Beginning in 2003, my business blog for Creative Services, Copywriting, Consulting, and Speaking. You'll find all sorts of information about the current trends in advertising and marketing to this unwieldy, diverse demographic.
Flack Ace Peter Himler's take on Fidelity Investment's investment in Sir Paul as spokesperson for their company is a must read.Today's seniors are reluctant to buy online from a site they haven't heard of; if they don't know a business offline it won't get their dollars online. But with the age 50-64 group, there's a mentality of wanting to try new things and being adventurous. The fact that an online vendor is newly launched is no deterrent for them.
Have browser, will travel.
Well, I wish they were my words - but I'm too much of a slobbering gusher. So here's Dick Stroud's simple, concise Theory of Everything (The UK version, at least). He wraps it up pretty well.
As everyone knows, thanks to so many astute media pundits and marketing/advertising gurus, Baby Boomers think they're still teenagers and are horrified when they look in the mirror and see some hoary stranger in their forties or fifties. (And in a few months, many of these malicious apparitions will take the form of normal human beings in their sixties.)"The graying of america is at the root of the problem for the $1 billion-plus mass-market hair-coloring business. The category has cooled from double-digit growth the past two decades to more than 4% declines the past two years..."Here's another article by Colette Bancroft of the St. Petersburg Times. An excerpt:
Diana Lewis Jewell is the author of Going Gray, Looking Great! The Modern Woman's Guide to Unfading Glory (Fireside, 2004) and a former marketing director of Vogue.Also check out the adjunct article with quotes from a bunch of old, creaky, silver-haired geezers.
"Look at this generation, our generation," says Jewell, who is in her 50s. "We always wanted to be ourselves."
The number of gray heads is growing, she says, because of "that boomer individualistic attitude: It's okay to be gray."
In her book she cites a poll commissioned by the AARP that shows 53 percent of boomer women and 6 percent of men in that age group color their hair.
"That means 47 percent of women and 94 percent of men don't."
For now, Forth & Towne isn't advertising. It's just throwing open the doors Wednesday and waiting to see who pops in.Oh ...... great idea! Just ignore the largest, richest demographic — a generation very much accustomed to being advertised to (and not particularly happy that they're off the radar nowadays) — and one that has always responded well to intelligent, informative advertising.
