The More Things Stay The Same, The More They Stay The Same

In this topsy-turvy world where there are boggling upheavals every 5-minute news cycle, it’s comforting to know that some things will always remain the same.  

Forget the millennials, online travel could be missing the boom time 
Young, slick, mobile-savvy millennials, if many headlines are to be believed, are the customer segment that many travel startups first target…

As it was, almost a dozen years ago…

14 November 2005
My Favorite Cyber-Myth
…Hitwise found that visitors to the top travel search engines were by far likely to be over 55 years of age. Hitwise attributed this to baby boomers…

15 April 2006
Insatiable Appetite for Information
…Of the travel content viewed by this group, over 70% takes place on agency, hotel supplier, and airline carrier websites…

Dick Stroud has no problems opening this can of worms:

Package design is the dark horse of the marketing world. So says Nielsen.
… So much packaging design assumes the customer has 20/20 vision, a knowledge of how the packaging works and the hand and grip and strength of a wrestler.

I had no problems over a decade ago:

12 June 2006
Boomers in Candyland
…I can rip open any dumb, stupid candy wrapper with my bare hands – as long as one of my bare hands is holding a pair of pliers…

The thrill starts with the grille…

The Crazy Logic Of Media Strategy
Ad Contrarian
… But why in the fucking world would you direct those commercials at 20 year olds? If your objective is to sell more cars, and people over 50 are 4 times as valuable to you, why in the world would your media target be millennials?

12 March 2009
Who’s gonna buy this car?
… I’ve blabbered about this for years.  In 2005 on The Advertising Show yours truly had a spirited discussion with hosts Brad Forsythe and Ray Schilens.  A chunky segment was about marketing autos to Boomers.

Baby Boomers are wonderful, Baby Boomers are horrible. Today and years ago.

Today:

How baby boomers became the most selfish generation
The baby boomers who have controlled this country since the 1980s are a selfish, entitled generation.

Baby Boomers Pitch In
Senior citizens are channeling time and money to volunteer efforts. One estimate: They’ll contribute $8 trillion in two decades.

Years Ago:

April 8, 1997
The Anti Boomer Page 

22 October 2009
Me vs. We Redux Redux
…Did any generation apologize for The Great Depression? I’ll have to check the history books.  If not, it should.  Some of those evil bastards must still be alive.  Anybody over ninety-eight had better atone…

So don’t feel too bad. Not everything is changing.  As I’ve said, take comfort in that.

Now I’m going to make myself some comfort food – maybe a grilled-cheese sandwich and a glass of chocolate milk with a straw – and watch the evening news.

Where we might be headed in 2017.

While the world, civilized and otherwise, is headed for certain annihilation, I’m a bit more optimistic about advertising to the 50+ demo.

Marketing folks are starting to catch on, maybe:

Getting to know urban elderly consumers
The elderly haven’t always been a priority for retailers and consumer companies. Yet they present a big opportunity: the demographic could account for more than half of all growth in urban consumption in developed markets in the next 15 years…

And for the last 15 years – but who cares about that.

Human Resources:

Boomerang Boom: More Firms Tapping the Skills of the Recently Retired
By CHRISTOPHER FARRELL
Call them boomerang retirees: people who exit gracefully after their career at a company, then return shortly afterward to work there part time…

Over-50s can adapt to new jobs and technology: research
By Anna Patty
… The survey of 5973 Australians aged 18 and over, conducted by Lonergan Research on behalf of insurance company Apia, found 77 per cent of people over 50 believe their creativity levels increase or stay the same with age…

I’ve heard this somewhere before. Maybe here:

Human Resources/Brain Power

Wearable Tech:

Why Smart Wearables Needs To Get Smarter: Notable Percentage Of Abandonment Due To Boredom, High Prices
… The reasons stated by them included boredom and the fact that they didn't find them useful…

I’ve heard this somewhere before. Maybe here:

15 October 2015
Baby Boomers Not Wearing Wearables

Never Leave The Hospital! Health Tech Wearables, Implanted Chips
By Chuck Nyren
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!
By Chuck Nyren
… Along with Google Glasses, you'll also be wearing Google Nose and Google Mouth.

Making Sense, Finally:

Turning Ad Dollars Into Pennies

(You’ll have to scroll a bit for the next one)

TV’s resurgence gathers pace
…Much has been written about the surging popularity of online video at the expense of more traditional media, yet in 2016 we have seen many online brands invest heavily in television content and advertising…

So after the polar ice melts,  and there’s WWIII, advertising and marketing might end up in better shape this year.

Recap 2016: Advertising to Baby Boomers

The year began with folks playing games with our brains:

06 January 2016
Brain Games: Hocus-Pocus Hyperbole
Looks like a not-so-bright company hawking a make-me-bright online game is in non-virtual hot water:
Lumosity fined millions for making false claims about brain health benefits…

And, as always, there was More Déjà Vu:

19 April 2016
Big Mags Roll Out Big Guns. Again.
… The Economist found that only 31% of firms it polled did take into account increased longevity when making plans for sales and marketing … One reason for this tardiness is that young people dominate marketing departments and think that the best place for the old is out of sight and mind.

