Models! Old Models! Old Beautiful Models!

Yours Truly doesn’t need much coaxing to blog about beautiful models. I’ve been doing it for years and years:

21 FEBRUARY 2007
Dove Pro-Age Campaign
… Baby Boom women are the real age revolutionaries. Many are feeling very empowered, very alive, and ready to take on the world. While they could do without some of the wrinkles and some of the aches, ask most women over forty if they would like to live their twenties and thirties all over again, and they'll say, "No thanks. I'm happier and more productive now than I have ever been."

A partial list of related posts:

17 JUNE 2005
Rubbing yourself and smiling.

01 SEPTEMBER 2007
Bottled Blondes and Man-Made Brunettes

02 JULY 2008
Demand for older models grows   

21 FEBRUARY 2018
Women

25 APRIL 2018
Women Redux

Recent articles from Newsday, Newsweek, People…

Older Models Aren't a Passing Fashion, They Make Sense Financially and Socially
by Cat Woods   
… "I'm the oldest model they [the modelling agency] have, but I really hope they don't stop this trend. I did a nude shoot for Vogue Singapore in December 2020, which came out in February. It was a brutal moment for me, but since I've been receiving comments from around the world. I went from 75 followers to 1,400 overnight when it was published," Warren said…

Judith Ann Warren Went From Arizona Choirgirl to LA Punk Singer to Mature Vogue Model

If you’re interested in breaking into the mature-model biz, some good advice:

Modeling matures as marketers court baby-boomer spending
“My son is proud that I returned to modeling,” said La Veda Davis, who in her 20s and 30s stomped the catwalk in Miami, appeared in commercial spots for Isotoner gloves and had a role in “Miami Vice.”

Older than a Baby Boomer, older than a member of The Silent Generation – and modeling:

99-Year-Old Great-Grandmother Becomes Fan-Favorite Model for Makeup Brand
Helene Simon tells PEOPLE that being the new face of her granddaughter Laney Crowell's beauty brand, Saie, has "put a little pizzazz in my life"

Hoity-toity in England:

Silver & Sassy Fashion Show
Silver haired models Rachel Peru and Annie Stirk have joined forces to make this a positive celebration of women with Silver, Grey and White hair at our beautiful 16th century hall.

The Good News: No noticeable photoshopping going on in all these pics, ads. Not the case a decade ago when Olay got slammed…

05 January 2010
Twiggy & Me
The '60s fashion star appeared virtually wrinkle-free in the ads and, since her baby-faced visage was selling anti-aging cream to older women, quite a few people—including bloggers, news outlets, and the British Parliament—grew quite disturbed.

More Housing No News News

Forbes has a brand-new article about housing us old seasoned folk:

Hey Senior Living Pros: Boomers Don’t Want Your Old, Tired Communities

I especially like the Getty photo the editor picked for the piece. Yours truly and everybody else I know who’s around my age dress and act exactly like this guy (except I usually use five straws when drinking out of a glass – not just two).

Opening paragraph of the article:

The Senior living industry needs to wake up and understand that Baby Boomers just don’t want what their parents and grandparents were offered. No matter how fancy the furniture, how many lakes and golf courses they install on the property, and how large the gym and swimming pool are, baby boomers want an entirely different experience.

I’ll agree with that. In fact, I agreed with it over fifteen years ago. From my book Advertising to Baby Boomers © 2005/2007:

Past generations tended to get excited about modern conveniences that would make their lives easier. They'd walk into a planned housing unit and exclaim, "Look! It's got this and this and this and this!" The more features, the better. The more 'planned,' the better. It was time to start a new life. Time to be rewarded for all the hard work, and relax.

