I have used this blog to post a lot of stuff about Heyday. Most of it, not very complimentary.
The first post was back in late 2005 when the news of the venture first started to creep out.
Worrying signs appeared in late May 2006. Being one of life’s really nice guys I wrote a post giving Heyday some free consultancy, pointing out some of the basic marketing mistakes they were making. Like all free advice, people don’t value it and Heyday continued along its muddled way.
By late June it was clear that it wasn’t going to work.
Age Concern has just issued a press release that tries to “draw a line” under the whole sorry mess. It is 600 words long and doesn’t contain:
A word of contrition
A word saying that the reason it failed was partly – probably mainly – due to the execution of the business launch.
No, what the press release tries to do is blame the failure on the unwillingness of the Boomer generation to engage with product. Unless the ‘product’ is understandable and desirable it will not work. Not for a 30 year old and most certainly not for the 50-plus/boomer generation.
I feel desperately sorry for the great bulk of people who work for and with Age Concern for seeing so much money poured down the drain so quickly and so needlessly.
The casual observer will look at the Heyday disaster and conclude: “I always thought selling to Boomers was hard work and a waste of time”. The truth is far more complicated and has much to do with a word starting with ‘inc’ and ‘etence’. Dick Stroud
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