EU research dishes the dirt on ageism

According to a survey by the European Social Survey Britain has one of the worst records in Europe on age discrimination, with nearly two out of five people claiming to have been shown a lack of respect because of how old they are. It is not very comforting to know that only Russia, Ukraine, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have more people who feel they have been ignored or patronised because of ageism.

This conclusion results from a EU funded research project taking into account the attitudes of 55,000 people across 28 countries, which every two years charts beliefs and behaviour. This and no doubt many more snippets come from the Eurage Project.

I may be doing the researchers a great disservice but I have never been impressed with my dealing with any of the EU funded research projects. I have always felt that it was a good way of wasting a lot of money and keeping academics employed. At the end of the day you end up with results that whilst of passing interest are just that - passingly interesting. Dick Stroud

AARP is launching its own ad network

AARP is launching a new online ad network consisting of AARP.org and more than 600 complementary sites, like Oxygen.com and Grandparents.com, that it says will reach 40 million boomers. Using a data management platform, AARP says it can further slice and dice that audience by characteristics like age, gender, income, and buying behavior to meet advertisers’ goals.

 The above was taken from AdWeek. Hopefully, there will soon be more details available. Somehow I cannot see this working in the UK.

I am becoming very sensitive to the photos selected to illustrate articles about oldies. Why the hell did AgeWeek select this one? Dick Stroud

Follow the money - follow women - stupid

If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female. If the business world had a sex, it would be male. Therein lies the pickle.

So starts an article in the McKinsey what matters publication. I guess that says it all.

To add a bit more detail - quote from the article:

The biggest difference in how men and women view the shopping experience comes down to this fact: in virtually every society in the world, women have primary responsibility for both children and the elderly.

They look at shopping as part of their caregiving role in the family and household. This means that women are buying on behalf of everyone in their lives, and as a result they are constantly considering the needs of others when they shop — even when they are shopping for themselves. If a mother is standing in a grocery aisle choosing ingredients to cook for dinner, she may think, “I’m going to go through a lot of trouble to make this, so it better be something everybody likes.” Or if a woman is buying a shirt for her father’s birthday, she may think, “I hope it fits, because if he doesn’t, I’m the one who has to go back to the store to return it.”

They are constantly considering the implications of their purchases in terms of other people’s wants and needs.

Generally speaking, men typically do not have the role of primary shopper for their households, and so they tend to view shopping in a more transactional manner. 

The implications of this simple observation are huge as is my view that "women do ageing better than men". That is why I nearly always include this picture in my presentations. Dick Stroud

The New Millennium Tales

When Kevin Lavery and Reg Starkey asked me to contribute to their book "The New Millennium Tales" I had little idea how good the finished publication would be. Prior to its publication I blogged about the book.

The are over 90 tales about the strange world of ageing, marketing and all that sort of stuff.

This is not a textbook - nor a "how to book" - but the musings of those of us in the ageing business and from a host of other perspectives. Well done guys for pulling together such a group of people and editing their outputs into such a readable book.

You can buy the book from Amazon or directly from Millennium. Dick Stroud

Nike goes age neutral - well sort of - well maybe not

The new Nike ad was featured in BrandChannel but then all of the videos appear to have been removed.

Maybe a clever ploy by Nike to get attention for the ad? Maybe not.

After some digging I did find a copy on YouTube plus the accompanying ads from 'the grandparents' and the 'the parents'.

Shame that Nike decided to portray the grandfather as a blithering fool. But at least they made some attempt to make the ads have appeal outside the narrow segment of the young and the wellness conscious older market. Dick Stroud
 

GPS - not diamonds - on the sole of your shoes

This development looks like it has potential for keeping track of people with dementia. I say 'potential' since like all of these new GPS products it is only as good as the complete system.

Still I am sure that in one way or another implants like these will soon be available that will enable system integrators to create better care packages. Dick Stroud

The world is one big keyboard

 

Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University have created a shoulder-mounted device, called OmniTouch that can turn any nearby surface into an ad hoc interactive touch screen. So says Technology Review. 

Clearly, this is at a very early stage of development but you can see the long term potential to make it easier for people with physical disabilities to use keyboards. Dick Stroud 

iOS5 removes a huge hurdle for the adoption of iPads

The greatest hurdle remaining for the adoption of iPads by older people was the need to have access to a PC/Mac to set-up and to receive updates.  The PC Free functionality puts and end to all of this nonsense.

This excellent article lists all of the changes with new operating system and details about the new standalone ability of the iPad.

