Advertising to Baby Boomers

15 June 2010

NostraChuckus Scoops New York Times

A blog post stamped May 21, 2010:

We’re all miserably happy, or …
While it’s usually a mistake to assume that Baby Boomers are all the same, in this case it must be true: We’re all happy and miserable.

The New York Times, June 11, 2010:

In Midlife, Boomers Are Happy — and Suicidal
In recent weeks, researchers reported that Americans in midlife are a remarkably contented lot, and that they also have the highest rate of suicide.

NostraChuckus is thrilled to be able to predict news stories weeks before the New York Times. He might kill himself because he never gets the credit he deserves.

Spending goes where the eyeballs are.

Not a big surprise:

TV, the ‘Old Medium,’ Holds Its Own in an Ad Spending Recovery
By ERIC PFANNER
“Many big advertisers remain loyal to television,” said Vincent Letang, an analyst a Screen Digest. “At the end of the day, it’s about audience. Despite all the hype about digital growth, spending goes where the eyeballs are.”

Then factor in this: New Media technology is getting smaller, not bigger. Eyeballs are squinting:

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. Advertising on smartphones will be considered an annoyance, invasive, and rather dinky – while marketing (coupons on steroids, and more) will flourish and dominate.

Ad space? Matchbook covers are bigger.

And television outlets “still provide advertisers with the best hope of reaching a mass audience in a single swoop, at the lowest possible cost, analysts say.”

If anything, smartphones and iPads are death-knells for ‘new media’ advertising.

13 June 2010

So what’s a Baby Boomer? Redux

I first blogged about this in 2006 (the embedded links have vanished):

So What's A Baby Boomer?
The "baby boom" actually began in 1943 when birth rates began to rise, dipping slightly in 1944 and 1945. I like to include people born a few years before that when I talk about Baby Boomers.

Obviously, I’m not anal about it. But because marketing research is such a huge industry and detailed studies cost hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars, I wonder why so many people involved in slicing and dicing demos are so often confused:

Alpha Daughters Help Unravel the Complexity of the Ageing Baby Boomer Market
Over 12% of the US population are aged 65 or over and in the EU and US combined there are over 100 million people in this rapidly growing demographic group. Many of these consumers are the greying baby boomers …

Not yet. Technically there aren’t any Baby Boomers over sixty-five. The oldest ones are turning sixty-four this year – and that’s just the oldest ones born in 1946. It’ll take another nineteen years for all Boomers to be over sixty-five.

Whatever ‘alpha daughters’ are, most are Baby Boomers. They’re actually alpha-grandparents/daughters – meaning, they are caretaking their parents who are in their late seventies, eighties, and beyond – along with being grandparents – and (obviously) parents of adults. A good book about it:

The Daughter Trap
Researcher Kennedy conducted 60 minute depth phone interviews across the U.S. with a nationally-representative sample of 216 working women born between 1946-1964, who reported having primary caregiving responsibility for one or more aging parents or in-laws.

Baby Boomers who will need caregiving won’t need it for another fifteen to thirty years.

Female baby boomers get online, not in line, for beauty
In the Mintel “Beauty Retailing” study, 1-in-10 of the 1,020 female respondents—all ages 18 years or older—reported using some type of online retailer to purchase cosmetics and skin care aids, and as the female population ages, the female boomer population is expected to increase by 30.9% from 2005 to 2015.

The female boomer population is expected to increase by 30.9% …

That would be quite a magic trick. I don’t think Professor Dumbledore could even do it.

09 June 2010

Cleaning Out Those Dusty Ethereal Drawers

It’s amazing what you find when you’re on a cleaning binge.
I’ve moved. Not this blog, my business site:
ChuckNyren.com
Bunches of pages were virtually shredded, the (very simple) design tweaked, and now I have a new home. Not much different than my old one. I like it.
Should I have left this on the landing page?

Tossed. It’s vapid and annoying. But not long or pointless.
There’s an in the news section. I stumbled down memory lane. As you might expect, there were some laughs, some gasps, some queasiness, some shocks, some I-told-you-so’s. A few nooks were empty. I guess news sites likewise do spring cleaning.
I’d been interviewed bunches of times about Baby Boomers, but this was the first news story about advertising and Boomers:

Don't call them old (2003)
By Jean Starr "Not wanting to get/be/look older isn't anything new. However, baby boomers will do it a bit differently," he said. "Looking and being healthy will be more important than toupees and botox. While botox and the like are getting a lot of press, I'm guessing only a small percentage of people are using stuff like that. Being able to ride a bike, play tennis and garden will be more important than looking good and feeling (bad)."

My local newspaper ‘covered’ me:

Ads today often skip over baby boomers
By Julie Muhlstein (2005)
Chuck Nyren is feeling abandoned. It's not about friends or loved ones. He thinks he's being ignored by advertising.
"What's happening now, advertising agencies are pretty much run by kids in their 20s and early 30s," said Nyren, an ad industry consultant who lives in Snohomish.

So much has changed since then. Like, my hairline.

