloitte’s research “State of the media democracy” and nearly lost the will to live. I went to Deloitte’s web site to look for more details. No luck there.
Fortunately Chuck Nyren persevered and wrote a good blog posting about the research.

The next e-mail I read was from Bain and detailed their research Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan. If this is your bag then this is an excellent report and well promoted. Deloitte’s you could learn a lot of lessons from Bain. Dick Stroud

Where do the 65+ go online

The secret is out. Most of them go nowhere and the rest go to just about the same place as you and me.

According to the NielsenWire Online, in the US the 65+ still make up less than 10% of the active Internet universe, although in the last five years their number has increased by more than 55%. Interestingly, the increase of women online has outpaced the growth of men by 6%.


Time spent on the Internet by increased 11% and now stands at over 58 hours per week in 2009.

The research director, at Nielsen's online notes that: "The over 65 crowd represents about 13% of the total population and... they're engaged in many of the same activities that dominate other age segments - e-mail, sharing photos, social networking, checking out the latest news and weather... (in addition) a good percentage of them are spending time with age-appropriate pursuits such as leisure travel, personal health care and financial concerns."

The next time somebody asks you the question you have the answer. Dick Stroud

The £178,000,000,000 problem

Let’s say a friend earns £498 per week, day, hour depending on what business they you work in but they spend £676 in the same period. Now let’s say they have been spending more than they earn for sometime and expect to do so for years to come.

In fact they expect the difference between what they spend and their earnings will increase.

Put on your marketer’s hat. Do you think this is a credible situation or do you expect that reality will soon catch up and they will have to make some substantial cut-backs in their lifestyle. You have friends living in Greece and Ireland who have been equally crazy with their financial affairs and the news from them is not good.

OK, multiply these numbers by a billion and you have the state of affairs in UK plc. I know there is a big difference between household budgets and national fiscal affairs but there is also a lot in common. The elephant in the room for 2010 and years to come is a £178 billion deficit.

Martin Wolf (The FT’s lead economic correspondent) opened his article in today’s paper

The UK is poorer than it thought it was. This is the most important fact about the crisis. The struggle over the distribution of the losses is going to be brutal

Does the UK’s financial crisis mean that commerce, as we have known it will come to an end - of course not? Will their still be lots of opportunities for innovative marketing ideas – of course there will be. But, and a thousand times but, the bland assumptions we have been able to make during the unreal times of the past decade will not keep working.

The rock certain prediction about 2010 is that marketers are going to have to work a lot harder for their wages. That applies equally to those targeting pensioners or school kids.

There is one group of consumers who are living a charmed life, for now. The Office for National Statistics has just released data showing that public sector workers are still receiving pay rises nearly three times higher than their counterparts in the private sector. Happy Xmas. Dick Stroud

The Fitness Industry and the 50-plus - an overlooked opportunity

Kim Walker has an interesting post about way that companies have overlooked the provision of fitness equipment and services for older people. There are numerous reports showing how beneficial exercise is for older people, both physical and mental, yet few companies have pursued this as a business opportunity.

I have written about a couple of companies that have ‘got it’. My favourite is Concept2 rowing machines, I am sure there are others, but not that many.

Should gyms be age-silo or age-neutral? What I mean is, would specialist gyms for older people be more successful than a multi-age gym, that realise that a large number of their members are at least 50-plus. I reckon that 50% of my gym’s membership is over-50 and during mid morning and mid afternoon periods they are in the large majority.

I guess some older people would prefer to be in a gym surrounded by their own age. Is that 10% or 50% - no idea? For sure, you could optimise the use of space and the type of equipment, if all of your customers were 50-plus. Part of the positive experience of using a gym, for me, is it being multi-generational with lots of noise and energy. That said, there are lots of ways the gym could be more older-friendly.

What is crazy is that few, if any, fitness companies are asking these questions. Dick Stroud

Retirement housing providers falling foul of the OFT

Not many people know that when you buy a retirement property, especially if it is in a ‘village’ you, or more likely your heirs, will presented with a bill of up to 10% of the property's price, when it is sold. That’s a lot of money and that's what the Office of Fair Trading thought.

Here is an example from the Q&A section Richmond Village's web site.

Question: “If we move out of the village, or upon our death, how is our property sold and is there a charge?”

