Passat's Midlife Crisis

I was tipped off to Passat’s tongue-in-cheek web site by Steve Hall’s top-notch, often troublemaking blog, Adrants (rated way up there in some recent marketing/advertising blog poll):

Mid-Life Crisis Campaign Alienates Both Young And Old

After sniffing around the Passat site, I forwarded the URL to Dick Stroud because the campaign was created in London. He jumped all over it.

Now it’s my turn ...

A bit of background: I also write fiction, plays, short stories, commentary, other stuff besides advertising. Most ad creatives do. And when I do, I write whatever I want. No self-censoring. If I make fun of myself, of getting older, of just about anything, the point is to be honest and entertaining and whatever you want to call it. And that’s it.

But when involved in selling products and services, of course I censor myself. Common sense tells you it’s a bad idea to alienate or make (too much) fun of your target market.

Here’s a ‘creative’ piece I recently sent to Ronni Bennett’s Elder Storytelling Place. You may think it’s funny, stupid, great, middling – think anything you want.

My point: I would never use this type of scenario to sell products or services to Baby Boomers – or any demographic. If you’re feeling the urge to viciously and relentlessly mock a group of people, it might be a good idea to make sure it’s not the group of people you’re targeting.

If you can’t control yourself (like I can’t sometimes), here’s a better idea: write something, make a video, put up a web site that is funny and vicious and relentless but isn’t advertising anything. Feel free to make fun of me. If it’s good, if it’s creative, I’ll probably laugh.

Steve Hall makes an excellent point about the Passat site also alienating younger demos:

This approach wields a questionably double edged sword. It clearly positions the Passat as a car no one under 40 would be caught dead driving.

How I would have done it: Make it a retreat for people in their twenties and thirties so they won't ever have to go through a ‘mid-life crisis.’ It's a preventative retreat. The older people would be the mentors, the enlightened ones. It would be explained that they never went through any sort of mid-life crisis because they’ve been driving Passats for their whole adult lives. Maybe one or two of the teachers (or guest lecturers) have recently reformed. They would tell horror stories about their midlife crisis former lives.

You've made heroes of your target market, you haven't alienated a secondary market (under 40s) - and you've still had all sorts of tongue-in-cheek fun.

Go play around on the Passat site. Laugh or roll your eyes, or both. I did both.

But I’ll bet that from now on, no matter what your age, every time you happen upon a Passat ...

You might chuckle – but it’ll also make you a bit queasy.

2007 Boomer Venture Summit

The 2007 Boomer Venture Summit will be an exciting one this year. Some of the speakers I know or know of include:

Mary Furlong (of course).

Paul Kleyman, editor of AgeBeat. He published a piece of mine a few years ago. One of the nicest and smartest guys around.

Mark Miller of 50+ Digital LLC. Mark presented in NYC a few months ago. Yours truly was also on the bill.

Emilio Pardo, Chief Brand Officer, AARP. We mixed it up a bit on the radio recently.

Looks like a great event. I blogged about the last two:

Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit (2005)

The 2006 Boomer Venture Summit

Unilever Resuscitates the Demo Left for Dead

Yeah, I’ve been feeling a bit like Nostradamus lately.

Here’s a good piece by Ad Age’s Jack Neff:

Published: May 28, 2007
Unilever Resuscitates the Demo Left for Dead
Marketer Spies Goldmine in the Often-Overlooked Baby-Boomer Consumer

When Unilever researchers started looking into the shopping patterns of baby boomers, many of its younger marketing executives wondered why ...

"When we first started launching this project internally, we received e-mails from some of our younger colleagues asking, 'Who cares about these people?'" said Mike Twitty, senior group research manager-shopper insights for Unilever."

Gee. That's a major theme in my book - originally published over two years ago.

More from Mr. Neff’s article:

Stereotypes aside, many boomers are actually early adopters of new technology and switchers to new brands, Ms. Kozin said. "Younger people may be more excited and write about it," she said. "But boomers have the money to spend on it." … And they'll do so, she said, particularly when the communications are geared to them.

I think I’ve read all this before. Click the image on the right to see the pull quote on the cover of the 1st edition of my book.

And about brand switching - a quote from a book review in The Journal of Consumer Marketing (PDF):

A second favorite excuse of agencies is: “Baby Boomers don’t change brands.” 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.

I also talk about AARP’s ‘body bags’ in a chapter – but I’m too lazy to go find it and pull some quotes.

