Daily Factoid: The sky is falling! Are dependency ratios alarming? That depends.

There's been a lot of talk about dependency ratios, which are at the root of Social Security alarmism. Part of this generally dismal talk is based on a strict definition of dependency: Anyone over 65 is defined as 'old-age dependent' and anyone under 20 is defined as 'youth dependent'. In case you're wondering, they're dependent on the so-called working population of people 20-65.

By this measure, about 67% of the population was dependent in 2010. That figure will rise steeply, to 83% in 2030. I.E., the dependency ratio will rise about 1% per year with each passing year for the next two decades.

Here @BrandROI, we're not convinced that a simplistic definition of dependency is that useful. First of all, we've learned that in countries like Pakistan, children as young as 8 make great factory workers. 

OK, I'm kidding. But seriously, we agree with researchers like Dr. Neal Cutler, a financial gerontologist, who spends a lot of time reminding doomsayers that simple demographic population ratios fail to reflect the fact that not everyone of working age is economically productive, nor is everyone over 65 economically dependent.

So, some people (OK, lotsa' people) say the sky is falling; I say, don't worry so much. Who should you believe? Me, and here's why: I took the U.S. Census Bureau's latest available figures for dependency ratios by state. They vary widely, from Utah at just over 68% to Alaska at around 51%. Then, I looked at the Bureau of Economic Analysis' figures for state-by-state economic growth.

Here's what I found: The economies of the five states with the highest dependency ratios (UT, AZ, FL, ID, SD) averaged 1.8% growth in GDP. The economies of the five states with the lowest dependency ratios (AK, VT, CO, MA, NH) averaged 1.4%. The high-dependency states' economies grew about 20% more than the low-dependency states' economies.

Clearly, the alarmists' view that high dependency=bad, low dependency=good is simplistic. 

I have to admit that even I was surprised by this finding. Obviously, states like Utah, with high rates of youth dependency have, by definition, lots of young parents in what are typically thought of as their years of peak productivity.

So I went back into the raw data and built a spreadsheet comparing economic growth to old-agedependency on a state-by-state basis. Predictably, this list was led by Florida, a retirement haven, and includes Arizona and heavily rural states like West Virginia.

In total there are 34 states with rates of old-age dependency higher than the U.S. average. Obviously, that means there are 16 states with rates of old-age dependency below the average. In 2012, the "old" states' economies—which if you believe the alarmists were being dragged down by all those horrible, unproductive people over 65—grew an average of 2.1%.

Meanwhile, the "young" states—presumably supercharged by the high proportion of productive young people—grew a stunning... 2.2%. Yes, the difference was 0.1%. 

If a larger proportion of residents over 65 was really a massive drag on the economy, wouldn't you expect a more pronounced differential? Again, I hope Dr. Cutler won't mind if I paraphrase the conclusion that he reached in his own independent research, which is that old age and dependency are not synonymous.

Daily Factoid: They say 60's the new forty, and seventy is the new 50. The problem: 85's still 85



The venerable U.S. Census Bureau produced this great year-by-year 'age pyramid graph, showing the population structure in 2010 along with estimates of the population structure in 2030 & 2050. These predictions are probably very accurate, especially at the top of the pyramid.

As you can see, the purple (2030 estimate) bars for people of ages from about 62-82 are up to double the width of the green bars, indicating actual 2010 census data.

I.E., between 2010 and 2030, the number of Americans in their 60s and 70s will roughly double. During that period, the number of people under 55 in the U.S. will increase only about 15%.

That purple 'Baby Boomer Bulge' indicates a huge increase in sexagenarians (I love that word) and septuagenarians between now and 2030. That's the heart of the mature consumer market that we're obsessed with here @BrandROI. But in percentage terms, the increase in the population of very old people (85+) between 2030 and 2050 is even more striking. That has implications for the 'dependency ratio', which is the topic of a lot of hand-wringing and doom-saying. I'll address some of those concerns in a future update to Daily Factoid.

Trojan and Colangelo pull off a great condom ad

Trojan just released an ad that could serve as a textbook example of an ad directed at young people that also works incredibly well on Baby Boomers.

