I am nearly one of the youth population.

This graph amused me. It is from a presentation about the rise of the luxury market in India.

I loved the way that the youth market is defined as “15-60”.

Any bets how long it will be before under-65 is defined as youth? Dick Stroud

Do you want the good or the bad news

A lot of financial-planning advertising tries to get us to think about how much money we need to save for those years when working income stops.

Well, Northwestern Mutual is trying to get Americans to consider “The Number,” too – but it’s a different kind of number. This is the number for how many years they might be likely to live.

It struck me as I used the calculator that whatever the result I would have mixed feelings. A high life expectancy is good but then it means I have to work for longer. A low number is disturbing but then I don’t need to worry about savings and spend for today’s enjoyment.

I wonder what outcome the marketers behind the calculator wanted? Dick Stroud

WRVS research - a good counter to oldie bashing

A while back I wrote about some research that was done by the WRVS (Women’s Royal Voluntary Service) to counter the oldie bashing that is a popular pastime for the UK’s chattering class.

I promised to write when the research was published. Well it is and it is worth reading.

Isn’t it odd how the dreadful book Pinch, by David Willetts, is forever being referenced but when some really decent research is done that comes to a diametrically opposite conclusion it gets little coverage.

I think this is definitely a case of “I happy with my predudices - don’t confuse me with the facts”.

Well if you are interested to read this research, and I suggest you do, then visit this first rate web site. Dick Stroud

The older we get, the happier we become - I would like to think so

There is a book being published by an academic, Lewis Wolpert, called You’re Looking Very Well. Must be worth a read. This is what the Amazon blurb says.

The book explores the scientific background and the implications of our ageing population. In this engaging investigation, he tackles every aspect of the subject from ageism to euthanasia to anti-ageing cream and, through it all, tries to better understand his own ageing.

The Sunday press has article about the book and comments about this graph. So far I have not been able to access the orginal document from the NAS. If anybody has, then please let me know where I can find it. Dick Stroud

The care home crunch

The Sunday press and today’s radio news has a lot about the sinking of Southern Cross into administration/rescue/death by a thousand cuts…

The company is now at the point of ‘asking’ its landlords to accept a 20% cut in the rent. I suspect that what is actually happening is stretching the word ‘ask’ to its limits.

The article reckons that Southern Cross is now operating at 85% occupancy levels. That might seem good to those of you in the hotel business but believe me it is a disaster for care homes.

What the company is doing is getting its suppliers (the owners of the homes) to fund both its historic financial failings and the low fees being paid by local authorities.

The Sunday Times had another article about the way that care homes are attempting to get around the un-economic fees paid by local authorities.

It is now common practice to have a differential fee structure for those who pay privately and those being funded by the state. Remember, that the people who are paying privately most likely have been forced to sell their property to pay these fees.

The chief executive of Barchester Healthcare, one of the country’s biggest providers of residential care homes, said privately funded residents were routinely charged between £100 and £200 a week extra for the same standard of care, compared to council-funded residents. “It’s disgraceful,” he said.

Now this situation cannot go on. One of three things will happen.

Option 1. Local authorities will be forced to increase the fees they pay. Most, most unlikely to happen.

Option 2. Local authorities will force even more older people to stay in their homes under the guise of “ageing in place” when they really should be in a care home. This is already happening and will happen more and more.

Option 3. Care homes will fragment into those that only take private payers and those that are funded by the state. I tell you what; I know which of the two I would sooner be in. You know, it wouldn’t surprise me that this government doesn’t start to force homes to take their “fair share” of state funded payers, rather like it is doing with universities that are now forced to accept students from the state system with low grades.

This is another example of the ultra-fragmentation that is occurring in the UK between the small group of people who are able to fund their post 50-years and those who are not.

Either way, there are going to be lots of business opportunities. The provision ultra-cheap care homes will undoubtedly be a big business. Maybe we really will see the offshoring of old people to low wage areas that I have been musing about for years.

