Lina Ko September 24th, 2007
With both AM740, radio’s golden-oldies star, and Classical 96.3 FM under his belt, former City-TV czar Moses Znaimer will be bringing entertainment catering to ‘zoomers’ – boomers with lots of zip.
One cannot but agree with Znaimer that society has tended to devalue the mature person. According to him, the world is ruled by 50- to 70-year-olds who deserve a little respect. He pointed out that the two stations are a good fit because both are proudly all about catering to the boomer crowd, a high-spending demographic which nevertheless gets the short end of the stick when it comes to arts/entertainment offerings.
While I’m confident that Znaimer will make both of his newly acquired radio stations a ‘gem’ for the boomers, I read with interest that he was quoted as saying, “Youth is overvalued. What the hell is youth anyway? Hell, they have no money and they’re living in the basement…” For somebody whose rise to fame was founding and developing City-TV, a TV station with one of the highest youth ratings, Znaimer’s new directions indicate a change of times and priorities.
Marketing to boomers is not as sexy as youth marketing, but it’s about time that one of the most innovative visionaries in Canada is zooming in on the older demographic.
Lina Ko September 17th, 2007
A new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives discovered that Canada’s ageing population will have little impact on the cost of maintaining a viable national public health-care system over the next 40 years. The report seeks to debunk the myth of runaway costs as baby boomers enter their final years.
The research predicts that the ageing baby-boomer generation will add less than one per cent to health-care costs each year. It also reassures everybody that the cost of maintaining the health-care system well into the future will be easily met by economic growth.
Taking into account ageing, population growth and inflation, Canada’s public system can be maintained at current levels by increasing expenditures about 4.4 per cent a year. That’s below the nominal growth in the economy, which has averaged 5.4 per cent over the past 20 years.
The report also found that health-care costs do not rise uniformly as people age. In fact, most of the costs associated with ageing occur in the last year of life, at rates about 50 to 100 times higher than seniors in general.
In conclusion, the report says that ageing contributed a mere 0.8 per cent to the cost of public health care in the last decade. Extrapolating into the future, the costs associated with ageing will rise slightly but remain less than one per cent per annum over the next 40 years. The biggest cost drivers in the health-care system are for new drugs, diagnostic imaging and usage – not the ageing population!
Lina Ko September 7th, 2007
Retailers who target baby boomers may make many mistakes before getting it right. Reitmans Canada, the country’s largest specialty women’s wear merchant, announced yesterday that they had failed with their Cassis stores and are in the process of revamping the chain. Last fall, Cassis was launched to cater specifically to 45- to 60-year-old women by offering bigger sizes at higher prices. This concept failed because boomer women still want youthful styles while defying the ageing process, and are also not ready to pay too steep a price for them.
The new Cassis outlets will offer new merchandise that are more stylish, higher quality, better fitting and not as expensive. Reitmans hopes to appeal to boomer women who want to look smart and elegant, but still follow the fashions of the day.
U.S. retail giant Gap Inc. encountered similar difficulties in attracting baby boomers. They closed its struggling Forth and Towne chain in the U.S. after failing to find the right fit for female boomers.
The truth of the matter is boomers may not really want to shop at separate stores. Older women do not want to dress like an older woman. The 50-year-old woman thinks she’s 40, and the 40-year-old woman thinks she’s 30. Everyone thinks they are younger than they are and to be seen shopping at a store for ‘older’ women is not good for their self esteem. Perhaps retailers should first master the shopping psychology of boomers before opening separate stores for boomers.