The Business of Aging

Can Boomers Step Out of the Greatest Generation’s Historical Shadow

Really interesting article in The Atlantic titled The Least We Can Do - written by baby boomer  Michael Kinsley.

Here is the intro:

Self-absorbed, self-indulged, and self-loathing, the Baby Boom generation at last has the chance to step out of the so-called Greatest Generation’s historical shadow. Boomers may not have the opportunity to save the world, as their predecessors did, but they can still redeem themselves by saving the American economy from the fiscal mess that they, and their fathers and mothers, are leaving behind.

Wow.

It is a super well written and believe it or not, quite objective.

Give it a read.

 

 

 

Webinar: Engaging Baby Boomers. Slides Available.

We had about 150 attendees show up today for the webinar, Engaging Baby Boomers: The Communications Tools, Technologies and Strategies.

A big thank you to Martin Diano, CEO of Boomer Authority for putting this together! If you are not a member (free) of Boomer Authority, join today. Boomer Authority is a professional association for experts and organizations that specialize in the 50+ Baby Boomer demographic.

Moderated by Nancy Shonka Padberg (CEO, Navigate Boomer Media) Lori Bitter (President, Continuum Crew) and I spoke about the senior care and Boomer market and how to gain and hold your share of this booming marketplace. We did not record the webinar but….

Mark Willaman (SeniorCareMarketer) slides here.

Lori Bitter (Continuum Care) slides here.

Enjoy.

Bankers Use Elder Care Programs to Service Boomer Clientele

The first line in this Wall Street Journal article titled Beyond Estate Planning: Bankers Tackle Elder Care    says it all:

"If you are looking for help caring for an older family member, you might try giving your banker a call."

Many private banks and trust companies are introducing services to help older clients (or parents of younger clients) sort out medical bills, hire in-home care or even manage the sale of a home. Sometimes the bank charges an additional fee for such services; in other cases, they are included in the asset-management or trust fees families already pay.

Banks, and the financial services sector in general, were pioneers in bringing work-life or family friendly benefits to employees in the 1980s. The reason? Demographics and Money. What else? Banks tend to employ large numbers of female employees and as record numbers of women re-entered the workforce in the 1980's banks were quick to realize the important role that child care benefits played in recruitment and retention.  

So it is not surprising that banks are the early adopters for elder care benefits. What is surprising is they are now using them not just to retain employees but customers - e.g., wealthy baby boomers! 

Smart move. Really smart move.

Some examples:

• Wells Fargo's private-bank Elder Services program provides help to older clients and their caregivers.
• Merrill Lynch's family-office group offers "Stand Ready", which helps clients organize all the details of their lives in case they suddenly become incapacitated.
• Bessemer Trust offers "health advisory" services.
• Northern Trust has beefed up its training in the family dynamics involved in long-distance caregiving.
• Broadspire Care Management, which contracts with bank trust departments and wealth-management firms to provide geriatric-care management, says it has seen referrals rise 10% to 12% a year for the past three years.

"This is not just a matter of revenue. This is a matter of developing an intimate, trusted relationship with the client," says Joseph Coughlin, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab.

Check out the article for more details.

New Twitter List - The Business of Aging

I recently (I know, late to the party) started a Twitter account for SeniorCareMarketer.com to share timely news on the senior and Boomer marketplace so I invite you to follow us on Twitter. 

I quickly realized there are some really fabulous Twitter accounts on the subject of Aging, Boomers and senior care. So I am building a Twitter List that aggregates these various Twitter accounts.  The List is The Business of Aging and I invite you to follow the list.

If you know of any Twitter accounts that I should add to this list please let me know. I tend to favor non promotional Twitter accounts that provide useful news on the space. Check it out here.

Disruptive Demographics: The Future of Retirement

I've been spending time this morning on Disruptive Demographics,  an online publication providing insights on the convergence of global aging and technology on business innovation and public policy.