As much as it pains me to say it, this government doesn’t seem to have a clue when it comes to dealing with the problems of the ageing population. Dick Stroud

Watch out Saga – Ageas is coming to get you

I had just started to write a blog posting about the new events programme that RIAS (the 50-plus insurance company) is undertaking this year when I read another news release that Ageas UK, its parent company, announced its acquisition of Castle Cover Limited – another company specializing on the older market.

The press release goes on to say that the purchase will increase its customer numbers to around 8 million and that the acquisition underlines Ageas UK’s position as the fourth largest personal lines broker in the UK. With around 280,000 customer policies, the reported revenue of Castle Cover in 2010 was £22 million and would bring Ageas’s total retail revenues to around £200 million. 


This will give the guys at Saga something to think about. Dick Stroud

Learning How to Make Market Segmentation Work Again

The Harvard Business Review Blog has a short article by the head honcho of strategy consulting at IBM Global Business Services. With a title like that you must know what you are talking about.

A couple of quotes

If your firm is still doing traditional segmentation using demographic details or psychographic profiles, you may be wasting your money. Worse, your old segmentation may distract you from major shifts in customer behavior that could cost you your customer base.

Your location, age or sex are no longer reliable proxies for what you consume. Nor are these details, especially age, reliable indicators of your technology savvy. The straight line that once linked a person's demographics to their buying patterns today looks more like a crack in the windshield, a meandering path marked with more than a few dead ends.

So there you go. Whilst I agree with the conclusion about age I am not so sure about how the author is able to substantiate his opening statement. Worth a quick read. Dick Stroud

The recession favours the debtors – mainly young

When I was reviewing David Willetts book (Pinch) I made the point that he had ignored two important factors, amongst many, in coming to his conclusion about the sins of the 50-plus. Low interest rates and inflation are great for those with debt and horrible for those with savings. That roughly equates to meaning that the young do well at the expense of the old.

I hate being able to say “told you so” but I told you so when you look at the latest inflation data for the UK.

Whilst we still have the ridiculously low interest rates of 0.5% the inflation rate has risen to 4.4%. Now that is bad, but if you take into account the real interest rate for the 50 – 64 year olds it is more like 4.6%.

I know I have been going on about Saga’s social networking efforts but they are doing a good job at keeping the issue of the age related rate of inflation in the public domain.

The bottom line for marketers is that older people are at one end getting less income from their investments whilst having to pay an increasing amount of their income to stand still. Dick Stroud

My chums at Digital Unite are promoting Spring Online

Digital Unite, more than any other UK organisation, has been delivering events and training to help older people to get online.

This year it is extending its activities to a week-long celebration, called Spring Online that takes place on 16-20 May 2011. Silver Surfers’ Day, now in its tenth year, will take place on Friday 20 May as a celebratory finale to the week’s activities.

Since the campaign’s inception in 2002 over 100,000 older people have been engaged with computers through activities such as Wii parties, Hawaiian days and Skype sessions.

A lot of people talk about reducing the digital divide. Digital Unite actually does something about it. I wish them lots of good fortune with the events this year. Dick Stroud

The end of the digital divide – nope

It does amuse me when I hear people say that because the under-50s have been raised in an era of the ubiquitous PC and Internet that the digital divide will slowly disappear (other than that based on socio economic group). The idea that the PC and Internet mark the high water of technological achievement forever and a day is plainly daft.

All that will happen is that new waves of technology will roll along that will create their own divide.

Let me give you an example.

An album (The Streets) is being promoted with a free mixtape download but to access it the fans must use the free app to read the barcode on a 3000g tin of Heinz Tomato Soup. The logic behind this is obscure to say the least. According to industry reports it has been successful however. While it may not have boosted tin soup sales it certainly has helped raise the profile of the barcode in the consumer’s mind.

This use of a smart device, app and barcode is not new. I have already talked about redlaser and stickybits that enable brands to add more details about their products and for consumers to compare prices.

I have now way of knowing if this type of application will succeed but it does illustrate that we will quickly move on to a new range of technologies that will create their own divide.

Fortunately, the smart device and app might also be part of the solution to the digital divide that exists with PCs and Internet.

