A note from the Dept. of Irony

Do you really want to get me started on this? 40 under 40? Everyone in the business is under 40.

Behind every joke, there's a kernel of truth

Courtesy of ADWEEK, here's the story of a series of short films, that serve as a call-for-entries to the 2015 AICP (Association of Independent Commercial Producers) awards. The online-only spots all explore the same premise, which is, Here are the lives of today's hottest ad creatives—as they'll be in 35 years.

Only two of these recent AICP award winners are still in the ad business in 2050, and one of them's just holed up in a janitor's closet. Another’s completely senile; one’s incarcerated. The only woman in the group gets, by comparison, kid-glove treatment. She still has a nice office. There's just one catch: as the script makes clear, she's gone bat-shit crazy. 

The one thing they’re all clinging to is that, as AICP award winners, they’ve got a commercial “in the Museum of Modern Art”.

I’m going to leave aside the fact that these creatives aren’t really “in MoMA”. The museum does collect and exhibit design objects, but no ordinary visitor to the museum will ever see the AICP award-winning spots, no matter how diligently they search for them. The commercials are not in the museum’s permanent collection, they’re archived in the museum’s film collection. None of these creatives are listed anywhere in the museum’s online database. 

But I get it. This is advertising. We play fast and loose with the truth. So I’ll let the implied promise—Enter our contest so your work can live forever in a famous museum—stand.

What I can’t let stand is, the future as imagined for these people. Every old person in these spots is pathetic. None of them have anything to live for, except the tenuous claim that their work—which will, of course, actually be long forgotten in 35 years—is “in a museum”. 

Of course it's a joke, but you need to bear in mind that it wasn't just imagined for them, it was imagined by them. This series of spots was conceived without any of the usual client-imposed creative limitations. These are the spots the brightest lights in the ad business conceived when they had free rein.

In their brainstorming session, someone might’ve suggested doing the spots in blackface. That idea would’ve been summarily killed. Not because they would’ve thought, It’s hilarious but we’ll be attacked by politically-correct zealots. Rather, because they would’ve realized, blackface isn’t funny any more. Yet, the spots they made bear the same relationship to ageism that blackface does to racism.

So, Gerry and Rob, thanks for validating the thesis of Revolutionary Old Idea: that ageism is the ad industry’s last acceptable prejudice.  

You could’ve come up with any idea, but you settled on aging. And this is the old age you imagined. Every single life portrayed is ghastly. Don’t misunderstand my criticism: I'm not a killjoy. I have a sense of humor about aging. I realize these spots were written and shot for comic effect; there'd be no 'ad' here, if these senior citizens were shown as still-vibrant creative forces.

But behind every joke, there's a kernel of truth. Most of the scripts make it clear that the 'old' versions of these guys bitterly resent being forced out of the business. For the writers, these spots are gallows humor, because they all know it's really gonna' happen. This is, in fact, how the ad industry sees old age.

Ultimately though, I’m not infuriated because this campaign is wrong. I’m  angry because it’s stupid. If this is how the industry’s creative leadership sees aging, how can Barton F. Graf 90001 or McCann2 possibly create ads that will resonate with mature consumers?

50+ consumers represent a $3,000,000,000,000 market in the U.S. (Yes, there really are twelve zeros in that number.) How much of that three trillion bucks  are clients leaving on the table, because these guys can’t imagine a life worth living as a senior citizen?

Tor, Tiffany, and Ted, in a few minutes online I identified several Grey3, co:collective4, and Droga 55 clients for whom mature consumers are profit-critical. If this is really what you think of, when you think of old people, how can you possibly craft messages that will resonate with older consumers?

To be clear: It’s a joke. I get it. But the choice of this particular joke says a hell of a lot about the ad industry. Ironically, if you’ve read this far, skip down to the next post, and read about Barbara Beskind. She's far older right now than any of the characters portrayed in these spots, and she’s a creative force.

You five should be so lucky.

Notes

The agencies cited in this post all have clients for whom the business of mature consumers is profit-critical. For example...

1—Barton F. Graf 9000 handles Dish Network. The median age of adult television viewers is over 50.