Not so with Baby Boomers. We take most modern conveniences for granted. And we don't want to start new lives, but continue the lives we already have.
Baby Boomers will be anticipating a seamless transition. Instead of "Look! It has this and this and this," we'll be sniffing around for friendly, useful spaces. You'll want us to say, "Look! There's a perfect place for my pottery wheel," or "There are plenty of windows and sunlight. My house plants and indoor herb garden will do fine in here," or "Good. I
  can put up big, deep shelves for my books and CDs," or "Here's the perfect room for our side business on Ebay," or "Here's a place where I can soundproof a recording studio or  entertainment center," or "This oversized back door is great because I can roll my bicycle in and out without squeezing and jerking it around - and the extra-wide hallway means there's plenty of room so I can just lean it against the wall and we won't bang into it every time we walk past it."

These will be the selling points. Less is more.

From the Forbes article:

… Communities of people with similar interests and backgrounds will hold greater allure than fancy amenities … How about communities for aging writers and journalists? How about a community for lifelong athletes? What about a community for those who spent their lives in medicine or science or those who want to make and show their art? What about a community of builders and woodworkers?

I’ll agree with that. In fact, I agreed with it over fifteen years ago. From my book Advertising to Baby Boomers © 2005/2007:

Some sociology experts predict that semi-retirement and retirement communities will naturally develop personalities based on shared interests. These could be gardening, motorcycles, vegetarianism, the arts, sports-related activities — even a community where shared interest might be financial speculation.

A PDF culled from the book:

Selling Universal Design To Baby Boomers/Aging In Place

And a (fairly) recent post about housing, retirement communities, etc.:

04 February 2020
Communities for Boomers
The elder-centric housing industry is about to explode every which way …

Another Dumb Article: Boomer Big Data

Echoing a previous post:

17 APRIL 2019
No News News & Fake News
I’m not linking to any more dumb articles…

It’s amazing how many data firms are out there. I have no idea why there is such an insatiable appetite for jumbles of numbers, slices of shaded pies, arrays of multi-colored lines going every which way.  Abstract art at its most incomprehensible.

Marketers specially love all the mystifying razzle-dazzle.

I read an article recently by someone who works at a big data firm.  The article made no sense.  Or the writer was so blinded by numbers, pies, and lines that it was impossible for this person to think intelligently.  Or the proofreader was on vacation. (I’ve found that most proofreaders nowadays are on permanent vacation.)

Let’s take a look at the first few sentences:

Baby boomers are the fastest-growing demographic in the United States…

Fastest growing demographic? Baby Boomers were born from 1946 to 1964. It is not a fast or slow-growing demographic. This person obviously thinks that people get old and magically morph into baby boomers. 

In 20 years, the population aged 55 and over will account for almost one-third of the U.S. population.

Well, that’s fascinating. But why the above sentence is in the paragraph and why it’s relevant to the article eludes me. Especially when followed by:

Unlike millennials, who are often burdened by student debt and the costs of supporting growing families, boomers have expendable income for in-store and online purchases.

I have no idea what any of the above means, or is trying to mean. Random facts and arbitrary time-frames are haphazardly commingled with jargon-laden gibberish.

Here are the facts:

Today, all baby boomers are over fifty-five years old. If you were born in 1964, you are fifty-five, fifty-six. Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996 (some sociology experts and demographic outfits assign slightly different years).

In twenty years, all of Gen X and even a handful of Millennials will be 55+.

What the hell does “unlike millennials” have to do with anything?

… After rereading this post, I’m even more confused. It’s difficult to unpack nonsense because unpacking nonsense often makes nonsense more nonsensical, if that makes any sense.

All I know is this: If I get any older, I’ll automatically become a member of the Silent Generation, and if I get really old, I’ll all of a sudden become a member of the WWII generation.

And if I live to be two-hundred and fifty, I’ll automatically become a Founding Father.

Another Dumb Article

Dilemma.

For years I’ve blogged about no news news. One of too many posts:

16 NOVEMBER 2015
The Déjà Vu No New News
It’s always a treat to get up, make some coffee, open the newspaper (pixels or pulp) and read nothing new.

And recently, I promised never to link to any more dumb articles:

17 APRIL 2019
No News News & Fake News
…Someone over at one of the major business magazines recently wrote about Baby Boomers, advertising/marketing, technology. He said nothing I (and others) haven’t been saying for almost twenty years…

Here’s the dilemma: There’s a brand-new no news news article I don’t want to link to -- but the comments are fun and worth reading.

