Women Redux

It’s been only a few months since I blogged about the power and influence of women:

21 February 2018
Women
… Ten, twelve years ago there were older women. Now there are older women younger than I am. Weird. It’s some strange time/space warp I’m living in.

Mature women are just all over the place. Take a look:

Meet Fashion’s Next Generation: Over 60s
… Baby boomers have been largely absent from advertising, especially in high-fashion, despite driving 42 percent of spending in the US, versus 13 percent for millennial and Gen-Z consumers … Typically, companies gear their campaigns towards a younger demographic, assuming the ads will also appeal to their parents. Now, some companies are reversing that formula.

Here’s a brave campaign, certainly braver than one from a few years ago:

Ads for pee-proof underwear campaign redefine the customers who wear them
by Zoë Beery
… New York-based underwear company Icon’s strategy is to go all in with a cheeky, flippant message. Today, their "Piss Off" campaign takes over the Bryant Park subway station in Manhattan…

 CREDITS

• Jasmine Zhang - Designer
• Fenghe Luo - Designer
• Supisara Burapachaisri - Designer
• Meng Shui - Art Director
• Kejal Macdonald - Marketing Director
• Kelsey Duchesne - Copywriter
• Anna Mackenzie - Photo Director
• Molly Matalon - Photography 

Pee-Proof Underwear Brand Launches ‘Piss Off’ Campaign To End The Stigma Of Bladder Leaks
Period-proof underwear company Thinx is taking on the incontinence industry with its sister brand Icon, “patented pee-proof underwear that lets leaky ladies kick pantyliners (and the lame stigma of bladder leaks) to the curb.”

And GRAND Magazine features a cover photo and article about model Yazemeenah Rossi (note: my interest is purely professional):

YAZEMEENAH ROSSI: Secrets To …
by Wendy Packer
… Contrary to what some people may think about women in their 60s, Yazemeenah feels prettier today than ever before … She is also very popular on Instagram with women in their 20s and 30s seeking advice on how to stay well as we age …

From The Remember When Files:

21 February 2007
Dove Pro-Age Campaign
… There is a big difference between thinking you are younger than you are, and not thinking that you are old …

Generations Make Better Decisions Together

That’s what a blogger for Forbes tells us:

Future Of Work: Research Shows Millennials, Gen Xers And Baby Boomers Make Better Decisions Together
by Erik Larson
“Decision-making teams that include a wide range of younger and older employees significantly outperform more narrowly young or old teams.”

Good article, worth a read. But it’s difficult to get too excited about this musty revelation. Yours truly and many others have been saying the same for years.

From my book © 2005:

I have a business friend who wants to start an advertising agency that would only accept clients whose products are for the 50-plus market, and he wants to hire only people over fifty, from the receptionist on up. It’s hard not to applaud such an idea, but I wouldn’t want to work there. And it wouldn’t be because of the receptionist. I’ve met some gorgeous, very smart ones who’ve mentioned to me that they’re grandmothers. (They’ve got to be lying.) The reason I wouldn’t work there is because I love working with people in their twenties. They sizzle. They’re galvanized. They charge me up.

Lots more:

Diversity = Productivity (2008)
... Scott E. Page, a professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan, is a fresh voice... Rather than ponder moral questions like, “Why can’t we all get along?” Dr. Page asks practical ones like, “How can we all be more productive together?” The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences.

You Know Who's Boss – Consumers (2007)
But Do You Really Know Them Well?
… It makes all the sense in the world for ad makers (both clients and agencies) to be well-stocked with people who understand consumers, whether young people who fathom the mysteries of cyberspace, a good mixture of people who reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of our country, and, yes, even older people who understand the vitality and buying power of the great gorge of baby boomers overtaking our land.

Talk about the need for greater diversity in the business largely has fallen on deaf ears. (2013)
Nobody likes to be told whom they should hire -- unless it can be demonstrated that hiring the right mix of people can improve the bottom line…

Intergenerational Teams A Strength (2013)
The company focuses on recruiting new talent and retaining the services of experienced employees, which often results in the creation of inter-generational teams tackling company projects together.