2—McCann handles Chevrolet. The median age of Corvette owners is over 60. And if you think I'm picking on the Corvette as a notoriously 'old man' car—which it is—bear in mind that nearly half of all Chevy Volt drivers are over 50. McCann's also proud of its work for Mucinex.  

3—Grey's U.S. clients include Gillette. Until young guys drop the whole beard fad, I'm guessing Gillette's customer base will skew older. Grey also brags, on its web site, about work done to launch a new season of 'Dallas' on TNT. The median age of a Dallas viewer? 57.

4—co:collective lists Infiniti as a client. Want to help Infiniti sell a bunch more high-end cars? Ya' gotta' put a spell on the 55-64 cohort. That's now the single most important age group in the car business. co:’s Wells Fargo and Kohl's clients also do a huge business with Boomers and Seniors. 

5—Droga 5's impressive client roster includes Airwick, Jockey, and Prudential—companies that generate much if not most of their income from mature consumers.

Droga 5's Ted Royer, who's in his 40s, is the only ad star who is depicted as still working, though he's portrayed as a pathetic, morbidly obese loser who, when asked what he's proud of, lists his initiative to put waffle-makers on every floor.

Gerry Graf, the head of Barton F. Graf 9000 graduated from high school in 1984.

co:collective's Tiffany Rolfe: in her imagined future, she's a consulting witch. 

Orange is the new gray for Grey's Tor Myhren.

McCann's Rob Reilly is treated most cruelly of all, but it's all in good fun, right?

50 over fifty: Barbara Beskind

Although I like to present 50 over Fifty subjects you don’t already know, there’s a good chance you’ve recently read about Barbara Beskind—a 91 year-old part time industrial designer at Silicon Valley’s uber-hip IDEO design studio (they designed the Apple mouse.) 

Now 91, Barbara still shows up at IDEO's Palo Alto studio most Thursdays. Nicolas Zurcher/Courtesy of IDEO

I admit, I may have almost been the last guy to learn of Barbara, when I got a Twitter message from the 3% Conference’s social maven @LaurelLu about her. As I noted to Laurel Stark Akman, perhaps the world of product design is ahead of the ad world, when it comes to seeking seniors’ input, because when a product doesn’t work, its failure is clear and unambiguous. When ads fail, they do so silently.

The backstory on Barbara Beskind is, she was an early specialist in design for injury rehab, who rose to the rank of Major in the U.S. Army. After an equally long career in the private sector, and long after ‘retiring’ she applied for a job at IDEO when she heard that they were researching design for the aged. That was in June, 2013 when she was already nearly 90 and living in an assisted living facility.

The Wall Street Journal quoted IDEO’s Gretchen Addi, “She’s a designer here, and she does get paid for some of the work that she does.” I recently called the firm’s Palo Alto office and confirmed that Barbara still comes in most Thursdays. Her role includes  consulting and developing personal projects. 

But there’s something else going on, too. And it’s that Barbara Beskind has become an internet meme. The first journalist to pick up the story was the Journal’s Tim Hay, who is based in the Bay Area and covers tech stories. He wrote about her on the Journal’s Venture Capital blog last April.

His original reporting was cited a few times, but Barbara’s story didn’t get real traction until she was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered early this year. The NPR story was, in turn, reposted (read: plagiarized) by dozens of bloggers and web sites, and—as I write this—there’s no sign of this meme losing steam.

The underlying personal story’s interesting and inspiring. “Most days, I feel 20 years younger [than I really am],” says Barbara. “On days I go in to IDEO, I feel 30 years younger.” 

But, what fascinates me is that, as this 90-year-old-with-job-at-hip-agency story has such a life of its own. People—including people far younger than her—have a real appetite for a story about someone who, despite age and macular degeneration, still has a vigorous and curious mind.

I suppose more and more people are starting to actually imagine being old, and wondering what it will be like. If they’re lucky, their lives will be like Barbara Beskind’s.

Are you kidding me?  I also love the way she describes herself in the last paragraph: "I… ambulate well." You go, girl.