Disruptive Demographics draws upon original research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab, business cases, cross-national data, developments in technology, and lifestyle trends to present new thinking about old age.

In particular I wanted to share two audio interviews with Joseph Coughlin on the subject of disruptive demographics and the future of retirement – best characterized by the baby boomer’s new expectations for old age.

The next generation of retirees are more likely to demand the opportunity to remain engaged, productive, and to have the flexibility to work, care, learn and play in old age. What opportunities for business innovation do these expectations create? What personal and public challenges are ahead?

Listen to these excellent interviews with Joseph Coughlin - really interesting stuff.

Part 1. An Introduction to Disruptive Demographics 
Part 2. Envisioning Retirement Tomorrow  

Opening Day - Aging in America 2010 & Boomer Summit

SeniorCareMarketer.com is at the annual Aging in America conference and Boomer Summit this week. We are exhibiting, sponsoring and speaking. I will try and give a daily update as time permits.  

As I have said before, any company that markets products or services relating to the aging population must be at these events.  They are two of the best.

This morning I participated in a panel discussion/workshop titled Entrepreneurship & New Career Opportunities within the Boomer Market. Other panel members included:

Mark Miller, President, 50+Digital, LLC
A.D. Frazier, COO/Co-founder, BOTH
Beth Sanders, Founder & CEO, LifeBio.com
Jeff Williams, President, Bizstarters.com LLC

This was a great session that provided a lot of practical information for anyone doing business in or thinking about doing business in the "senior care" marketplace.

Mark Miller did a fantastic job moderating this event and summarizing  the opportunities in this growing market.  Mark also reminder everyone that the 55+ demographic posts the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity.

Jeff Williams, an expert on starting a business after 50, says "In the corporate world, one person can fire you. But to be truly "unemployed" as a self-employed person all of your customers would have to "fire you", and I don't think most of us are so stupid as to let this happen." Jeff discussed how boomers who have been downsized will have to accept the new reality that they may never again be employed with another Fortune 500 company - and that this is not necessarily a bad thing. 

A.D. Frazier, the CEO of a very interesting start-up called BOTH (Back of the House) spoke about how his company can help any solo practitioner (the majority of businesses) get started (incorporating, business plans, web hosting, billing, etc.) by outsourcing all non revenue producing activities. I wish I new of BOTH when I started my business ten years ago!

Finally, Beth Sanders took us through the early days of her start-up, LifeBio. LifeBio simplifies the publishing process so that anyone can create their own book of life's adventures. Customers create an autobiography or the biography of a loved one by using LifeBio's carefully-crafted questions or by using our Memory Journal or other reminiscence products. Beth discussed how she created a scalable business by utilizing innovative distribution "partnerships" - something any business, regardless of size, can benefit from.   

 

Some Thoughts on Boomers, their "Retirement" and the Companies That Market to Them.

I came across two interesting articles I wanted to share - and why the information is important to companies selling products and services relating to the aging population.

"The Census Bureau forecasts that the 65-and-over population will rise from 38.7 million in 2008 to 88.5 million by 2050 and that the 85-and-over slice will swell from 5.4 million to 19 million. The actual size of this "age wave," though, could reach tsunami proportions, if a December study from the healthcare policy journal Milbank Quarterly turns out to be prescient. It predicts an average American life span of 86 years for a man and 93 years for a woman by 2050—more than a decade longer than now—and a grand total of up to 108 million seniors."- Excerpt from January 25, 2010 U.S. News and World Report article.

The first, Why Baby Boomers Should Rethink Retirement, from U.S. News and World Report discusses how seniors today are living more independently, dying less from lengthy and debilitating bouts of cancer, and are happier than they were in the past (according to a 2008 University of Chicago study). The article goes into pretty good detail about the impacts of an aging - and active - population on the individual and society as well as the challenges it brings to public policy.