So hire or work with someone who’s not you. You already have a you. Why would you need another one?

Wearables, Home Monitors

A short video popped up on one of my feeds. It’s from the UK, is a few years old - but I’d never seen it:

I liked it, sent links to a few folks.

Ronni Bennett blogged it.  Her take on home monitors and wearables brilliantly (and hilariously) complements the video:

Crabby Old Lady and Home Monitors for Elders
… Marketed as a way to help elders live independently at home for as long as possible, hardly anyone has spent much effort yet to find out how the spied-upon old people feel about inanimate objects acting as nannies and tattling to their human controllers …

Also read the comments.

I’ve been screaming about over-the top monitor/wearable doodads for almost a decade.  A few moldy posts and two Huffpo pieces:

05 December 2009
Microsoft & AARP Study: Boomers & Tech II
… How biofeedback-onic do you really want to be while taking a walk in the woods or playing some doubles?…  It’s a mark of honor to sustain a sports injury, but I’d feel rather silly if I were limping about and had to tell everyone, “I fell over while Wii-ing …”

15 October 2015
Baby Boomers Not Wearing Wearables
… While we’re not sailing around slaying metaphors, we are doing something almost as unforgivable: we’re getting old. What a curse.
And apparently we’re all supposed to strap on high-tech wearables as penance …

Never Leave The Hospital! Health Tech Wearables, Implanted Chips
I'm having issues. I'm worried that the medical industry might want me to worry too much about my health. A little worry is good. But constant worry? It seems as if they want me to think of nothing else but my vital signs for the rest of my life …

Finally Live The Life You've Always Wanted With Wearables!
… Along with Google Glasses, you'll also be wearing Google Nose and Google Mouth.

Most of these gizmos are useless, will fall by the wayside. They also may turn out to be harmful. As you get older you have to hone your senses, not lull them. These whizzing, beeping doodads are often distracting and/or give you a false sense of security.

And the ones that are helpful won’t be an easy sell. So far, most of the advertising is clumsy and patronizing.    

NostraChuckus’ Crystal Ball of Common Sense has spot-on prognosticated what would come true in 2018

It’s still March and already NostraChuckus’ Crystal Ball of Common Sense has spot-on prognosticated what would come true in 2018:

09 January 2018
The Year of Big
That’s my prediction. Advertisers will finally follow simple common sense, something a certain seer has been urging for years …  An advertisement you hold in your hand is about as big as a large piece of confetti…

Proof of NostraChuckus’ uncanny predictive powers of  the mundane and the obvious:

Advanced Ad 2018: Attribution Data Points to TV Ads Driving More Sales
3/26/2018
by Jon Lafayette
… TV advertising works, and marketers should buy more of it, according to an executive at a company specializing in attribution measurement …

19 March 2018
Marketers who prioritise digital advertising have delusions of effectiveness
by Samuel Scott
… Marketers think that online video and social media are the second- and third-best mediums for brand building. But in contrast, Ebiquity found that the top six mediums are actually traditional ones that are always proclaimed as “dead”.

This isn’t the most exciting video in the world, but it’s short and informative. Stick with it and you’ll learn a lot about the silliness of itsy-bitsy advertising:

NostraChuckus’ Crystal Ball of Common Sense is getting hazy now…

Mark Ritson

Mark Ritson is a fun fellow. And a troublemaker. I like him.

I don’t follow him on Twitter (actually, I do now, just clicked follow as I write this) but I really don’t have to follow him. His posts are always mucking up my feed because over a dozen people I do follow retweet him. Sometimes there are four or five retweets almost in a row of the same Ritson tweet.

Now there’ll be one more.

Dick Stroud tossed up a video of a recent Ritson talk:

Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Is marketing in such a bad state as depicted by Mark Ritson - probably
… When reading about the exploits of marketers I spend more and more of my time shaking my head in disbelief. How can they be so dumb?

Click the YouTube logo for the wide-screen version:

At 2:20 Mark goes on a waggish rant about the death of. Everything in marketing and advertising is dead and replaced by ……?