Ads target empty nests, full wallets (2005)
by Bob Moos "Yes, I have my favorite toothpaste. But other than that, I'm wide open for suggestions," said Chuck Nyren, 55, the author of Advertising to Baby Boomers. "Why do ad execs believe boomers don't switch brands?"
Mr. Nyren said advertising agencies often ignore or misread boomers' preferences because most of their creative people are too young to understand that generation. "The agencies better hire more boomers if they want to reach them," he said.

So much has changed since then. But not my toothpaste.

Active lives defy aging (2006)
By Bill Glauber
"There will have to be a revolution in the advertising world," says Chuck Nyren, author of Advertising to Baby Boomers. "Baby boomers do not want to be twenty again, or thirty again," Nyren writes. "They want to feel as good as they possibly can for the ages they are. They do not want to be marketed and advertised to as if they were young adults or thirty-somethings."

Don’t tell these people.

A Booming Opportunity (2006)
By Renee M. Covino
"In England, they've done a lot of studies about 'wrap rage,' and it goes much deeper than not being able to open a bottle of medicine, for instance. It's anything, any consumer goods packaging that people have trouble opening, and as Baby Boomers are starting to age, they are very sensitive to this," says Chuck Nyren, who just happens to be another Baby Boomer and also creative strategist and consultant, as well as author of "Advertising to Baby Boomers." According to him, "bad packaging can make Baby Boomers feel incompetent; as marketers, you don't want to remind this group of people that they don't have the physical skills they had when they were younger."

Of course, the above has nothing to do with me. 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.

Boomers: A Web-Marketing Bonanza (2006)
By Olga Kharif
But many sites are still struggling with their identities and have not yet hit their stride, says boomer advertising consultant Chuck Nyron, author of Advertising for Baby Boomers (Paramount Market Publishing, 2005) "Every site has happy, smiling faces of baby boomers and says: 'We want to inspire you'," he explains.

My name is misspelled.

Trying to catch the wave (2006)
By Bill King
He’s proud that an industry once monopolized by white males opened itself to women and other races and ethnicities under the watch of the boomers. But there was one way in which his generation of marketers threw up a wall.

“Our blind spot was age,” Nyren said. “We were the ones who started only marketing to ourselves. We created the demo. We taught people how to market to it. And now, we’re paying the price, because the agencies have all been brainwashed into thinking that to be worth anything [to marketers], you have to be young.”

Don’t trust anyone over thirty. Unless they’re over fifty.

'Elderbloggers' Shy Away From Money Talk (2008)
By Candice Novak
"Most older people hit that Google button, and in some ways it confuses them more than it enlightens them," Seattle marketing expert and blogger Chuck Nyren, 57, says, "because there's so much crap you have to wade through to get something that is truthful or helpful."

I was talking more about this – not Google Search.

Baby boomers become the forgotten consumer (2008)
By Jennifer Mann, McClatchy Newspapers
Nyren said he often hears from marketers that advertising isn't effective on those 50-plus consumers, that it's a waste of time and money.
No, he said, they're just not doing it correctly.
"Speaking to the 50-plus, it has to be different in terms of writing and graphics and presentation," Nyren said. "A 20-something is an easier sell - you have to work harder, work smarter to get that 50-plus customer, but the return on investment, if you do it right, can be tremendous."

So do it right.

Adult underwear no longer being given the silent treatment
By Bob Moos (2009)
Chuck Nyren, a Seattle advertising consultant and author of Advertising to Baby Boomers, says the TV spots are carefully crafted to appeal to boomers who, if they don't use Depends themselves, may be caregivers for parents who do.

"Morris got the right people and took the right approach," he said. "Now, if only other advertisers would hire boomers to pitch refrigerators, soap and other products."

No kidding.

Businesses Fighting For Baby Boomer Dollars (2009)
By Mary Motzko Aside from age issues, Nyren added that there are many different personality types included in the baby boomer generation, from former hippies to conservatives. "Evoking the '60s, it's not the smartest thing to do."

No kidding.

Others have vanished into the unity, take advantage of my linguistic illiteracy, are hidden behind virtual curtains.
But you can still hear me being drowned out by Led Zeppelin.

07 June 2010

The world might become a better place.

I bookmarked this piece a few weeks ago. It keeps pulling at me. While there’s not much new, it has that ‘sums up everything’ quality:

As longevity grows, the world might become a better place
The Washington Post
By Fred Pearce
The longevity revolution affects every country, every community and almost every household. It promises to restructure the economy, reshape the family, redefine politics and even rearrange the geopolitical order over the coming century.

I try to stay on topic with this blog. So I’ll simply say: The international advertising industry had better pay attention to this article.

Posts/links from the past:

We have seen the future, and it is old and cool and wise.

People generally get better.

Old Masters and Young Geniuses

What Kind of Genius Are You?

Baby boomers are smarter than you think

Fred Pearce also talks about the origins of retirement:

The idea of a retirement age was invented by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s, when as chancellor of Germany he needed a starting age for paying war pensions. He chose the age of 65 because that was typically when ex-soldiers died … In the future, people will probably be expected to stay in the formal economy longer.

Some worry that an older workforce will be less innovative and adaptable, but there is evidence that companies with a decent proportion of older workers are more productive than those addicted to youth.