Lina Ko March 31st, 2008
Destination spas have long become attractions for baby boomers, but the recent rise of health centres in the U.S. has begun to lure guests to check in for the best tests and advice money can buy – all with a massage and a glass of wine.
As ageing boomers begin hearing their physicians mutter about colonoscopies, mammograms, and DNA damage caused by late-night partying or excessive exposure to the sun, a new generation of ‘wellness complexes’ in the U.S. is incorporating progressive medical services – aimed at prolonging your life – along with spa pampering.
Unlike outpatient facilities such as the Mayo Clinics, these health institutes have an informal methodology. Guests receive ‘executive checkups’ complete with diagnostic tests, consultations with LifeAdvisors, and all the trimmings of a world-class hotel: massages, rounds of championship golf, Italian linens, art installations, and serious wine cellars. Such complexes represent the partnering of genetic science with the holistic world, where impassioned advocates are bringing together top medical research facilities and deep-pocketed investors.
Two of the most famous, relatively-new wellness institutes are the California Health and Longevity Institute which pairs a 270-room Four Seasons hotel and spa with a high-tech medical facility on a 20-acre property near Los Angeles. The other is the Miraval Life in Balance Resort in Arizona. Housed in a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified, eco-friendly annex, Miraval guests are able to take advantage of its non-conformist approach to sustaining health. From cardiometabolic stress tests to diagnostic blood work to nutrition assessment and an exercise regimen, guests receive their analyses delivered in a warm and fuzzy manner.
What’s certain is that these programs are effective in behavioural modification. Almost all medical studies on longevity point to one thing – people with bad habits have a shorter life span. So while it helps to have new tests that are great at catching potential problems early, guests at the resorts have to be committed to making a few adjustments to their routines to see results. If you’re ready to quit smoking, stop drinking, stop stressing and eat more veggies, you may want to visit these facilities during your next vacation!
Lina Ko March 24th, 2008
Most people have heard about Europeans’ lack of interest in having children. Even with Europe’s more generous paid maternity leave and subsidized child-care policies when compared to North America, fewer and fewer Europeans are using them. Europe’s average fertility rate is an un-self-sustaining 1.5 children per woman.
Canada is no better. Two weeks ago, Statistics Canada released data that showed Canada’s unemployment rate of just 5.8 per cent is the lowest level in modern times. But the workforce is getting older – fast. The median age passed 40 for the first time ever on this census and now sits at 41.2 years, up from 39.5 in 2001. In 2006, a whopping 15.3 per cent of the workforce was 55 years and older, up from 11.7 per cent just five years earlier.
Our population continues to age at an alarming rate, and it’s only going to get worse as the baby boom blasts into retirement. The problem, according to The Calgary Hearld, really boils down to not enough babies. Canadian women, like their European counterparts, only have 1.5 children each while a rate of 2.1 is needed to simply replace our population. Whereas Americans are reproducing at precisely the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman of childbearing age, Europeans and Canadians are on track to put themselves utterly out of business.
According to a 2006 Statistics Canada report, even a substantial increase in the number of immigrants could not stop Canada’s population ageing. The only way to stop the Canadian ageing process, states the report, is to increase fertility.
While it is strategic for all levels of Canadian government to encourage ageing baby boomers to remain in the workforce, it is also important for the government to think of a new strategy to increase our population. Anything less is the end of Canada’s way of life.
Lina Ko March 17th, 2008
When I appeared as a guest on CBC’s Fortune Hunters two weekends ago, program host Dianne Buckner asked me what businesses would be strong prospects for boomer-marketing. I mentioned anti-aging, health and wellness, travel and leisure, and financial services but forgot to mention the business which I believe is going to grow in the next two decades – the business of death.
According to the Globe and Mail, the entire business of death is predicated on a single, relatively stable number. In Canada, that number – the crude death rate – stands at 7.3 meaning that 73 out of every 10,000 random Canadians would pass away in the next year.
Prospects for family-run funeral homes used to be grim. This is no longer the case. People will always eat, get sick and die; it’s how they went about it that was changing. The huge funeral-home-operating companies such as Loewen and SCI are now finding it difficult to compete with family-run homes. At the core, death cannot be mass-produced. Family-run funeral homes have been succeeding in personalizing the services to each family. They turned to the wedding industry for inspiration. They’ve discovered that Canadians were willing to splurge on traditional ceremonies as long as they maintained control over the details. Creative funeral directors have become special event managers who decorated a room in the funeral home ranging from a hockey rink to a movie theatre for dead movie buffs.
For all of us who used to be fans of TV series, “Six Feet Under,” the idea of a family-run funeral home business has taken on a new meaning of reflections on life and death. With the growing number of leading-edge boomers moving towards their ’senior’ years, they would want to take control of even their death and plan their funerals to the last detail. Funeral home operators who can capitalize on this opportunity and begin to personalize and customize their offerings would reap the biggest profit from the business of death.
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.