Daily factoid: Boomers’ galloping discretionary spending

Gallup.com recently released results of a survey of Baby Boomers’ discretionary spending, which suggests that, as a group, Boomers’ spending fell from 2008 high of $115/day to a low of $55/day in early 2009. Since then, it’s rebounded back to $105/day. I.E., Boomer spending has nearly doubled since the bottom of the recession.

While the methodology of the survey leaves a lot to be desired, the results still provide some interesting food for thought. Based on the numbers reported, Gallup suggests that there are really two distinct Boomer cohorts. They dub them ‘leading-edge’ (born 1946-’55) and ‘trailing-edge’ (born 1956-’64). Gallup’s not the first to make such a distinction. Way back in 1985, Schuman and Scott conducted a broad survey of Baby Boomers, asking them to recall seminal social memories. Older Boomers cited the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of JFK and MLK, the civil rights movement, feminism; and sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Younger Boomers cited the  cold war, Vietnam war & protests, and Watergate. The second group is less cohesive and more cynical. But, I digress...

According to Gallup, leading-edge (technical term: ‘older’) Boomers are more likely than trailing-edge (younger) ones to report that they’re spending more this year than last year. Gallup draws this conclusion: “Leading-edge boomers appear to have greater latitude in their spending—and are applying it to things they would prefer to do rather than things they have to do.” [Their italics]

There are a number of reasons that members of the older cohort would have different financial situations, compared to the younger cohort. Most of the older ones are over 65; they’re more likely to be retired, hence less burdened by work-related expenses and more likely to have their financial situation tied to the stock market, which has recovered to pre-recession levels. Trailing-edge Boomers are the ones most likely squeezed from both sides, too; they could still be helping pay for their kids’ college educations, and are more likely to have surviving parents who also need assistance.

For all that Gallup’s study prompts as many questions as answers, it’s nice whenever a mainstream organizations views “Baby Boomers” and/or “Seniors” as more than a monolithic group. The distinction of leading-edge and trailing-edge Boomers is a start.

There are close to 100 million Americans over 50. No group that large could possibly be made up of people who all think, or for that matter spend, the same. 

The Statistician’s Curse: Gallup’s methodology notes are sparse, and do not address any of these issues...

• We haven’t been told whether or not these figures are inflation-adjusted. If they are not corrected, today’s $105 figure is still quite a bit shy of 2008’s $114 peak. Full recovery would equate to about $125 today.
• This study is based on a telephone survey in which random respondents self-reported an estimate of the amount they’d spent that day, in various categories. Self-reporting is notoriously inaccurate. 
• If Gallup has research examining whether or not the recession has influenced self-reporting errors, they haven’t shared it.

Daily Factoid: Is the middle class shrinking? Not if you're a senior.

In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama hammered away at the idea of "middle class economics". He outlined policies to address the shrinking of the American middle class by increasing upward mobility among the working poor (e.g. making two year college tuition-free) and shoring up the erosion of the existing middle class' purchasing power (e.g. with some form of universal child care for working parents.)

Yesterday, the New York Times' Upshot team of Alicia Parlapiano, Robert Gebeloff, and Shan Carter analyzed broad trends in American class mobility and purchasing power. They defined 'middle class' as people in households earning from $35,000 to $100k in present-day dollars.

The Times' view is that in the last third of the 20th c, the share of the population in the middle class steadily fell as more and more middle income American households moved into upper-income, six-figure territory (inflation corrected.) However, since 2000, the middle class has been shrinking for different reason—families are falling out of it. 

Where I got interested was when Upshot broke out graphs illustrating the change in the size of the middle class since 1967, by age. People under 30, 30-44, and people 45-64 are all much less likely be members of the middle class today than they were in '67. About 60% of all those groups were middle class at the beginning of the period and today the share is in the mid-40% range.

Senior citizens buck that trend. In 1967, only about 20% of seniors had middle class incomes. Today, 39% of them do. And it's not because more seniors started out rich and ended up in the middle class, either; the number of well-off seniors has increased too. Meanwhile, the number of low-income seniors has happily dropped from about 75% to less than half.