The second article, Economy Forces Changes in Thinking about Retirement, discusses the economy's impact on senior housing including smaller homes, increased emphasis on bike paths and walking trails (and decreased emphasis on greens and fairways), a shift away from traditional "warm weather" retirement destinations, and the types of design features the 55+ population wants in their homes.

Some lessons from these articles:

When it comes to marketing to an older demographic group, strategies that may have worked in the past will not work with aging boomers.  This is new territory for a lot of companies because historically people over the age of 50 have not been highly targeted by marketers because their spending power was minimal.  But as a group aging boomers will have double the spending power of today's 60-70 years olds, will not consider themselves "old", are affluent, and will live independent and active lifestyles well into their 70s and 80s and beyond if they are healthy.

All of these changes will have a dramatic impact on how company's market their products and services - all companies, as well as how employers recruit and retain older workers.

Companies that Ignore the Over-50 Set Do So at their Peril!

A great cover story article in Baron's titled Boomer Consumer discusses how companies that continue to ignore the over-50 set do so at their peril, as "boomer consumers" eat up a larger slice of the nation's spending pie.

I've blogged about this topic extensively the last twelve months (including related topics):

- Event Review: 2009 Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit
 
- Staying Relevant With An Aging Population. An Elderhostel Case Study.

- Recession Turns a Graying Office Grayer

Key points from the Baron's article:

• Increasingly, the 77 million [aging boomers] are being ignored by advertisers and marketers.
• By 2015, when all the boomers will be 50-plus, folks aged 50 to 75 will account for 40% of adult consumers, up from 36.8% now. And they will boast the most spendable cash. Yet advertisers and marketers still seem to devote about 90% of their energy to wooing the 18-49 group, and 10% to those 50-plus.
• Does it make sense, after all, for NBC's suits to judge a new TV show like Jay Leno's mainly on its appeal to 18-to-49-year-olds, as some published reports say is the case? Leno's advertisers include companies such as BMW, many of whose buyers are 50 or older.
• But while the aging boomers certainly will be a bonanza to health-care outfits -- they already account for two-thirds of the spending on pharmaceuticals -- they will be anteing up a lot more for other things.
• The 50-plus set already accounts for 45% of all U.S. consumer spending and, Francese predicts, the figure could ultimately approach 50% by 2015.
• One myth is that older Americans are much more interested in shedding furniture and housewares than in buying them because most are empty-nesters. The reality: Older consumers account for more than 40% of the money spent on new household furnishings and equipment in the U.S.
• Bottom line: Older consumers will keep trudging off to Bed Bath & Beyond,  Target,  Wal-Mart Stores and Ikea for years.
• Boomerologist Martin partly blames ad agencies for what he views as 
  " He says a disproportionately large number of advertising copywriters, account managers and art directors are young. "Ask them to do an ad targeting the 50-plus demographic, and they default to a gray-haired senior limping down a beach trailed by an aging golden retriever," he adds.
• Take 1965 (see chart on this blog post) when the oldest boomers were turning 18, then jump to 1995, when the very oldest were turning 49. Over these three decades, the number of U.S. residents aged 18 to 49 soared from 78.6 million to 125.9 million. In the same period, the 50-to-75-year-old cohort, many of them a product of the birth dearth of the 1930s, rose far more slowly.

Great article Baron's.

Staying Relevent With An Aging Population. An Elderhostel Case Study.

The blog 50-Plus Marketing (from consulting firm 20plus30) had a great post this week titled Elderhostel makes a fascinating marketing case study.

It is about how Elderhostel, a travel and educational organization for older adults, is trying to reverse a decreasing enrollment trend that has led to the organization losing millions of dollars this past year.

One problem is the age of their average customer has risen to 73 from 68 over the last ten years. In other words, through attrition alone they are on a downward spiral as they are losing relevance to the market they desperately need to sell product to - older Americans. And ironically, this is the fastest growing, largest and wealthiest demographic in the US. 

Not good.

So what are they doing?