At first glance you could mistake this for an ad that has Baby Boomers like this dad as a primary target, but you'd be wrong. This ad is aimed at the son and daughter giving him dating advice. Here's the strategic context...

  • Trojan's own data and years of independent research confirm that the biggest condom buyers* are teenagers. According to Trojan, "Levels... of condom use are higher among younger teens and decline steadily as teens grow older." According to the Center for Sexual Health Promotion in Indiana University's School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, "[A]dults over the age of 40 have the lowest rates of condom use."
  • TV networks have consistently prevented the brand from advertising in prime time, and Trojan would never, ever get network approval on any ad that suggested, even obliquely, that teenagers should enjoy sex (however responsibly.)

Yet with a stroke of creative genius, Trojan's agency (Colangelo, based in Darien CT) reversed the roles of the kids and the dad. Teenagers watching the ad get the message: condom use will keep you out of trouble. The role reversal helps the ad to break through, and be memorable. ("Hah! Imagine me giving advice to dad.") That's an old copywriter's trick pulled from the same playbook that yielded E-Trade's talking baby. But Colangelo's genius was in realizing that by suggesting it was the fifty-something dad who was going to go out and have sex, they could make the first Trojan ad deemed safe for prime time.

The people this ad is talking to are the dad's kids; the ones giving him dating advice. But the reasons we here at BrandROI love this ad are...

  • While adults over 40 represent a small share of condom buyers, the number they buy is still significant.
  • Colangelo's creatives have pulled off something almost none of the agencies working on ED drugs have managed: Along with director Gavin O'Connor, they've made the idea of 50-something sex seem charming, natural and (OK, it's subtle) even sexy.
  • This dad would be proud to have raised kids as responsible, and with such an open, loving relationship.

This is a perfect example of an ad that, while focused on a younger market, will pay dividends with an older one.

Paramount gets a mark of "Eh!" plus for flaunting 'Nebraska' actors' ages

Paramount's winter release of the film Nebraska neatly mirrors the characters, and actors, who are all in the winter of their lives. But as Deadline Hollywood recently pointed out, Paramount's ad for the film is the first time any studio has openly trumpeted the advanced age of the film's stars. Bruce Dern, it seems, has finally got the role of his career (and serious Best Actor Oscar buzz) at 77. And he's young compared to his co-star June Squibb, who's 86.


The interesting thing about this spot is this; while it seems like a commercial aimed at the mature movie goer, its running primarily in L.A. and New York, where the studio hopes to influence Academy Awards voters. This commercial is the last step in a very carefully orchestrated release—beginning with a premiere at Cannes—calculated to influence Academy voters. (It's hard to believe that studios would take out television ads when the real target audience is so small and easily reached by direct marketing methods, but it is what it is. Studios do send screener copies of films to potential awards voters, organize invitation only viewings, etc., but TV ads catch voters where they live, and influence voters friends, too.)

Why does focusing on the actors' ages play well with that specialized, narrow audience? Because the median age of voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is 62. Only 14% of voting members are under 50.

Daily Factoid: (Grand)dad, can I borrow the car?

Check out this graphic, courtesy of Edmunds.com, showing changes in the age of new car buyers between 2007-'11. The percentage of new cars sold to the 18-44 demo that ad agencies are obsessed with fell by about a third, while every age group over 45 increased its share.

What's perhaps even more noteworthy is that just five years ago, the cohort responsible for the largest share of new car purchases was the 35-44 group. Since then it's shifted twocohorts; last year, it was 55-64 year olds who bought the lion's share of new cars.

50 over fifty: Speed skaters Jacki Munzel and Bruce Conner

With the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, fast approaching, we're seeing stories about sports that don't usually make the news. Right after the New Year  re: spotted two stories that originated at the U.S. Olympic trials for speed skating, which took place in Salt Lake City.

AARP's "Life Reimagined" series recently focused on 50 year-old Jacki Munzel—an ex-national level figure skater—who is currently competing with kids less than half her age for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. Frankly, the odds are long for her making the Olympic team, but that doesn't take anything away from Munzel's skating cred. Her day job is, she's a power skating coach for NHL players. She's old enough to be their mom, too.
​

Bruce Conner (perhaps frustratingly) will always be known as "the brother of gymnast Bart Conner"—a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. men's team in nineteen eighty-four.