Well done Apple. I am not so sure about the split keyboard feature but I guess I will come to love that as well. Dick Stroud

QR codes are a mystery to most people

Back in June I wrote about QR codes as being a technology looking for an application.

Since then I have modified my view (a bit) but I am still not convinced.

The author of this article is even less enamoured with QR codes. Here is a straight quote

The current use of QR codes in advertising is... I could finish that statement with "stupid," "useless," "uncreative," or "uninspiring." Surprisingly, that is not news to anyone at advertising agencies or brands. QR codes seem to be a last ditch effort; an ignored piece of "Hey, throw a QR code on there that leads to our website." But why bother? The general public seems largely oblivious to what they are used for, and why they are on all those ads.  

If QR codes leave early adopter smartphone users cold you can imagine what they do to the average older person. Maybe the technology will reach a breakthrough point but I doubt it.  In case you were wondering - the code does say something. Not sure it is worth reading. Dick Stroud

Product packaging can be bad for your health

Another excellent and amusing blog by Laurie Orlov about the conflicts between age friendliness and the desire of companies to protect our safety, health, sustainability and all of the other good things that governments are insisting upon.


 In this blog she talked about the Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging Certification. This has been in existence for at least three years but it is new to me. The video explains the problem the certification is trying to solve. If you have any more detailed question there is an excellent FAQ. Useful and amusing. Dick Stroud 

Not that many oldies at the Occupy Wall Street happening

The Fast Company has been trying to put some demographics numbers around the Occupy Wall Street event - protest-street-party-phenomenon......or whatever you want to call it.

I had a look through Google at the images of the event and found it very difficult to "spot the oldie". But I did find one.

Now I am sure that the statistical validity of the conclusions of a survey of 1,619 visitors to the occupywallst.org site is ziltch but it worth repeating.

Here are the numbers :
64% of respondents are younger than 34
20% is 45 or older.

The numbers are a bit like the use of mobiles in the early days.  

A bit of marketing advice to the protesters. Unless you can verbalise a half sensible alternative policy then you will fade away like the Autumn leaves. Anger will only drive you for so long and keep up the momentum. You need tangible (and sensible) demands. Dick Stroud

A bunch of lefties have formed an outfit called the Intergenerational Foundation

This is a rant and has nothing to do with 50-plus marketing.

However, if you are interested in the weirdos that emerge from under the stones, during recessionary times, you might want to read on.

Basically, this 'Foundation" believes that: “Britain’s policy-makers are more interested in helping the old than the young.”

One of their ideas is to withdraw some universal benefits to those (I assume only those who are over-65) living in houses worth more than £500,000. Good to see that they are a caring and sharing bunch! 

Looking through the press and you find one of their supporters is the pathetic  Tessa Jowell. This is woman who didn’t have the wit to notice that her mortgage had been paid because she was too busy. OK, her husband was a crook but that illustrates her poor taste in men – she also has poor taste in the company she keeps and supports.

 The UK already has a government that is kicking the hell out of the older age group by keeping interest rates close to zero and letting inflation rip. There is even talk of not uprating pension by the inflation rate since it an ‘exceptional’ item.

Add to all of the policy of printing money that drives down the rate of return older people gets from their pension annuity.

If that was not bad enough the press has been full of the horrendous conditions that old people have to put up with in the NHS and care homes. I suppose this bunch probably think they deserved it for being so beastly to their children and grandchildren.

Into this mess we get this bunch of fools who come out with statements like: “The Intergenerational Foundation’s Hoarding on Housing report found that 51.5% of over-65s live in homes with two or more bedrooms they do not need or use. “ Who says they don’t need or use them? Don't you just love the accuracy to 0.5%.

No doubt they will get airtime in the lefty media of the Guardian, Independent and the BBC. What a bunch of plonkers. Dick Stroud

Consumer has fallen out of love with advertiser

 I recently sat through a presentation by a guy from Microsoft – supposedly about technology and the ageing population.

I suspect (like 99% certain) that he took his standard PowerPoint slides and tried to adapt as he went along to the requirements of the audience.

What was so amusing was that he showed this video. I think it is a great way of illustrating the potential for advertisers to shout and consumers to turn-off. What didn’t occur to the presenter was that he was doing exactly the same as the guy in the video – shouting a standard message.

