My grandmother was the most meticulous person I knew. Her nails and hair were always perfect and her house was immaculate. Which is why I never understood how come the knick-knacks in her curio cabinet were always dusty and she usually had one or two long white wiry hairs protruding from her chin.
Until Saturday morning.
I was doing my LSD (long slow distance) run and looked down at my watch to check my pace. Depending on the setting, my running watch displays two of the three figures I care about – distance covered, heart rate, and pace – and amazingly, they both read 140 (yes, there were some decimal points – don’t get ahead of me here). Did that mean I’d covered 14 miles or my heart rate was 140 beats per minute or I was running at a pace of 14-minute miles?
Hey, I’m slow but I’m not that slow so I knew my pace was about 10 minutes per mile, meaning my watch was showing me distance and heart rate. The point, though, was that I couldn’t tell what the information was because I couldn’t see the labels next to the data.
Suddenly, I knew why my Grandmother’s shelves were dusty and her chin was unkempt. I also remembered that when I used to speak to my other Grandmother, she’d say, “Let me put on my glasses so I can hear you.” And when I’d come home from school the woman who helped raise my brother, sister and me used to instruct me to “sit still so I can look at you.”
They were getting on in age and couldn’t see clearly.
Last week I wrote a blog post titled “The Boomers Shall Inherit the Earth” about the statistics of our aging population and the opportunities they will provide for savvy marketers. Perhaps the most important part of the article was the first paragraph.
“Between now and 2014, 10 Boomers will turn 50 years old every minute. By 2030, 20% of Americans will be 65+. What’s most remarkable is that most of them will live at least 25 years more, creating the largest and wealthiest generation in the history of the United States.”
Years ago, Atico Bank instituted a program to train their predominately young tellers on how to deal with the bank’s mostly aging customers. The tellers were outfitted for the training with kernels of hard corn in their shoes, Vaseline-smeared glasses over their eyes, cotton plugs in their ears and tight suspenders looped around their necks and fastened to their belts, causing them to hunch over. They were then instructed to walk around the sun-baked parking lot two or three times before they walked into the bank and tried to manage their accounts.
It was a great lesson to the impatient tellers who didn’t realize what their customers were dealing with.
It was also a great lesson to the young designer I was who often forgot that form follows function and thought that any type larger than seven point was “horsey.” Wonder why your elderly clients are cranky? There’s a clue.
Perhaps the bank’s methods were extreme, but it’s easy to see how awareness of – and empathy towards – aging customers can increase both sensitivity and profitability, regardless of what business you’re in. Senior Selling — creating products and services specifically designed to make purchasing easy and pleasant for the largest and wealthiest generation in history just has to be good business.
As for me, I’d just be happy if the labels on my running watch were a little bit bigger. IS that too much to ask?
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I loved your article. Age gets us all and we should know how to deal with it but knowing this we also have the opportunity to make life easier for senior people and increase our share of business if we target this market.
Great post. The entire world would be a better place if more people exhibited a little (more?) empathy.
Bruce, loved your post: well-written, amusing and with a valuable marketing point, as always.
But I appeal to your way with words to choose another word besides “elderly” – my 102-year-old Mother would never describe herself as such, and I’m sure Boomers half her age (or even a little more
!) wouldn’t, either.
How about simply “older?”
Other suggestions welcome – and thanks again for always providing a good read, and a provocative thought
I’m right there Bruce, not the 10 min miles, but the fading vision and hearing. My Grandfather, an old ad man, used to complain that fonts should be larger, and advertisers were leaving out seniors. I now get it, and I’m only 50 … crap.
Thank god the font size on your blog post was nice and horsey. I’d never have been able to read it on this new fangled laptop thing-a-ma-jig if it wasn’t.
Nice one Bruce.
I recently noticed my most two commonly used comments are “God I miss my eyesight” and “I’m convinced we’re much younger than our parents were at this age… don’t you think?”
Seems we’re so hot on reaching the younger generations through marketing and social media, we’ve simply forgotten the goldmine in front of us.
I am endlessly inspired by your blog!
A dear friend once told me that G-D has the perfect plan…when we are young, we look in the mirror at our youthful selves and think, damn I look good…. then we age and our eye sight gets fuzzy and dim, and we look in the mirror at our grey hair & lined faces, and we think, damn I look good!
This is why I don’t ‘Text.’
