23 December 2019

End Of Year Links: 2019

I’m just so tired. Probably of politics. So this last post of the year is going to be snooze-worthy. There’s no energy left.

Most popular post of the year:

Goings On About Town
… Ranking The Best Five Toilet Papers For Seniors

My favorite post of the year:

Reefer Madness Redux
… Along with my more-significant-than-I-am other, I finally made it into one of these new-fangled headshops. Quite a culture shock. No day-glo posters of Dylan, The Doors, or Hendrix.

Abbie Rosner’s follow-up post:

Two Ways Cannabis Companies Can Show Baby Boomers They Care
… Not all Baby Boomers are looking for medicinal tinctures …

Ronni Bennett gathered up all the best 2019 Christmas commercials from the U.K.:

British Christmas Adverts – Part 1

British Christmas Adverts – Part 2

I’m not that impressed this year. Of course, some are good. The problem is I’m sick of CGI. The simple, straightforward ones are more effective. 

Here’s one Ronni missed (0r rejected) that’s very sweet and touching. And cliched and maudlin. Just like Christmas spots are supposed to be:

That’s all. Happy Holidays. I’m gonna take a nap.

26 November 2019

People hate ads.

*The following post is about advertising to baby boomers.

A shocking research report featured in The New York Times:

The Advertising Industry Has a Problem: People Hate Ads
By Tiffany Hsu

… The advertising industry faces an “existential need for change,” according to a blunt report published on Monday by the research firm Forrester. Now the agencies must “disassemble what remains of their outmoded model” or risk “falling further into irrelevance,” the report concludes.
And there are various surveys from multiple sources to back this up:



Scary!  Except … I forgot to add the dates of these surveys:



Most of the above statistics are from The Mirror Makers by Stephen Fox:
image

So not much has changed. Or maybe a lot has changed.  Nowadays:
… As advertisers bombard consumers across platforms like Twitch, Facebook, television, billboards and more, consumers are trying to get away, signing up for ad blockers and subscription services …
The truth is messier. Few people admit to enjoying ads. In the olden days, advertising on radio and television was often tastelessly intertwined. Today (or maybe it was ten years ago, it’s hard to keep up) we would call this Madison & Vine or Product Placement or Native Advertising or Stealth Advertising. There were complaints, and things changed. By the late 1950s, you listened to/watched a program – then came the commercial breaks. This technique is still effective today.

Most people don’t mind and many even like advertising - if it’s positioned as such, doesn’t constantly bombard you.  I wrote about this years ago:
06 March 2012
Digital Distractions

Advertisers are getting wise to the drawbacks of marketing in the digital nest … The more people use smartphones, the less they’ll tolerate silly graphical doodads mucking up their small screens.
Back to the NYT article:
… Agencies must “disassemble what remains of their outmoded model” or risk “falling further into irrelevance,” the report concludes …

The “outmoded model” happened when the internet exploded – and the industry became greedy. With greed came all this and this and this:

Digital Ad Shenanigans
It’s been a bad week or so for online advertising foolishness and chicanery.

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein
Rolling on the floor laughing  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.

Follow this crazy guy if you want to know more:

The Ad Contrarian



*The link below is to a silly piece about advertising to baby boomers:

Should older people be allowed to change their age?
by Chuck Nyren
Nov 4 · 2 min read

22 October 2019

Jumping On The Bandwagon

Cindy Gallop hops on:
Disrupting Ageism in Advertising
By Grace Birnstengel
This outspoken 2019 Influencer in Aging has a few choice words for the ad world…
From a 2017 post about Joseph Coughlin:
…. There are lots of folks who’ve educated us and continue to educate us. Names off the top of my head: Robert N. Butler, David Wolfe, Ken Dychtwald, John Migliaccio, Kurt Medina, Matt Thornhill, Brent Green, Marti Barletta, Mary Furlong, Myrna Blyth, Carol Orsborn, Rick Moody, Mark Miller, Paul Kleyman, Scott Rains, Kevin Lavery, Dick Stroud, Reg Starkey, Laurie Orlov, Richard Adler, Todd Harff, Bill Thomas, Louis Tenenbaum, Arjan in’t Veld, Martijn de Haas, David Cravit, Moses Znaimer, Maxime de Jenlis, Florian Kohlbacher, Christopher Simpson, Gail Sheehy, Marc Middleton, Ronni Bennett, Jim Gilmartin, Gill Walker, Dave McCaughan, Kim Walker, Tony Mariani, Barry Robertson, Frédéric Serriere, Bob Hoffman, have I left any out? No doubt.
CNext Avenueulled from the Next Avenue interview:
“There’s a very simple way to address negative stereotype depictions of aging in advertising. When you have older people creating ads, producing, approving — problem solved.”

Sounds familiar. A 2003 article of mine courtesy of The Way Back Machine:

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 … 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.

For more background, download the Intro & 1st Chapter of Advertising to Baby Boomers (selected as a Classroom Resource by The Advertising Educational Foundation)
Intro & First Chapter (PDF)
There’s also a chapter in the book titled Get Rid of The Stereotypes.

It’s great to have Ms. Gallop aboard.
__________________________________________
*** The above is an update post from last October:
AARP & NostraChuckus

24 September 2019

Another Dumb Article

Dilemma.

HISTORY CORNER: Tragic Hindenburg disaster ends zeppelins as air transportation For years I’ve blogged about no news news. One of too many posts:
16 NOVEMBER 2015
The Déjà Vu No New News
It’s always a treat to get up, make some coffee, open the newspaper (pixels or pulp) and read nothing new.
And recently, I promised never to link to any more dumb articles:
17 APRIL 2019
No News News & Fake News
…Someone over at one of the major business magazines recently wrote about Baby Boomers, advertising/marketing, technology. He said nothing I (and others) haven’t been saying for almost twenty years…
Here’s the dilemma: There’s a brand-new no news news article I don’t want to link to -- but the comments are fun and worth reading.

So close your left eye and just read what’s on the right:
Older People Are Ignored and Distorted in Ageist Marketing, Report Finds

16 August 2019

That Big Concert Fifty Years Ago

I wasn’t there. If you want, you can read about why I wasn’t there:

76 Million Sociopaths Outed (HuffPo)

There are so many articles/blog posts floating around commemorating/condemning the event that I’ve OD'd. One more could do me in. This could be the one.

Advertising. I’ve written about how dumb it is to heavy-handedly invoke ‘60s stuff to reach Baby Boomers:

03 OCTOBER 2005
Invoking "The Sixties": Fidelity Financial vs. Ameriprise
Two major financial planning companies, Fidelity Investments and Ameriprise, are all agog over Baby Boomers.

There are a dozen more subsequent posts, but I’ll spare you.

Barry Robertson has a take on it all (and he’s even more fed up than yours truly):

https://15thnation.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/wodstock-1969-life.png50 Years of Woodshtick
For the next week or so, prepare to endure the 50th anniversary of Woodshtick – the endgame of five long decades of punditry and pontification over a messy 1969 mudfest in upstate New York that, supposedly, defines the Baby Boom generation.

Now I’m off to a walk-in clinic to see if they have any sort of antidote for Nostalgia Overdose.