I’m Back and Senior Marketing Has Never Been More Popular!

For the past 15 years I’ve talked about the value of targeting the 50-plus market. Now with the ad market in a state of confusion, suddenly the 50 plus market looks very becoming. They have the money, the interest and the need for your products.

In the next few months I’ll give you a look at how the ad landscape has changed.

The Senior’s Marketing Perception

CBS is on the verge of announcing that Katie Couric may be replaced on the CBS Evening News. It was a 75 million dollar experiment that floundered and may fail. The result is a marketing lesson we can all learn from. It was assumed that many people who watched and enjoyed Couric in the morning would follow her to CBS, it didnt happen.

In marketing I call this, “Weber’s Flawed Law of Line Extension.” Conventional marketing believes that if you have a product that is doing well, (The Today Show with its features and fluff) take one of those ingredients, (Katie Couric) and create a different product and image using that familiar name. Then success is sure to follow? Not so fast, remember “New Coke?”

The TV audience sampled Couric and then left her in droves. They failed to her as a news authority and now CBS may move her to Sixty Minutes. Will the audiences perception of her change? Probably not, however if you were to place Katie on a show like “The View” she would most likely do well. You may scream sexist, however whether its right or wrong, it’s the public’s perception of her and that wont change.

The marketing lesson we can all learn from CBS’s mistake is this. If your thinking of expanding your segment of a market and it involves the very savvy 50 plus senior market, consider this. Don’t assume that the senior’s will accept your new product simply because of your past name brand recognition.

You have to woo them, not wow them!

 

 

Here Comes Santa Claus, Maybe!

The pucker factor for retail merchants has just gone off the scale! Normally the holiday sales blitz starts the day after Thanksgiving with door busting specials. But not this time around!

 This year it’s started three weeks earlier and the merchants are indeed very nervous. Perhaps for good reason! Amid a deeping housing slump and higher food and energy costs, stores feel the need to pull in shoppers as early as possible.

From a marketing standpoint, what’s the demographic that has the most disposable income this time of the year? Seniors who are less affected by the ups and downs of the economy. There are 70 million of them over the age of 55 with 850 billion dollars in spending power. Thier disposable income this holiday season far exceed any other segment of the buying public.

A lot of merchants are  certainly not in tune with this segment of the market. I was in a Florida department store recently and saw a “Friday Club Membership Card” that said it was for the exclusive use of people age 49 and under. I can’t help but wonder how that stores holiday shopping will pan out!