Actually, if you read Jack Neff’s piece along with Rance Crain’s piece you don’t need to read my book. (Unless, of course, I’ve predicted bunches of other stuff and you’d like to know the future. Or, you can wait for brand managers, research folks, and CMOs to catch up and be profiled in Ad Age in a few years.)

Here I am at work – with my patented Crystal Ball of Marketing and Advertising Common Sense.

Disney Does Something Smart

Disney is putting together an interactive video-on-demand travel channel:

The channel will include original programs, including reality shows, episodic programs, concerts and special events highlighting Disney's domestic theme parks in Florida and California as well as its adventure travel business.

The shows will be offered free to viewers and will include interactive features, including the ability to request more information using buttons on the TV remote control.

Good move. I talked about doing long-form commercials over two years ago in my book. The chapter is available as a PDF on The Advertising Educational Foundation's web site.

And here's a fellow speaking about the travel industry and Baby Boomers - mirroring much of what I said over three years ago:

Another key trend in today's travel industry is that tour groups are getting smaller, especially as travelers move toward more special interest activities … Lacy noted that the days of seeing 50 people getting off a motor coach are slowly fading away, and modes of transportation such as RVs, bikes, minivans, trains and planes are becoming just as important.

Below are the first few paragraphs of the article - courtesy of The Way Back Machine:

You'll find a chapter about travel in the 2007 edition of my book. Who knows, I may have predicted a bunch of other stuff. We'll have to wait and see.

P.S. I don't use a crystal ball. Just common sense.

Music for Grownups?

I was a guest on NPR/WNYC’s Soundcheck this week. It’s a rousing, as-eclectic-as-you-can-get music show hosted by John Schaefer.

No, John did not ask me to play blistering, sloppy, cliché-ridden blues guitar (although I had it plugged in and right next to my phone just in case). The segment was titled “Music for Grownups?” and was about AARP’s new music site. Also on the show was Emilio Pardo, Chief Brand Officer for AARP.

Read about and listen to the segment here.

As is usually the case, AARP’s grab for Baby Boomers is an admixture of good intentions, some top-notch stuff – and cheesy, insulting schlock.

The top-notch stuff includes Music for Grownups - a blog by veteran critic and writer Richard Gehr. Mr. Gehr does a superlative job balancing the esoteric with the middle-of-the-road. It’ll be worth checking in with him from time to time.

Also pretty good is Music Connections (buried – it should be on the opening page). This section profiles well-known artists and longtails them. Not a bad idea – although the original Baby Boomer music longtail is Rhino Records – decades before the term ever existed. If I were producing a music site for Baby Boomers, I’d study the history of Rhino, along with its business/cultural model, and pick up pointers (or partner with them). I'd also check out Shout! Factory - another longtail music/video site birthed by "refugees from the Rhino Records label."

There is a Pandora-driven feature called AARP Jukebox. It's fine, it's business, it's one of the ways new technology companies make money - by partnering with sites like AARP. But as John Schaefer points out during the show, Pandora is Pandora. If you want your Pandora filtered through AARP, do it. But it's nothing that special. (In fact, cookies keep your account the same no matter which site you happen to be on.)

The dreadful cheese includes a Music IQ Test that should have been created by someone with an IQ over fifty (or, I’m guessing, someone over fifty years old). And there is a Paul McCartney Timeline that is so useless and inane – it reminds me of a teen magazine from 1964 (or maybe that’s what it’s supposed to remind me of). Features like this may sink the site.

AARP had an excellent opportunity to promote and brand their organization with an article about Carlos Santana – but they blew it. I clicked the link, and started reading:

At 55, Carlos Santana is at the pinnacle of his artistic and creative career …

At first I thought there was a typo – knowing that Carlos Santana is closer to sixty. I kept reading (it’s a good piece) and at the end talks about his recent album “Supernatural.” That’s when I rolled my eyes. “Supernatural” came out about seven or eight years ago. This was some old article that they’re fobbing off as something new – on their ‘new’ site.

What should they have done? Added this: Here’s a vintage AARP Magazine article from six years ago that is still worth a read. And at the end of the piece they should’ve added something like: Since then, Carlos Santana has recorded two or three albums (info about the albums), has played on albums by (blah, blah, blah), has gone on these many successful world tours, tours with his son, is currently working on an album titled …

Not only are we up to date with fresh information – but AARP has now branded itself as an outlet for music that (little did you know) has a long, distinguished history.

Listen to Music for Grownups? by clicking the start button (the little arrow on the left):



Thanks again to the staff at Soundcheck for inviting me on the show.