Baby Boomers - A South African Perspective

To: nyrenagency (at) gmail.com
Subject: Baby Boomers - A South African Perspective

Hi Chuck

A Baby Boomer myself, I have for many years contemplated to further my post graduate studies. I live and work in Johannesburg, South Africa. Reading on the internet about you and the work you have done on advertising to the Baby Boomers have really motivated me to follow my dream and to submit a research proposal on this subject to my local university. I first graduated in 1976 with my very first job at an ad agency in Johannesburg. In and out of advertising over the years of rearing a family, I now have the time to pursue my studies again. I have mainly had a career in media strategy and implementation.

My first step is going to be to order your book, Advertising to Baby Boomers on-line and start with a comprehensive literature overview. Hopefully this topic will bring me the meaningful field of study I have been in search of for many years. I will have to find out what has been done in South Africa that is relevant.

Any thoughts on attempting a study on Baby Boomers from a South African perspective will be much appreciated.

Kind regards,

Tertia Strydom
Johannesburg
South Africa
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I emailed Tertia this link (from a 2006 blog post):

Managing age diversity in the advertising industry
Do people working in ad agencies lack emotional intelligence, because their average age is lower than in traditional organisations? Paula Sartini explores the issue of age in the advertising industry in this paper.

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain

In January NostraChuckus predicted that this would be:

The Year of The Baby Boomer Brain
Not that the last few years haven’t had plenty of neurons bouncing about and flashing all sorts of surprising info about middle-aged noggins …

And he mentioned an upcoming book:

The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain
The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind
Barbara Strauch – Author
For many years, scientists thought that the human brain simply decayed over time and its dying cells led to memory slips, fuzzy logic, negative thinking, and even depression. But new research from neuroscien­tists and psychologists suggests that, in fact, the brain reorganizes, improves in important functions, and even helps us adopt a more optimistic outlook in middle age.

I haven’t read it yet (it’s on its way) – but I did sit transfixed by Barbara Strauch on Fresh Air. 

For advertisers, everything she says is important.  Ms. Strauch talks about “creating a disorienting dilemma” and “shaking up the cognitive egg” to get our attention – not something usually done when advertising to Baby Boomers. Most ads pander and lull us to sleep. 

The last question asked and answered is really what it’s all about.  

Carve out 30 minutes sometime soon and listen to it all:

Selling To Seniors

I had a good chat today with Libbye Morris.  She’s writing a piece for the Selling To Seniors web site.

Forget about what I said (we’ll find out in May).  I asked Libbye if she was offended by advertisements targeting Baby Boomers.  She replied: No, I’m not offended. I feel ignored.

That sounds about right.

Designing for Older Consumers

As usual, Dick Stroud beat me to it because he gets up eight hours earlier. (At least that’s as good an excuse as any.)

Dr. Joseph Coughlin (I’ve blogged about him a bunch of times) has a post on his Disruptive Demographics blog that should be read by everybody involved in advertising and marketing to Baby Boomers:

Personalization: The New Language of Design for Older Consumers
Researchers and industry have spent considerable time and resources on improving the usability of new technologies. Despite these efforts, the capability and functionality of most new devices still outstrips their usability. Greater capability is often coupled with greater complexity packaged in an ever-smaller device … The cell phone provides a good example. Many phones enable users to play music, take photos, film videos, and now many mobile platforms are being designed to monitor chronic disease. However, this high level of functionality is not matched with an equal level of usability.

Entrepreneurs often approach me with products and say, “I’ve dumbed it down for Baby Boomers.”  One product had a dumbed-down GUI – but even worse: the text was reverse white on blue, the most difficult to read color contrast for older eyes.  The designer hadn’t a clue.

Dumbing-down is what you don’t want to do. You want to make the product easier to see, to hold, to operate.  That’s not ‘dumbing down’.  You can apply Universal Design principles to complex products. 

From my book (© 2005, 2007):

Apply the above to smart phones and apps, and just about any technology product.  Baby Boomers do want and demand choices, features.  They just won’t be interested in or use them all.   

Read the Disruptive Demographics blog post. (Although we’ll forgive Dr. Coughlin for his ‘Me Generation’ quotes.)

ennu – the multimedia magazine

I saw it a few weeks ago, knew it was something exciting - but was otherwise occupied and simply bookmarked it.  Since then, colleagues Brent Green and Dick Stroud have jumped all over it:

Arjan in't Veld, a young Dutch man, and the Future of Boomer Magazines
Sometimes it takes getting out of our own country to encounter new ways of experiencing being Boomer through media, as has this new online journal taken some very creative steps toward envisioning a 50+ magazine for the future.

This is worth 10 mins of your life
The magazine is in Dutch, not surprisingly, but you can still appreciate its excellence. Real ground breaking stuff.

What they’re talking about:

www.ennumagazine.nl

 

I’ve always wanted to publish an edgy, dense, contemporary magazine for Baby Boomers – eschewing the typical fodder:  grinning pod-people on beaches, empty self-help silliness, stories about how to look younger but you really won’t, medical breakthroughs that really aren’t, etc.*  Arjan has done that and more. I never envisioned the multimedia possibilities. Kudos, Mr. in't Veld.

And I’ve never been a fan of the software used to transform print mags into online PDFs or whatever they are – with phony ‘page turning’ widgets and silly sounds.  Arjan and his crew did it right.  There is a small page-turning gizmo on the front cover so you know it’s a magazine and will be presented as such (linear, horizontal) – but after that you get beautifully designed single-page layouts specifically for the web and/or the iPad and Kindle.  Ennu would also look pristine on a flat screen TV.

Criticisms? Pure nitpicking: Maybe I’d bump up the fonts a bit, not overuse italics, and think a little about text over busy backgrounds. 

So scamper through ennu.  It’s amazing how you can enjoy something without understanding any of it. 

Then imagine if you could …
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* There are a few beaches and whatnot in ennu – but I think they’re mostly advertisements.