Brain Games or Mind Games?

More bad news for brain games:

Think brain games make you smarter? Think again, researchers say
Brain games marketed by the billion-dollar brain-training industry don't improve cognition or help prevent age-related brain decline, new research finds…

“The thing that seniors in particular should be concerned about is, if I can get very good at crossword puzzles, is that going to help me remember where my keys are? And the answer is probably no.”

Forget Brain Games — They Won't Make You Smarter

No big surprise for dumb Chuck. Eight years ago I was skeptical (but mostly skeptical of the outrageous claims with no proof):

02 March 2009
The Brain Games Game
… My first exposure to the recent spate of brain games was at the 2004 Boomer Business Summit.  I scratched my not-too-bright head and wondered what the difference was between a brain game and any mind-bending game: Rubik's Cube, Scrabble, Sudoku, etc.  Obviously, this new crop of revolutionary IQ busters improved your brain power while all the others were, I guess, just for laughs. 

…  And that’s what bothered me about the marketing – and still does.  Are these new-fangled blinking lights on a screen the best way, the only way to keep your noggin nimble?  This seems to be the claim.  Or are they a new breed in a long line of cognitive games that go back to counting pebbles on a cave floor?

You certainly get the ‘hard-sell’ impression that if you don’t buy and play these games, eventually your brain will leak out of your nose and ears…

Now we have proof.  Brain games do nothing but entertain – and don’t say otherwise or this is what’ll happen if you do:

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…

Want to kill time at the airport? Take out your smartphone and play a brain game. Want to get smarter? Read a book. Want to stay smart? Re-read a book.

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Just for fun:

The Live Forever Diet
by Chuck Nyren
Scrumptious and so simple to prepare even a 112-year-old can do it.

Much 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…

Steve Lubetkin is tired of the myth that baby boomers aren’t tech-savvy.  He thinks he’s tired??? I’ve been exhausted for almost a dozen years … Ever wonder what type of advertising is the least disliked?  Or the most trusted? I spilled most of the beans way back in 2007 … Kevin Lavery has warned us. His blog contains adult content …

From the It’s All About Me Files: Small business gears up for baby boomers according to Marjo Johne of The Globe and Mail (you’ll find a quote or two from Yours Truly) …  This blog made the list (#40):  Top 70 Advertising Blogs And Websites for Advertising Agencies & Firms …

Talk of The Town: Max Wells chats with Marc Freedman of Encore.org … Carol Orsborn is as fierce as ever … Susan Silver in NYC still looks hot in hot pants while hawking her tell-almost-all memoir, Hot Pants in Hollywood … The Society for Women’s Health Research honors AARP media maven Myrna Blyth …

Don’t spend too much time hanging out here or anywhere else on the WWW. Psychologists claim social media ‘increases loneliness’.  NostraChuckus told you this years ago but obviously you weren’t listening …

… ‘til next time…..

Something Old, Something Old, Something Borrowed, Something Old

Actually, everything in this post is old and borrowed.

Has wearable tech had its day?
By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News
This time last year analysts were making multi-billion dollar forecasts for the developers of health trackers and smartwatches … But by November 2016 Smartwatch shipments declined by 51.6% year-on-year …

… Jawbone, once a popular fitness tracker brand, confirmed to TechCrunch that it is leaving the consumer market and focusing on healthcare providers … Microsoft has removed its Fitness Band on its online store … and crucially no longer provides the Band developer kits.

And if you read to the end, they’re still optimistic. 

My old and borrowed takes:

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.

15 OCTOBER 2015
Baby Boomers Not Wearing Wearables
… My guess is that we’re a decade away from wearables we might want to wear. Even then we might not want to wear them.

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Industry Arrives at a Consensus on Online Advertising
by Brian Jacobs
… Since the media world exploded and we all started talking digital gobbledegook the BS filter gets clogged, and all sorts of rubbish gets through (and all sorts of good stuff gets blocked) when that happens.

Then there’s the ads. Sad to say they’ve become ludicrously irrelevant, the province of the luddite creatives…

My takes on this are so old and borrowed they’re threadbare:

03 OCTOBER 2016
Digital Ad Shenanigans

Social Media - WOMM - Web Advertising

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Top model agency responds to baby boomer spending power
by Helen Leggatt
The growing buying power, and lust for life, of the post-war baby boomer generation has led to one of Europe's leading model agencies to launch a new division – RETRO….

Some of many:

05 OCTOBER 2007
London & Marks & Spencer
… The adverts use Twiggy and three other models of various ages - very age-neutral marketing.