I’ve laughed about this for years. A few moldy posts:

01 May 2010
Foretellings
… Television, print, radio, and billboard ads will continue to have the visceral power they’ve always had – if only for their sheer size, simplicity, and cutting-edge audio/visual qualities.

18 May 2010
Advertising Is Dead. Again. (Part I)
It’s official.  The last sixty-four years of advertising has been declared ‘ineffectual’.

19 May 2010
Advertising Is Dead. Again. (Part II)
But … what about social media marketing?  That’s the new thing, what everyone’s talking about, the only way to go nowadays. It’s the greatest thing since the telephone.

21 July 2017
The Interminable Death of Television
Nothing I can think of is as lively and chipper as television in its final throes. If we all began dying as happily, healthily, slowly, and painlessly as TV, we wouldn’t fear the process - but welcome it.

At 12:18 in the video, Mark talks about one of my favorite subjects (because it doesn’t exist), Brand Purpose. He does a funny bit where he asks the audience to match the brand purpose with the product/company.  I did pretty much the same thing a decade or so ago when talking about Baby Boomer sites and their mission statements:

14 September 2006
INVASION OF THE BABY BOOMER POD PEOPLE

27 August 2009
Advertising to Baby Boomers Can Be Tricky Business
… “Now, take out a pencil and paper.  It’s time for a test.  Match the graphics with the tag lines.”

Around 19:40 he’s all over digital nonsense. Again, very funny. Reminded me of some of my takes on digital nonsense:

07 December 2012
What is Digital Advertising?
… Television is now digital, commercials are shot with digital cameras – so are commercials digital advertising?  Are digital spots on digital radio digital advertising?  Print ads are created on computers, usually rendered as PDFs, delivered digitally. Digital advertising?  Magazines, both editorial and ads, are digitally produced.  Digital advertising?

04 November 2013
Smartphones & Tablets, Apples & Oranges
Clients and just about everybody else seem to be confused about advertising on all these new-fangled gadgets.  Added to the mix are odd, stupefying concepts like digital and mobile and native. Most of this stuff is gobbledygook, but I’ll try to separate the chaff from the chaff …

Keep watching Mark Ritson’s video for more laughs and insight.

Joining Forces with Boomer/neXt

You will now encounter my beaming countenance on
The  Boomer/neXt site (it’ll take a few scrolls):

Consultant Team

With offices in Boulder, Colorado, and New York, Boomer/neXt is a national network of age-appropriate professional consultants, communications experts, market researchers and strategists who train brands to re-imagine and re-generate in the 50+ space.

After a few emails and phone chats with Barry Robertson, we agreed that joining forces would be a good idea. So we did it.

He’s put together an impressive collection of hot-shot associates. Hope I can keep up.

Even Another Pointless Press Release

I keep getting them. Hundreds a week. Here’s one from a few months ago:

12 December 2017
Another Pointless Press Release
… What’s not mentioned, not even considered, is that 95% of advertising is targeted to Millennials.  Of course they would be influenced.

Today’s pointless press release (no linking to silliness) has something to do with a book about aging in place and technology.

I opened the email because I’d never heard of this person – and I know most of them. The best: Laurie Orlov and Louis Tenenbaum. You could also check out yours truly:

Aging In Place & Universal Design

I clicked the first link in the press release. It sent me to the book’s Amazon.com Kindle page:

This book is currently unavailable because there are significant quality issues with the source file supplied by the publisher.

The publisher has been notified and we will make the book available as soon as we receive a corrected file. As always, we value customer feedback.

Someone probably bought the Kindle book, it was a mess, had technical problems, reported it to Amazon.

If you can’t get it technologically correct, or you hire someone who bollixes the whole thing, do I really want to read what the author has to say about technology?

Just for fun, I clicked on

and the only thing there was the cover of the book.  It should’ve read Look outside …

Do I really want to check out someone who hires a PR firm that is incompetent, one that sends out a press release with a link to something that is an embarrassment to the client?

Deliver us from newfangled flack news.