Answer: “We will market your apartment on your behalf, and deal with all enquiries and show rounds and charge an assignment fee of 6% - 10% depending how long you have been living in the village. This fee is deducted from the market price on the sale of the apartment to cover sale costs and a share of the capital cost of the facilities.

This is what the OFT said: “We have announced an investigation into the contracts signed by occupants of purpose built owner occupied retirement homes. The OFT considers that a number of terms on exit fees in these contracts may be unfair and so may breach the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations (UTCCRs).

The OFT is issuing formal written notices to 26 retirement home firms setting out its concerns over terms on exit fees charged when residents sell or rent their properties.

It sounds to me like a lot of these companies have just lost a large slug of the capital value of their properties. That is going to make a rather large hole in their balance sheets. Anybody from the retirement property world want to comment or are you all in a state of shock! Not the sort of Xmas present a property developer wants. Dick Stroud

Older Australians more adventurous than their kids

Online travel company Expedia.co.nz questioned 1000 Australians and 500 New Zealanders - weighted to provide a cross-section of the population - about their travel tastes.

It found that older Kiwis are heading for Eastern Europe, South America, Africa or Asia. Nearly half of those in the 55-59 years age bracket said they were keen to travel to exotic places. Most of those in their twenties apparently dream only of trips to the standard destinations like Fiji, Rarotonga and Australia. Less than a third of those aged 25-29 were interested in going somewhere more adventurous.

As Expedia's local marketing manager puts it: "These survey findings fly in the face of conventional thought that 20-somethings are open-minded to new and different experiences.”. She went on to say: "The findings that New Zealanders of the baby-boomer generation are more up to veering off the well-beaten travel path is ... an indication that people are more intrigued by lesser-known destinations as they get older."

These findings are bang in line with the research I did with OMD that found that older Australians are more adventurous, more willing to take risks, more interested in technology than their kids.

I had to laugh having just read a blog from a young Kiwi who is definitely suffering from a sense of humour failure and is moaning about older people are to blame for all the ills of the world. If he ever reads this blog he might want to look at my letter to the FT on a similar subject. Come on mate, lighten up and take a few more long haul flights like your mum dad. Dick Stroud

The reality of the ageing population

Drinking a cup of coffee (well that is what I ordered) I gazed around me and thought - crikey this is what the ageing population is all about. When I am speaking about the implications of the old outnumbering the young people it easy to forget the mundane like this scene where your fellow coffee drinkers are all 60-plus except of a single child and its mother. Welcome to ageing Britain. Dick Stroud

Designing web sites for ageing cavemen

As usual, Jakob Nielsen's December Alertbox newsletter contains some thought proving stuff.

It is all about short-term memory and web usability. The central thesis is that the brain is not optimised for the abstract thinking and memorising data that web sites often demand.

Most people can't keep much information in their short-term memory. This is especially true when they're bombarded with multiple abstract or unusual pieces of data in rapid succession. To make matters worse, aspects of cognitive ability decline with age.

Nielsen is running a series of workshops (all in the US) on this topic, titled "Usability and the Human Mind: How Your Customers Think." His first thought for the seminar was designing web sites for cavemen but he chicken-out and took the safe naming option instead.

It would seem that our short-term memory famously holds only about 7 chunks of information, and these fade from your brain in about 20 seconds. With this in mind it means that the web site design should ensure that:

• Response times must be fast enough that users don't forget what they're in the middle of doing while waiting for the next page to load.
• Change the colour of visited links so that users don't have to remember where they've already clicked.
• Make it easy to compare products, highlighting the salient differences on both the initial category page and in special comparison views.
• Offer help and user assistance features in the context where users need them so they don't have to travel to a separate help section and memorize steps before returning to the problem at hand.

To make matters more complicated there are big individual differences in user performance: the top 25% of users are 2.4 times better than the bottom 25%.

At the extreme, only about 4% of the population has enough brainpower to perform complex cognitive tasks such as making high-level inferences using specialized background knowledge.

You can see the problem, if your web designers (and yourself) are in the 4% group you are not going to be aware of the problems of the other 96%.

