04 August 2010

Universal Design As A Beginning, Not An End

image I’ve been blogging about MIT AgeLab and Dr. Joseph Coughlin since 2006:

 MIT AgeLab

Bookmarked Brains

Fast Company Names Joseph Coughlin to Top 100 List

An excellent post yesterday:

Fashion, Function & Fun: Product Design Demands of Older Baby Boomer Consumers
imageToo many designers, marketers and concerned observers have declared universal design to be the universal answer to meet the new needs of the growing numbers of older baby boomer consumers. While not altogether incorrect, they are woefully incomplete in their hopes and claims ... Even if an older consumer can easily use a technology, they must value its functionality before investing the money, time to learn, let alone adopt a new way to do tasks that they may already achieve with 'tried and true' methods.

This mirrors a few things I’ve said over the years. The pull quote from the cover of my book, first edition published in early 2005:

coveradvbb“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.

More from Joe Coughlin:

Research suggests that older users critically assess whether a new technology clearly provides greater value than the existing means they use to satisfy a given need before spending money or time. If the value is not appreciably greater than the existing means, then the likelihood of spending the time to learn how to use, let alone adopt, the technology is very low.

From my book (© 2005, 2007):

image

Apply the above to smart phones and apps, and just about any technology product.  Baby Boomers do want and demand choices, features.  They just won’t be interested in or use them all.

Dr. Coughlin:

Usability, universal or otherwise, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of product purchase, adoption and use.

The above quote is likewise true when marketing and advertising to the 50+ demo.  Do not assume that Universal Design is a Unique Selling Proposition.
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Update, August 7:

Rolling Rains Report – Take It To The Next Level

Boomers Driving and Demanding Innovation by Dr. Joseph Coughlin (CNBC)

Update, August 19:

Marketing Universal Design
by Louis Tenenbaum  August 19, 2010
image I was catching up on some of my colleague’s writing today starting with Laurie Orlov’s blog Aging in Place Technology Watch about Aging in Place as a Crisis of Opportunity for CCRCs . Laurie referred to a piece by MIT Age Lab’s Joe Coughlin in his blog, Disruptive Demographics, called Should I Stay or Should I Go? These are both great pieces, sucking me right in the way the web does, ‘helping’ whole days to slip away unnoticed. This is time well spent.

02 August 2010

New Site Renders Social Media Experts Obsolete

This cracked me up:

New Site Renders Social Media Experts Obsolete
by Jason Kincaid
image PR agencies and social media experts across the web, prepare to meet your match. This week sees the launch of ******.com, a website that can tell startups to “identify relevant and compelling hooks”, “humanise the brand by driving the audience conversations”, and combine a bevy of many other pleonastic words to forge taglines that are utterly and completely devoid of meaning. Free of charge.

In an earlier version of my business web site, I had this ‘pinned’ to the landing page:

post- it
Too bad this valuable service wasn’t available then.  But I’m bookmarking it now - in case I ever need to say nothing somewhere.
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Thanks to Peter Himler for pointing me to the TechCrunch article.

26 July 2010

Peace is good for business.

smithsoniancoverFun and very wise issue of Smithsonian Magazine for August.

I’m guessing anybody breezing through it will stop and thoroughly read at least a dozen or more of the 40 Things You Need To Know About The Next 40 Years

Two that will have a positive effect on business and advertising:

The Age of Peace
Maturing populations may mean a less violent future for many societies torn by internal conflict
By Carolyn O’Hara
Demographers have found that developing nations with “youth bulges”—more than 40 percent of people between the ages of 15 and 29—are 2.5 times more prone to internal conflict, including terrorism, than countries with fewer young people …

“If we know that youth bulges are a big source of violence, including terrorism, it’s good news if these youth bulges are receding…”

All this isn’t new.  I’ve blogged about it many times:

The world might become a better place
image 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. (Washington Post, Fred Pearce)

image

While a few industries might disagree, it’s generally acknowledged that peace is good for business. Many companies around the world are gearing up for the needs and wants of an older demographic.  A good resource: The Silver Market Phenomenon.