---

More PR shenanigans:

October 2017
The Press Release Parade: Halloween Personality Profiling

02 November 2011
The Press Release Parade Marches On

19 July 2013
Do PR outfits vet press releases anymore?

Helen Mirren

I hate it when I love someone everybody else loves. I feel like I’m just a boring, average, celebrity-obsessed dunderhead.

But I do love Helen Mirren.

Not just lately. I remember her in the 1970s (Oh, Lucky Man!), before long she hid out (from me) doing theatre in England, then popped up again in the 1990s. Ms. Mirren was great in The Madness of King George. 

Since then she’s made a few flicks and TV shows.

And is a spokesperson for L’Oreal:

What she did a few days ago knocked me out:

Helen Mirren Praised For Sharing Makeup-Free Photo Taken Before Oscars Glam Squad Got To Work
“I’m not setting standards for others. All I can do is be who I am. I’ve always loved makeup,” she said, according to The Telegraph.

Did I get suckered into thinking she just ‘did it’ on Instagram – or was this a L’Oreal publicity stunt? 

I don’t care. Love is unconditional.

Automobiles

We still buy them, we still want to know all about them before we buy them.

A few posts ago:

13 December 2017
We’re always sick.
… I googled the car and it’s a pretty good car. But the spot tells me nothing about the car. Of course, why would I want to know anything about the car? All I need to know is that it has healing powers …

I won’t take you on a whirlwind of moldy posts about cars and advertising and the 50+ market.  The first was in 2005, there have been dozens since then, here’s just one:

03 May 2012
67% Of All Sales…
… Those age 50 and older are buying more than three of every five new vehicles sold, or about 62% … For the Detroit Three, boomers now account for 67% of all sales …

Today:

Ford’s Facelifted Van Aimed at Baby Boomers Reliving Glory Days
By Keith Naughton
Ford Motor Co. is looking to revive an aging workhorse with a facelift, technology injection and appeal to baby boomers looking to relive their “magic bus” days …

Somehow I doubt that, Keith. It probably has more to do with grandkids, dogs, short vacations, trips to Costco and Home Depot. Unless they’re offering a model in day-glow colors with a built-in bong in the back seat. 

For many, grandchildren are the glory days.

What about accessories for us? (Do they call accessories accessories anymore? I’m sure there’s a new, cutting-edge techno-term for them, but I don’t know what it is.)

Essential New-Car Features For Baby Boomers
by Jim Gorzelany

1. Push-Button Entry/Start
2. Tilt/Telescoping Steering Wheel
3. Extendable Sun Visors
4. Digital Speedometer
5. Head-Up Display
6. Rear Backup Camera
7. Parking Proximity Alarms
8. Self-Parking System
9. Navigation System
10. Automatic Day/Night Mirrors
11. Adaptive Headlamps
12. Adaptive Cruise Control
13. Blind Spot Warning

No bong? Oh, well.

I’m one of those old fogies who thinks less is more. Give me a big windshield, some strategically-placed mirrors, a comfy seat, and I’m gone like a cool breeze.

An accessory is a cup holder.

Women

Let me get this out of the way…

I love older women:

Going Nutty Over Older Women’s Bodies (Huffpost)
… With younger bodies ... they’re the same from top to bottom. Same shape, same skin, same rubbery feel. Nothing much there. Unfinished, incomplete. Like they were just hatched from pods - smooth and slippery, no essence yet. And only a few curves and barely any crannies. Bland and simple. Uninteresting.
Older bodies are complex, real.

Ten, twelve years ago there were older women. Now there are older women younger than I am. Weird. It’s some strange time/space warp I’m living in.

One of the first advertisements targeting this demo featured in a 2005 blog post by Brent Green:

A Heroine for Our Time 
… Fidelity Investments recently unveiled a 30-second television commercial that presents the biography of a Boomer woman. In this frenetic, flowing montage, augmented by rapid cuts of iconographic images such as the "peace sign," Fidelity has effectively captured powerful elements of the Boomer zeitgeist.