It looks like a great course. Let’s hope he brings it to Europe.Dick Stroud

Understanding how the 50-plus are thinking about the recession

I have been amazed how few companies have reflected the changes in consumer attitudes, resulting from the recession, in their advertising. Most companies have been limited to reducing prices and stressing their “good deal” credentials. That might be step one, but the recession has changed a lot more than just wanting to trade down.

This ad from Prudential, whilst not startling in its creativity, at least recognises that older people will have responded in different way to the trauma of the past 24 months. Hopefully you can read the copy (click on the image for a larger version) – the weakest part of the ad. Dick Stroud

A knoll about 50-plus marketing

Thank you – whoever – for adding one of my articles about 50-plus marketing to Google Knol. This is the first time I have come upon this Google services, even though the article was added in July 2008. Like so many things Google does the real power of the venture doesn’t become clear until sometime in the future. Why would Google want to invest in Blogger for instance? A strange and amazing company. Dick Stroud

A good insight into the 50-plus’s attitude towards technology

Earlier this year, 60 people gathered for dinner and after-dinner discussions about their attitudes toward, use of and expectations for technology. The lengthy sessions were in four cities: San Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago and New York. The participants ranged in age from 50 to 60. The event was sponsored by AARP and Microsoft.

The recordings of those conversations have been sifted and distilled, and the results published in a report called “Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation.”

I have to say that this is not the easiest document to read and to translate into “so what” conclusions.

The bottom line conclusions seem to be that this group were generally enthusiastic about techno gadgets and the use of technology that improves their dealings with the health care industry (e.g. electronic health records) and the ability to interface with their doctor online.

A repeated complaint was that products were cluttered with too many features that they were never likely to use. This is the joy of Apple's iPhone, it is a truly “feature on demand” product.
Worth downloading the report. Dick Stroud

I own up - I am anti-slippers

Looks like my mockery of the Warwickshire Slipper Brigade and its inept campaign to stop the over-50s falling over has truck a raw nerve. Having looked around a little further I found Richard Littlejohn’s hilarious article about this nonsense. That’s it. No more commentary or comments on this subject and no I don't want any slippers for Xmas. Dick Stroud

'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation' – so nothing important then

The warm-up acts of the street demonstrations, hours of background TV coverage and minor politicians moaning on about doomsday scenarios has come to an end and now we have the big ‘C’ conference. It is strange that with this strictly choreographed coverage, with everybody being on-message, the great British and American publics are becoming less convinced of the strength of the climate change arguments. Why?

There are two things at work. Firstly, the law of diminishing returns. There is only so much hectoring that people can take before they start tagging “climate stuff” as noise to be filtered out. Secondly, there is the law of "distrust by association" (i.e. Gordon Brown consistently gets things wrong; hence, he probably has got this one wrong as well). For Gordon, read just any branch of Government, business and media.

I suspect the final straw for a lot of people will be this editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change that is published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages.

Irrespective of your views about climate change, this is no way to sway the hearts and the minds of Joe and Jolene public. This is certainly true if the aforementioned have had their 50th birthday. Dick Stroud

Another agency working in the 50-plus space

It is always good to see new marketing companies entering the 50-plus space. Last week I was contacted by Mark Beasley, a guy I met ages ago, who told me about a new agency he and his colleagues has launched.

This is what it says about itself:

rhc advantage is a creative agency that specialises in planning, creating and managing integrated marketing communications for older audiences. The partners have the insight, experience and expertise to provide our clients with creative and effective solutions to the marketing challenges of an ageing UK population.

From looking at the web site it seems that rhc advantage covers most areas of marketing. I wish them well. Dick Stroud

ContinuumCrew Webinar

Lori Bitter is the President/CEO at ContinuumCrew, an agency that was born from the closure of JWT BOOM. Prior to running JWT’s specialist agency, she was in charge of client services at Age Wave Impact. As you can see, Lori knows a thing or two about marketing to older consumers. If you visit her blog you can download a Webinar that was presented last week as part of IMMN’s series of marketing events.

It is a while since I visited IMMN’s Web site and was amused to see that it has adopted aquatic imagery. Anybody who regularly reads this blog will know I am fascinated why organisations involed with older people are obsessed with water and it looks like IMMN is no exception.

I digress from the main point of this posting. Lori’s Webinar contains some terrific research. There are so many interesting themes that it far best if you read the results yourself. One item that stood out for me was how the multiple sources of stress vary by age. Look how high the fear of “losing my job” is for all but the oldest age group.

