Lina Ko September 7th, 2010
The Globe and Mail recently reported that a new survey suggests that young Canadians are less likely than their parents to choose which products they buy based on a company’s reputation for social responsibility. The findings are contained in the Consumerology Report, a quarterly survey that tracks trends in Canadian consumer attitudes.
The most recent survey, which focuses on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), indicates a generation gap between younger consumers and baby boomers when it comes to the importance of a company’s reputation for CSR. In the survey, only 16 percent of those under the age of 30 said a company’s reputation was ‘very important’ for them in making product choices, compared with more than 75 percent of respondents over the age of 55.
The results seem surprising since young people are usually perceived as being concerned about issues such as the environment. However, marketing experts who initiated the survey said younger people are more likely to show support for a cause through Facebook postings or donations via their smart phone than by taking part in a protest. They think marketers who want to build brand loyalty among this demographic through CSR intiatives should do it digitally.
But this is more about why the change in attitude instead of how to market to consumers. Incidents such as The Gulf of Mexico oil spill – in which a company that had marketed itself as socially responsible saw its reputation tarnished - are fuelling cynicism from both youth and boomers. Corporate social responsibility initiatives should always be in synergy with reputation management. Earning consumer trust should be an ongoing goal for corporations.
Lina Ko February 17th, 2009
It seems at long last that the fashion industry is getting it – you need boomer models to appeal to boomer consumers! According to The Globe and Mail, 50-year-old Madonna is donning the ads for Louis Vuitton; 52-year-old Jerry Hall is the new face of Chanel; 50-year-old Twiggy is the model for Marks & Spencer; Helena Christensen, in her late 40s, is modelling underwear for Agent Provocateur. The list goes on and on – Ines de la Fresange, a former Lagerfeld muse, just walked the Paris haute couture runways at 51. On TV, former models Cheryl Tiegs (61) and Iman (54) are appearing as hosts and guest judges on shows such as True Beauty and Project Runway. At 42, Cindy Crawford touts her own line of furnishings and 40-year-old Jennifer Aniston was the recent cover girl for GQ magazine.
With the demographic reality of an ageing population, this makes sense as the fashion industry realizes that the disposable pounds, euros and dollars lie in the pockets of a much older age group. Of course, we need to remember that older women now look better – so most mature women models are now proud to let people know their age. The biggest satisfaction for older women boomers must be J. Crew’s recent accomplishments – donning senior citizen Lauren Hutton as its 2009 spring cover girl – and, at the same time, supported by U.S. first lady Michelle Obama and her daughters. Who thought J. Crew can be cool again?
Lina Ko December 11th, 2008
According to The Globe and Mail, Toyota engineers have worked hard to create a higher hip point so it’s easier for ageing, wider baby boomers to pivot their backsides in and out of their latest creation – the all-new 2009 Venza crossover utility vehicle.
Behind the wheel, car critics claimed that the Venza feels like a Camry sedan. The Vensa has numerous standard safety features, including vehicle stability control, traction control, hill-start assist control, active front-seat head rests, ABS with electronic brake force distribution, brake assist and seven airbags, including a driver’s knee airbag.
The Venza seats five. Sweeping rocker panels enclosed behind the doors is a nice touch; they keep pant legs clean when entering and exiting the vehicle. Car critics also said that from the driver’s seat, all-around visibility is excellent. Despite a low step-in, the driver has a high sightline.
Whether you’re riding in the front or rear seats, you’ll be equally comfortable with plenty of space for long legs. With so many ageing boomers now having back or arthritis problems, getting in and out of this car should be a piece of cake. Canadian boomers will be glad to hear that the Venza will hit Canadian showrooms in January.
Lina Ko May 12th, 2008
According to a recent survey conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of the Canadian Newspaper Association, Canada’s wealthiest demographic – baby boomers – still plans to spend big money in the coming months in spite of the slowing economy.
Eighty percent of the 1,980 boomers surveyed said they still had “big buying power.” And many indicated they fully intended to exercise that power with large purchases. Almost 40 percent of boomers said that taking a vacation topped their spending priorities for the next 12 months. Purchasing home electronics, appliances and a car – as well as mutual funds – also ranked high as priorities.
The Toronto Star also reported that the survey revealed that in a world where 74 percent of advertising money is directed at a younger audience, 40 percent of boomers feel neglected by ads. The survey also shows newspapers are the medium of choice for boomers, with 65 percent indicating they don’t see a time when their paper will be replaced by something else.
Advertisers and marketers are still ignoring an important demographic although I have to say there have been some improvements. In these times when we know the economy is shrinking, perhaps marketers should speed up in paying attention to the boomer demographic who still has money and is willing to spend.
Lina Ko March 10th, 2008
The ninth episode of CBC Newsworld’s Fortune Hunters that I taped about two weeks ago was finally aired this past weekend. This program is relatively new and features hot new trends that interest entrepreneurs from across the country. I appeared with former Dragon Robert Herjavec of Dragons’ Den fame in this episode featuring entrepreneurial ideas on marketing to Baby Boomers.