I think the most likely next divide will be a combination of technology and the intelligence of its user. Dick Stroud

It's much harder to understand complicated information when you're reading through a peephole

As usual, the useit.com newsletter has some fascinating commentary.

This one is about the problems of accessing the web via a mobile device – tell me about it.

I quote.

When reading from an iPhone-sized screen, comprehension scores for complex Web content were 48% of desktop monitor scores.

It's more painful to use the Web on mobile phones than on desktop computers for many reasons:
• Slower downloads
• No physical keyboard for data entry
• No mouse for selection; no mouse buttons to issue commands and access contextual menus
• Small screen (often with tiny text)
• Websites designed for desktop access instead of following the usability guidelines for mobile
• Whacky app UIs that lack consistency

And so on…

Heavens knows what the situation would be if you overlaid the problems of physiological ageing.

Jakob Nielsen's comments are always worth reading. Dick Stroud

Care homes beg for taxpayer support

This is the subject of an article in today’s Sunday Times. Sorry, I cannot give you a link because it is behind a paywall.

Just before the last general election I met with a Conservative shadow cabinet minister - now a minister – to talk about “all things old” and I told him that if they were elected they would have a major problem with the unstable financial state of the care industry. For my sins it is a subject I know something about.

I suggested that they might want to start thinking about how they would respond when local authorities cut their funding to an industry that is already financially stuffed.

Needless to say, nothing happened until the situation got to a crisis, as it has been doing over the past few months.

Southern Cross, the UK’s largest provider with 31,000 residents has been struggling to survive ever since the disastrous financial engineering that made a lot of people wealthy but made the company a financial fruitcake.

This is what the Sunday Times had to say.

The crisis-stricken care home industry has asked the government to come to its rescue by filling half-empty homes with NHS patients.

The desperate move comes as the four largest operators — Southern Cross, Four Seasons, the Priory and Barchester - outlined their plan at a meeting last month with David Cameron’s special health adviser. There will be a second meeting this month that will be joined by Bupa.

The thing that makes it even more ironic is that much of the debt of these care companies is owned by banks that are effectively owned by the state.

Many economic pundits have been suggesting that older people have got off lightly from the spending cuts. Maybe the sights a thousand or so care home being boarded up will make them feel a bit better. Dick Stroud

Some more thoughts about Sagazone

My previous posting about social networking generated a comment that I thought it worth exploring since it raises some interesting points.

Point 1. I am researching social networking for older people and it would be in the interests of my commission to find the Facebook forum exactly where you said it should be.

Why did Age Concern's Heyday fail – other than incompetent management? Why did eons.com burn through more VC funding than any other social networking start-up for older people?

Answer, they thought older people want to talk to older people about older people stuff.

Sure, some do, but most people want to converse about their passions, interests, concerns, visions… with people who have the same passions, interests, concerns, visions…. Now it maybe because of the topics the audience happens to be old, but that is a secondary factor.


It is like when I get asked, and believe me I get asked it a lot, what sites do older people use? Because older people consume a lot of news, they happen to use the BBC site in their droves, but that is because they are interested in news not because of their age.

Point 2. The data does not agree.

You make some good points about the very heavy users. But your statement that the forum shows posts weeks old seems odd. 

I used a screen grab for presentation purposes a few days ago and not one forum showed posts over 22 hours old and every other thread was active within a couple of hours and seconds before. This was taken on a weekday, as well. 


OK, there are some forums that have active threads (The debate zone) but an awful lot are as dead as the Dodo. See screen scrapes. You have to be careful when interpreting the frequency of forum use since the top level shows the most active forum in the tree  – you have to go to the next level and look at the detailed subject forums to understand the range of their activity.


Point
 3. The sphere of your interest, though, might limit what we might usefully discuss. Our interest is social connection and the potential for relating online to actual networks of connection. It is a social more than a commercial interest. And in our view Forums have little potential for marketing interests anyway.


What I would be interested in discussing is if you think that the obviously slow progress of their network is in any way linked to the fact that this is a network based upon a commercial website, albeit a very good one.