In addition to this video he talked a bit about Connect and its application to ageing / disabilities. Not that convincingly but it confirms my views that the Connect / iPad / Wii interfaces and the new ones that will be with us in the next 12 months have fantastic applications for the older consumer. Dick Stroud

Nokia to “rejuvenate” brand to focus on youth

This is the headline from Marketing Week. Isn’t it odd that when companies start to making mega mistakes it becomes a habit.

Firstly, the company insisted on sticking with its own operating system. When it dumped that idea it ran for cover to MS - bad mistake.

Now it is looking back to the past and using generational marketing.

One mega mistake is bad luck – two is unfortunate but three is a disaster.

For a company that must compete globally it has to adopt an age-neutral strategy. Why invest your marketing effort into a market that is declining in size and is getting poorer by the day? Don’t do it Nokia – you will regret it. Dick Stroud

What CMOs really think

IBM has published an interesting report based on researching the views of 1,700 heads of marketing to understand their fears, hopes and desires. Well at least those related to marketing.

The respondents came from a wide variety of organisations, ranging from 48 of the top 100 brands listed in the 2010 Interbrand rankings to enterprises with a primarily local profile.

I was particularly interested in concerns of the marketing head honchos to demographic change. As you can see this subject featured at number four in their worries. So what aspects of demographics are keeping these top marketers awake at night?

This is a quote from the report.

New global markets and the influx of younger generations with different patterns of information access and consumption are changing the face of the marketplace. In India, as one example, the middle class is expected to soar from roughly 5 percent of the population to more than 40 percent in the next two decades. 


Marketers who have historically focused on affluent Indian consumers must adapt their strategies to market to this emerging middle class. In the United States, marketing executives must respond to the aging baby boomer generation and growing Hispanic population.

I guess that working so much in the part of the “shifting demographics” world that is all about ageing that you tend to forget that there are other big changes going on. This is a report worth downloading. Dick Stroud

An interesting observation from High50

I haven’t heard much about High50 since its launch. Maybe it is keeping quiet as the money comes rolling in.

I hope it is doing OK because I do like the quality and style of the web site and the newsletters. The newsletter I received this week had an interesting item about brands.

Here are some selective quotes:

According to the latest CoolBrands survey, our generation (50+) has changed the market for – and the meaning of – cool.

The coolest brands in the UK are increasingly the ones that are consumed by the over-50s rather than the under-30s. Aston Martin came first with Apple second, followed closely by Harley-Davidson, Rolex and Bang & Olufsen.

Perhaps the only one of these that you might associate with youth is Apple. But when you think about it, Apple is in fact the archetypal baby boomer brand, as personified by the late Steve Jobs (who was born in 1955).

What interested me was that at least two (B&O and Apple) lead the world in design. Some would say that so does Aston Martin. In my mind it is the simplicity and beauty of the design differentiates these brands and this is clearly something that works well for older people. Dick Stroud

Ignorance about ageing leads to dangerous outcomes

Metlife has just published its 2011 Retirement Income IQ Survey giving insights into the knowledge, more accurately the lack of it, of pre-retires about retirement issues.

Looks to me like older people need to do a bit of extra homework.

As you can see from the example, only a third of people got the question about longevity correct.

Whenever I see research that says that “X% of older people think they have enough money to retire” I cringe since most of them would not have a clue if they have enough or not. This report reinforces that view. Dick Stroud

The Design Council is looking for good product ideas

The Design Council has a half a million to help finance new innovative ideas to help older people remain connected. The video explains what it is all about - so does this link. Dick Stroud

Older lottery players might get something back

The Silver Dreams Fund is the first of the Big Lottery Fund’s dedicated investments in older people in England, and is being delivered in association with the Daily Mail. 


What a strange combination - the lottery people and the Daily Mail.


The fund wants to: "pioneer ways of working with older people that will allow them to play a much greater role in their communities. They should be able to influence the local services and facilities that will help them prepare for and manage major life-changes."


My initial reaction when reading this was to think it will be a big waste of time and cash. Maybe not? Time will tell. I will revisit it in a year's time and see what has been delivered. Dick Stroud

Things are looking up for the older Irish

The Irish Time article start - Elderly people are far less at risk of falling into poverty than previously.


You then read that it is referring to the 65+ and think - hell they are talking about me - well very nearly me.


It would seem that the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) shows that the risk of poverty rate for those aged 65 or over fell from 27.1 per cent in 2004 to 9.6 per cent in 2009. It also reveals the gross weekly income of elderly people rose by more than 48 per cent during the same time period.