Well done ContinuumCrew in adding to our understanding of the American older person. Dick Stroud

Predicting the economic health of geographic areas

Marketers spend a lot of their time trying to be smarter than their competitors by being better at predicting the future. My experience has been that there are lots of small crumbs of information about and if you spend the time looking you can add them together to increase your odds of guessing right.

Here is an example of what I mean. The graphic shows the contribution to local economic growth between 1997-2006 (%) of public, rather than private sector expenditure. The one thing we know for absolute certainty is that in the next decade public sector spend will be slashed.

The geographic areas that owe their economic existence to the public purse are going to be really badly hit. If I was looking at the map of the UK for places to make my marketing bets it would be those with the least threat from spending cuts. Of course there are lots of other factors to take into account, like population density, but in the eye of the blind the one eyed man is king. Better one, hazy eye, than none at all. Dick Stroud

Natural Born Clickers

Just 8% of Internet users account for 85% of all clicks. Of course we all know that the Pareto Effect (80:20) applies in most areas of business but I have never thought of it in terms of clicks. Why should I be surprised – but I am.

comScore researched this topic a couple of years back and has just updated the results. It shows that the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32% of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8% of the Internet user base) accounting for 85% of all clicks.

In 2007, comScore found that ‘Heavy’ clickers, representing 6% of U.S. Internet users and accounted for the top 50% of clicks. ‘Moderate’ users, 10% of Internet users accounting for 30% of the clicks, and ‘Light’ clickers, 20% of users producing 16% of the clicks. By March 2009, these numbers had changed substantially as you can see from the table.

comScore VP of marketing solutions and author of the study, made the very reasonable conclusion: "... marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84% of Internet users who don't click on an ad... "

If anybody needed evidence that for most display ad campaigns, the click-through is not the most appropriate metric for evaluating campaign performance. Rather, advertisers should consider evaluating campaigns based on their view-through impact. Good stuff that applies to all ages. Dick Stroud

Alienate, annoy, frustrate and infuriate all in one go

Somebody in s Warwickshire County Council sat down and thought: “What can we do to really get up the noses of the over-50s - let’s create the gold standard for pissing off the oldies”.

Either this is the explanation or the Daily Telegraph has mistaken the 5th December for the 1st April.

It would seem that deep in the bowels of the council some twerp decided to promote a service to allow “older people” to bring in their old slippers and replace them with a pair of new ones that will cut the risk of them falling over.

Not only did the council alienate, frustrate, annoy and infuriate its older tax payers it wants to charge them a fee of £5 for the fitting session. For this princely fee they are presented with a brand spanking new pair of the Velcro fastening slippers and advice on how to don them and avoid accidents around the home. You know, the advanced stuff of not lifting your right and left foot at the same time.

So there you are, if you want the “best how not to deal with the over-50s” example of the year you need look no further. Dick Stroud

The importance of intergenerational wealth transfer

A new generation of professionals, aged between 35 and 45, are relying on inheriting money from their parents to survive. According to a study, by Elizabeth Finn Care, over a half of individuals are banking on inheriting their parents’ estates, however, only a quarter of those parents will be able to leave all their wealth to their children. Don't bother looking for the report on the organisation's web site - it ain't there. Here are couple of factlet from the press release:

• 51% of those surveyed said they depend on parental support to bail them out of tight financial situations.
• Half of the older people surveyed said they assume all home care costs will be covered by the government – dream on!

My usual advice, I would take the absolute research results with a pinch of salt, but I am sure the overall picture painted is accurate.

On a not dissimilar subject, this research was covered in the FT. The insurance company (RIAS) has also been researching the financial position of the over-50s. A couple of factlets from this research.

• It is estimated that the older generation is contributing a cumulative £5 billion each year in childcare costs, but they are also putting money to one side for their grandchildren.
• Some 25 per cent of grandmas and grandpas put money in a Child Trust Fund or saving account.

The "who pays for what" question in the generations of families is getting more complex. This has an impact on those involved in purchasing decisions, something that should interest marketers. Dick Stroud

Unemployment stinks at any age

Who should get the bulk of your sympathy; the student who cannot get their first job or the older person who finds themselves unemployed with little chance of getting back into the working world?

