Where we might be headed in 2017.

While the world, civilized and otherwise, is headed for certain annihilation, I’m a bit more optimistic about advertising to the 50+ demo.

Marketing folks are starting to catch on, maybe:

Getting to know urban elderly consumers
The elderly haven’t always been a priority for retailers and consumer companies. Yet they present a big opportunity: the demographic could account for more than half of all growth in urban consumption in developed markets in the next 15 years…

And for the last 15 years – but who cares about that.

Human Resources:

Boomerang Boom: More Firms Tapping the Skills of the Recently Retired
By CHRISTOPHER FARRELL
Call them boomerang retirees: people who exit gracefully after their career at a company, then return shortly afterward to work there part time…

Over-50s can adapt to new jobs and technology: research
By Anna Patty
… The survey of 5973 Australians aged 18 and over, conducted by Lonergan Research on behalf of insurance company Apia, found 77 per cent of people over 50 believe their creativity levels increase or stay the same with age…

I’ve heard this somewhere before. Maybe here:

Human Resources/Brain Power

Wearable Tech:

Why Smart Wearables Needs To Get Smarter: Notable Percentage Of Abandonment Due To Boredom, High Prices
… The reasons stated by them included boredom and the fact that they didn't find them useful…

I’ve heard this somewhere before. Maybe here:

15 October 2015
Baby Boomers Not Wearing Wearables

Never Leave The Hospital! Health Tech Wearables, Implanted Chips
By Chuck Nyren
I'm having issues. I'm worried that the medical industry might want me to worry too much about my health. A little worry is good. But constant worry? It seems as if they want me to think of nothing else but my vital signs for the rest of my life.

Finally Live The Life You've Always Wanted With Wearables!
By Chuck Nyren
… Along with Google Glasses, you'll also be wearing Google Nose and Google Mouth.

Making Sense, Finally:

Turning Ad Dollars Into Pennies

(You’ll have to scroll a bit for the next one)

TV’s resurgence gathers pace
…Much has been written about the surging popularity of online video at the expense of more traditional media, yet in 2016 we have seen many online brands invest heavily in television content and advertising…

So after the polar ice melts,  and there’s WWIII, advertising and marketing might end up in better shape this year.

Recap 2016: Advertising to Baby Boomers

The year began with folks playing games with our brains:

06 January 2016
Brain Games: Hocus-Pocus Hyperbole
Looks like a not-so-bright company hawking a make-me-bright online game is in non-virtual hot water:
Lumosity fined millions for making false claims about brain health benefits…

And, as always, there was More Déjà Vu:

19 April 2016
Big Mags Roll Out Big Guns. Again.
… The Economist found that only 31% of firms it polled did take into account increased longevity when making plans for sales and marketing … One reason for this tardiness is that young people dominate marketing departments and think that the best place for the old is out of sight and mind.

23 September 2016
Deaf Ears, Gatekeepers, and Frustration
… We have approached all the local ******* ad agencies and (our pitches) seem to fall on deaf ears … their gatekeepers are millennials and they have no interest in marketing to a bunch of old fogies …

26 July 2016
Television Still Shining
…I like it when someone else writes a post for me – and/or I’ve written the post before (in this case, loads of times) so I don’t have to start from scratch. Copy ‘n Paste is fast becoming my mantra...

14 October 2016
Tweeters & Zoomers & An Ugly ‘Ism’
… No surprise to NostraChuckus,  famed soothsayer and advertising gadfly who’s been startling the world for years with his mundane prognostications…

What blog wouldn’t be complete without Shameless Self-Promotion Posts:

21 February 2016
Published: Advertising in the Aging Society by Prieler, Kohlbacher
… Professor Kohlbacher asked me to fashion an Afterword for his newest co-written tome…

28 March 2016
Advertising In The Aging Society: The Foreword, The Interview

07 October 2016
Zoomer Media/ZoomerU Presentation in Toronto
Last week I was at  ZoomerPlex, a city square of TV production facilities, radio stations, magazine headquarters, and site of an astonishing television museum.