So close your left eye and just read what’s on the right:

Older People Are Ignored and Distorted in Ageist Marketing, Report Finds

No News News & Fake News

I’m not linking to any more dumb articles.

Or fake news. Fake news to me can be broken up into two categories:

1. News that’s half-fake and half-not fake. There might be some good advice in an article, but if it also has a lot of bad advice – then no link.
2. News that’s fobbed off as new when it’s really old. In the past I’ve called this No News News.

Someone over at one of the major business magazines recently wrote about Baby Boomers, advertising/marketing, technology. He said nothing I (and others) haven’t been saying for almost twenty years. Just about every point he makes can be found in the Intro and 1st Chapter of my book © 2005-2007:

Folks Are Still Reading My 2005 Book
… Truth is, you can analyze marketing fodder all day and night, read countless books about marketing to Baby Boomers, attend advertising and marketing conventions around the world, and soak up everything all the experts have to say. Much of what is out there is valuable and useful … But if you plan on implementing a creative strategy and turn it over to a different generation of advertising professionals—you'll forfeit the natural sensibilities required to generate vital campaigns…

Intro & 1st Chapter (PDF)

Another major business mag (this one in the U.K.) just published two articles full of admixtures of old good advice, old bad advice. Trouble is, I don’t want to be 50+ Marketing Snopes.com and have to sift through the diamonds and dreck. No links.

Instead, read Dick Stroud and Kevin Lavery.

Even Another Pointless Press Release

I keep getting them. Hundreds a week. Here’s one from a few months ago:

12 December 2017
Another Pointless Press Release
… What’s not mentioned, not even considered, is that 95% of advertising is targeted to Millennials.  Of course they would be influenced.

Today’s pointless press release (no linking to silliness) has something to do with a book about aging in place and technology.

I opened the email because I’d never heard of this person – and I know most of them. The best: Laurie Orlov and Louis Tenenbaum. You could also check out yours truly:

Aging In Place & Universal Design

I clicked the first link in the press release. It sent me to the book’s Amazon.com Kindle page:

This book is currently unavailable because there are significant quality issues with the source file supplied by the publisher.

The publisher has been notified and we will make the book available as soon as we receive a corrected file. As always, we value customer feedback.

Someone probably bought the Kindle book, it was a mess, had technical problems, reported it to Amazon.

If you can’t get it technologically correct, or you hire someone who bollixes the whole thing, do I really want to read what the author has to say about technology?

Just for fun, I clicked on

and the only thing there was the cover of the book.  It should’ve read Look outside …

Do I really want to check out someone who hires a PR firm that is incompetent, one that sends out a press release with a link to something that is an embarrassment to the client?

Deliver us from newfangled flack news.

---

More PR shenanigans:

October 2017
The Press Release Parade: Halloween Personality Profiling

02 November 2011
The Press Release Parade Marches On

19 July 2013
Do PR outfits vet press releases anymore?

What a year.

Not for advertising but for everything else.

In my corner of the ether, no progress by ad agencies targeting this unwieldy, diverse demographic.  Looking over my posts the last twelve months…

It’s always a treat to get up, make some coffee, open the newspaper (pixels or pulp) and read nothing new.

The three most popular posts of 2017:

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein

The Age of Portmanteau
If I may coin a phrase, we’re living in the Age of Portmanteau, what with Bromance, Sexting, Frankenfood, and dozens of other blends bandied about – even by reputable news sources (if there are any anymore).

Smartphone Ads = Silly Graphical Doodads

My pick for must-read post of the year:

The Interminable Death of Television
Nothing I can think of is as lively and chipper as television in its final throes.

If we all began dying as happily, healthily, slowly, and painlessly as TV, we wouldn’t fear the process - but welcome it.

My favorite post of the year:

Something Old, Something Old, Something Borrowed, Something Old
Along with Google Glasses, you'll also be wearing Google Nose and Google Mouth.

Back in January if the world is still around.