02 JULY 2008
Demand for older models grows

13 JUNE 2013
Are you model material?

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Thanks to Christopher Simpson for telling me about this:

50 Years Later, Heinz Approves Don Draper’s ‘Pass the Heinz’ Ads and Is Actually Running Them

I remember laughing when Draper was pitching a campaign to Lucky Strike around the concept of It's Toasted, Lucky Strike's slogan created in 1917.

Mad Men was either 40 years behind the times or 50 years ahead of it. It may have missed the 1960s altogether.

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Just for fun:

76 Million Sociopaths Outed
by Chuck Nyren
… As someone who does not have impressive degrees in history or sociology, I was thinking, just off the top of my head, how an eminent scholar (as the author assuredly is) might go about researching and ultimately arriving at the startling conclusion that baby boomers are a generation of sociopaths…

The Age of Portmanteau

If I may coin a phrase, we’re living in the Age of Portmanteau, what with Bromance, Sexting, Frankenfood, and dozens of other blends bandied about – even by reputable news sources (if there are any anymore).

A new one: Boomaissance.

I swear I didn’t make it up.  Some marketing firm did. A humongous marketing firm.

Boomaissance: While the media remains smitten with Millennials, it's the Boomers who control 70% of the disposable income in this country. The tide is turning—older is becoming cooler as Boomers take on a "Middle Aged Millennial" mindset…

Tell me some youngsters didn’t write this. Of course, all us old folks do is just sit around all day wanting to be Millennials…

Such Hubrilescence!  (I made that up. A blend of hubris and adolescence.)

We weren’t that different when we were their age:

11 February 2008
Me vs. We
… Talk to some folks in their twenties, thirties. They are now in that ‘me’ stage. It’s healthy, smart for them to be so. I was just like them thirty years ago, get a big bang out of them, admire their boundless creativity, energy – and self-obsession. These ‘me generation’ twentysomethings today will become a ‘we generation’ in thirty years…

But we do not have or want millennial mindsets.  Two quotes from my book (2005):

… Contrary to popular myth, Baby Boomers do not believe that they are still teenagers or young adults. (Some probably do, but they need therapy.) Boomers are slyly redefining what it means to be the ages they are. Included in this new definition are some youthful attitudes - but the real change is that instead of winding down, many are winding up. We're not 'looking forward to retirement,' we're looking forward to new lives, new challenges…

… There is a big difference between thinking you are younger than you are, and not thinking that you are old. This “night and day” distinction may confuse many pundits, but it does not confuse most Boomers…

Of course, any Boomaissance advertising created by Millennials that assume all Boomers want to be Millennials have failed and will fail. 

And maybe that’s been my problem all along! While I’ve been writing about hiring older creatives for over a decade…

The Human Resources/Brain Power Posts

… I never came up with a proper portmanteau to promote the concept of age diversity in advertising agencies. Let me give it a whirl:

Boomlennial (Boomer and Millennial)

Juveluvian (Juvenile and Antediluvian)

Youngacious (Young and Sagacious)

I’ll keep trying.

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Just for fun.  Absolutely nothing to do with advertising:

No Goblins
by Chuck Nyren
…I don’t watch TV shows with goblins. Or draculas or monsters of any kind. Which means I don’t watch much TV anymore...

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein

I blogged this book already – without reading it.  Now I’ve read it.

Good one, recommended if you don’t mind getting sick to your stomach. Stay away if you’re prone to paranoia. As for me, it just got me all itchy and queasy.

So far, this might not seem to be a positive review. It is one. But like most of what’s on the web nowadays, how do you know if it’s fact, advertising, fiction, advertising, drivel, advertising, truth, advertising? Professor Einstein does what she can to sort it all out.

I’ve been following this cesspool for over a decade and writing about it here for just as long. The power of Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing and the Covert World of the Digital Sell is the cumulative effect of all the advertising/marketing/public relations slop roiling in digital ether – contained in one book.

Two visceral takeaways:

  What a wacky virtual world we live in!  Streams of prose, pictures, videos, all not what they seem.  Alice in Wonderland, by comparison, is rather prosaic.

  And speaking of Looking Glasses and such, it never occurred to me that my computer screen and smartphone are really one-way mirrors. (Or are they called two-way mirrors? See? It’s all so confusing!) While I stare at my screen, literally hundreds, probably thousands of people are staring back at me, following me everywhere I go, watching and recording my every move. And here I thought I was merely reading Google News and checking my email.  It makes me want to scream at each of them with that tired retort, “GET A LIFE!”

Reviewed in
The Guardian:

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein review – stealth marketing is everywhere
by Steven Poole
…Profiling may be scandalous when the police do it, but it is all the rage online…