Memo to H.R: Older Brains = Smarter Brains

I can’t seem to get away from this book:

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain
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.

Carla Fried of CBS Moneywatch profiled the book:

Memo to H.R:
Older Brains
= Smarter Brains
A new book makes the case that our brains can age as well as a vintage French burgundy; many of our most important cognitive functions actually improve with age … as Strauch’s book makes clear … older workers can provide valuable brain power to an organization.

I said pretty much the same thing a few days before, commenting on a New York Times interview with Barbara Strauch:

My book also surprised me after I read it:

The Trouble with HR
While writing the first edition of my book way back in 2004, I ripped through it without much of a third eye – meaning, I knew what it was about but I had no idea what it was going to end up being.  When I received copies from my publisher, cracked open one, and finished it, I had a minor epiphany.  “This is really a book about HR.”  Kind of a shock, since I certainly didn’t plan it as such.  I’m one of those creative types, not a Human Resources person.

I wonder if Ms. Strauch had some of those same thoughts about her book.

I'll leave you with a quote from Rosser Reeves:

Old Masters and Young Geniuses
"No, I don't think a 68-year-old copywriter can write with the kids. That he's as creative. That he's as fresh. But he may be a better surgeon. His ad may not be quite as fresh and glowing as the Madison Ave. fraternity would like to see it be, and yet he might write an ad that will produce five times the sales. And that's the name of the game, isn't it?"

The Year Of The Baby Boomer Brain

Have I blogged that already?  Sometimes I get distracted, forgetful.

Ahhh. I guess I did:

2010: The Year of The Baby Boomer Brain
Researchers have confirmed what many mature people already know – intelligence actually gets sharper with age.

And there’s that book. I finally read it. I think:

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain
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.

Now we have even more research about older brains … although something tells me I’ve seen it all before – but I can’t remember …

Sometimes Older Really Is Wiser
By PAULA SPAN
“Our study is one of the first to show that some cognitive processes seem to improve in old age.”

Have I blogged that already?  I don’t remember.  Sometimes I get distracted, forgetful.

Foretellings

NostraChuckus, that uncannily somewhat accurate prognosticator who mostly deals with predicting common sense, is at it again:

Social Media/Word-of-mouth advertising/marketing on the web has been a washout:

The Failure of Web Advertising
While the web itself has been a massive success (influencing virtually every aspect of our lives) advertising on the web is mostly a bad joke.

Fifteen years into its mainstream life, television had created scores of powerful consumer-facing brands.

The only truly powerful brands I can think of that web advertising has created are native web brands like Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook. It's as if the only brands television was good at creating were CBS, NBC and ABC.

I’ve talked about this for years:

The Latest WOM On WOMM

5 Reasons Why 90% Of Social Media Efforts Fail

Is roiling ether the best place for advertising?

Snake Oil In Cyberspace
Perhaps … it is simply a case of older users being a bit more savvy about marketing ploys, social networking, and the intermixing of the two.

While Dick Stroud might not agree with everything I’ve said so far (or what I’m about to say), he did get me thinking …

Why are marketers so conservative
To me it is as obvious as the nose on your face that smartphones will dominate the mobile market … It is an absolute no brainer. This applies to the older and younger market and all groups in between.

Smartphones could end up dominating more than that. With the exception of the workplace, smartphones (along with iPads and Kindles or something like them) might just make desktops and laptops and the web as we know it obsolete.  If ‘being connected’ mostly means communicating with friends, doing simple search, reading the news - then all that’s really needed is a smartphone. 

And the more people use smartphones, the less they’ll tolerate silly graphical doodads mucking up their small  screens. (I’m not including digital games– that’s another industry.)

Steve Jobs already knows this:

Thoughts On Flash
Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.

My advertising/marketing predictions and not-technical-because-I’m-not-a-tech-guy recommendations:

1. The visual power of the web will fade as more people use handheld devices.  Goodbye, fancy-schmancy web sites. People will get bored sifting through it all when they can find what they need with their smartphones.
   
   
2. How this will play out, I don’t know – but the ‘web’ needs to be rethought.  Accessing a page on a desktop or laptop is not the same as accessing it on a smartphone.  There will have to be two separate ‘webs’ for large screens, small screens. People will get very tired very fast clumsily negotiating bulky pages on handheld devices. Usability cannot be ignored.  Laptops and Desktops will only be utilized for deep research or visual treats. 
   
   
3. 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, 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.  Advertising on smartphones will be considered an annoyance, invasive, and rather dinky – while marketing/search (coupons on steroids, and more) will flourish and dominate.

25 Defining Images in Baby Boomer History

Hi Chuck ,
We would love to share with you an article that we just posted on our own blog! “25 Defining Images in Baby Boomer History” would be an interesting story for your readers to check out … so we hope you will consider sharing it!
G. T.

I get a lot of not-quite-spam emails like the above. Underneath it all is a company/website that promotes online learning – not such a bad thing.

Nice to see a Boomer timeline that doesn’t stop with the Vietnam War – as if we all disappeared in the early 1970s – and magically reappeared thirty-five years later in a Volkswagen Bus.

Interactive Guide: Advertising & Marketing to Baby Boomers 2nd Edition (2010)

The first one has been fiddled with thousands of times:

Interactive Guide to Baby Boomer Marketing/Advertising Goes Copper

So I put together a 2nd edition covering the last six months or so.  It’s a loose-knit compendium of popular posts and news stories.  Download it here.