Although both of us are boomers, Robert and I have agreed to disagree on air about the business potential of the company featured on air – DanceScape. Headed by two former North American dance champions Robert and Beverley Tang, DanceScape wants to build its brand from a Burlington company to a global dance lifestyle brand. The show followed the couple’s ordeal to ask for a seven-figure investment from a venture capitalist Tim Draper in California. Although Draper’s answer was initially no, he promised to further consider the Tangs’ proposal and open doors for them.
Robert Herjavec, one of the fiercest dragons from Dragons’ Den and a self-made billionaire himself, concluded that using a Facebook tool to market a hobby favoured by baby boomers is not going to work. According to him, the concept is too niche and for the brand to really take off around the world, it needs something that would appeal to a mass market. On the contrary, I think the business concept of conducting dance lessons for boomers around the world is dead on – we know boomers love to exercise and build their physical and mental strength and there is nothing better than dancing – ballroom, swing, salza, jazz… you name it! As I previously mentioned on this blog, boomers’ savviness to technology has been greatly misunderstood. Yes, social networking sites may be more prevalent for younger people, but boomers are eager to bond and socialize online if it’s the right subject matter. And I think dancing is just one of the passions that would connect boomers.
The Tangs’ challenge is not whether their idea is sound or not. They made the same mistake that a lot of other people are making in marketing to boomers – they did not segment their audiences and market to boomers with a one-size-fits-all solution which will not work. As I mentioned on the program, leading-edge (older) boomers have different dancing needs than their younger counterparts and one marketing program using the same tool for all boomers will not work. Evolving the DanceScape brand from a Burlington company to a global brand also needs a strong marketing plan that shows some understanding of the opportunities and challenges in connecting with boomers from around the world. This was obviously missing or was left out when Robert and I were viewing the profile of the company in the CBC studio.
When I first started talking about marketing to boomers, a lot of people thought it’s too niche as well. What they don’t understand is that just with the sheer size of the boomer population, this will soon become mainstream. The buck doesn’t stop here at all!
Lina Ko March 4th, 2008
I went on the new travel web site for boomers – www.boomeropia.com – because I share the founder’s frustration that there are very few marketers who are catering to the fun side of boomers. According to the web site founder, Liz Dahl, boomers are getting ads for medication and hearing aids and no one was appealing to their fun side. So she created Boomeropia as an information site, listing interesting travel tips and tours in 30 categories. What I like about this new website are culinary trips such as exploring the New Orleans Cooking Experience with highly-personalized classes focusing on Creole cooking. In addition to the usual cruises, the web site even has pleasant surprises such as Boutique Hotels, Motorcycle, Scuba Diving, and a category entitled Money Is No Object. For the super-affluent boomers, there are adventure-seeking trips such as Cultural Treasures – Around the World by Private Jet with a price tag of $100,000 based on double occupancy and a nature-embracing stay in Boulders Lodge in South Africa, the design of which makes every effort to allow nature to play a leading role and its organic architecture creating a soothing space for rest and relaxation.
Canadians are known for going online to conduct research on travel ideas and options. Boomers are no different, and I’m glad to see that not everybody is focusing on the doom and gloom of ‘retiring’ and ‘ageing’ boomers.
Lina Ko October 22nd, 2007
Contrary to popular belief, a growing number of social-networking websites are being developed for people over the age of 50. According to an Internet monitoring company, 14 per cent of adult Internet users are older than 55. It also predicts seniors in Britain will overtake 35 to 44-year-olds as the age group with the largest representation online. There’s a boom in networking sites targeting older people interested in keeping in touch with friends and chatting about subjects such as diet and health care.
According to the executives at GrowingBolder.com, on average, people over 50 spend more time online than any other demographic group, but so far have been ignored by online entrepreneurs. North America is such a youth worshipping culture and Hollywood is partly to blame for that. It’s enlightening to see that there’s a dramatic, revolutionary change under way right now. It’s no longer people fighting ageing – they are embracing ageing. Unilever’s ProAge Campaign for Dove certainly reflects this trend.
Online marketing trade publisher, iMedia Connection, says more than 43 million people aged 50 or older used the Internet in 2005 – up 21 per cent from the previous year. These users generally have more money to spend and show more loyalty to certain web sites. Marketers are now spending more and more online as Baby Boomers now have a relevant voice on ‘greying Internet’ sites such as GrowingBolder, Boomertown, Multiply and Rezoom.
Lina Ko October 1st, 2007
The numbers recently released based on the 2006 Census surprise a lot of people. The picture of traditional Canadian families, with the married mom and dad who had children who grew up and married, and had their own kids making mom and dad still-married grandparents, is no longer here.