Another Pointless Press Release

I read a press release the other day that was a mix of silly and pointless. A few news sites picked it up and fashioned their own versions. (There won’t be any links because I don’t link to silly.)

Culled from the press release and articles:

Millennials (81%) are much more likely to be influenced by advertising than Baby Boomers (57%), who have generally already set their brand affinity and buying patterns …

I’ve debunked the myth of ‘boomers don’t change brands’ so many times I’ve lost count. A quote from a review of my 2005 book by Dr. Joyce M. Wolburg published in The Journal of Consumer Marketing:

A second favorite excuse of agencies is: "Baby Boomers don't change brands" (p. 52, italics in original). Nyren dismantles this excuse nicely with examples of brand switching, and he further acknowledges that in cases where loyalty to a brand does exist, marketers who do not target Boomers give them no reason to change.

Read the full review. (PDF)

What’s not mentioned, not even considered, is that 95% of advertising is targeted to Millennials.  Of course they would be influenced. And when advertising is directed at a mature demographic, advertisers screw it up so much that we’re offended. (I think I’ve said this a thousand times in my book, blog, speaking engagements, consulting assignments, on street corners drooling and unbathed as I accost unsuspecting passersby.)

Download the first few chapters of the book: Advertising to Baby Boomers PDF

Overall, consumers view traditional advertising mediums — TV, print, and radio — as the most trustworthy, while they view online and social media advertising more skeptically …

What a shock. I’m also guessing that most consumers trust established stores more than some guy in a dark alley with an open suitcase full of watches and whatnot.

A post from a few weeks ago:

Smartphone Ads = Silly Graphical Doodads
… The mobile/social media soothsayers will have you believe that there is this unknown, magical mode of persuasion that has never been thought of before – and will reveal itself any day now.

And lots more, too many more posts:

Social Media - WOMM - Web Advertising

From May 2010:

Foretellings
… 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.

NostraChuckus Scoops The New York Times.

Famed Soothsayer and advertising gadfly NostraChuckus has been startling the world for years with his mundane prognostications.

Almost every eve, The Great Seer stares into his Crystal Ball of Common Sense and sees himself – but in other guises. These strange visages look nothing like him – yet they do. It’s as if his magikal orb doubles as a phantasmagoric funhouse mirror.

Today, he stares into the undulating image of The New York Times…

Baby Boomers to Advertisers: Don’t Forget About Us
By Janet Morrissey
“Marketers have gotten so hot for the millennial generation that they have essentially ignored boomers” … “We’re here in the millions, and we have more disposable income, time and want to spend money. Yet they don’t give us the consideration that they should.”

Sounds eerily familiar. Download the first few chapters of Advertising to Baby Boomers (2005/2007).

“I’m here today to fix something that drives me completely crazy,” before criticizing his wireless competitors for deeming boomers as “too old,” “stuck in the past” and not interested in technology or the internet.

NostraChuckus, from the 2005 book:

“It will be the Baby Boomers who will be the first to pick and choose, to ignore or be seduced by leading-edge technology marketing. There’s a simple reason for this. We have the money to buy this stuff. Experts say we’ll continue to have the money for at least the next twenty years. Write us off at your own peril.”

14 November 2005
My Favorite Cyber-Myth
How I snicker and roll my eyes whenever I read about Baby Boomers fumbling around on computers, scratching their heads, totally flummoxed.

More from The New York Times:

He mocked some of his rivals’ senior phone plans for focusing on “big buttons”…

08 December 2007
The Jitterbug Phone
… Those numbers and buttons are big - like a toy phone … Boomers are tech-savvy, demand choices.

Right now, it’s mainly companies that make senior-related products, like life insurance, medical devices and reverse mortgages, that regularly target boomers.

16 September 2009
Boomer Backlash II
The Backlash: If every time someone over fifty sees a commercial targeting them and it’s always for an age-related product or service, pretty soon their eyes will glaze over, they’ll get itchy and grumpy.
The Real Issue: Marketing and advertising folks grasping the fact that Boomers will be buying billions (trillions?) of dollars worth of non-age related products for the next twenty-odd years. If you target this group for toothpaste, computers, clothes, food, nail polish, sporting equipment, toenail clippers - anything at all (almost), and you do it with respect and finesse, they will appreciate and consider your product.

