All
this talk of baby boomers and senior citizens was making me fall asleep. You,
too, no doubt. So let’s talk about death instead, just to lighten things up a
bit.

"Print
may not be dead, but print editions are suddenly dying at an unprecedented
rate." Well-put, Erik
Sass. He’s talking about the folding
of Child magazine, an embarrassing failure for Meredith Corp, trailing not far
behind the story of Life magazine in its
final hours. (For the second time.) What’s up with Time, yo? Laying
off 300 magazine workers?

Daniel
Okrent of Time, Inc. had this to say at
a lecture at Columbia entitled, “The
Death of Print Media?”

And I believe one more thing: I believe that all forms
of print are dead. Finished. Over. Perhaps not in my professional lifetime, but
certainly in that of the youngest people in this room. Remove the question mark
from the title of this talk. The Death of Print, full stop.

There’s
a great scene from
Monty Python and the Meaning of Life when the Grim Reaper enters the room where
a dinner party is taking place and announces, “I’ve come for you. You’re all
dead.” A very clever Englishman replies, “But, Mr. Reaper, how can we all have
died at the same time?” He merely points a gnarled finger at the dinner table
and declares, "The salmon mousse."

Well,
it appears that magazines and newspapers are both partaking in the mousse. It’s
no secret that newspapers are sinking, sinking. Declining circulations + stagnating
ad revenue = slow death. Even our beloved SF Chronicle is in
trouble these days. Yet editors of major newspapers are still insisting that
the medium, much like Kate Winslet, “will go on.” Where is this rampant optimism
coming from? That water is damn cold!

Something to note: perhaps we can partake in after-life
mints. Both Child and Life magazine will remain active online, the latter as a photo
portal, housing a collection of 10 million images. Lose one thing, gain
another. I like that idea – rebirth. It’s almost pleasantly Buddhist.

So,
now that we’ve established to the jury that baby boomers are the “new black”
for online marketistas, now we’re going
to give you the 411 on how to capture this totally fab market. Let me rephrase
that in boomer terms: here are some ideas to grab them by the knickers and make
them listen to your message. And do it not just because they are feeling sad
and neglected. (According to TV Land research,
45% of the demographic believe that advertisers are ignoring them.)

When
baby boomers were in their teens and their 20s, they were the ones that
advertisers were largely after, and "now at the age of their 40s and 50s,
they’re really feeling left out by advertisers today," laments Kimberly Maxwell, TV Land’s director of brand
and consumer research in this MarketWatch
article. Not to sound cold-hearted, but we’re not concerned about
feelings here, Chester. We’re not going to serenade them with jingles and rich
media to make them happy. No, these guys are literally worth the effort. Boomers outspend all other age groups 2 to 1
across all product categories. They’ve worked hard for the money, and now
they’re going to spend it. And we’re going to tell them how.

Like
so many situations with great reward potential, the challenges are many. The
pervading stereotypes of seniors as untrusting of people they don’t know is
certainly true, especially when dealing with the faceless multitudes of online
businesses. Though not as stubborn as the generation above, they’re still less
likely to use their credit card online, and don’t always trust the Internet
with their personal information. (With justifiable concern: read here
about how people are grappling for access to your medicine cabinet, which for
some whose contents are now expanding, could be very revealing.)

So how do we get through to them and help them overcome these
obstacles? You’d best rec-og-nize.

Recognize their issues. I think it was Christopher Guest disguised as the
six-fingered man who once said, “If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t
got anything.” Microsoft must have been wearing its thinking cap when it acquired
Medstory, the healthcare search engine,
because services like this are going to be more and more valuable as the
boomers age and start realizing their limitations. The psychological and
emotional aspects of aging, as well as other life-stage transitions, may make
the boomers more open to spiritual outlets and communities, which are developing
at a fast pace online. In addition, as people live longer, there are many who
undergo a “transformation” into healthier living (green, anyone?) which opens
the door to sites that cater to those in need of guidance in an unfamiliar
lifestyle. Maybe you hadn’t considered advertising on a self-help site as a way
to reach confident consumers: think again.

Recognize their interests. The traditional destinations of most baby boomers
are daily inputs like news and weather. They are also frequent visitors to financial,
travel,
and gift/flower sites. But as this Daily Tech article
shows, video games are catching on in retirement homes. And why not? We’ve seen
how games can be attractive. Scrabble, shuffleboard, heck, even my mom is
getting into bocce ball. It shouldn’t be too long before online gaming catches
on.

Recognize their influences.
Although baby boomers are ultimately the final decision-maker, studies
have shown that it’s the Generation Y’ers that have the most influence on
the family’s purchasing decisions. So cater to the boomers, but we can’t
completely forget about those young’uns.

