So long, Longmire...

The cable TV network A&E just cancelled it's top-rated show, Longmire, even though it draws a bigger audience than Mad Men. Why? In a nutshell, because Longmire's viewers are, on average 60—that's about twelve years older than the A&E's overall audience.

According to Deadline Hollywood,..

In its second season, the series, based on Craig Johnson’s mystery novels, averaged nearly 6 million viewers, up 9% from Season 1. Longmire‘s viewership has dipped only slightly in Season 3 to 5.6 million viewers (in most current ratings, up from the previous 4.6 million season average), despite its lead-in, Criminal Minds repeats, being a lot weaker (-72%) than the series’ lead-in last year, original drama The Glades. The cancellation of that series got a strong reaction from fans; the axing ofLongmire, which has a wide fan base, will likely not go well with them either.

Devoted Longmire fans will be doubly pissed when they realize that Season 3 ends with a cliffhanger, and triply pissed when the truth sinks in on them. A&E's decision to cancel was influenced by the fact that Warner Brothers, not A&E produces the series; but the main reason was, simply that the viewership was too old.

Advertisers still can't wrap their heads around a 60 year-old audience, so a 30-second spot on Longmire sells for about half what a Mad Men spot commands, even though as one disgruntled Longmire fan noted, "They are still suffering under the delusion that those in their 20-30’s have the money. What 20-30 years-olds have is a room in mommy & daddy’s house due to unemployment. A&E are pissing off the people that do have disposable income."

That's a little oversimplified, considering that Mad Men's audience is also famously upscale. According to AMC, half of the 40- and 50-somethings watching the ad drama earn $100+. But, no matter how you cut it, there's a big disconnect between A&E, advertisers, and Longmire's solid older audience. Considering the high margins in pickup trucks and SUVs, and the fact that the 55-64 cohort are major buyers of new cars, I'm surprised there wasn't a car company willing to put together a coordinated product-placement/advertising/social campaign built around the show.

Daily Factoid: Is the comparative underfunding of Alzheimer's research ageist, sexist, or racist? Perhaps the answer is, all three

According to Newsweek, while the number of deaths due to HIV, stroke, heart disease and prostate cancer all dropped between 2000 and 2010, deaths attributable to Alzheimer's increased 68 percent, according to the Alzheimer's Association. It is now the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., (and at that, likely under-reported.)

Women in their 60s are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's as breast cancer. And by the time a woman turns 65, her estimated lifetime risk of developing Alzheimer's is 1 in 6 (it's nearly 1 in 11 for men). Older African-Americans are about twice as likely as older whites to have Alzheimer's and other dementias.

50 over fifty: Johanna Quaas

Meet Johanna Quaas, 86 year-old YouTube phenomenon. While we're the first people to admit that she's an extreme outlier in the area of senior fitness and sport, a lot of people are fascinated by the example she sets. She simply defies the accepted wisdom about old age. 

As we'll be writing in an upcoming Medium post, Ms. Quaas and people like her are culturally significant in the sense that as the Baby Boomers age, they're less inclined to view characters like this as simply inspirational/exceptional and more inclined to view them as aspirational, i.e., many Baby Boomers see people like her as a model for how they too may age.

There's a lesson for marketers in Johanna's 4,000,000+ YouTube hits: It doesn't matter whether your audience will actually be able to do an effortless back somersault in their 80s—most of them obviously won't—it's often true that if you want your message to resonate with your audience, it's better speak to the person they aspire to be, instead of the person they actually are. 

Daily Factoid: Oldest drivers' risk of fatal crashes has fallen, even as miles driven climbs

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently released a report showing that older drivers' risk of serious injury or death has fallen in the last fifteen years, although when they are involved in crashes, older drivers are still more likely than younger drivers to suffer the consequences.

This chart summarizes one key result of the IIHS analysis. It compares drivers 70-74, 75-79, and 80+ with, as a baseline, drivers 35-54. You can see two interesting trends here.

• 80+ drivers' fatality rates fell the most, although they remain significantly higher that the rates for younger drivers
• Fatality rates for all drivers under 80 seem to be converging

The general trend for all fatalities reflects the gradual updating of the total vehicle fleet; more and more vehicles are fit with ABS and stability control, helping drivers avoid accidents, and more and more have air bags, helping drivers survive the accidents they do have. 

The higher rates of fatality for the oldest drivers (which mirror the  probability of injury, as shown in other studies) simply reflect the inevitable physical frailty of drivers in their 80s and 90s. The IIHS is considering establishing a new vehicle safety testing standard ("Silver Standard") that would reflect a vehicle's ability to protect older drivers in a crash.

The risk that older drivers present to themselves, and others, is about to get a lot more relevant. Between 1995 and 2008, drivers 75 and older increased their annual mileage by 50%, and there's every reason to believe that as the Baby Boomers age, they'll be less inclined to self-regulate and restrict their driving behavior.

In the coming weeks, Revolutionary Old Idea will be releasing its first White Paper. The topic will be the intersection of Automotive R&D and the age demographics of the driving population.

Daily Factoid: According to the KC Fed, Boomers are about to move back into the city

I pulled these two graphs out of a report recently authored by Jordan Rappaport, an economist working for the Kansas City office of the Federal Reserve. 

The upper graph looks at growth in single family housing stock. It shows a wide divergence between the growth trend established between 1990 and 2000, and the demographic trend, which indicates the realistic potential demand. This graph proves that the housing bubble, which burst in late 2005, was unsustainable.

The lower graph shows that the bubble (as indicated by divergence of the dashed line and the blue line) was less pronounced for multi-family housing. Not only that, the gap between the number of units available and the projected demand is much larger: 4.8% for multi-family units, compared to 2% for single-family units.