Note that senior citizens are still over-represented among low-income households, although an analysis that examines gross income only (as this one does) ignores the facts that seniors are more likely to own their homes, and less likely to have work-related expenses such as child care or the costs associated with operating a second car.

It's not possible to ascribe the steady increase in the number of middle class senior citizens to a single cause. In case you're wondering, Social Security benefits began in 1940, but there was a 50% increase in total payouts between 1960 and '65. Medicare also began in 1965. The data certainly suggests that this minimal social safety net has a positive impact on the ability of Americans to enter the middle class.

At A&F, the youth cult's high priest is excommunicated

Bloomberg Business Week recently ran it's first ever 'topless' cover, featuring a slightly sagging 70-something torso. That was a reference to a brilliant feature story about the decline of Abercrombie & Fitch, and the ouster of the brand's CEO Michael Jeffries.

Ad Age called Bloomberg's daring art direction "Gross and Awesome", so I can't decide whether to compliment them for calling this 70-something torso awesome or to be mad at them for calling it gross. 

Jeffries, who is 70 but desperately clings to lost youth, took over the brand 22 years ago. Depending on your point of view, he was either a creepy, micromanaging narcissist or a retail genius. I'd say both. You should definitely read the entire story, by Susan Berfield and Lindsey Rupp, to fully appreciate this character, who turned a moribund sporting goods brand into a multibillion-dollar homoerotic fantasy. He had a Gulfstream jet with a four-man cabin crew—all male models who were told what underwear to wear. (Boxers.)

It's easy to read this great Bloomberg piece as Greek tragedy—or at least an updated tale by Theodore Dreiser—and miss a message that I find a little bit heartening.

Jeffries, who is also apparently addicted to plastic surgery, became real target on social media. If you do a Google image search for this guy, half the images that come up are memes like this.

Jeffries built what is arguably the most youth-besotted brand in America. Visitors to the flagship store in New York were actually greeted by shirtless male models with bodies as hairless as a salamander.

Until recently, the company refused to carry anything larger than a size 10, even though the average U.S. woman is size 14. Music volumes and light levels in the stores were set to drive out older consumers; all part of a plan to ensure the shoppers were young and thin. Over the years, the company settled lawsuits alleging both ageism and racism, which I suppose is not surprising considering that it existed primarily to allow spoiled upper middle class high school students from midwestern suburbs to fantasize that they were, in fact, the children of Hamptons billionaires, afflicted with terminal ennui.

What's heartening about that? Mainly that, eventually, it failed. After explosive growth in the late '90s, the company's profits trended down. Some of that was inevitable; the company had targeted a demographic that's notoriously fickle. But A & F's problem was mostly self-inflicted. Dickish comments Jeffries'd made blew up on Facebook. A recent survey of teenaged girls asked, "What brands have you stopped wearing?" and two of the top three answers were A & F and it's subsidiary, Hollister. Eventually, even kids in the clique tired of that exclusionary vibe. A & F's subtext went from 'affluent' to 'asshole'. Investors began complaining about his $140M/year compensation, and the un-approved management role taken by his life partner.

Late last year, the brand's parents — in the form of Arthur Martinez (ex-CEO of Sears and Chairman of the Board of A & F) grounded the high-flying Jeffries—literally, taking the keys to the Gulfstream—and firing him a few months before his contract was up. The company's looking for a new CEO.

Good luck to him (or her.)

The ageism guy writes a post on ad industry sexism

I spent a few days in San Francisco last week. I was there to address a session of the 3% Conference, which is usually all about the topic of sexism in the ad industry. It is called the 3% Conference because a few years ago, the conference founder—Kat Gordon—realized that only 3% of mainstream ad agency Creative Directors were women. That seemed to indicate discrimination to her, because she was pretty sure that more than 3% of consumers were women. Since she began publicizing this disparity, the ratio of female CDs has risen to 11%.

Anyway, thanks to me (I think) Kat added a session on ageism this year. I presented along with the Emmy- and Cannes Lion-winning Hélène Côté. Of course, there is no ageism conference; if there was one, it would have to be called the 0% Conference, since there are virtually no over-50 creatives in hands-on roles at big agencies.