Finally, Lewis Green on Marketing Profs says
it well when he prompts marketers to recognize the diverse character of
baby boomers: "One size does not fit all," he concludes. "Get back to the basics of good
marketing. Forget the bells and whistles and reach us where we live and work." 

Okay, we’re coming!!!

Did you get a sneak peak at that early bird buffet? There was
a run on pigs in a blanket. What they’re not running out on, though, is
customized web sites for the older set. For example, witness the new launch of Personal Life Media, which is a
site that focuses on issues related to baby boomers, “ranging
from life coaching to green living to sex.” Oh wow. I didn’t just say that. Take a moment
to recover.

The
question we’re focusing on here in part two of the very exciting three part
series – I have a friend who insists that the best things come in fours, but I
can’t please him on this one – is not whether or not the boomers represent an
important demographic for marketers (they do) but where to find them. What are
these folks up to?

See
here for a handy chart, provided by eMarketer, about online activities of
seniors.

We
find that first and foremost they’re going online to conduct research to make
purchasing decisions. Advertisers seem to think that seniors are still
referring to the 1955 World Book Encyclopedia when
in fact they are going online. Of course, I can’t imagine my
grandmother checking out CNET product reviews of a new cell phone before
buying it. (My argument is somewhat damaged by the fact that she doesn’t
currently own a cell phone, and if she was going to buy one, she would just get
whatever her kids told her to, or, in her hipper moments, go for whatever comes
in hot pink.)

Recommendations are dictating much of their buying decisions. Second on the tier of how seniors spend
their time online is to purchase products or services recommended by others,
and I’m not talking about their kids. Anyone who has ever witnessed a group of
elderly women kickin’ it on a park bench off of Flatbush Avenue knows that there is nothing passive about
their communication. It’s all, “Mabel, you simply have to try this new dish
soap.” or “When are you going to introduce your Jimmy to my Kathryn? They’d be
so perfect together.” It’s the former that we’re interested in. According to the
study by Weber
Shandwick, the majority of baby boomers get asked for recommendations on
products and services about 90 times every year, and nearly all (89%) of those
“trusted sources of information” bestowed the advice to their peers.

"When
it comes to word-of-mouth recommendations, boomers have both unrivaled
influence and rich networks of peer advisors," said Dr. Leslie
Gaines-Ross. Seeing as how most boomers are not 100% comfortable or savvy with
online networks, most of it is being done in person, or on the phone. So, maybe
the key is to
provide enough information online to fuel an offline word-of-mouth campaign.

Though I said that the seniors are not exactly taking over
MySpace, there is a movement now towards online communities. So says Mary Furlong,
president and CEO of a baby-boomer-centric firm, who founded SeniorNet and
ThirdAge Media. "A lot of the dissonances of aging
aren’t fun," she notes, which is why faceless discussions of potentially
embarrassing topics are becoming popular. "Nobody wants to talk about a
prostate condition at lunch.”

Agreed.

Another fact of life is that as the
senior generation gets older, they’re going to experience more limitations on
their physical abilities and personal interactions that many of them enjoy now.
I think that those who have begun to embrace the Internet and the amount of
activities they can engage in – just think! you can do crossword puzzles, check
the weather, and even check what your son-in-law is doing on Twitter, all at the same time! and it’s
free! – are going to be more and more enthusiastic about the Internet. And then
maybe they’ll tell all their friends, and their friends’ friends, and next thing you know, you’ll have a
revolution on your hands. Seniors unite!

What
do you believe in? That’s a good question, she said. (Thank you.)

I
believe in...Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies (frozen, of course) and their power to
heal all emotional wounds.
I
believe in supermodel length jeans.
And,
I believe in Bob Ross, string theory, hybrid vehicles, and
personal ghosts.

I
also believe in catering to the audience. The Internet audience, as we’ve all been quick to realize, is short,
sweet, and has a serious case of A.D.D. This means that despite the fact that I
have many, many things to say about baby boomer marketing, I am going to cater
not to their more long-term inclinations (seeing as only 10% of them read blogs
anyway) but to ours. Short, sweet.

First up are a few surveys. According to the Pew Research Center, 35.5 million Web
users are between 50 and 64 years old. (And they ain’t getting any younger.)
But au contraire, here comes another
study conducted by media agency GroupM and research firm Millward Brown.
About 15% of U.S. seniors, or roughly 13.1 million people, don’t currently go
online. At all.

So which is it? Are the baby boomers
a fountain of revenue just waiting to be tapped, or are they too far gone and should we just, pardon my brooklynese, "fahgeddaboutem"?