Having been in Ireland a couple of times in the last month I doubt if these revelations are going to be be much comfort for the older Irish. Dick Stroud 

It's Done! The app for the forgetful

This app - a very basic 'to do' and 'have done' list is billed as the saviour for those of us who are cognitively challenged.


It looks like one of those apps that you download, spend 10 mins mucking about with and a couple months later delete. I may be wrong - perhaps it changing the lives of my forgetful peers?


This blog gives some more details.  Dick Stroud

The 50+ dominate the casual gamers scene

An interesting distribution of ages between 'casual' and 'hardcore' social gamers. I am not really sure the meaning of these definitions and how they are measured.

I think the only message you can take from this type of analysis is that older people are very interested in gaming  - why I do not know - but the are. Dick Stroud

Ageing in place smoke and mirrors and self-deceit

Anybody who reads my blog will know I am a great fan of Laurie Orlov. Not only does she know a lot about the subject of Ageing in Place but she expresses herself brilliantly and gets to the messy core of issues.

I guess the fact that I agree with a lot that she writes also accounts for being a fan.

Long ago in the UK we had "care in the community" this was a fancy name for shutting down expensive intuitions for people with mental health problems. There were lots and lots of good arguments, honestly expressed, about it being much better for people to be 'intergrated' in 'the community'.

OK, there was the point that this saved a hell of a lot of money and the reality was far away from the nice theories. We just shunted people from mental health institutions to the street or into hospitals / prisons.

Nobody can disagree with the theory of "ageing in place" but my fear (certainty) is that it will be used as a way of saving money. We can add some tinsel of technology to show how we connect to older people but for many (not all) the outcome is going to be horrible. Of this I am certain.

Apologise to Laurie but I am going to give a verbatim quote from her blog. She expresses a similar sentiment much better than I ever could.


Okay, okay, we get it – everyone wants to age at home. How do we know? AARP say so. 


Forget that AARP’s survey sample might be skewed towards the younger end of fifty- and sixty-somethings, not 80-90 year olds. Forget that life expectancy is lengthening -- the good life or the not-so-good – apparently indistinguishable among the life expectancy extender-types, aka the healthcare system. 


Forget that this is a gloomy and isolating picture for those with limited transportation in their 80’s and 90’s, those living alone with mild to moderate dementia, and those for whom it is a great chore just to get up and about.


 Tech and service vendors (want you to) believe home can trump assisted living. So if one more vendor tells me that the monthly cost of their (monitoring, sensor, chronic disease checker, whatchamacallit) subscription service is one-tenth (one-fifth, half, or whatever) the cost of a month in assisted living, I may just lose it. 


Does their product/service offer up group activities? Trips to the park? Shared dining experiences? Redirection and therapy programs for the mildly disabled or those with dementia? Is there a dietician on staff? How about an activities director? Need I go on? 


This sales pitch is designed to make adult children and the vendor feel self-righteous, but all that their products do (hopefully) is in the specs – sense this and track that, and hopefully forward the info to someone who can react. Someone who can react is certainly an improvement over no reaction, but on the continuum of oversight, it skews to the left.

Is there a place for using tech to assist older people live longer in place - sure. But it is not the only answer and we mustn't use it as a distraction from providing decent face-to-face care. Dick Stroud

Silence from the Baby Boomer bashers

If it wasn't so tragic it would be amusing.


In the last year it became the thing to give older people a good kicking for "stealing their kids inheritance" and all of that other sort of nonsense that the media loves to publish. Given the fig leaf of respectability by the dreadful book 'Pinch', written by David Willetts, who was supposedly the brightest guy in the Tory Party, the reality is so, so different.


The single, undisputed, policy of this and the previous government administration is to allow inflation to increase. The reason - it diminishes the pile of debt that has be repaid. The resultant outcome - those with savings get hammered. The losers - older people - the group with cash. 


Yesterday, the Bank of England announced another round of printing money or as it better known - increasing inflation. How strange that this is the institution with the single objective of maintaining low inflation. Today' informed commentary in the media agree that it is more about being seen to be doing something than with any expectation of it 'working'  - whatever that is.


Ros Altmann, Saga's Director General, called the announcement a disaster for older people. She is right.


Whilst some of the worthies in the ageing business are prattling on about creating a "minister for older people", Saga has raced to the front as being the primary voice of older citizens. From a PR perspective this has been a brilliantly executed strategy.