I heard two recurring themes. The first was that women—who (duh!) still carry most of the child-rearing load, even in modern families—were often excluded from the all-night creative sessions that are part of ad agency culture. And, participant after participant complained that while they’re now present in agency creative meetings, their ideas often don't seem to get heard in group sessions.

In one panel session, I watched two women sparring on the topic of work-life balance. A Late-Gen X mom was refreshingly honest when she told the audience, basically, "I handle this issue by being exhausted all the time." Her Early-Millennial co-panelist just blew off the entire concept of work-life balance. That's not for winners, any more, I guess.

After a few hours listening to variations on those themes, something really bugged me: No one stood up to say, "Look, the reason ad creatives are called upon to work through the night isn't because there's anything inherently emergent in the ad creative process; they are called upon to pull those all-nighters because the people (men, by the way!) who manage ad agencies are incompetent."

I was disappointed that the women in attendance seemed to have bought into the notion that the big ideas come at 3 a.m. and if they couldn't be there alternating beers with Red Bull, eating cold pizza, and making giddy, exhausted fart jokes with the bros, they were destined to be left behind, career-wise. 

Bullshit. For every good 3 a.m. idea, there are 99 shitty ones (and at least nine perfectly good 3 p.m. ideas.)

The idea that women are producing their share of great ideas, but that they don't push their ideas forward as aggressively as men was the whole premise behind the hash tag #takethemic. Kat Gordon mentioned that she'd met one presenter when she took a coaching workshop called, "Silence your inner critic." 

In Q&A sessions, participants stood up to say, "When the agency gets together to pitch ideas, mine don't get picked." They got advice like, "Make sure you don't begin statements with phrases like, 'You've probably already thought of this but...'" or, "Stop making statements with a raised pitch at the end, because it makes you sound uncertain."

It occurred to me that I was in a room full of people from the first generation in which everyone got a trophy in school. I resisted the urge to stand up and say, "I've got some bad news: Half of you are, by definition, below average. So right away I can explain why a lot of your ideas aren't getting picked."

But in their defense, the ad business does over-reward presentation skills. And it is a gender trait that women tend to collaborate and seek consensus while men aggressively push their private agendas. That's a problem because the corollary of over-rewarding presentation skills is under-rewarding ideas.

So again, I was frustrated that no one stood up to say, "Let's change the business." Instead, the advice women gave women was, basically, "Be more like men."

Irony #1: If the conference succeeds in convincing those women to adopt the same strategies used by the men in their ad agency, they will have succeeded in changing a creative process that currently discriminates against women into one that discriminates against a different 50% of the population: introverts. It would be a hell of a lot better if the industry was actually capable of determining which ideas were better, not just which ideas were better presented.

When I was researching my book Build a Brand Like Trader Joe's, it occurred to me that every industry faces its own defining problems. I coined the term Gardiner's Paradox to describe the way that each industry promotes the people who can best adapt to those challenges. The paradox part comes in because the people who thrive on those problems are the ones least likely to change business models in ways that will eliminate them altogether.

In the ad industry's case, two of those defining problems are chronic mismanagement—leading to the sort of chaos that forces creatives to work all night—and an arbitrary and unscientific approach to testing and evaluating creative—which turns brainstorming sessions and client presentations into verbal wrestling matches between egomaniacs. It almost certainly is true that men, as a group, are more likely to thrive in those settings, and it's precisely because the industry's male-dominated that it hasn't ever eliminated those fundamental problems.

Irony #2: It was a man, John Gerzema, who presented an extensive research project proving that both men and women, in countries around the world, believe that business and government would be more profitable and effective if they were managed in a "more feminine" way. (For example, corporate CEOs overwhelmingly agree that their businesses would be more profitable if management was more empathetic.)

The whole premise of the 3% Conference is that the ad industry does a disservice to its clients through its underrepresentation of women. In that sense, the business does 'need' more women, but it doesn't need more women who think and act like men. It needs to get more feminine.

Of course, by the same logic, it also needs a lot more input from mature creatives, too.