Larry
Dobrow, in last month’s Mediapost,
believes that online seniors are “the lost generation,” and that marketers are not being proactive enough about going after
this demographic. He observes that not only do they have disposable cash but
also the time to spend it, as well as the energy to engage with marketing
content. And there are surely sites
popping up like Eons.com – a MySpace for
the “mature set” and Cranky.com, the
“first age-relevant search engine.” (Check out the #1 search term. Eww.)

But the way you really know that the industry is gearing up to go after the boomalicious is the plethora of conferences geared at helping marketers plan their approach. The "What’s Next Boomer Business
Summit" was held in Chicago a week or two ago, and I
am curious as to what they had to say about digital marketing. And next week
Vegas is the venue for  “Boomers 2.0 – Reaching 40+ Consumers
Today.” Register early for the, ahm, early bird buffet.

Who cares? 

The Hillary 1984 ad is really not that creative.  And btw, it will have exactly zero impact on the campaign.   This is derivative navel gazing of the worst sort.  I got bored before it was over (which says more about Hillary’s speaking style than the genius of the editor) and I didn’t really get it.

The one thing this ad will doubtless do (as we all chatter about it) is help the producer with the very Francais sounding name of Phillip(e) de Vellis, — outed today by Arianna Huffington — grow his consulting business, as the lemmings latch on to this oh, so out-of-the-box revolutionary idea of sending up an over-rated twenty three year old commercial.  Good thing for Phillip(e), he got fired today.

Next up? Steve Jobs, goes after de Vellis, YouTube, Obama, Microsoft (on principal), Blue State Digital and us for denigrating the logo.

The
best things in life…are free.

If this is true, then on my Best Things in Life list would be
whiskey night at Elixir
Cocktail Club, library books, and the Digital Axle 1-800 phone number.
1800613AXLE. And, of course, YouTube.

Although, just like health care, highways, and cereal box
prizes, we can’t pretend that no one is, in fact, footing footing the bill for
our benefit. Along those same lines, it would be naïve to think that no one was
paying for YouTube. Oh yeah, Google did. One point six five.

I really wonder if the Googlies
(they’re big enough to constitute their own planet, so they deserve alien
names) are starting to wonder, though, if it is worth all this hassle. The most
obvious issue is the Viacom lawsuit which is based on
YouTube’s flagrant “unauthorized use of copyright entertainment.” Obviously
there are going to be illegal postings, and I don’t think that Viacom expects
perfection. Nor does Google want to openly flirt with the law. But it is a
question of who is responsible for the enforcing of that law. As my volleyball
coach used to say when he was up against a big hitter and blocked him to shame:
“Not on my watch.” Google says the so-called ‘victim’ is responsible for
protecting their material, and Viacom insists that it be the provider. In these
terms, I have to say that the latter makes a bit more sense. You don’t ask
people to test their own prescription drugs, do you? Or give authors AK-47s and
place them at bookstore exits? “Do not steal my book, or I will shoot you in
the face.”

(There is inevitably some juicy hypocrisy in all of these
situations. Click here
for the one in this.)

It just keeps getting nastier. In a statement, Viacom
lashed out at YouTube’s business practices, saying it has “built a lucrative
business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in
order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.” And University of Chicago law professor Douglas
Lichtman now stands
behinds them, saying that Google should be “mercilessly punished” for not
producing an adequate content filtering system.

Dude. That’s heavy stuff.
What can you say to that? How
about, “Hey Viacom. Maybe you should have signed a licensing deal with us, like
everybody else.”

Ouch.

Back to money. Another underlying issue that was finally
addressed was the fact that YouTube is not generating any revenue to speak
of. At 100 million video streams a day, it should be a goldmine, but lack of advertisers
or viable methods is preventing it from turning into the money tree that
everyone thought it was going to be. It’s quite possible, though, that Planet
Google just doesn’t give a hoot. Maybe they’re just in it for the kicks.

And the Hillary
Clinton video. Have you seen
it? 

Dan Morain of the LA Times has an interesting
angle on it – he brings money into the free speech debate. If the FEC
requires disclosure when candidates pay for ads on websites and paid Internet fundraising,
and of course for TV ads, why would Internet video be any different? Ah yes,
because it is “free.” But Scott Tomas of the FEC remarks that it does cost money to create an ad, and it
should be noted as a contribution to the candidate. I guess the rule is, when
money is involved, you gotta name names. Is this rule going to apply to other
forms of political content on the web?

In the sixth part of our six-part series (which means it is the last!) Martin Wesley discusses what he thinks is the "Biggest Challenge in the Market Today."

I won’t give it away…

I’m sure many things happened these past 2 days at the OMMA Hollywood Party
– I mean Conference – that were rip-roaringly entertaining, but I’m gonna go
with this one: the Shunning
of the pre-roll ad.