Married couples are now the minority. Divorce rate is up and most couples prefer living together to getting married. Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians aged 20 to 24 live with their parents, compared with 41 per cent two decades earlier. Three million Canadian households are now living alone. These are the men and women who are not necessarily old maids or odd single men who never got married; they are not even widows or widowers – these are the ‘New Singles’ who opt to live on their own.
Apart from an ageing population, this astonishing stat can partly be attributed to how technology and the frustration with relationships have turned us inward; where the once-coveted happily-ever-after-married-with-kids life is often seen as unattainable, inconvenient or an economic challenge.
Within my own circle, there are quite a number of boomer women living alone. We are marrying later in life, if at all. We are having children later in life, if at all. If we divorce, we often don’t remarry. A lot of my friends are either a mid-40s or mid-50s man or woman who never seemed to make the love connection that would take them from one-person household to married with children, but instead took the career path that led to the high-rise condo, the new car every few years and the annual vacation in an exotic resort outside Canada.
That’s why I don’t understand why we continue to see TV commercials and ads showing happy, greying couples living happily ever after. It’s about time that marketers should better understand and segment boomers – by all means include the couples; but please give some thought to the new generation of ‘singles’ who have earned a new-found freedom, especially in the first few years of solo life, when waking up alone on a Sunday morning to a quiet house or condo with no responsibility.
Lina Ko July 31st, 2007
In my article on Selling ‘Soft’ Ware, Not Hardware previously posted on May 4, 2007, I mentioned that I would be going on a luxury cruise this summer. Upon my return from my vacation, I owe it to my readers to give an overall evaluation. Cruise lines are marketed now, more than ever, to baby boomers. As a discerning boomer myself, my overall score was a 7 out of 10 after my seven-day cruise along the Adriatic Cost and Croatia.
While the cruise line exceeded my expectations on food and beverages – both were of Michelin Guide calibre – it fell short in other areas such as service, entertainment and facilities. Service is very much about selling ‘soft’ ware, and although there were highlights such as having a copy of the Canadian News printout every day outside my room, overall the cruise line has not delivered its brand promise due to a lack of understanding of its customers. The overall ratio of staff to customers was about 1:1.3 which should have made us very happy. However, after being asked four to five times over dinner about how we felt about the food, I had to stop them because I felt that my intimate conversations with my girlfriends were interrupted. The way the wait staff asked also annoyed me – you could tell from their eyes that they weren’t very sincere, instead they came across as almost robotic, trained to ask the right questions.
I also feel that this company is out of touch with us baby boomer women. When my two girlfriends and I entered the dining room one night in spectacular evening gowns (the dress code was black tie optional), three male waiters offered us their arms and insisted that they escort us to our table. Being friendly and accommodating individuals, we willingly obliged. On the second night when this happened again, two out of the three in my company had to politely refuse. I didn’t have time to explain to the maitre d’ but our completed questionnaire on our feedback reflected what really bothered us. In this contemporary era when boomer women are increasingly independent, we would be very comfortable at any time, in any dress code, to walk solo and unescorted into a big room and still look happy, charming and feminine.
This, together with the housekeeping staff missing one night of refreshing our room, led to an overall less-than-satisfactory score.
Then came the entertainment which was once again disappointing. The cruise company misunderstood that because this was a more expensive voyage, their passengers would be senior citizens and might prefer aging lounge singers and cabaret performers. Believe me, while we’re not expecting rappers or hip-hop musicians à la Black Eyed Peas, we were expecting a mix of contemporary and classical music and yes, after paying that much, even Broadway-quality shows on board the ship!
In the end, the highlights of our drive along the breathtaking Amalfi Coast and Positano, and the food on the cruise made our trip worthwhile, and not to mention the great company I’ve had over numerous glasses of champagne with caviar!
Lina Ko May 4th, 2007
According to the latest research on retirement spending, 84 percent of potential retirees anticipate that they would travel during their first five years of retirement. This makes the travel industry possibly one of the biggest growth sectors in the next decade. More than any other sector of the industry, the cruise industry succeeded in reinventing itself during the last decade and is anticipated to continue to do so in order to appeal to the most affluent, best travelled generation in history – the Baby Boomers.
Among the many cruise lines, Seabourn has consistently been voted by Condé Nast as one of the top three luxury cruise lines in the world. According to Seabourn, you’ve got to sell more than the facts to justify the luxury price. Consumers are looking for an evocative experience, not only a list of destinations and features, when they are purchasing a luxury product. What motivates baby boomers is more the ‘soft’ ware than the hardware. Seabourn recently instituted a personal shopper program to help vacationers shop for antiques in Istanbul or glassware in Venice.
Boomers view vacations as a God-given right. They would never think of denying themselves a vacation unless they were in dire economic need. They are not guilty about self indulgence. Luxury marketing is never about what you need, but what you want.
I look forward to experiencing the ‘soft’ ware on board the Seabourn Spirit to Italy and the Adriatic coast this summer!