Bruce Conner (perhaps frustratingly) will always be known as "the brother of gymnast Bart Conner"—a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. men's team in nineteen eighty-four.

Astonishingly, Munzel wasn't the oldest competitor trying for a spot on the U.S. team. That was Bruce Conner, who made the standard that allowed him to attend the trials at the age of fifty-seven. Conner was sanguine about his chances of making the team, telling one reporter, "My Olympics is the trials."

Daily Factoid: Meet the 'Mass Affluents'

There's a general consensus among marketers when it comes to defining 'affluent': Families or individuals with over $1M in investable assets. It's a numerically small group that is heavily targeted, especially by luxury brands.

The tier below them are known as the Mass Affluents. Depending on who you listen to, this group is defined variously as those who save more than they spend (Wikipedia), people withbetween $50-$250,000 in investable assets (not including their homes, Merrill-Lynch). Nielsen uses a higher standard, defining this group as having between $250k-$1M in investable assets.

According to Nielsen, there are about 13 million Mass Affluent households in the U.S., representing about 11% of all households. (This group, incidentally, holds over 1/3 of the country's wealth and had an average income of over $102k in 2011, i.e., their household income was more than 50% higher than average.

Two-thirds of the people in this group are over 55.

Miss Daisy will drive herself, thanks

My mom, who’s well into her 80s, still drives. The only concession she makes to Calgary weather is, she no longer drives when the streets are covered in snow or ice. The consensus is that as we Baby Boomers age, we’ll put in even more miles than our parents.

We’ll drive more because we need to; boomers are blurring what used to be a bright line between ‘working years’ and ‘retirement’, so our lives as commuters won’t necessarily change when we hit 65. Boomers want to live independently, and for most North Americans that means living in neighborhoods designed around cars. We’ll also drive more for emotional reasons; cars represent freedom and independence, and we’re unwilling to let change be forced upon us as we age.

Luckily, the car industry is rapidly developing technology that will make it easier for seniors to drive longer. 


This ad for the Nissan Pathfinder (which ran last year) highlights Nissan’s Around View Monitor feature that provides the driver with a bird’s eye view of his vehicle that makes parking easier. That’s nothing compared to some new Fords, that offer completely automated parallel parking. 

New Audis are available that steer themselves to stay in their traffic lane and cars equipped with adaptive cruise control—another new option—will automatically adjust speed to maintain a safe following distance in traffic.

Of course, the holy grail of automated driving is a fully automated car that will drive itself to a programmed destination. That would have sounded preposterous just a few years ago, but Google has made huge strides on that project. It has fully self-driving prototypes in testing right now. (Nissan has promised that it will offer reasonably priced autonomous vehicles for sale by 2020, and the auto industry analysts at IHS have said that by the time the first Baby Boomers reach my mom's age, nearly 10% of the cars on the road will be self-driving.)

So far, the automotive industry has advertised these ‘driver aids’ in commercials featuring Gen X and Gen Y actors. But at re: we know that it’s aging drivers who will benefit most from new car technology. 

The first car brand that intelligently markets these aids to aging boomers and positions itself as the company that understands and appreciates older drivers will be setting itself up for decades of, dare we say, booming sales to older drivers.

Daily Factoid: A trend emerges among moviegoers

@BrandROI's got a little tradition of going to the movies on Christmas Day. This is the time of year when studios tend to release the sort of 'grownup' fare that might get them Academy Awards nominations, so there's always a few releases to choose from. 

In the future, we might actually see more films aimed specifically at the mature audience. Look at this chart, courtesy of the Motion Picture Association of America. All the younger demos are trending down or flat at best. But the oldest film-goers—while admittedly still a small percentage of total audience—have gone to more movies every year since 2008. 

Another reason film studios like older viewers: The older the opening-weekend audience, on average, the smaller the drop in attendance in subsequent weeks. A great example is the film 'Gravity', which had a massive opening weekend and drew a conspicuously mature crowd: 59% of them were over 35. It followed that with a second weekend only 21% smaller—the smallest drop in recent memory.

