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.
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CMOs/Ad Agencies are sort of getting the message. Not that they quite know what to do with it after getting it, but efforts are being made. What a shock not to be portrayed as sick, daft, vapid, immature or stupid in any of these ads.
Oscar Mayer:
Cute, sassy. Not sure why this fellow would make fun of a male teenager with long hair. This ignorance creates a queasy cognizant dissonance for folks fifty to seventy and thereabouts.
Tide Washing Pods:
Not sure why these two have to be retired. They could simply have busy lives, appreciate the convenience. It’s as if the advertisers are embarrassed using older folks in a commercial and feel the need to apologize and explain why. You see, they’re retired. Now it makes sense.
T-Mobile:
Age-neutral targeting starring Boomers (unlike another one). A simple, clever campaign making everybody aware of T-Mobile’s global coverage plans. I laughed out loud at this one:
Overall, pretty good spots. A few tweaks from some or more older creatives would have helped.
Big surprise:
Carmakers should be marketing their hybrids to … baby boomers
Car companies have long pitched their rides to the young, but the biggest buyers of hybrid cars in the US are the 60-plus set…
The study found that these buyers most valued the pride and prestige of driving an environmentally responsible car…
As usual, I wonder why this is news:
21 December 2007
Green Boomers
Green boomers are more attuned to advertising, both positively and negatively. They pay attention to ads for products they plan to buy, but are more critical and therefore are more likely to believe there is not much truth in advertising. They also wish that advertising included more real product information to help make decisions.How long have I been saying that? I wrote articles about it four years ago, must have posted about it here twenty times over the last 2½ years…
17 February 2011
Green Boomers Redux
… A few of these Green toy companies might get the smarts – and market their products directly to Baby Boomer grandparents.16 May 2008
Coming Boom in Boomer-Friendly TransportMy point three years ago was that Baby Boomers were buying up those mid-priced boxy cars (even though they were being marketed to college kids and twenty-somethings) because they were easy to get in and out of, easy to see out of, and some had large dashboards that were easy to read. So why not build cars with these and more features for older drivers?
Along with ‘green’ – the auto industry had better retool with an eye on the 50+ market.
12 March 2009
Who’s gonna buy this car?
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Two excellent biz/marketing bonus reads by Jonathan Salem Baskin in Forbes:
The same day the previous post was tossed up, I read this:
Facebook And Twitter Do Almost Nothing To Drive Sales
by Ashley Lutz… "While the hype around social networks as a driver of influence in eCommerce continues to capture the attention of online executives, the truth is that social continues to struggle and registers as a barely negligible source of sales for either new or repeat buyers. In fact, fewer than 1% of transactions for both new and repeat shoppers could be traced back to trackable social links."
A surprise?
02 May 2011
Click this ad. 0.051% do.25 September 2012
Twitter & Advertising
27 November 2012
Black Friday, Cyber Monday Surpass One Billion Press Releases
07 December 2012
What is Digital Advertising?
So WOMM is a washout. So are banner ads.
What the hell are these consumers people doing? Reading stuff? Looking at pictures and silly videos? Listening to music? Communicating with each other? Sharing stuff? Being virtually sociable?
Where are their priorities? They are supposed to be viewing and clicking ads, then buying stuff.
Back to that piece in Business Insider:
Mulpuru didn't study small businesses, which she said do disproportionately well in social commerce.
What’s disproportionately well mean? If fewer than 1% of transactions are influenced by social media for large businesses and their products/services, does this mean that 1% of social media advertising is influential when considering small business products? Or would it be fewer than 2%?
Hardly anybody pays attention to social media marketing blather or banner ads. Most product reviews are useless.
That leaves paid search, email, direct marketing, and something we now refer to as traditional advertising…
15 December 2006
The Brouhaha Over WOMM
Pretty soon, consumers won't believe anybody - even their best friends. They'll realize that they receive the most honest and straightforward information about a product or service from a TV commercial, print ad, or product web site. At least we don't lie about who we are and why we're saying what we're saying.
You have read this on the web, so believe it.
Give Yourself 5 Stars? Online, It Might Cost You
By David Streitfeld
September 22, 2013… New York regulators will announce on Monday the most comprehensive crackdown to date on deceptive reviews on the Internet. Agreements have been reached with 19 companies to cease their misleading practices and pay a total of $350,000 in penalties.
The yearlong investigation encompassed companies that create fake reviews as well as the clients that buy them.
Sounds familiar:
15 December 2006
The Brouhaha Over WOMM
Pretty soon, consumers won't believe anybody - even their best friends. They'll realize that they receive the most honest and straightforward information about a product or service from a TV commercial, print ad, or product web site. At least we don't lie about who we are and why we're saying what we're saying.25 January 2009
Internet Hero of the Week
An uproar hit the Web over the weekend when it was discovered an employee at consumer electronics company Belkin had offered to pay people to write positive reviews for his company's products, even if they hadn't tried them … "Write as if you own the product and are using it," Bayard suggested. "Thank the website for making you such a great deal. Mark any other negative reviews as 'not helpful' once you post yours."
21 July 2010
Manipulation of the Crowd
… This article does not mention paid shills who do the reviews. As a freelance writer, this is one of the more common things that I am paid to do.
27 August 2012
The Best Reviews Money Can Buy
… Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth.22 August 2011
5-Star Web Reviews Go for $5