Furthermore, the Fed report shows that the housing collapse was less drastic for multi-family units, and that multi-family construction recovered faster. Why? According to the Fed, a major factor is that Baby Boomers want to downsize, often moving from the suburbs into cities.

The full report is visible here. Two key points are...

• Over the long term, single-family homes are a losing bet. As Rappaport notes, The baseline projections described in this article suggest that construction over the near future will accelerate only moderately for single-family housing but strongly for multifamily housing. Over the intermediate and longer term, even optimistic assumptions project a relatively moderate peak level of single-family construction, which will be followed by a large contraction over many years. Conversely, even pessimistic assumptions project a relatively high peak level of multi- family construction, which will be followed by a decline to a still-high level of construction.
• Cities need to pay attention to the Boomers' desires to downsize and move closer in. For cities, this offers the possibility of revitalization and the shoring up of public finances. But to attract aging suburban households, cities will likely need to offer significant amenities such as safe streets, diverse retail and restaurant options, museums, and venues for theater, music, and sports. Suburbs seeking to retain aging households may need to re-create a range of these urban amenities and enact some rezoning to encourage multifamily construction.

Daily Factoid: Why Boomers will drive the market for self-driving cars

There’s been a flurry of media coverage about autonomous vehicles, aka self-driving cars. 

• Last summer, Nissan announced that it will offer its first self-driving car by 2020. Volvo’s also promised autonomous vehicles by that date. 
• The auto industry consulting firm IHS has estimated that by 2035, nearly 10% of new cars will be self-driving.
• So far, self-driving cars have proven to be safer than human drivers. Google’s research vehicles have driven over 500,000 miles on public roads without causing an accident. 
• The Eno Center for Transportation—a sort of automotive think-tank—recently estimated that if even 10% of the cars on the road were self-driving, 1,100 lives would be saved every year.

Eno’s recent report was written by Eno Fellow Daniel J. Fagnant and Kara Kockelman, a prof at the University of Texas. Fagnant and Kockelman finally at least touched on something we here at re: noted last year, which is that this technology has huge implications for aging drivers. 

The report cites Dr. Joanne Wood’s 2002 study, ‘Aging Driving and Vision’ in the journal Clinical and Experimental Optometry. Dr. Wood observed that “many drivers attempt to cope with such physical limitations through self-regulation, avoiding heavy traffic, unfamiliar roads, night-time driving, and poor weather, while others stop driving altogether” and draws the logical conclusion that “AVs could facilitate personal independence and mobility, while enhancing safety”.

That’s true, but a colossal understatement, and here’s why: The septuagenarian drivers who Dr. Wood studied over a decade ago—people of my mom’s generation—didn’t see getting their driver’s license as an essential rite of passage into adulthood and independence. So when they “self-regulate” or decide to stop driving altogether, the decision is not freighted with psychological weight.

By contrast, Baby Boomers are emotionally attached to their cars in a completely different way. Even the auto industry has, thus far, dramatically underestimated the significance to Boomers of AVs that can preserve their independence and mobility. (Perhaps the reason for that is that the engineers working on AVs are themselves still young, as are the auto industry’s marketing analysts.)

Daily Factoid: Lesson from Japan

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of the American population over 65 will rise rapidly for the next fifteen years. Senior citizens account for about 13% of the population today, but will account for over 20 percent of the population in 2030.  

Here at re: Revolutionary Old Idea we’re fascinated by the aging population because it carries huge implications for brands, marketing, and advertising. But of course there are far wider social, cultural, and economic implications, too. Anyone with an interest in the shape of America’s future is thinking about that demographic change—an inevitable consequence of the Baby Boom.

What will the future be like? Maybe there are clues to be found in Japan, which has the oldest population of any country: 23% of the population is over 65. (This is a ratio that the Census Bureaunever projects for the U.S.)

Michelle Gibley, Director of International Research with the Charles Schwab company’s Schwab Center for Financial Research, recently authored a white paper entitled, Japan: Land of the Rising Consumer, which made these observations—which will surprise some people—about Japan’s 30 million seniors.

Normally we think of working-age people as spenders and of the elderly as savers—however, in Japan, its elderly actually spend more annually than the population average (1.29 versus 1.20 million yen respectively). And, with average savings of 22.6 million yen ($226,000), this segment of the population has cash ready to spend.

Japan's elderly are buying more than just staples; they're spending money on toys (for grandchildren), travel, luxury goods, and conveniences. According to a recent survey by the Japan Association of Travel Agents, seniors traveled more than any other group during the second and third quarters of 2012. Supermarkets are redesigning stores geared toward older shoppers. Additionally, technology companies are designing more products to appeal to this demographic:

• NTT DoCoMo introduced a specialized smartphone that caters to older users, featuring larger icons, a touch screen that vibrates, and simplified steps for sending email and taking pictures.
• The robotic pet "Paro," selling for roughly $5,000, offers companionship and is used in "robot therapy."
• Toyota has developed cars with hand controls and seats that swivel to make it easier to get in and out.
• Household technology is also adapting, with products such as beds with sensors that lock doors and toilet seats that rise automatically when someone enters the bathroom.

50 over fifty: Locke McCorkle

Locke McCorkle has a couple of claims to fame: He served as the inspiration for  a character in Jack Kerouac's book The Dharma Bums, and he once wrote a successful sex manual. Oh, and that motorcycle in the background? He still rides that on California race tracks. Turning 60 didn't slow him down. Neither did turning 70. Or 80...

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.

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.

50 over fifty: Cindy Gallop

We don't want to create the impression that we've got sex on the brain* here @BrandROI, but we thought we'd show you this 2009 Ted talk by 50-something entrepreneur Cindy Gallop, whose business is... well, just watch it. If you're at work, turn the sound down.

*We do have sex on the brain, we just don't want to create that impression. 

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.