See my answer to the first point. The reason for the slow uptake is because older people don’t like age ghettos. In my experience the majority of older people don’t. Secondly, only a certain type of person are real users of forums/social networking, as my analysis showed. Hence the unbelievably high levels of posting of a small percent of the users.   This is a subject that has been researched to death. There has been a major EU funded study about using social networking for older people. I cannot believe there is much more to learn about the subject.

OK, that does it on this subject. I am happy to converse more but please do it via e-mail.

I am much more interested in why two of my friends have found that Facebook is the cheapest marketing technique for generating interest from the 60+. Dick Stroud

Texting stats from Nielsen

These stats from Nielsen don't tell us anything we didn’t already know but provides some current data about the volumes of texts sent/received by age.

I have never understood why texting has been seen as some sort of technological status test. If you text a lot then you “get it” if you don’t then you are technophobic.

Texting isn’t better or worse than voice/e-mail/messaging or using cans attached by string. It is different and clearly appeals to younger people more then their grandparents.

There are physiological factors at work that make texting harder as the years go by but more than that it is attitude.

When I think that years gone, by when I worked in the mobile world, we wondered long and hard what we would do with the SMS feature that nobody seemed to want to use. How times have changed. Dick Stroud

Ultra-fragmentation comes in all shapes and ages

A theme I have been developing in my conference sessions is the ultra-fragmentation of the UK by income and geography and with the older age groups fragmenting into the Charmed and the Anxious Generation.

On a global scale the world is experiencing its own ultra-fragmentation into young and old societies.

Just read this quote from Insead.

In the last 30 years, the number of Arabs has more than doubled, surging from 173 million in 1980 to 352.2 million in 2009. According to the United Nations, assuming that fertility levels continue to decline, the total population of the Arab region is projected to reach 428.4 million by 2020. The majority of these are under the age 24 and live in cities. The “youth bulge” is expected to increase to 73 million in 2015. This is important as some studies suggest that countries where young adults make up more than 40 per cent of the working age population are more likely to experience armed conflict than countries with lower proportions of youth.

Makes you think doesn’t it. Just imagine what these countries will look like in 50 years time when this youth bulge becomes an Arab Boomer Generation. Dick Stroud

Social Networking - it’s the numbers that matter

This time last year I wrote a blog posting about the waste of time (from a marketing perspective) of having forums and other aspects of social networking on an age silo web site.

Today I had a comment that rather amazed me.

If this post is true could you explain why the Saga forum, whose social network you were rather scathing about too, is so huge and why not one of their forum threads has posts more than a few hours old, most a few minutes old.

Well I thought, maybe it is time I had another look at Sagazone. Firstly, it is much improved in design from the last time I looked – well done Saga.

But all of my reservations about the usefulness of such functionality as a means of generating marketing interest remain. If anything my views have hardened.

It is not true to say that most of the forum threads have posts more than a few hours old. Sure there are a few that meet this criteria but most are more like a few weeks or a few months old.

Since I last looked at the site, 20 months ago, the number of searchable profiles has increased from 63,000 to 80,000. Just for reference, Facebook as more than 600,000,000. In the last 44 months, Sagazone has less than doubled in size.

To be honest the absolute number of profiles is meaningless. If you look at the above graphic it shows the activity of these profiles. As you can see, the vast majority has not accessed the site in the last 90 days. You have about 5000 people who have access the site in the past 7 days.

Now if you go and have a look at the number of posts of some of these Sagazone fanatics it blows your socks off. There are people there who have posted over 90,000 times. Lots are in the 4,000 posts.

The same screen names keep appearing.

This behavior is how social networking sites work. A few people contribute the majority of the traffic.

From a marketer’s point of view, this is fine when you 600 million people with profiles. When you only have a handful then it is a total waste of time.

Don’t get me wrong. For the Sagazone fanatics I am sure it is great fun but this doesn’t mean marketers should give it a second thought.

I have one big caveat about these comments. They totally rely on the accuracy of the Sagazone search engine. If I am wrong then I am sure somebody from Saga will point out the mistake. Dick Stroud

Gyms don’t get it about older people

Gyms are fascinating places to observe human behavior. Most of the instructors are under 30 – I can only think of one who is older. Lots and lots of the users and potential customers are in their 60s and older.

