AARP Global Network

There’s a chapter in my book about AARP – although I never mention the organization.  I goof a bit on their B2B campaigns circa 2004-5.  Some of what I said:

AARP Targets Media Planners
… The advertising campaign has one ad with ashen-faced Baby Boomers in body bags ("These days, doctors don't pronounce you dead. Marketers do."). Another shows Baby Boomers acting like testosteroned teenagers ("Outta the way, punks: older racers are the hot-rod kings!").Yet another has one of a middle-aged lady dead in a powder room (probably from overdoing it on the dance floor) with police chalk outlining her body. I don't know what the copy is because I haven't seen it. It's probably something like, "Give me wrinkle cream, or give me death!"

And I wasn’t enamored with their food fights, balloons and dancing gorillas.

I admired their Chicken Coop campaign, but a new print ad is a visual and conceptual mess.  It looks much better on a computer monitor (no big surprise since it was designed on one) than it does when grainy and washed out in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine:

Why is it a mess?  I can only guess.

So now it’s time to be nice to AARP.  Here goes:

The AARP Global Network is one great resource.

Global aging is a defining phenomenon of the 21st century. Does your organization have what it needs to creatively and efficiently achieve its social mission in this rapidly changing demographic landscape?

Good articles, good news section – all with juicy global perspectives. 

It’s also fun to follow the member links and visit other organizations that cater to and are concerned with aging issues.

Digital Advertising Natives and Immigrants

Follow-up to:

Foretellings 
Social Media/Word-of-mouth advertising/marketing on the web has been a washout.

Lots of talk over the last few years about computers and digital devices and whether you’re a native or an immigrant:

My Brain, Your Brain, iBrain
It’s mostly about Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants – terms apparently coined by educational consultant Marc Prensky. In iBrain, Dr. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan consider the psychological and neurological traits of these evolving archetypes …

How does this affect advertising creative? More fuel for the idea of a diverse workforce. Younger folks ingest and digest the world differently than older folks. So you’d better have the right guts around to trust.  If you don’t believe me, believe Rance Crain.

A parallel take on Digital Natives/Immigrants:

Baby Boomers have been inundated with technology all their lives. We were the first generation of television natives. I remember the thrill of first seeing an IBM Selectric in action – with that frenetic orb whirling and jabbing every which way like a cartoon character in a boxing ring.  My portable electric Smith-Corona became Stone Age overnight.

I first had an Apple II in the early 1980s.  A couple of bright Baby Boomers had put a typewriter and a television (monitor) together and called it a personal computer. Typewriters became Stone Age overnight. Then the-powers-that-be hooked up computers with telephone lines ringing up each other - and called it the internet.

We were there for all of it. 

Originally the internet was used for military purposes, then adopted by colleges and universities. When it became available for businesses and the public it was used for  research and communication.

We were there for (almost) all of it. 

In the middle 1990s commercialization was introduced. Not everybody loved this.   

I remember when hyperlinks and animated GIFs were eye-popping, cutting-edge marvels. Before long video, music, and games were everywhere. That ended up as lots of fun.

But technological marvels come and go.  Human nature persists. The importance of being connected, communicating, and seeking out information has been around since the beginning of civilization. 

Being connected but untethered seems to be the next phase, possibly the final one for awhile. It started with cell phones and laptops and Wi-Fi.  Now we have smartphones and portable iPads, Kindles, and who knows what’s next.

Back to advertising/marketing:

Baby Boomers are Commercialization Immigrants.  Television, radio, print, billboards – we grew up with these as advertising entities. Computers were for work, communication, research – not for commercial messages.

Researching products/services?  Oh, yes. Which is why I’ve always said:

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

Social Networking sites are popular – but are Baby Boomers making friends with advertisers? 

Anecdotal: A few recent posts on my Facebook News Feed:

“FB has too many ads … FB is becoming less interesting to visit. Hearing news from friends, finding new friends and seeing their pictures is what FB was all about. Can we get back to that, hmmmm?”

“Hide all the group posts or drop them from your news feed! That's what I do.”

“I think FaceBook should change its name to ClutterBook or CauseBook.”

“Thank you Lord Jesus Christ for answering my prayer and showing me how to rid my wall of Farmville, Garden World, Fish Life and all similar pieces of life-wasting crap. You have made my home page a heaven.”

So how can these social networks turn a buck?  I don’t know. Here’s how they’re doing it now:

The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets

Facebook Scandal Version 2.0

Doesn’t that make you all warm and gooey inside?

Which brings me back to:

Foretellings
The visual power of the web will fade as more people use handheld devices.  Goodbye, fancy-schmancy web sites. People will get bored sifting through it all when they can find what they need with their smartphones.

And/or their iPads.  Or whatever gizmos end up as standard issue. 

Anecdotal: I’ve asked a handful of folks around my age about their smartphones/iPads. Some aggregated responses:

Do you see any advertising on your smartphone?

No. Whatever it is is too small.  And they’re always on top, which makes no sense because if I’m searching for something that’s what I look at first. If there were any marketing messages afterwards, on the bottom, my eyes might continue down and I might read them because I’ve already found what I was searching for. But they’re never there.

Do you rush home and turn on your computer?

Not much anymore. I find almost everything I need on my smartphone or iPad. And if I’m home, it’s just easier to use one of the portable devices.

This all sounds about right to me. The new pocket-sized web will be friendly to marketing, not advertising.  The desktop or laptop, when not for work, will be used for deep research, visual delights, playing games.

So where will advertising be effective?  Where it’s always been effective:

Magazine Audiences Increase 8%

Busting the Cord-Cutting Myth

Spending goes where the eyeballs are.

And with those huge screens, surround-sound systems at home and in cars, HD radio, and gloriously glossy layouts - advertising may be more effective than it’s ever been.
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Foretellings Redux

Consumers Hesitant To Embrace E-Reader Advertising

Could the Droid X Replace Your Laptop?

Ipad sees success with seniors

Are Smartphones Getting Too Smart?

Tweet

Universal Design As A Beginning, Not An End

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
Too 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:

“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):

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
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.

New Site Renders Social Media Experts Obsolete

This cracked me up:

New Site Renders Social Media Experts Obsolete
by Jason Kincaid
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:

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.

Peace is good for business.

Fun 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
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)

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.