A lot but the three biggest changes are:

1. A name change. They are now Exploritas.
2. Their top line messaging is now "Educational Travel in the U.S.A." with a tagline of "Adventures in Lifelong Learning".
3. They removed their age restrictions. No longer do you have to be at least 60, now anyone 21 or older will be able to participate.

I hope it works but removing the age restriction is a huge gamble.

I am in my forties but I am quite familiar with Elderhostel because my mom was a loyal customer up until her death last year. She loved Elderhostel! It was basically an educational vacation where you went to nice destinations and learned something by taking courses. She had a blast and enjoyed meeting new people.

But I'm not sure she would have enjoyed hanging out with 20 somethings - or even forty somethings. And vice versa. So this is a risky marketing strategy. In fact, I was surprised to see on Exploritas web site that in the section "Browse by' my choices were:

• Location
• Interest
• Date
• Activity Level
• Catalog
• Map

But not "age".

Interesting.

Anyway, I do hope their marketing strategy works because they have a great product.

Just about every business in the US needs to pay attention to this "case study" because:

1. If you don't currently include older American's in your target market you need to. The aging population is the largest, wealthiest and fastest market segment in the US. You can't grow your business by ignoring this demographic.
2. If your target market is limited to "older American's (like  Elderhostel's was) you need to realize that today's older consumers make buying decisions far different than yesterdays older consumers. Continuing to market today like you did yesterday will lead you down the same path as what Elderhostel has experienced. I'm not saying you need to do a 180 degree turn like Elderhostel did and include all age groups in your target market but you do need to repackage your products, branding and marketing to remain relevant to the Boomer market.

And that is the marketing case study all businesses will face the next several decades.

Interesting stuff - and a challenge all marketer's should love and embrace.

The Dangers of Generation Lumping in Marketing

Move Over Boomers, Y Has Come of Age.  This article is interesting. While it is written from the perspective of the travel industry it nevertheless raises an important question - is the buying power of the Boomer's (today's biggest and wealthiest generation) overrated? 

The article cites new research from PhoCusWright's Consumer Travel Report that shows the strategy of marketer's to aggressively go after the Boomer market may not live up to expectations.

Fact is, baby boomers between the ages of 45-54 spent the least of any age group per household on travel, and are the most likely to reduce their travel spending in 2009. With children in college, devalued homes and ravaged investment portfolios this age group has been among the hardest hit by recent economic struggles.

The author concludes: "While boomers still represent a critically important consumer group, the permanence of their risk-taking and resulting financial scars will change the way this generation spends money for a long time, if not forever. Marketers should seriously rethink boomers' status as the golden target group, at least for the near term".

Compare this to Gen X and Gen Y. The author writes "thirty-two percent of 25-34 year olds (the group that spent the most on travel in 2008) plan on spending more in 2009. This group is less likely to be burdened by high-fixed expenses and has likely not suffered significant investment loss. They also have plenty of time to save up for retirement, so they are not afraid to reach into their wallets. And fortunately for the industry, travel is high on their to-do list".

Again, this article was written for the travel industry. But could it have been written for any industry?

I've posted several blogs about the danger of lumping all "boomers" together. In fact, "boomers" is a terrible marketing term because it tends to force people into thinking of this generation as a single purchasing entity. 

When I shared this article with marketing demographic guru John Sumser he had this to say and I believe John is exactly right:

'This [article] makes an important point. I think, however, that focusing to hard on these giant demographic ideas causes one to miss the mark(et). The generational differences are a way of talking about a big change in consumer behavior. When you act as if there are impermeable walls between the genrations you don't notice important trends like...

[Person A] and I are roughly 10 or 12 years apart in age. Our children are 25 years apart. [Person A] is nearly my generation, our children inhabit grossly different universes. The language of generational difference is useful to a point, a starting point. Once the argument gets as polarized as it currently is, it stops being useful and it's time to move on.

If the people entering their 6os are your target market, you might be better served looking for regional similarities in that age group and its consumption habits......".

I agree.