In general the instructors are not bad at relating to older people but I reckon I could improve their effectiveness by at least 25% if I had a few hours with them. The gym is where I go to relax and I don’t intend to mix business and pleasure.

This article from the US is good since it relates some of the issues that arise when you have older and younger people wanting different things and both thinking they are entitled to get their own way.

Personally, I think it might overstate the case since one of the upsides of a gym is the mixture of generations. I am not that keen on the music that is played but it is easy enough to use my iPod.

Also, there are lots of the younger gym members who have succumbed to too many Big Macs – it is certainly not the case that young = fit.

I think the bottom line is that gyms don’t have to do that much to make themselves more age-neutral. The last thing I would want is an oldies only gym. Dick Stroud

More insights into cognitive ageing

Of all of the types of physiological ageing I think the changes in our cognitive abilities is the most fascinating and probably the least understood.

Kim Walker's blog references an article in the New York Times about how the decision-making process changes with age.

At the core of the way out behavior is affected by cognitive change (notice the word change not decline) is the way older minds appear to be more easily distracted.

A fascinating topic and one that is fundamental to the way marketers and the operations of companies adapt to the ageing population. A subject you are going to hear a lot more about. Dick Stroud

Interested in Canada, the over 55s and digital?

If Canada is somewhere that interests you then this is must read. An excellent analysis by Comscore of all things digital, with lots about the over 50s.

As you can see, the use of social networking by this group is on the rise but then it is coming from a low base so the growth percentages can be misleading. You will have to click on this graphic. Dick Stroud

Even official statistics can be misleading

I have written a couple of blog postings and articles about the plight of youth employment in the UK – and just about everywhere else come to that matter.

Having just read a paper (Getting the measure of youth unemployment ) by John Philpott, Chief economic adviser to the Chartered Instituted of Personnel and Development, I should have delved further into the numbers.

In this paper he looks at the way that the number of students in the “young people” category has distorted the figures when comparing them with previous periods. As you can see from the chart the percentage of students has increased dramatically.

Philpott is not saying the situation is good but it is not as bad as some commentators (including me) have suggested. Dick Stroud

The power of humor?

One of the videos shown at the Dublin conference was of Podge & Rodge promoting the campaign to improve awareness of bowel cancer.

Now let’s face it, this is one hell of a difficult subject to grapple with and make interesting/funny.

However, for older people, especially men, it so important since the earlier it is diagnosed the far greater the chance of surviving.

You probably have to be Irish to really get this advert and probably also need to be fans of these two comical figures.

The result is strong stuff.

When it was shown at the conference I reckon half of the audience approved – a quarter didn’t and the rest were unsure how to respond.

I cannot see it making it onto UK TV and I would be prepared to make a significant wager that it will not make it to the US.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts. Dick Stroud

Podcast of my presentation in Dublin

I have mentioned in an earlier blog post that I was recently in Ireland presenting about my favourite subject – segmentation.

If you have a spare 30 mins you can see the slides and hear the dulcet tones. Enjoy, well at least be amused. Dick Stroud

What women want – to read?

According to the marketing press in the UK, AOL is repositioning itself as a key destination for women and is making the claim as part of a shift in strategy that will see it put the brands of recent acquisitions above its own.

This change in strategy follows a yearlong acquisition spree that included The Huffington Post.

I wonder what age group of women AOL reckons it will focus upon?

It has always been a no-brainer that older women are extremely important in making household purchase decisions. The graphic shows one of the slides I used in a recent presentation.

AOL does not have a great track record of converting strategy into business results. It will be interesting to see how this one works out. Dick Stroud

You need to read the small print before believing market research

The Harris Poll of about 3000 Americans generated a news release with the tag line that: “People over 65 less likely than younger generations to be taking some steps to economize.”

That conclusion chimes with my own gut feeling but I thought it worth looking to see what evidence Harris produces to justify the conclusion.

First things first. It should go without saying that the 66+ is a hell of a lot of people at various stages of their lives with a host of different lifestyles in multiple socio-economic groups. Hence, talking about their behavior as a group is a pretty fruitless exercise. But let’s not be critical since most organizations continue to talk about generations as if they were a homogeneous lump of humanity.