That's interesting, eh? You'd think that younger audiences, so plugged-in to social media, would be more effective at spreading word-of-mouth. @BrandROI will keep an eye peeled for a plausible explanation of the correlation between an older opening-weekend audience and a film's 'legs'.

Daily Factoid: Welcome to the age of the 'Graypreneur'

  • People over 50 are far more likely to start a company than people under 30.
  • Older Entrepreneurs have higher success rates.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, based in my home town of Kansas City, is devoted to the study and teaching of entrepreneurialism. Dane Strangler, a researcher there, studied thousands of companies formed from 1996 to 2007. This was at the height of the dot-com boom — the period when Google and Facebook were formed, and when the popular image of an entrepreneur was some kid who couldn't even wait to graduate from college before making his first million.

The numbers tell a different story...

  • People aged 55-64 are about 1/3 more likely to start a business than people aged 20-34.
  • Even in the tech sector, people over 50 started twice as many companies as people under 30.
  • Companies started by people over 50 have a five-year survival rate about 50% higher than companies started by people under 30. 

Why the USPS should make older customers a priority

When UPS found itself overwhelmed by packages on Christmas Eve—resulting in many parcels not being delivered in time—I was reminded of the original package delivery service... the United States Post Office. (The USPS was in the news at Christmas too; a ‘temporary’ rate increase was approved on Dec. 24.

The USPS recently got a new agency-of-record, McCann Erickson. (Full disclosure: I was Creative Director at an affiliated agency, MacLaren-McCann, in Calgary, Canada.) McCann’s first work was a TV spot promoting package delivery services, built around the theme of Priority: You. You probably caught it running last summer.

According to Leslie Sims, McCann’s executive creative director, the inspiration for the campaign was the notion that the USPS’ priority is the American people, while its competitors in the package delivery category, UPS and FedEx, are really interested in serving their shareholders.

That probably went over well when they pitched the spot to Nagisa Manabe, the USPS’ CMO, but the truth is, the USPS’ priority right now is that it’s in an existential battle for it’s very survival. It’s losing $25 million a day, which is the result of email replacing letters, spam replacing junk mail, e-commerce replacing things like printed utility bills, and of course UPS and FedEx taking the lion’s share of package delivery. 

The spot, which features real postal workers as actors, is well written and beautifully produced. And, for a moment, it will make you think, yeah, I really should use the post office instead of UPS. But it’s not working to solve the postal service’s real problem, which is that millions and millions of Americans are finding it easier and easier to imagine an America without a postal service at all.

What does this have to do with older consumers? The short answer is that the postal service should focus its next ad on baby boomers and their parents. Here's why:

Although older consumers are increasingly heavy web users, they are still far more likely than younger consumers to send and receive real letters. They’re more likely to rely on bills arriving in the mail, and checks being sent out. They still send real Christmas cards. Their response rates are higher on direct mail. But far more important than that, older people living independently are the people who most appreciate the daily visit from their letter carrier. 

Many older consumers are lonely, and a few words from the letter carrier brighten their lives. The letter carrier is one person they can count on for a daily visit, who might notice something amiss at the house.  

Imagine the power of an ad campaign that tells true stories about all the things that letter carriers dobesides carrying the mail—because those are the things that truly emphasize the difference between the USPS and private carriers.

There are over 250,000 letter carriers, so there must be millions of heart warming stories such a USPS campaign could draw from. In the campaign I imagine, real customers and real letter carriers would recall the carriers’ small—and occasionally large—daily acts of kindness and heroism. Mailmen returning lost dogs. And kids. “When my mom had her stroke, it was Skip that called 911...” You get the idea.

Customers—and unlike UPS or FedEx, by ‘customers’ I mean all of us—could nominate their carrier, giving the campaign a natural social media extension. Does the USPS really want to ensure that there’d be huge political fallout for gutting the service? Then it needs to subtly spread the message that if it wasn’t for the mailman keeping an eye on the baby boomers’ aging parents, baby boomers themselves would have to do so. And, they can subtly remind aging boomers that they’ll be able to count on their kids even less. 

The campaign we here @BrandROI imagine would not exclusively feature (or focus on) older consumers, but it would skew older. That’s an audience that makes heavier use of the USPS, and has the political clout the USPS is sure to need, if it’s to emerge unscathed from this decade.

