Toyota is fretting about becoming Honda

In the UK, Honda has the reputation for being an oldies car – guess what car I drive!

It sounds like Toyota is worried that it might be heading in the same direction, according to this article in Newsweek that suggests the carmaker is desperately seeking Gen-Xers. Having just read the horrendous financial results from US car manufacturers I would have thought they would be happy with anybody with a checkbook and a positive account balance!

Toyota has retired Sly and the Family Stone from its ads for the Camry and replaced them with a modified version of Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" - nothing like thinking outside the box! The company has also established a youth-marketing staff made up entirely of people in the prized 24-to-35 age group. In the UK these would be considered geriatric marketers. All of this is intended to lower the average age of Toyota buyers by a decade, to 35.

The article suggests that Levi and Nike are also struggling to attract a younger audience and shake off an outdated image because:” It's a hard sell for boomer brands to persuade today's kids to drive the cars and walk in the same shoes that Mom and Dad did.”- "The days of boomers setting pop-culture trends are over," says the editor of Trends Journal. "Boomers are over the hill." Madison Avenue is now training its sights on the boomers' babies.

Maybe I have been missing something but this is re-writing of history. The reality is that advertising land has been obsessed with the Boomer’s kids and grandchildren for ages – to the exclusion of their parents. Still it made a good story. Dick Stroud

Medicine and care - how the Web can help

I received a couple of really interesting responses to my last blog posting about the way the Web can assist in the areas of medicine.

The University of California has teamed up with scientists at The University of California, San Francisco to launch an Internet video channel dedicated to improving understanding of incurable neurodegenerative brain diseases. See the above video.

The channel is intended to increase awareness among patients, their families -- and physicians about the various forms of dementia. The goal is to promote earlier diagnoses and to get more patients into research studies and clinical trials. The site is also intended to educate caregivers, and provide support through caregiver testimonials.

The UCSF team is also reaching out with two other forms of online communication. They've created a widget, containing links to the YouTube channel and the UCSF Memory and Aging Center web site that will help the viral promotion of the facility.They have also created a Facebook group, "Defeat Dementia."

The second contact was from OnTimeRX, a company that is all about reminding people about their medication. Look at the comment on the previous blog posting. How interesting that Microsoft includes OnTimeRx software in their generation-specific “Senior PC” Vista systems for Assistive Technology.

Isn’t it great we live in the Web era.

My guess is that this is just the start. The amount of VC funding that will flow into resolving issues created by the ageing population has yet to start. Dick Stroud

The future shape of health and care management

My Outlook inbox contained two totally disconnected e-mails containing links that illustrate how care and health management in the future might (will) be managed.

I don’t know what it is like outside the UK but the health and care services provided by the Government, and much of the private sector, use a level of IT that Noah would toss out of the Ark and demand something more modern.

Every shrill article in the media about the ageing population is accompanied by dire predictions of how the health and care services will implode and that people (mainly 50-plus) must take more responsibility for their own health and care. They may be right.

One thing that could make a big difference is the application of the latest concepts of the Web.
Arjan in't Veld told me about a US outfit called Lotsa Helping Hands that is a free online volunteer caregiving coordination tool. Basically it applies social networking functionality to a specific issue of coordinating care for an individual. What a brilliant idea.

So far there are 8,000 Lotsa Helping Hands communities. The company has partnered with organisations like the Alzheimer’s Association, American Lung Association, Lance Armstrong Foundation and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society providing co-branded services they offer to their members.

The other development is the concept of owning your own medical data and using Google or Microsoft tools for its management. This appeared in an article in Technology Review.
Google and Microsoft want to do the same thing for personal health that software such as Quicken has already done for people's personal finances. Google Health (released in May) and Microsoft HealthVault (launched last October) allow consumers to store and manage their personal medical data online. Users will be able to gather information from doctors, hospitals, and testing laboratories and share it with new medical providers, making it easier to coordinate care for complicated conditions and spot potential drug interactions or other problems. Both Google and Microsoft will also offer links to third-party services like medication reminders and programs that track users' blood-­pressure and glucose readings over time.

Are you getting the picture? It looks to me like we will have the providers of care and health services using clapped out IT whilst consumers will be expecting/demanding/needing to use Web 2.0 and Cloud technologies. Dick Stroud