There is a natural instinct for the public to have more sympathy for the young. As we know, where public opinion goes, politicians will not be far behind.

An analysis of official labour market figures covering the period July-September 2009 show s that older workers are finding it harder than any other age group to get back into employment after being made redundant. Fewer than one in five (18.7%) of over-50s find employment within three months, compared to more than 40% of 25- to 34-year-olds.

Long-term unemployment (six to 12 months) among the 50+ age group has also more than doubled over the past year.

It would seem that young people are having a much tougher time during this recession than they did in the past downturns. Those who don’t get into the labour market at the level of employment they deserve can suffer for years.

The bottom line is employment is the pits, irrespective of age. I do hope the political class do not get into a “young is more important than old” argument or indeed “old is more important than young”. The downturn impacts age groups in different ways. The assistance should be appropriate to their needs not to their age. Dick Stroud

Technology use is becoming age-neutral

Motorola has just discovered the concept of age neutral behaviour. Better late than never.

The research study (Media Engagement Barometer) found that high percentages of Americans - across multiple generations - are using media and mobile technology. Age no longer dictates new media use. And surprisingly, influencers who drive usage are now found in every group. Well that is not totally true but Motorola has definitely confirmed something that a few of us have been banging on about.

What we are seeing is the highly engage technology group of older people is growing in size. It is expanding from the leading edge users to masses. Let’s be honest, using Facebook, Twitter, my beloved iPhone and all of the other goodies isn’t exactly difficult.

We have constructed this idea that only Yoof have the mental horsepower/agility to understand this stuff – plainly nonsense. For the tech aware members of an older generation that brought up trying to work out the mysteries of MSDOS it is all easy-peasy. Dick Stroud

Warm up before sitting in front of the TV

I am receiving more and more press releases that are related to the 50-plus in the hope I will write about them. Sometimes they are fascinating, sometimes dull and sometimes they just capture my imagination. This one plopped into my inbox this morning.

Here is a direct quote from the release.

More People Between 35-55 Experiencing Joint Pain From Video Games

34.7% Increase in Flexcin Arthritis Supplement Due To Popularity of Today’s Interactive Video Games

Flexcin International, Inc., a natural supplement company reports a rise in the number of older people using its arthritis relief supplements because of increased video game use. Approximately 16.8 percent of its customers are under the age of 30, but the company has noticed a growing trend of older people seeking joint pain treatment after playing video games and electronic gadgets.

That’s amazing. Heavens knows if it is true but I do know that my chiropractor tells me that he is now getting a steady stream of people with aches and pains having had a workout on a Nintendo Wii. Full marks to Flexcin for thinking outside the box with this story. Dick Stroud

Is inertia marketing ethical, legal or effective?

Thanks to Chris Gosling for passing on this story about the perils/rewards of inertia marketing.

Imagine you went into your local pub and was charged you £7 for a pint of beer. You paid them, drank the beer and departed. Next time you visit you are charged £8; you pay, drink the beer and depart. This continues until the end of the week you pay £12 for a pint and then a friend taps you on the shoulder and asks: “why are you paying four times more than me for the same drink?”

You are enraged, demand to see the landlord and ask him why you are paying so much more than your friend. The landlord says: “because he is a pain in the butt and always asks me to lower the price - you are daft old sod and don’t ask, so I add another pound to compensate for what I lose from serving your him.”

So what do we conclude? You are a fool? The landlord is a brilliant marketer who is able to increase his gross margin by 100s of percent. If this works for a pub, why doesn’t Tesco try and do the same?

OK, what’s the point of these ramblings? Substitute buildings and content insurance for beer and you have what the Royal Sun Alliance insurance (RSA) company has been doing for years and years. Have a read for yourself.

So what do we do? Nominate the marketing director of RSA for marketer of the year or have the guy/girl publicly humiliated? Hero or villain?

I would think RSA knows that the trust in Financial Services cannot go any lower so the may as well exploit their customers. They are only doing what their customers expect of them. Dick Stroud

Names mean different things to different ages of people

I have recently been in contact with Danny Altman who is the Founder and CEO of A Hundred Monkeys – now that is a name that gets your attention.