Nagisa Manabe: We should talk. My number’s 816.416.9235.

JWT does an excellent job for Xarelto

I'd no sooner finished writing my relatively damning review of that Symbicort ad than I noticed an ad that serves as a perfect counterexample. Everything that Evologue--Symbicort's ad agency--got wrong, JWT* got right in this ad for Xarelto.

The two briefs were pretty similar, resulting in two ads that are structurally identical: Symbicort's a drug for COPD, and Evologue's creatives expressed the benefit as, "you'll be able to go fishing with your grandson". Xarelto is a blood thinner used in the treatment of arrhythmia (amongst other things) so the target demographic's similar. JWT’s creatives expressed the benefit as, "you'll be able to go car-camping with your wife".  So, both ads feature old guys, doing old-guy stuff.

Watch this spot for Xarelto and I'll tell you why it's so much better** than the Symbicort spot.

The website iSpot.tv archives and tracks thousands of commercials. The visitors to that site agree with me: 86% of them gave the Xarelto spot a thumbs-up rating, while only 46% of them gave thumbs-up to Symbicort.

Here’s why: As you may remember, the actor in the Symbicort spot was cast and dressed to be a caricature of an old man; that's a predictable mistake, easily made by young creatives who tend to typecast old people anyway. But the creative director and director of the Xarelto spot cast and dressed their lead actor in a way that tells viewers, "Cardiac arrhythmia be damned, you can still be cool." 

For those who know about such things, the "fisherman" in the previous spot doesn't have a clue about fly fishing. But the hero of this spot has great taste in campers; that vintage Airstream is bitchin'. Little things like that make all the difference; the first guy's vaguely embarrassing, but this dude's aspirational. 

That’s why here at BrandROI, we’re giving this ad a grade of “be”, which is to say, we would not be embarrassed at all to have been involved. If you want further proof that this is a decent commercial that works on the target demographic, check out these comments that were left on iSpot.tv

I can guarantee you that no one’s leaving comments like "this guy is a total heart-throb" about the guy in the Symbicort spot. In fact—further proof that it’s a ‘meh’ ad—no one’s left any comments on that spot at all.

*Xarelto is a drug developed by Bayer, licensed by Johnson & Johnson, and sold through J&J’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals division. I think I’m giving credit where it’s due, to JWT. Heartbeat Ideas also works on the Xarelto brand.

**For the record, I’m well aware that Symbicort is considered a commercial success. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling in any B2C category, the ad is only part of the total effort. You can make a great ad and, if the consumer’s direct experience of the brand is negative, it will fail. You can make a mediocre ad, like the Symbicort ad below, and still succeed. Evidently, Evologue and the rest of the Symbicort marketing team did most things right.


How Symbicort could've raised its grade from 'meh' to 'meh+'

How Symbicort could've raised its grade from 'meh' to 'meh+'

Symbicort is a drug used in the treatment of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder). It's been promoted in heavy rotation and represents about 10% of the revenues of drug giant AstraZeneca, which is why I'm a little dismayed that this ad's such a 'meh'.

My first criticism of the spot is not specifically tied to @BrandROI's older-consumer focus. I'm just bugged that this spot is an example of the creative department "handing the brief back" in the form of a script.

What I mean by that is, somewhere in ad-land a planner wrote a sentence in a brief that went, "These people want to control their COPD so that they can do things like go fishing with their grandchildren." 

Either because the creative team couldn't come up with anything more original, or because the suits on the account fixated on that simple image, they ended up settling for a cliched script in which — surprise — the guy goes fishing with his grandchildren. 

Meh. But watch the ad and then I'll tell you how they could have got it to 'Meh+'.

Why did the stylists and wardrobe people feel they had to make their actor a caricature of the fishing grandpa? Compare the Symbicort guy...

...to this actual fishing guide I found in a Simms fishing equipment catalog. 

I'll leave it to others to point out that the agency and producers of the spot obviously didn't bother asking anyone who actually knows how to fly-fish to come along when they were shooting the spot.The two men are about the same age and even look similar, but Simms' model somehow seems cool. He's the one the kid would want to fish with; he's also the character actual COPD patients probably aspire to be.