Marketing to these lovelies was written about by Marti Barletta over a decade ago, wisely updated years later:

16 April 2014
Marketing to PrimeTime Women
… Great move by my publishers – releasing an updated paperback edition of Marti Barletta’s Marketing to PrimeTime Women …

And there was BOOM: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer by Mary Brown and Carol Orsborn.

Worthwhile articles by a slew of others followed, including over one hundred posts by yours truly.

Lately, there’s a renewed interest in mature women. In Joseph Coughlin’s The Longevity Economy, a huge section is dedicated their power and influence.

JWT in the UK has put together a fancy-schmancy PDF slide presentation:

The Elastic Generation – Female Edit
Women in their 50s, 60s and early 70s are active, engaged and involved. Pillars of family, community and society, nothing they do is motivated by their age. It’s time for brands to take age out of the equation …

Give JWT a name and email address and you can download it.

I was entertained, enjoyed the over-the-top pics, didn’t enjoy the over-the-top copy (while I love long copy, this was long, long copy).

Click through at a fast pace - and it’s a good show. 

Super Bowl 2018

There are never too many news articles, blog posts, and podcasts about Super Bowl commercials right after the Super Bowl. Except for today. Now there’s one too many.

As everyone will tell you, the Tide (something like Every Super Bowl Ad is a Tide Ad) was clever and I fumbled my dip-dripping Dorrito and the mess spilled all over my sweatshirt while watching it.  And, I imagine, I’ll flash on the commercial the next time I’m stumbling around in the detergent aisle.  What more could an advertiser ask for?

And as everyone will tell you, The MLK/RAM truck spot was tone-deaf embarrassment. Just think: He coulda’ been a crackerjack car salesman instead of wasting his life away in and out of jail and meeting a violent death. Sad.

The bleeping commercial was bleeping too long.

An M&M was funny when it turned into Danny Devito, but after watching him beg to be eaten, then swirling around in a flat vat of chocolate (it looked like a vat of something else), I don’t think I’ll ever put an M&M in my mouth again.

Finally, there was an E-Trade commercial with old people still working when they should be retired. I think that was the takeaway. The problem was that most of the geezers looked like they were having loads and loads of fun and being productive. Of course, having fun and being productive aren’t things we want old people to be doing. 

There’s something unnatural about it.

2018: The Year of Big

That’s my prediction. Advertisers will finally follow simple common sense, something a certain seer has been urging for years:

18 April 2011
The Flat-Screen Rectangle of Common Sense

Good piece by Steve Weaver of ThinkTV Australia:

Size does matter: how ad size and screen coverage affect audience attention
… In real life, TV commands 58% active viewing, compared to only 31% for YouTube and just 4% for Facebook … TV’s relaxed, ‘lean-back’ viewing environment is not to be confused with passive ad attention …

An ad on Facebook averages 10% screen coverage. An ad on YouTube averages 30% screen coverage and on TV – where the ad plays full screen with no scrolling and no clutter – screen coverage for ads is 100%.
So, in simple terms, size matters.

Now factor in the size of smartphones vs. the size of televisions. An advertisement you hold in your hand is about as big as a large piece of confetti. And I’ve noticed that often they scurry around like tiny bedbugs. Sometimes I try to squash them.

NostraChuckus’ thoughts through the years:

May 2010:
Foretellings
… That silly retronym “traditional advertising” will remain the premiere force for introducing people to a product or service, along with sustaining its shelf life. Television, radio, and billboard ads will continue to have the visceral power they’ve always had – if only for their sheer size, simplicity, and cutting-edge audio/visual qualities ...

06 March 2012
Digital Distractions
Advertisers are getting wise to the drawbacks of marketing in the digital nest…

12 March 2012
Digital Distractions II
There are so many digital distractions that it’s difficult to be distracted…

22 September 2015
Marketing Miscellanea
… Baby boomers also had a highly negative response to mobile ads ... Fewer than 8% said they were likely to purchase a product advertised on their mobile phone … Overall, just 5.2% were interested in receiving ads on their phone at all …

28 November 2017
Smartphone Ads = Silly Graphical Doodads

NostraChuckus’ Crystal Ball of Common Sense is getting hazy now…