How Subaru could'a made a great ad even better

Subaru's great 'tree hugger' spot walks a very fine line, by making fun of the brand's status amongst tree huggers. The reason I like the spot is that presents a funny, loving portrayal of the aging hippie grandmother.

Sure, she's a caricature, and she's prone to saying and doing things that make her son roll his eyes, and which occasionally shock her prim daughter-in-law. But the little girl is enthralled, and looks at her worshipfully. On balance, it's a positive portrayal and one that's refreshingly different than the saccharine 'grandma' characters we usually see.

Clearly, the spot's aimed at Millennials, like the driver and his wife. But the 'Woodstock' sign's another little nod to Baby Boomers and Seniors, for whom that word will always be evocative. Subaru's agency, Carmichael-Lynch, did a great job creating a spot that sells the Outback to the prime target demo, which will also work well on buyers in the key 55-64 cohort, too.

At first, the line about "I was naked zip-lining…" stood out for me, because zip-lining wasn't a thing when grandma was young. But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea that maybe grannie was naked zip-lining just in the last few years. Why not? So, I'd leave that line as-is.

But there is one tiny change that could move this ad from a solid A- on the BrandROI scale to an A+.

If it was up to me, I'd give the grandmother one line in which she looks around the car and asks, "What model did you say this was?" or something to convey her thought that she just might buy one for herself. After all, I guarantee you that as many (if not more) new Outbacks are sold to 55-64 year-old buyers than to young parents. 

If Subaru and C-L had brought Revolutionary Old Idea into the process, it would have been easy to cut a second version of the spot specifically for older audiences—in which grandma is acknowledged as a potential driver, not just a passenger. That version could run at low cost in the (many!) TV shows that skew older than 55.

Welcome to ageism, Millennials

Apple and Facebook were in the news recently, because both announced that ‘egg freezing’ would, henceforth, be covered by their employee healthcare programs. 

Commenters on this news generally fall into one of two camps. There are those who view it as evidence that tech companies are finally taking female talent seriously enough to offer this exotic and expensive health care ‘benefit’, and those who see it as an implicit threat—get pregnant and your career’s over.

But I see a third message from the tech industry to its employees: Some time in your early 40s, your career’s going to end, anyway. So, have your kids then.

I suppose most of the 20-something tech grads those companies recruit expect to be rich and retired by 40, anyway. And, most wouldn’t give a thought to the plight of people who are currently 40 or older; I mean, of course those people are hopelessly out of date, and couldn’t possibly expect good tech jobs. No wonder no one’s recruiting them.

But maybe some Millennials will be a little disquieted by the message Apple and Facebook are really sending: Even you, sought-after digital natives—forget about staying up to speed, forget about the fact that you’ll be building whatever brave new tech world we live in, in 15 years—because when you’ve built it, we’re throwing you out, too.

I suppose it might be some small consolation that you'll still—barely—be old enough to have children.

Daily factoid: People over 50 will cast half the votes next month

As the midterm election approaches, one thing is already clear: Boomers and seniors will have a disproportionate impact on the results, whatever the results may be.

I spent an hour parsing the data on recent elections, paying particular attention to voting patterns by age of voter. I expected to find older citizens are more likely to vote than younger ones. But even I was surprised by the extent of the differences in young vs. old voters.

After the 2012 elections—obviously a presidential election year—the U.S. Census Bureau gathered data from 50,000 households and broke down the ages of people who reported that they had, in fact, voted.

According to the Census Bureau, about 46% of people under 44 actually voted. The group of people between 45-64 (let’s call that the Boomers) were far more likely to vote—almost 68% of them voted. And senior citizens were even more likely to vote—almost 70%. 

Of the cohorts supplied in the Census Bureau’s dataset, 18-24 year olds are the least likely to vote. There are a variety of reasons for that, including that age group’s high mobility. People 65-74 were the most likely voters, with voting rates dropping slightly for people over 75; that drop’s likely explained by the oldest voters’ difficulty in actually getting out to the polls.