The devil is in the detail when it comes to these research findings.

Firstly the method of conducting the research was online. The research methodology contains an interesting statement. “Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.” I wonder what that means when you consider that according to Pew Internet only 44% of Americans aged 65-73 have home broadband falling to 20% of those 74+. I think we can safely say that the majority of Harris’s 65+ group is off-line.

The numbers in the above graphic result from the question: "Have you done or considered doing any of the following over the past six months in order to save money?" So if I had a fleeting thought about cutting down on the amount of coffee I drink I would have answered the question in the affirmative. Vague or what? Surely, to make such a profound statement the question should have asked if people had actually changed their behaviour, not just thought about it.

Finally, the results from the research might say more about the habits of older people than they do about how the recession has influenced their thinking. For instance, the question about cancelling a landline phone and relying on a mobile is probably totally related to the uptake of mobile phones. In fairness, Harris does recognize this causation issue in the case of the question about brown-bagging lunches that relates to the number of people still working rather than a genuine change in purchasing behavior.

So what is the bottom line for the usefulness of this research? As viewers of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In will remember (if they are of a certain age) -interesting but useless. Dick Stroud

The importance of women including older women

Last week I returned to Dublin to talk at the Business of Ageing Conference. More details about the conference in future posts.

One of the points that I mentioned was the importance of older women as consumers and their influence on major purchase decisions. Also, I talked about the fact that women seem to ‘do’ getting older better than men. Yep, I know it is a huge generalization but that has been my experience in working in the ageing business for the last 6 years.

Of all the things I mentioned this generated the most questions. So rather than respond to all of the e-mails individually I thought I would write a blog posting listing some of my information sources.

First books. If you are interested in marketing to the older women then I recommend you look at:

Primetime Women - Marti Barletta
Boom – Mary Brown and Carol Orsborn
What Boomer Women 50+ Know, Think, Do and Buy – Stephen Reily and Carol Orsborn

I know I have missed out a couple of other excellent books but that will be something to be getting on with.

For the factlets that appeared in my presentation.

This gives the data about the split of older and younger women using Facebook. Like all of this research it is indicative rather than accurate to the last decimal place.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research have done a lot to look at the spending power and attitude of women and older women in particular. I like the terminology – they have created a "long-on-women" investment opportunity.

Have a read of this and this to give you more details.

Nielsen is making a lot of use of the BCG (Boston Consulting Group) research that showed that the vast majority of new income growth over the next ten years will come from women and makes the bold assertion that women influence 65% of the world’s annual consumer spending.

All of this leads to a simple bottom line. Ignore older women (and younger ones) at your peril. When constructing a strategy to address the older market you had better make sure that the mindset of the women is core to your thinking. Dick Stroud

Cell phone survey for 50+ users

I was asked to mention this research study on my blog. Normally, I don't but in this case the survey is very short and is about a subject that is close to my heart - smart devices.

If you are 50+, own a cell phone and you're interested in making technology more usable for older adults, please take part in this online survey:

I did it in less than 10 minutes.

The findings of this study will contribute to a University of Guelph MSc thesis - Smartphone Evaluation Heuristics for Older Adults.

So if you have a few moments and are 50-plus and want to help make smartphones even better.. Dick Stroud

WRVS says the 65+ boost society by £30bn

After the stream of boomer bashing articles it is refreshing to read something that puts the other side of the story.

A study published tomorrow by the WRVS, the volunteering charity, finds that the elderly are in fact net contributors to the tune of £30bn to £40bn a year because they pay tax, spend money that creates jobs, deliver billions of pounds of free care to others and contribute to charities and volunteering.

The study, compiled by the economic consultancy SQW and reviewed by Robert McNabb, professor of economics at Cardiff Business School, is one of the more comprehensive attempts to estimate the costs and benefits to society of over-65s.

I have requested a copy of the study and will comment in detail when it is released. What’s the betting that it doesn’t get as many quotes as Mr. Willett’s confounded Pinch! Dick Stroud