Yesterday's move is unlikely to do much good to the UK economy but will certainly reduce the confidence and spending power of older  consumers. Dick Stroud  

What Mature Consumers Want - new report from AT Kearney

This new report from AT Kearney concludes the most important finding in the study is that older shoppers do not think they are adequately served by marketers, retailers or manufacturers. Most comments focus on the difficulties they face, including the inability to navigate large stores, with too many hard-to-reach products on shelves that are either too low or too high. 

The following is taken straight from the report.

Product packaging is often difficult to open, and labels, prices and directions in stores are hard to read. Of the study’s participants, 52 percent in the 60-70 group, 58 percent in the 70-80 group, and 66 percent aged over 80 say they cannot read labels properly, even when wearing glasses or contact lenses.

Mature consumers also complain that most stores are not only understaffed but also that the staff on hand is not trained well enough to help them. Most respondents (63 percent under 70, and 75 percent over 70 say they would like to be able to sit down in stores.

On the whole, mature consumers want and expect a sympathetic understanding of the realities of age, but they do not want to be treated as old or elderly.

Older people enjoy shopping, not only as a necessity but also as a social and leisure experience. They shop often: Two-thirds of those aged 70 to 80 say they shop twice a week or more. They shop at different times, preferring to go on week- days, and relatively early in the mornings, when the stores are less busy. The older they are, the more they prefer smaller stores and shopping closer to home (68 percent), and the more likely they are to walk to the shops rather than drive or be driven. Proximity is almost always a main reason for choosing a specific store.

The next major development in marketing to older consumers is understanding the impact of physiological ageing on all of the customer touchpoints. Nice to see this major consultancy agrees. Dick Stroud

Problems continue and continue for the Care Industry

The care company Four Seasons Healthcare is seeking control of 140 homes formerly managed by nightmare Southern Cross. Once the change has been made it makes Four Seasons Britain’s biggest care home operator.


Just one small problem it needs to refinance £780m of debt.


The debt, which is due in September next year, has already been deferred by creditors from September 2010.


When you get comments from the CEO like: “We are going through a process of strategic options” and “We are considering with shareholders the refinancing of the debt. We have two or three different scenarios and we are confident of refinancing before the deadline.” You should start to worry.


Four Seasons Healthcare, the operating subsidiary of Four Seasons Health Care Group, recorded a £12.1m pre-tax loss in 2010, down from a £928,000 profit the year before, according to its latest accounts. The company explained this because of “declining occupancy across the industry” and government spending cuts.


Both these explanations are correct but it the company's debt levels that are the critical issue. Now the Government can explain the Southern Cross problem away as it being an exceptional event (although it did know all about the problem over 24 months ago) but if Four Seasons goes the same way then it is really in the dirty stuff.


Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I bet a lot of government ministers have their fingers crossed. Dick Stroud

What applications of Apple's Siri for older people?

When you go to the Apple web site it shows Siri (the personal assistant) as being a beta release. This is the software that was launched with the new iPhone. Well if it does half the things suggested by the Apple video then it could be the basis of a great product for older people.

I know there is a long way from the nice promotional ad to the real thing but give it a year or two and this voice activation technology could become a game changer for the way that older people with eyesight or dexterity problems interface with the device. Of course Apple needs to get the volume levels right otherwise it will be useless. Dick Stroud

Lempert Report reinforces the importance of grandparents

Today's Lempert Report has its lead article dedicated to the importance of grandparents as a contributor to their children and grandchildren's household spending.

We should all be well aware of the grandparent power but it does us good to be reminded. As the report says: The sooner supermarkets dig into these emotional and economic connections between multiple generations of families, the quicker they'll be seen as authentic solutions providers.

The report makes a lot of reference to the MetLife report about grandparents that was published in July.
Dick Stroud

Go, go, go, boom, boom boom...the language of Boomers?

The Huffington Post has just published the first edition of Huff Post /50  - the online age portal/news site / hang-out for Boomers that I talked about in a previous blog when it was originally called Huff Post / 40. 


The editor (Rita Wilson who is Tom Hanks wife) penned the opening article. The tone and language had an uncanny similarity to the style of Jeff Taylor when he was originally advertising Eons.com (see ad) 


Whilst writing this blog post I found an interview between Taylor and Joe Coughlin (who runs AgeLab). This must have been done before Eons was sold. As I said when Eons was originally launched, Taylor talks a lot of sense. Unfortunately, there were not enough older people who shared his vision of social networking and ageing.


Let's hope that Rita Wilson has more luck than Jeff in capturing the attention of the Boomers. Dick Stroud