Danny was telling me about some work he did for a retirement homes company that shows how the connotations of a name varies by the age of the ear. This is his story

We have a naming and branding company in San Francisco and found ourselves working for three non-profit companies that merged into one group that ran 15 big retirement homes.

So we dived in and toured all the facilities and had a great time talking to the residents, aged 60 to about 95. We went through a long process and ultimately decided to go with the name Front Porch, which we thought was pretty laid back and friendly – definitely non-institutional.

Well some of the residents didn’t exactly agree with us. There was a minor revolt because some of them thought that Front Porch meant we were portraying them as old folks in rocking chairs, which was the last thing we were trying to do.
After the excitement died down, they got used to the idea. And as you can see, the overall image was pretty young and hip.

What’s the moral of the story? Most people who are over the hill are apparently not ready to be put out to pasture.

As you can see, the Front Porch web site is definitely not your usual ‘retirement’ type design. I think it is the most extreme example of an uncluttered site I have seen and all the better for that. How fascinating that the term “Front Porch” can have such different meanings and create so much angst. Dick Stroud

Max-Wellness a new oldies retail group

This looks interesting. A new retail chain (Max-Wellness), aimed at the older consumer, is being established by the guy who started OfficeMax, a large chain of office products retail outlets and a catalogue business.

The founder must have the experience and I assume the necessary funding. One to watch. Dick Stroud

New business start-ups a growing business opportunity

For ages I have been going on about the market demand created by older people who are, and will increasingly, starting-up their own business. The reason may be necessity or for life style reasons, Either way, it creates demands for all types of business services.

Today’s FT reports that as a result of the recession the number of British businesses will hit record levels. The director of the Centre for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises at Warwick Business School said waves of redundancies were swelling the ranks of “necessity entrepreneurs”, who set up businesses because they have few other economic options.
If you want to look at the stats then read this paper on Business Demography.

A word of caution, especially for anybody who thinks this growth in start-ups will be the saviour of the UK’s unemployment problems. Today there is an article in Business Week - Beware the Freelance Economy.

This shows that in the US as employer businesses decline, non-employer firms are on the rise (i.e. lots of one-man/woman-bands but not companies that will not be hiring hoards of school leavers). Dick Stroud

Bluffers guide to communications and behaviour change

Oh no, the UK Government has discovered the ‘science’ of behavioural change.

It is an amusing and costly phenomenon that the government discovers the techniques of business at a time when business has kicked them out and moved on.

For the past decade or so we have had a government machine that has been driven by multiple ‘targets’ long after the technique was rejected by the business world.

Now the Government has discovered the ‘science’ of behavioural change and thinks this is the best way of getting the recalcitrant population to do as it bids. To help the hapless marketing agencies, in particular advertising, it has launched its 101 primer on the subject. This is what it says about the publication.

Within government, we are continually seeking new and better ways to communicate with citizens to encourage positive behaviour change. With this document, we hope to provide those working in government communications with an update on some of the latest thinking about what drives human behaviour and to launch the debate as to what this means for our approach to communications, from strategy development through to evaluation. We see this as the first stage in an ongoing dialogue.

We look forward to working with you to continue developing and delivering communications that are informed by both a deep understanding of the behaviour we seek to influence and the rapidly changing communications landscape.

Mark Lund, Chief Executive, COI

If you're not from the UK you might wonder what the COI does. Here is its “About US”.

COI works with government departments and the public sector to produce information campaigns on issues that affect the lives of every citizen - from health and education to benefits, rights and welfare.

The bottom line is that during 2008/2009 it spent £540 million of taxpayer’s dosh.

Shall I tell you what will happen next? Every agency will get hold of a copy of the document and ensure that their pitches for government business are festooned with behaviour jargon. They will abandon their native cunning and creativity and start adopting the “5 step approach”. Out the window goes inventiveness in comes systemisation. Call me a cynic of what!

A good place for UK Government to start would be to ensure that its communications are vaguely understandable by the human race. I just came upon this prize example of Government speak.
The cultural sector that we refer to is an interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral, inter-genre collaboration, which encompasses policymaking, intercultural dialogue/cultural relations, creative cities/cultural planning, creative industries and research & development.
OK, to be honest it is from a quasi-Government organisation, but you get the message. Or maybe you don’t. Dick Stroud