But wait, that was a presidential year. If you’ll pardon the pun, it turns out younger voters are far less likely to, ah, turn out for midterm elections. In the last midterm election (2010) voters under 30 were less than half as likely to vote as those 30 and older.

What does this all mean? Half the votes cast next month will be cast by people over 50.

50 over fifty: Sonny Bright

This 70 year-old bodybuilder puts a lot of Boomers' feelings into words when he says, "People have the misconception that age makes you old. I realized that it's a state of mind that makes you old."

Sam Bright was, obviously, the recipient of good genes. But Boomers want to believe his theory that people speed their physical aging process by letting their conscious and subconscious minds dwell on their chronological age. 

"I honestly don't feel that I've aged since I started bodybuilding [at age 44]," he says.

Whether you agree that working out is a panacea against aging or not, it's clear that a lot of people are inspired by his story, judging from 17,000 Facebook shares.

Daily Factoid: Canada's Generation (Spending) Gap

If there's a recurring theme when it comes to news stories about the aging population, it's that unproductive seniors, moldering away on their fixed incomes, with their high medical bills, are inevitably going to be a huge economic drag on the hard-working Millennials.

Right. @BrandROI has debunked this myth before, but we never get tired of doing so. Today's Daily Factoid comes from MACLEAN'S Magazine, up in Canada, which found that, in fact, it's more likely that aging Canadians will drive the economy, not drag on it.

Some of the highlights of the story include the fact that, while it's true that 5% of seniors are living in poverty, that's about half the poverty rate for the working age population as a whole.

Canadians age 75 and older make up less than seven per cent of the population, but control more than a third of all financial assets in the country­­—roughly $1 trillion worth of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and cash. —MACLEAN'S 

The story cites Bank of Montreal studies that show the median net worth of seniors has jumped 70% since 1999, though it has hardly risen at all for Canadian under 35. What's going up for younger people? Debt. 

You go, Depends!

For years, I've been using 'Depends' as a sort of brand shorthand, when I want to describe the kinds of products that force even youth-besotted ad agencies to acknowledge the existence of mature consumers. So, you can imagine that I was pleasantly surprised by this summer's "Underwareness" campaign for Depends, which was produced by Ogilvy's NYC office.

The campaign's TV ad focuses on a wide range of people, walking down a city street, wearing normal clothes on their upper bodies, but only Depends down below. The spot is stylish, funny, ironic; everything you'd want in a 'modern' ad aimed at a younger demographic, but selling a product for oldsters. 

"Wow," I thought, the first time I saw it. "Finally an ad in this category that doesn't assume all Depends users are a bunch of decrepit old fuddy-duddies." 

According to this story in the New York Times, the campaign is nominally aimed at younger consumers. Depends' brand managers like to say that nearly half the people who experience some sort of incontinence are under 50. (Many of the younger consumers who experience incontinence are having some transient medical problem; the older consumers who use Depends are going to be incontinent for the rest of their lives.) Either way, sales in the category as a whole have increased about 30% in the last five years.

I'm sure the campaign will work on those younger customers, but it's greatest impact will be felt in years to come, as the aging population enters the incontinence market. They won't come into the market thinking that Depends are cool, exactly, but it will be the least-stigmatized brand, I'm sure.

'Depends' may also be even more ensconced as the de facto noun for this whole product category, just as Kleenex stands for all disposable tissues. That's something Depends owner, the Kimberly-Clark company, obviously understands, since they own the Kleenex brand, too.

For years, I've been arguing that ads for products that are primarily purchased by young people can be tweaked to make them work on mature consumers too. And, that the adjustments made to those ads would not hurt their effectiveness in the primary target demo. 

This is an ad for a product purchased mainly by older consumers, that has been tweaked to make it work better for younger consumers. At the end of the day, most Depends will still be purchased by people much older than the creative team, but they did a great job creating a spot that will work across the market.

So, my hat's off to Calle Sjoenell, Ogilvy's the chief creative officer; Victoria Azarian, a group creative director; and Danielle Vieth, a creative director. (Mr. Sjoenell has since left Ogilvy for a creative post at an ad agency in his native Sweden.)

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.