The kids working in the agency  and the young, hip crew who produced the spot, dressed and styled the actor to conform to a very particular archetype, although they themselves aren't old enough to know where that archetype originated.

Ironically, anyone old enough to actually need Symbicort for COPD almost certainly does recognize the wardrobe: They've dressed him as a live-action version of Mr. Wilson, Dennis the Menace's grumpy old neighbor.

So there are two demographically specific things that bug me about this spot: 

First, anyone who grew up reading Hank Ketcham's classic comic strip relates to Dennis the Menace, not Mr. Wilson. Our 'inner Dennis' would rather go to the skateboard park with our grandson, even if it meant we just watched while he did tricks. It would be even better if, together, we then lied to Mrs. Wilson and told her we'd been fishing at the end of the spot, because she didn't approve of skateboarding.

And second, who, at Evologue (the B2C division of Ogilvy's Commonhealth ad agency network) thought that making the central character a caricature instead of cool would somehow sell more Symbicort? Does anyone in the agency really think that there is a consumer, anywhere, who would look at my cool model and think, "Oh, I guess this drug treatment is only for more badass dudes than me. I'll keep watching TV until I see an ad for Advair, aimed at goofy old farts"?

The truth is, for COPD patients, just going fishing — doing almost anything out of the Lazyboy — is aspirational. But there was nothing to lose by dressing and styling the actor in a manner that sent the message that yes, you've got COPD but you're still Dennis inside.


Every generation has their Lees

If you’re reading this, your brand wants to reach the large, growing, and affluent market of mature consumers. But you may not feel you can afford to create a separate campaign to specifically target them. 

You probably don’t have to. 

The other day in the gym, I looked up at the TV and saw this 15-second spot for Lee Jeans' ‘Modern’ series, and realized that Lee’s agency, GSD&M created an that deftly appeals to Baby Boomers, without actually casting anyone who looks much over 40. 

GSD&M didn’t offer an answer when I emailed them to ask whether the brief for this ad specifically mentioned older consumers. (Looking at the campaign overall, I’d say their primary target for the Modern Series jeans is guys in their thirties.) But, for the purposes of this post, it doesn’t matter why they made a great ad for older consumers, it just matters that they did do so. 

Here's the ad. Watch it once through, and then read on...


OK, here's why, even though it’s targeting millennials, I know this ad is also resonating with a key secondary audience: Boomers.
 

Hipsters? Check.

Hipsters? Check.

Austin's a motorcycle-crazy town, so I’m not surprised the creative types at the agency used this opening shot to establish the brand's hipster bona fides. You might think this is the kind of shot that would tell older customers, “Stop watching; this ad’s not for you.” But you’d be wrong. The average age of a new motorcycle buyer in the U.S. is over 50.

Here’s where it get’s interesting to me. These models are (I’m guessing) all under 40, but the choices the agency made in casting — no tattoos or piercings, none of those ubiquitous hipster beards — make me think, “Sure these guys are all young, but there could easily be a 60-something guy in this game, who just happens to be off camera.” 

And look at the set dressing/location: It looks like some place you could actually carry on a conversation. 



Check out the close... The message isn’t, “It’s what all the hipster douchebags are wearing, you know you want a pair.” It’s not even, “Get the girl.”

Nope, it’s all about quality, materials, and fit. The little computer mannequin on the screen suggests that, somewhere in the database, there’s a body like the average Baby Boomer’s. And look at the propping: The vintage Wilcox & Gibbs chain stitching machine that is literally under the word 'crafted' could (and does) appeal to the real hipsters who want selvage denim, but it also sends a message about craftsmanship that resonates with older consumers — who, yes, want to look good — but also want to be able to tell themselves they're buying quality.

The difference between the millennials' message and the Boomers' message is subtle: Lee's telling the millennials, "We'll help to make you the person you want to be, or at least we'll help you look like that guy." At the same time, the message that I take from this ad as a Baby Boomer is, "These jeans are made for people like you."

GSD&M and Lee did a great job of sending both of those messages with one ad. And the best part is, the millennials don't have to know the ad also works for me.