ZoomerU gets off to a successful launch

Take a break with a Double-Feature & Shorts:

26 August 2016
Entrepreneurs & Spending Power
Why Advertising To Boomers Just Got More Important
by Barry Robertson
Shocking new study defines vast Boomer (ugh!) spending power…

Digital Déjà Vu:

03 October 2016
Digital Ad Shenanigans
…It’s been a bad week or so for online advertising foolishness and chicanery. No big surprise for yours truly. I’ve been yacking about all this nonsense for a decade...

29 November 2016
Digital Ad Shenanigans: The Academic Edition
…The realization that something you thought to be “real” is actually an advertisement is an increasingly common, if unsettling, sensation. Mara Einstein calls it “content confusion,” and if her book, “Black Ops Advertising,” is right, we’re in for even more such trickery…

Like this year and last year,  no doubt more frolic beginning in January.

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Just For Fun:

The Everlast
by Chuck Nyren
Fred Thorson had been dead for fifteen million years...

Digital Ad Shenanigans: The Academic Edition

Not too long ago:

03 October 2016
Digital Ad Shenanigans
It’s been a bad week or so for online advertising foolishness and chicanery. No big surprise for yours truly. I’ve been yacking about this nonsense for a decade.

Now there’s a book about it:

Black Ops Advertising
Native Ads, Content Marketing and the Covert World of the Digital Sell
by Mara Einstein
… Whatever the label, however, it comes down to this: advertisers can camouflage their sales message in only one of two ways 1) hide the advertising within existing content environments or 2) create the pitch themselves and make it look like something other than advertising. The first of these is native advertising, the second content marketing …

And a review in The New York Times:

… The realization that something you thought to be “real” is actually an advertisement is an increasingly common, if unsettling, sensation. Mara Einstein calls it “content confusion,” and if her book, “Black Ops Advertising,” is right, we’re in for even more such trickery, indeed a possible future where nearly everything becomes hidden commercial propaganda of one form or another. She forecasts the potential of a “world where there is no real content: Everything we experience is some form of sales pitch.”

All true. Although my take is that these silly Next Big Things will come and go.  They’ve been coming and going for years:

07 December 2012
What is Digital Advertising?
… The newest buzz-phrase has me completely baffled: Native Advertising.  One social media guru described it as advertising that is ‘baked into’ the content. I guess it’s sort of like the old Burns & Allen Show where one episode had Gracie baking a cake using Betty Crocker Cake Mix, a sponsor.

And this (again):

 Professor Mara Einstein has been working in and writing about the media industry for more than 20 years. Her career has taken her from being an executive at NBC and MTV Networks to positions at major advertising agencies, working on such accounts as Miller Lite, Uncle Ben’s, and Dole Foods.

I haven’t read the book, but will.

Even More Some of The News That’s Fit to Print

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Marketing from continent to continent and satellite to server and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press…

Hungry? Senior Nutrition Fellow Ruth Kava sez to Food Purveyors: Ignore Baby-Boomers at Your Peril … “How amazing. How astonishing. How pathetic.” That’d be Dick Stroud wondering about Marketers discovering  the importance of the 50-plus once again and again and again … Advertising campaign gone wrong: The idea of people over fifty driving their cars is so appalling and such an embarrassment that they outright ignored and disparaged the most valuable economic group in the history of the world (or you could’ve read this blog for the last thirteen years) … From the Best 18 minutes you can spend today Dept.: The “Great Volkswagen Ads” Documentary Film … The No Big Surprise Dept.: Boomers buy about two-thirds of the new cars sold annually, as well as half the computers and a third of the movie theater tickets … Read all about Doodyville … Meet the 2016 Influencers in Aging (What? I’m not on the list? The process is rigged!) Congrats to Paul Kleyman and Louis Tenenbaum … ‘til next time…

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Just for Fun:

Mouth Hunters
by Chuck Nyren
I’ve been thinking about buying this house. Then I was told that it might be time to buy a new mouth…

Tweeters & Zoomers & An Ugly ‘Ism’

Twitter is teetering:

Twitter Shares Plunge, as Suitors Appear to Lose Interest
By Yoree Koh (WSJ)
Twitter Inc.’s shares plunged 12% on Monday as the odds of a sale appeared to dim further, shifting attention back to the social-media company’s troublesome pursuit of a strategy to jump-start user and revenue growth.
Salesforce Walks Away from Twitter Deal
by David Faber (NBC News)
… After reports that companies like Google and Disney had already backed off bids for Twitter, Salesforce had been left as the most likely bidder …

No surprise to NostraChuckus,  famed soothsayer and advertising gadfly who’s been startling the world for years with his mundane prognostications:

25 September 2012
Twitter & Advertising
… Twitter is a fascinating phenomenon, has worldwide cultural and political influence and will be around for quite some time.
But it is not an advertising platform. How Twitter will eventually support itself, who knows. Maybe some sort of underwriting …

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Zoomer U in Canada had a boffo blast-off (see my previous post):

ZoomerU gets off to a successful launch
by David Cravit
… Zoomer U will offer information and insights online as well as through special events. We kicked things off with a client breakfast on September 28, featuring the noted Boomer advertising expert Chuck Nyren …

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New News From Yesteryear:

Is Ageism The Ugliest 'Ism' On Madison Avenue?
by Avi Dan (Forbes)
… The majority of 20-and-30-somethings working in agencies (there are exceptions, of course) have zero insight into anyone different from themselves and they don’t seek that insight. They are too invested in the youth zeitgeist.

Perhaps it’s time for CMOs to stop rewarding agencies with inexperienced talent and look at agencies that rebalance their staff along the lines of age diversity as well as diversity across gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. – so they can produce work that will resonate with the required audience.

Golly Gee Willikers, I wrote this in 2003 (and wrote it over and over since then):

Advertising to Baby Boomers: Back into the Fold
The Giant Leap: There had better be a minor revolution in the creative end of the advertising industry. Talented men and women in their late forties and fifties need to be brought back into the fold if you want to reach us. This includes copywriters, graphic artists, producers, directors, and creative directors.

Truth is, you can analyze marketing fodder all day and night, read countless books about marketing to Baby Boomers, attend advertising and marketing conventions around the world, and soak up everything all the experts have to say. Much of what is out there is valuable and useful, some practically required reading, others instructive and illuminating. But if you plan on implementing a creative strategy, and turn it over to a different generation of advertising professionals—you'll forfeit the natural sensibilities required to generate vital campaigns.

The 'old blood' has moved on. They're top execs or have retired. How do you get them back? Do they want to get their hands dirty again? These former crackerjack creatives must be convinced that they're needed …

I’ll leave you with a few moldy posts…

23 June 2009
NostraChuckus Scratches His Head
Another déjà vu …For me, the strangest episodes are happening while reading news articles about Baby Boomers and realizing that I’ve read versions of them all before – in my book and blog.
01 December 2010
NostraChuckus Conjures The Specter Of NostraChuckus
Almost every day, NostraChuckus stares into his crystal ball and sees himself – but in other guises. These strange visages look nothing like him – yet they do. It’s as if his crystal ball doubles as a phantasmagoric funhouse mirror ...
13 September 2012
The Déjà Vu News
Sometimes I think my browser is playing tricks on me.  Twilight Zone tricks.  Or Google is on the fritz, spitting out news stories from the past. 
16 May 2014
The Age Premium
… Some employers promote innovative programs to show that they appreciate their older employees and don’t want to lose their experience, their rapport with customers or their ability to mentor younger workers …

And the first few chapters of a tattered old book:

Advertising to Baby Boomers© 2005, 2007
Free Download:Preface - Intro - Chapter One (PDF)