Nine of ten panelists agree: the
30 second spot “has no place on the Web”. (Duh.) Not only are Internet video
users impatient and clickhappy, ready to navigate away from anything that has the faint odor of an ad, but there exist too many alternatives for them to stick with
their original choice. We just don’t grin and bear it anymore.

Speaking of alternatives – how
about they come up with one for the pre-roll? Video sites and agencies have yet
to combine their resources to come up with a sustainable, innovative and
optimized ad model alternative. And they keep blaming each other. “It’s Agency
that doesn’t want to change,” says Video Site. “Shut up, dork, it’s you that doesn’t want to accept what we
might have to offer,” Agency replies. (While sticking out it’s tongue.)

Whatever it is, it just has to be effective. And how do we
tell that? Ah, measurement. As posted
on MediaBytes:

By
measuring the reach and response of traditional TV spots in a mixed media
campaign. Such a campaign may include: an animated Flash ad, a purpose built
custom online video message and a non-video-based format, such as a text
overlay. The results can easily be compared in terms of: click-through rate,
viewing-time length, conversions [where applicable], and costs per interaction.

Or how about a post-roll ad? Check out what a VC in NYC had to say about
this:

…post-rolls
are something else entirely. If they are well targeted and entertaining,
they’ll be viewed as relevant and will be watched with interest. If not, the
user will just navigate away. No harm, no foul. And they’ll keep coming back to
your service for more entertainment.

And
the final idea
of the day: Turn the 30 second spot into a 5 minute one. What was that? Be the
content?

Turns out, Blackfoot’s got quite a number of fans. The company’s focus on econometric modeling serves to give a more accurate representation of campaigns and their effectiveness. Martin Wesley notes that even "the branding folks like us."

I had a friend in college who, before going out at night, would give herself a pep talk in order to protect her (supposedly) fragile ego from the potential bashing that fraternity parties might inflict upon it. (Yes, she was from L.A.) She would stand in front of the mirror and ask herself 3 questions. The first two I will not disclose – just to keep you guessing. But the last one was, "Do boys like me?" To which she would smile sweetly and give an emphatic, "Yah they do!"

Overheard in the Blackfoot office: "Note to self. Buy mirror."

Back to business. The
NewsFactor
Business Report, that is. And the problem of local search.
Here we get another perspective on the issue – the
numbers.

In the TNS Media Intelligence
study of category ad spend allocated to the Internet, it is computer
products (18.6%), financial services (17%), diet and fitness (26.1%), and the
Internet itself (51.2%) that have the highest
percentage of their budgets for online advertising. But people, at least where
I come from, do not spend their days buying gadgets, stocks, and diet books.
They are working, playing, shopping, and eating.

Let’s talk eating. San Francisco is kind of an anomaly, but it’s my home and I’ll use it as
an example if I want to. The state
of the restaurant industry, despite taking some hard
hits, I would deem “healthy to quite healthy.” And restaurants are a prime
example of local business – particularly by neighborhood. The decision to eat
at a particular restaurant is not as impulsive as that mini-bag of Skittles at
the checkout counter of the grocery store, but certainly less in-depth than the
purchase of a new car. Either way, it is still a consumer decision – a decision
that, as we now know, can be made or broken by the quantity and quality of
targeted advertising campaigns.

Yet only 0.9% of all restaurant
advertising budgets go towards online ads, and only about 5% of small
and medium-size businesses are using paid search (Kelsey Group). In this case, 2 plus 2 is not coming out to 4. In
fact, it’s not even pushing 3. Local restaurants and bars are lagging behind in
their online & paid search efforts, and they are not going to increase them
unless they feel confident that they will see results from their local
community.

Where are these going to come from? How about a 4-5%
click-through rates – as opposed to the average at a lowly 0.5%? That’s what
Ted Morgan of Skyhook Wireless, the company that is attempting to bring local
search technology to the forefront, is shooting for. So far, they have mapped
the 100 biggest U.S.
cities (70% of the country) and enabled marketers to locate the exact
coordinates of any device with a Wi-Fi antenna, which means PCs and more importantly,
cell phones. The location-based Internet search toolbar is called Loki and
allows users to find services and product that are geographically relevant. This
kind of technology makes me go Whoa, Keanu-style, and makes consumers go, “Hey, that’s
right on my way home. I think I’ll check it out.”

What do you think? Is this the future knock, knock,
knocking on our door?

Methinks, too, that once restaurants jump on board,
retail food stores and department stores, which now also are on the low scale
in terms of online ad spend, at 2.1 and 4.4% respectively, will not be far
behind.