23 September 2016
Deaf Ears, Gatekeepers, and Frustration
… We have approached all the local ******* ad agencies and (our pitches) seem to fall on deaf ears … their gatekeepers are millennials and they have no interest in marketing to a bunch of old fogies …

26 July 2016
Television Still Shining
…I like it when someone else writes a post for me – and/or I’ve written the post before (in this case, loads of times) so I don’t have to start from scratch. Copy ‘n Paste is fast becoming my mantra...

14 October 2016
Tweeters & Zoomers & An Ugly ‘Ism’
… No surprise to NostraChuckus,  famed soothsayer and advertising gadfly who’s been startling the world for years with his mundane prognostications…

What blog wouldn’t be complete without Shameless Self-Promotion Posts:

21 February 2016
Published: Advertising in the Aging Society by Prieler, Kohlbacher
… Professor Kohlbacher asked me to fashion an Afterword for his newest co-written tome…

28 March 2016
Advertising In The Aging Society: The Foreword, The Interview

07 October 2016
Zoomer Media/ZoomerU Presentation in Toronto
Last week I was at  ZoomerPlex, a city square of TV production facilities, radio stations, magazine headquarters, and site of an astonishing television museum.

ZoomerU gets off to a successful launch

Take a break with a Double-Feature & Shorts:

26 August 2016
Entrepreneurs & Spending Power
Why Advertising To Boomers Just Got More Important
by Barry Robertson
Shocking new study defines vast Boomer (ugh!) spending power…

Digital Déjà Vu:

03 October 2016
Digital Ad Shenanigans
…It’s been a bad week or so for online advertising foolishness and chicanery. No big surprise for yours truly. I’ve been yacking about all this nonsense for a decade...

29 November 2016
Digital Ad Shenanigans: The Academic Edition
…The realization that something you thought to be “real” is actually an advertisement is an increasingly common, if unsettling, sensation. Mara Einstein calls it “content confusion,” and if her book, “Black Ops Advertising,” is right, we’re in for even more such trickery…

Like this year and last year,  no doubt more frolic beginning in January.

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Just For Fun:

The Everlast
by Chuck Nyren
Fred Thorson had been dead for fifteen million years...

Digital Ad Shenanigans: The Academic Edition

Not too long ago:

03 October 2016
Digital Ad Shenanigans
It’s been a bad week or so for online advertising foolishness and chicanery. No big surprise for yours truly. I’ve been yacking about this nonsense for a decade.

Now there’s a book about it:

Black Ops Advertising
Native Ads, Content Marketing and the Covert World of the Digital Sell
by Mara Einstein
… Whatever the label, however, it comes down to this: advertisers can camouflage their sales message in only one of two ways 1) hide the advertising within existing content environments or 2) create the pitch themselves and make it look like something other than advertising. The first of these is native advertising, the second content marketing …

And a review in The New York Times:

… The realization that something you thought to be “real” is actually an advertisement is an increasingly common, if unsettling, sensation. Mara Einstein calls it “content confusion,” and if her book, “Black Ops Advertising,” is right, we’re in for even more such trickery, indeed a possible future where nearly everything becomes hidden commercial propaganda of one form or another. She forecasts the potential of a “world where there is no real content: Everything we experience is some form of sales pitch.”

All true. Although my take is that these silly Next Big Things will come and go.  They’ve been coming and going for years:

07 December 2012
What is Digital Advertising?
… The newest buzz-phrase has me completely baffled: Native Advertising.  One social media guru described it as advertising that is ‘baked into’ the content. I guess it’s sort of like the old Burns & Allen Show where one episode had Gracie baking a cake using Betty Crocker Cake Mix, a sponsor.

And this (again):

 Professor Mara Einstein has been working in and writing about the media industry for more than 20 years. Her career has taken her from being an executive at NBC and MTV Networks to positions at major advertising agencies, working on such accounts as Miller Lite, Uncle Ben’s, and Dole Foods.

I haven’t read the book, but will.

Even More Some of The News That’s Fit to Print

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Marketing from continent to continent and satellite to server and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press…

Hungry? Senior Nutrition Fellow Ruth Kava sez to Food Purveyors: Ignore Baby-Boomers at Your Peril … “How amazing. How astonishing. How pathetic.” That’d be Dick Stroud wondering about Marketers discovering  the importance of the 50-plus once again and again and again … Advertising campaign gone wrong: The idea of people over fifty driving their cars is so appalling and such an embarrassment that they outright ignored and disparaged the most valuable economic group in the history of the world (or you could’ve read this blog for the last thirteen years) … From the Best 18 minutes you can spend today Dept.: The “Great Volkswagen Ads” Documentary Film … The No Big Surprise Dept.: Boomers buy about two-thirds of the new cars sold annually, as well as half the computers and a third of the movie theater tickets … Read all about Doodyville … Meet the 2016 Influencers in Aging (What? I’m not on the list? The process is rigged!) Congrats to Paul Kleyman and Louis Tenenbaum … ‘til next time…

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Just for Fun:

Mouth Hunters
by Chuck Nyren
I’ve been thinking about buying this house. Then I was told that it might be time to buy a new mouth…