Sabiha Al Khemir on Islam and the West
The museum curator and author predicts that relations between the United States and the Muslim world will improve
By Amy Crawford
… I believe things are changing, on both sides. The East is no longer far away. Also, this new generation, in various parts of the Islamic world, they are modern in thinking and modern in seeing the world. With all the communication that’s happening and all the opening of boundaries, the connections are there …

… People want to know, because they realize quickly enough that the way Islam has been represented by a certain minority, extremism, et cetera, is not necessarily Islam the way it is.

I experienced the above when in Istanbul last March

Take a look at more future ‘things’ from the August issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

21 July 2010

Manipulation of the Crowd

As readers of this blog know, one of my favorite activities is WOMing WOMM:
image The Latest WOM On WOMM (2009)
Wouldn’t it be nice if this were my last post about WOMM?  I think it will be, since prattle marketing won’t be much of an issue from now on…
image I guess sometimes NostraChuckus gets it wrong.  Since the above post I’ve WOMed WOMM a few more times

And this post is even another WOMing.
Manipulation of the Crowd: How Trustworthy Are Online Ratings?
By Michael Moyer

image … The philosophy behind this so-called crowdsourcing strategy holds that the truest and most accurate evaluations will come from aggregating the opinions of a large and diverse group of people. Yet a closer look reveals that the wisdom of crowds may neither be wise nor necessarily made by a crowd. Its judgments are inaccurate at best, fraudulent at worst.
Pulled from the comment section:
This article does not mention paid shills who do the reviews. As a freelance writer, this is one of the more common things that I am paid to do. Yes, you heard that right. I get paid to write articles about "products". You should try going to freelancer.com and see for yourselves the prices of reviews, articles, tweets, blog posts, facebook friends, etc. Your world is a highly manipulated one.
No kidding.

Add to all this the fact that users just love all the marketing and advertising on social networking sites:
Social Sites Lag in Customer Satisfaction
by Mark Dolliver
image … In drawing thematic conclusions from the data, the report suggests that the increasing presence of advertising within social media could be a notable source of customer dissatisfaction.
Which makes me dig up this old chestnut:
image When it all comes out in the wash, WOMM will be the best thing to happen to (silly retronym ahead) traditional advertising. Pretty soon, consumers won't believe anybody - even their best friends. They'll realize that they receive the most honest and straightforward information about a product or service from a TV commercial, radio spot, print ad, direct marketing collateral, or product web site. At least we don't lie about who we are and why we're saying what we're saying.

Remember this: Advertising didn't die with the invention of the telephone.
But don't believe me. This is just some blog, and I'm just some blogger. Who knows if someone's paying me to trash word-of-mouth marketing ...

One thing's for sure: You'll never know.

19 July 2010

All this sounds vaguely familiar...

Nielsen: This Isn't Your Grandfather's Baby Boomer
Research Titan Claims Demographic's Retirement Upends Old Notions, Younger Consumers Are Losing Dominance
by Brian Steinberg
image … Most times senior citizens are still seen in ads selling life insurance or denture cream, yet the older person in the U.S. in the next decade is likely to be anything but helpless and in the market for more than just financial help and medications.

That’s this blog, my book, my speaking and consulting around the world, my articles since 2003.

Like this one:

Boomer Backlash II
… I guess what upsets me about this campaign is not the campaign itself.  I love it.  I see people around my age – they’re entertaining, loose, funny. I’m wondering what the payoff will be. What a letdown.  

Why couldn’t it have been a car?  Laundry soap?  Baked Beans? Gender-specific razors? Aluminum foil? A smart phone? Anything but some age-related malady …

image 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.

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Update: Good piece about all this by Eve Troeh of Marketplace: Over the hill but not in a rut

Update: Brent Green’s trenchant take on it all