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.
Dick Stroud is excited. With the help of wise outfit MotherApp®, Mr. Stroud now has his own iPhone app - and a new blog to blog about it:
Mobile apps for Baby Boomers Everything you could want to know about mobile apps that are especially useful for ageing consumers be they Baby Boomers, Seniors, Matures, 50-plus or even oldies.
I remember the thrill of HTML – and tossing up my first web page in 1996. The second one even had an animated GIF!
There have been a few technological advances since then (although sometimes I wonder how ‘advanced’ they really are).
I have iTunes installed and an iPod is floating around here – but my phone is considered dumb. I don’t plan on sending it to Harvard anytime soon.
However, a very brainy phone with a handful of advanced degrees lives here. Every so often yours truly and Dr. Droid have deep, rewarding, philosophical thumb-dances. Because I’m not nutty about mobile media, I have no idea if Mr. Stroud’s app would work on the thing.
There’s a piece in BusinessWeek about social marketing (whatever that means) for the Ford Fiesta:
How Ford Got Social Marketing Right The idea was: let's go find twenty-something YouTube storytellers who've learned how to earn a fan community of their own. [People] who can craft a true narrative inside video, and let's go talk to them. And let's put them inside situations that they don't get to normally experience/document. Let's add value back to their life. They're always looking, they're always hungry, they're always looking for more content to create. I think this gets things exactly right.
Hmmm. Twenty-somethings only. I guess they forgot about this:
What Next From The Crystal Ball of Common Sense? My 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? And market them as such?
Back to the promotion: YouTube ‘storytellers’ get free cars for six months (or forever, it’s not clear) and drive around, videotaping their exploits.
Sounds like a jingle writing contest to me. Not that social marketing or jingle writing contests are bad things. They’re okay things.
Here’s one of the Ford Fiesta jingles getting attention:
Fine. But for crazy antics, sound effects, and music - I prefer Spike Jones:
More from the BusinessWeek article:
The effects of the campaign were sensational … Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign.
Except … as a commenter noted:
There is a major blunder in the article: "The effects of the campaign were sensational... Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales." In fact,the Fiesta is not yet on sale outside Europe and Asia, and no potential customer has so much as driven a US-spec model. The referenced "sales" are most likely the non-binding, no-deposit reservations made on the Fiesta website. The cars used in the campaign were European-market loaners, and we'll have to wait a few months to see how many North Americans actually buy the car.
Yes, we’ll have to wait and see. We’ll also have to wait and see how long Ford waits (after cars are in lots) before they decide to do what they do in England … making the Fiesta a top seller. It’s called advertising:
And when it comes to viral videos of the Ford Fiesta – here’s the most popular one of all – uploaded and ‘remixed’ by dozens of ‘citizen marketers’ and seen by millions:
As most of my readers know, NostraChuckus’ predictions are uncannily somewhat accurate. After all, those are hazy images in that crystal ball. The Great Soothsayer can’t always make out the details, the wrinkles.
And you’re not supposed to, either – especially when gazing into ads for cosmetics.
A couple of years ago, NostraChuckus was the only one to divine the real photoshopped picture from the fake (read the comments):
Another Online Diviner, Ronni Bennett, is rarely, if ever, fooled:
The Ad is a Fraud Eagle-eye Ronni Bennett unmasked this ad for a wrinkle cream:
Now, Our Mother Country is taking action against such non-magickal practices in advertising:
Twiggy's Photoshopped Olay ads banned in England … Beauty company Olay debuted its Definity eye cream campaign depicting model Twiggy looking far younger, smoother, and firmer than her then 59 years should suggest. 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.
Way back in July 2009, NostraChuckus mentioned something about Twiggy’s airbrushed Olay ad in one of his lantern and shadow shows. It’s only about a minute-and-a-half in – so you don’t have to watch the whole thing:
I guess what I find odd is that real Ms. Lawson looks quite attractive to me. A dollop of Olay, a dash of makeup, and she’s good to go. Better than good.
Of course, yours truly at fifty-nine (the same age as Twiggy, give or take a few months) looks years and years younger. I have to get graphic artists to add wrinkles, flaps, and fat sags to my images. Here’s a recent untouched one:
The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind Barbara Strauch – Author For many years, scientists thought that the human brain simply decayed over time and its dying cells led to memory slips, fuzzy logic, negative thinking, and even depression. But new research from neuroscientists and psychologists suggests that, in fact, the brain reorganizes, improves in important functions, and even helps us adopt a more optimistic outlook in middle age. Growth of white matter and brain connectors allow us to recognize patterns faster, make better judgments, and find unique solutions to problems. Scientists call these traits cognitive expertise and they reach their highest levels in middle age.
How to Train the Aging Brain Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age.
I liked this:
The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can.
Time to wrap up the aughts and throw’em in the trash (please don’t recycle them).
That’s what most people think:
Current Decade Rates as Worst in 50 Years As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have a generally negative (50%) rather than a generally positive (27%) impression of the past 10 years. This stands in stark contrast to the public’s recollection of other decades in the past half-century. When asked to look back on the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, positive feelings outweigh negative in all cases.
I’ve stumbled upon a few news stories about the above survey – and either the writers are not too bright, or they’ve purposely twisted the results to make Baby Boomers seem as if they had mostly positive reactions to the past decade. I’m not linking to these news stories – but I’ll quote one:
Despite the generally negative view of the 2000s, fewer baby boomers saw this decade negatively. “Baby Boomers - most of whom are between the ages of 50 and 64 today and were between 20 and 34 in 1979 - view this decade in an overwhelmingly favorable light, with positive impressions outnumbering negative views by 48 points (59% positive vs. 11% negative).”
Boomers Look Back Fondly … The biggest generational division of opinion is in retrospective evaluations of the 1970s. Baby Boomers – most of whom are between the ages of 50 and 64 today and were between 20 and 34 in 1979 – view this decade in an overwhelmingly favorable light, with positive impressions outnumbering negative views by 48 points (59% positive vs. 11% negative).