“They want to market to the cool segment, the modern segment, the ‘in’ segment,” Mr. Light said of marketers, many of whom are millennials themselves.

The 2005 book again.  The introductory chapter, The Geritol Syndrome, is all about this.

19 August 2015
Folks Are Still Reading My 2005 Book
… It’s going to be up to companies to be proactive when dealing with advertising agencies. Quality control of your product doesn’t stop at the entrances of Madison Avenue’s finest, or at the doors of small local or regional advertising agencies. If companies put pressure on agencies, and demand 45-plus creatives for products aimed at the 45-plus market, then they will find out that Baby Boomers are still “the single most vibrant and exciting consumer group in the world.”

Automobiles is another category where boomers may feel underserved…

Too many posts about this.  Three:

12 March 2009
Who’s gonna buy this car?
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.

18 DECEMBER 2009
What Next From The Crystal Ball of Common Sense?

03 MAY 2012
67% Of All Sales…
… Those age 50 and older are buying more than three of every five new vehicles sold, or about 62% … For the Detroit Three, boomers now account for 67% of all sales.

NostraChuckus is getting tired now. The images are becoming jumbled, hazy.

The Great Seer knows he’s not alone. Other Great Seers have been staring into their crystal balls for decades: Kevin Lavery, Dick Stroud, Mary Furlong, John Migliaccio, Kurt Medina, Todd Harff, Brent Green, Carol Orsborn, Matt Thornhill, David Wolfe – just to name a few. 

16 NOVEMBER 2015
The Déjà Vu No New News
… It’s always a treat to get up, make some coffee, open the newspaper (pixels or pulp) and read nothing new.
Even that shticky opening sentence is nothing new.

At least it's nice to have The New York Times catch up with validate what we’ve been saying all these years.

---

Just for fun:

Normal and Healthy is Scary
by Chuck Nyren
Is living forever going to suck?

Disillusioned

Harry (Rick) Moody, former Vice President and Director of Academic Affairs for AARP, tackles disillusionment in an engrossing piece for The American Society on Aging.  He opens with a humorous, self-deprecating story about not giving a presentation on the subject:

Baby Boomers: From Great Expectations to a Crisis of Meaning
… I had given many presentations at conferences on aging, but this session turned out to be unique: I sat on a chair at my poster session for two hours and not a single person came by. Not one. Talk about disillusionment!

Rick goes deep, quoting and/or referencing Robert N. Butler, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, The Buddha, Erik Erikson, Viktor Frankl, and others. His take, it seems to me, is not to define disillusionment as some sort of generic depression - but as a wisdom-inducing experience, perhaps not welcomed but ultimately enlightening.

The Danish author Isak Dinesen once said: “All the sorrows of life are bearable if only we can convert them into a story.” Are we perhaps telling the wrong story about old age—namely, that we can “fix” it?

---

Rick Moody’s Human Values in Aging Newsletter has over 10,000 subscribers. It’s free w/ no advertising. A personal newsletter. No privacy-invading shenanigans.  Email Rick and he will add you to the list.

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While Rick goes deep, Chuck goes shallow – simply sticking a finger in the ocean and wriggling it around. Way back in 2005, in my book Advertising to Baby Boomers, a chapter dealing with some of the same issues:

Don’t Paint Too Rosy A Picture
A recent article in USA Today asks us to “take a moment to journey forward to 2046, when 79 million baby boomers will be 82 to 100 years old.”[i]  A paragraph later, the reporter asks, “So just what kind of America will be forged by this crowd of geriatric goliaths?”

Excuse me for being an unassuming ‘David’ (or even worse, a genocidal Grim Reaper) but I doubt very much that all 79 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. will still be alive in forty years, swaggering like giants – unless the medical establishment is holding out on me.

