Short Takes

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS

You have to love a company that knows its audience and gives them exactly what they want. One such outfit is Eons.com, “a 50-plus media company inspiring a generation of boomers and seniors to live the biggest life possible.” In an effort to draw more regular visitors and enhance its value to advertisers, Eons used Cranky.com (LOVE the name), “the first age-relevant search engine,” to survey the ten most popular searches for January, to see what 44 million online boomers were looking for. From first to last, the list included: Jobs after retirement; Brain Builders; Body Mass Index; Reiki (REIKI??); Blogs; Arthritis (Uh-oh; Stereotype alert!); Travel; Home-sharing; Online dating; and Triathlon. But with all that talk about how, umm, “frisky” those folks are, where was sex? Eons says it also looked at “Fast Movers” for January, and “Senior Sexuality” searches rose 1,700% in January, second only to “Stephen King, who was up a whopping 8,993% from a year ago.

WELL, SURE, YOU CAN BUY CHOCOLATE ANYWHERE…

At first blush, the following might not seem earth shattering, but it could help some marketers better focus their efforts. According to San Francisco company 50Plus Research, which focuses exclusively on baby boomers and the senior market, “Chocolate is more important than sex.” (Gasping now, clutching chest…) “In a recent online survey, 50Plus Research asked over 500 boomers and seniors what would be the hardest things to give up. Reading was the hardest to give up, followed by chocolate. Sex came in third.” (READING? Where did THAT come from?) Breaking it down by numbers, 19% of boomers said chocolate would be the hardest to give up vs. only 16% who said sex. Twenty percent of seniors said chocolate would be the hardest to give up vs. only 10% who said sex. So, maybe Victoria’s Secret could tap this wealthy market by showing its girls scarfing down a Hershey bar? Just a thought.

SOMETHING YOU NEED NOT CONCERN YOURSELF WITH

The rankings are out for the Most Prestigious Private Jet Services Brands in 2007, according to our good friends at the Luxury Institute. According to the survey, “Blue Star Jets edged out Jet Concierge and Delta AirElite as the most prestigious brand in the Private Jet Services category, as rated by ultra-wealthy American consumers.” (Which might help explain why we couldn’t recall filling out the survey. Respondents had an average household income of $1.175 million and average net worth of $14.0 million. ) A spokesman for the company noted, "Survey results indicate a category that continues to deliver brands that are not highly differentiated. This is rather rare for a luxury products and services category, and indicates a major opportunity for key brands to truly differentiate themselves from competitors.” So, all you luxury jet companies, get busy. The rest of you, back to work. Nothing to see here.

BECAUSE I’M THE PARENT, THAT’S WHY!

If that headline rings a bell, you might want to know about the “Appreciation Station,” a new item being pushed by a Minnesota mom apparently at her wit’s end with her kids. “Diana Low created The Appreciation Station as a way to reward her kids for what they were doing right, rather than focusing on negative behaviors and consequences,” according to a release. (And the cynic in us right now is wildly rolling his eyes…) It’s a treasure chest that holds prizes kids can redeem by cashing in tokens that parents give them to reinforce good behavior. "The Appreciation Station is a constant, visual reminder that we should appreciate and celebrate a job well done in our home," Low said. (There they go again.) But at $99.95, we have a better idea. Take that 100 bucks, and keep it around as a pile of singles. Throw the kid a buck or two when they do something right. They’re happy, you’re happy, everybody wins.

IS MATLOCK ON?

There’s a new TV network which most working folks never get a chance to watch, but that may change shortly. Retirement Living TV, aimed at those who are, well, retired (to state the obvious) currently broadcasts daily from noon til 4 p.m. over CN8, The Comcast Channel. But its audience is about to expand dramatically with the announcement this week that DirecTV will start carrying the programming from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday thought Friday. With aging baby boomers a growing financial force to be reckoned with in this country, the channel might well be ahead of the curve in terms of potential audience. And make all the jokes you wants about ads for Depends, Preparation H and Poligrip (We’re dying to, but that “Matlock” crack is as far as we’ll go); those folks have money and they like to spend it. Savvy marketers can chase them down at Retirement Living TV.

WHEN YA GOTTA GO, YA GOTTA GO

The baby boom generation continues to influence marketers and leave its indelible stamp on everything it encounters, so the death of its members will be no different. That notion was the impetus behind author Michelle Cromer’s new book, Exit Strategy: Thinking Outside the Box. In it, Cromer outlines the various ways that boomers are choosing “to go,” including “having one's remains shot into outer space, turned into a piece of jewelry, sifted into the roots of a tree, spread across the sky in a fireworks display, submerged in a coral reef, or scattered over Mt. Rainer.” Yeah, that’s us; subtlety ain’t our strong point. Read the intro paragraph and see if the tome is worth buying at MichelleCromer.com. And we just came up with a new slogan for the generation (With apologies to Matthew Perry’s Chandler Bing character of Friends fame): “Boomers: Could we BE any more annoying?” Heh.