Snake Oil In Cyberspace

Forrester Research has a new probably-not-much-new report: How To Reach Baby Boomers With Social Technologies.  I haven’t read it, but Jenna Wortham of the New York Times has:

Baby Boomers, Luddites? Not So Fast.
A recent report from Forrester Research indicates that while it might be tempting to categorize all aging Americans as techno-dinosaurs and Luddites, more than 60 percent of baby boomers are avid consumers of social media like blogs, forums, podcasts and online videos.

I had first crack at commenting:

As far as Boomers being tech/web Luddites - I’ve been dispelling that silly myth for years - in my book and blog (Advertising to Baby Boomers, first published in early 2005).

But monetizing social networking sites … well, they still haven’t been able to do that with the Millennial and Gen Y demos. What makes anybody think you can do it with Boomers?

Michael S. Malone recently had something to say on this subject:

Facebook Scandal Version 2.0
But just as crucial to this strategy is step two, or what has been called Web 3.0: monetizing all of those millions of users. And here, most of these companies have hit a wall. By inculcating in their users the belief that social networks should be free, these companies are having a hard time figuring out how to make them pay.
Having failed to tackle the problem head on, these companies are now trying to get in through the back door -- in particular, selling off to advertisers all those terabytes of information about searches, interests and purchases.

Back to the comments collected by The New York Times – some fascinating ones follow mine:

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.

Sounds like my take on WOMM: For every duplicitous WOMM post exposed, thousands go undetected. Even a lowly blog like this one has been infected by such sleazy business tactics.

…Marketers should be looking at niche sites that draw boomers…

Sounds like my book:

I’m an instructor of technology as well, and believe it or not there are … clueless twenty-somethings when it comes to applications ... Just because you can use Facebook or MySpace hardly makes you technology-savvy.

I’ve blogged this subject.  From 2007:

An Award Winner
On NPR recently there was a report about students who were given laptops instead of textbooks. While these kids certainly knew how to download music, hang out at Facebook, and play video games – they had real problems opening up and using a word processing program. Many had no idea how to save a document. And when they did save it, they couldn’t find it again to open and work on it – or figure out how to print it.

This raises two issues for me; one about the attitudes of younger people toward me and technology and the second about the flailing about of “marketing” types who continue to refuse to understand why many of us Boomers refuse to buy their snake oil in cyberspace … Don’t sell to me when I’m trying to share research findings with colleagues, or when I’m trying to answer students’ questions, or when I’m trying to catch up with the latest events in my daughter’s life. The value of such connections cannot be monetized. Get over it.

And there’s this:

Boomer communications are personal in nature.
Eighty-four percent of boomer recommendations are made face-to-face and 82 percent by phone, as opposed to 45 percent that are made online. With boomer recommendations so rich with personal opinions, companies can reap the full benefits of positive buzz by ensuring that their customers are completely informed of all key features, capabilities and benefits of the company's products and services.

For the umpteenth time …

The Most Effective Marketing/Advertising Model For Reaching Baby Boomers: What is now called traditional advertising pushing you to an age-friendly, informative product/services web site.

Facebook Furor

I guess the big 2.0 story this week is Facebook’s TOS/PR brouhaha.  There are thousands of press pieces, podcasts, and blog posts:

The Facebook uprising
Thousands of Facebook users threatened to un-friend the entire Web site this week to protest what one consumer guardian called "a digital rights grab."

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and 25 other groups were poised to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission…

Lots of juicy morsels splayed on this social networking news story smorgasbord - but I’ll only chew on one: diversity. 

Take a look at Peter Himler’s post:

Saving Face (Book)
I knew the moment the news broke that Facebook was in for a rough patch in the court of public opinion … The real value seasoned PR pros offer seems to be in short supply at many tech start-ups, even the most successful ones. It has less to do with the number of journalists or bloggers the PR person knows, or even his or her ability to craft a sticky story line. The real value lies in one's intrinsic sense of how a "public" will react to various outputs -- a skill that is only honed after years of wallowing in the mud.

PR professionals can’t anticipate everything. But the PR department of a social networking site not anticipating a groundswell of negative social networking?

Age Diversity.  I think I’ve blogged about it a few times:

Old Masters and Young Geniuses
What Kind of Genius Are You?
Baby boomers are smarter than you think
Trust Your Gut

And a NYT piece:

Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

 

That New York Times graphic?  It’s what Peter Himler is talking about.

The list goes on and on…

Lina Ko of Boomerwatch.ca rounds up examples of mature women in campaigns:

Model Boomers
… 52-year-old Jerry Hall is the new face of Chanel; 59-year-old Twiggy is the model for Marks & Spencer; Helena Christensen, in her late 40s, is modelling underwear for Agent Provocateur. The list goes on and on …

My favorite link Lina provides:

Who says supermodels have to be 14 years old? Former French runway model Inès de La Fressange, 51, walked Jean Paul Gaultier's haute couture runway on Wednesday and stole the show from her younger colleagues.

I’ve blogged this topic before:

Demand For Older Models Grows

London & Marks & Spencer

What happens if you don’t use age-appropriate models.

2009 What’s Next Boomer Business Summit

Some interesting folks speaking this year at The What’s Next Boomer Business Summit in Las Vegas on March 19th:

Discover the business segments with the largest growth opportunity in the boomer, senior and caregiver marketplace.

Read about them.

Television Still Shines

Interesting stats and a news story …

The Stats:

In a Nielsen survey … people of all ages said they spent vastly more time watching television than they did using the Internet … In a Multichannel News article, Starz Entertainment executive director of marketing, sales and corporate research Neil Massey said, “There is no evidence that people are abandoning television for other platforms.” He continued to note that “the universe of people who watch no television but watch long-form video online is about 1%.”

The News Story:

Why Television Still Shines in a World of Screens
by Randall Stross
… Television stands out as the one old-media business with surprising resilience. Though we are spending a record amount of time online, including a record amount of time watching video, we are also watching record amounts of very old-fashioned television …

As enamored as advertisers are with the interactive potential of digital advertising, they know that online is a complement to offline, not its replacement … the typical American watched 142 hours of television monthly, up about five hours from the same quarter the previous year. Internet use averaged more than 27 hours monthly, an increase of an hour and a half …

I talk about this in my presentations and consulting. The web is a boon for most traditional media, not competition. With Baby Boomers, advertising should push them to web sites:

89% typically visit a Web site after seeing a print ad, and 83% visit a site after seeing a television ad.