The good news you know: many Baby Boomers will live longer, healthier lives – more so than in any previous generations. The bad news you also know: a huge chunk of Boomers will pass on, and another huge chunk will be dealing with acute diseases and afflictions.  

The problem is that well-meaning articles in the press like the USA Today piece, along with mountains of 50+ marketing fodder, are setting up Boomers for a psychological fall.  There will be a backlash.

Not being a therapist, I won’t diagnose – but if it were beaten into my head over and over that things were going to be just peachy for the next forty years, that my same-aged friends will all be around laughing and cavorting while leading meaningful, vigorous lives—then, shock of shocks, many of us become incapacitated and/or drop and die – I will feel cheated.   I will become depressed and disillusioned.  It will happen even if I’m one of the ‘lucky’ healthy ones.

Ask today’s 80+ year olds about this or that and you’ll probably find that many are surprised (but relatively pleased) they’re still alive.  They believe they’ve beaten the odds, for whatever reasons.  Jump twenty-five, thirty years: if the myth of the non-dying, perfectly healthy Baby Boomer persists, folks in the aging industry are going to have millions of very angry octogenarians their hands.  They might even blame you for all those false promises.

How should this be dealt with by marketers and advertisers?  Contrary to popular myth, Baby Boomers do not believe that they are still teenagers or young adults. (Some probably do, but they need therapy.)  Boomers are slyly redefining what it means to be the ages they are.  Included in this new definition are some youthful attitudes – but the real change is that instead of winding down, many are winding up.  We’re not ‘looking forward to retirement,’ we’re looking forward to new lives, new challenges.  Only a small percentage will opt for pure retirement.

This is all part of redefining what it means to be the ages we are.  It may seem to some as  pathological, believing and acting as if we’re eighteen or twenty-five – but that’s because pundits and experts suspiciously eyeing this gargantuan, spirited, unwieldy and varied hoard of middle-agers have nothing to compare it to.  The only conclusion they can come to: Baby Boomers must a bit daft.

There is a big difference between thinking you are younger than you are – and not thinking that you are old.  This ‘night and day’ distinction may confuse many pundits, but it does not confuse most Boomers.

Much of this new, positive attitude about our future has to do with being the beneficiaries of so many fast and furious medical advances.  Some we have already taken advantage of, while others are ready and waiting for us – or right around the corner.  A good example is joint and hip replacement surgery.  The cane industry is in the doldrums, and we’re hoping it will never recover.

Another medical advance (still in its infancy, from what I’ve read) is pain management.  This promises Baby Boomers and successive generations freedom from a fear that haunts all as we age.

There has been plenty of press about Baby Boomers and their dread of Alzheimer’s.  Not much of a surprise.  Alzheimer’s affects many of our parents, we’re caring for them – and nothing frightens us more than not being in control of our own destinies.  However, from what I’ve read there may be some breakthroughs within the next twenty years.  That’s very good news.

Am I painting too rosy a picture here?  Isn’t this something I was railing against in the first few paragraphs?

Yes, but with a big difference.  All the examples above have to do with the quality of life – not the quantity.

If I were digging into a marketing/advertising campaign for a client in the aging industry, I would extract as much quality inherent in the product/service – and toss out any (or most) mention of longevity.  This would hold true even with basic nutritional and  exercise products.  A significant chunk of people who eat only healthy foods and  exercise regularly die of heart attacks, get cancer, are the victims of  all sorts of diseases and afflictions.  You can’t fool me.

But the quality of their lives in every respect will be superior to the ones who don’t take care of themselves, or avail themselves to what’s out there in the aging industry market.  

Nobody can promise you that you’ll live to be a hundred.  However, you can (more or less) make a good argument that healthy lifestyles and advances in modern medicine will offer you a quality life after sixty that no preceding generation had ever imagined.

[i] 2046: A boomer odyssey
By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY October 27, 2005

_____

There’s nothing wrong with being positive and aspirational – you just have to temper it with dollops of reality so your marketing won’t be dismissed as pie-in-the-sky nonsense.