You and I have known one another since 1981 (sounds like 1881, now.) I remember when Len Ridge was amazed to observe me reading or pasting down 2pt. type without glasses; he was 10 years older than me. I was one of the lucky Boomers who didn’t need glasses until my 50s, so I imagine I should be grateful. Still, I wonder how many Boomers are getting away without texting all of the time.
Hey, Bruce can you still not ‘beat Max’s meat’ – as your beloved grandmother always professed! Don’t worry about slowing down; the rest will catch up sooner than you think. They were raised with having their eyesight and hearing ruined at an early age from TV screens, computer screens, and being constantly plugged into an MP players! HA! Plus, many of them don’t get much real exercise, so can’t keep up energy-wise.
Guess the jokes on them!
Great story, by the way!
Hi Bruce. Your story about the bank tellers being trained to deal with older customers reminds me of an upcoming event here on Miami Beach called “Ability Explosion”, October 19 24th. Thanks to events like this, Miami Beach is fast becoming one of the most handicap accessible cities in the country. One of the events on Oct. 20th is called “Lights Out Miami Beach (A dining in the dark experience)”. It is for sighted people who will be blindfolded for a dinner in order to experience what blind people would. A dear friend of mine who has had 2 cornea transplants is one of the organizers. Check out http://www.abilityexplosion.org for more info!
Well put Bruce,
I love your take on this. As a fifty-year old woman, there is no greater horror than suddenly having the light exactly right and catching sight of an ambitious and resplendent stray chin hair.
Humour, especially directed at myself, seems to be the only way through this humbling and very enlightening process called aging.
Thanks for your ongoing thoughts…
Best regards
Colleen Friesen
What’d he say? I can’t hear nothin’…
Is this big enough for you, Bruce?: http://www.amazon.com/Timex-Marathon-Stop-Watch-Easy/dp/B000F3RZX2
I get my reading glasses at the dollar store. I have them everything and can never find them. My husband always ends up having to read the menu to me. And I’m only 45!
I meant to say ‘everywhere’, not ‘everything’.
This is a good article. I’m always looking for smart resources to show the retirement community, and your piece is certainly worth sharing!
7pt. Type – THAT’S HUGE!!!
Thank goodness it is not just me. I am on the verge of 60 (ouch) and am finding it increasingly difficult to read the fine print without aid. It is getting a little cumbersome to carry a magnifying glass around so i suppose i will have to go to the drug store and invest in some of those magnifying glasses. Not to mention the mini flashlight I will need in order to read the menu in the darkness of many restaurants.
Hey Bruce, are you having a birthday soon or something that age has been so prevelent in your articles these past few weeks? By the way, you don’t need larger letters you just neek LASIK – Dr. Richard Simon at Center for Excellence in Eye Care over in Baptist Medical – tell him I sent you – it’s the best cure for aging I’ve found!!!
Okay, no type comments necessary – you NEED LASIK, not neek LASIK. lol
TYPO!!!!! Geez – maybe I need more than just LASIK……
Bruce,
Well said. Two points of interest:
(1) At Disney they say, “The customer may not always be right, but we must let them be wrong with dignity;
(2) Amazon.com used to ask prospects for customer service jobs the following question, “How would you design a car for a deaf person?” The answer, “Put cotton in your ears and drive a car.” The point – they wanted people who could put themselves in the other person’s place.
Love your blog. Keep it coming.
Lou
Yo, Bruce,
I knew your grandma. Used to deliver groceries when she lived on Teller Avenue, in the Bronx. A very nice lady. A very long time ago.
But did you know that Sally, The Optimist, is my former lady? Ah, that epitome of good lookin’ woman?Seeing her, on rare occasions, makes almost everything about me go soft.
Cheerful regards to all, Buddy
I love your LSD ( long slow distance) definition. I LSD 4 to 5 times a week but never knew what I was doing until you just “splained” it to me. I like my cardio and usuallly let it run up and down bewteen 125 and 140. It’s a killer runnung in this heat but I sure look good in the winter.
I have to agree with Geraldo who hit it on the head. I’m 60 years old and usually the older crowd will frequent a finer restaurant. By older I mean you don’t see too many 18 years olds going out for fine dining. Why do they have to have the 4 point print that you couldn’t read even if they turned the lights on or even if you had a 100,000 watt spotlight.
Very insightful. I’m already in that age group and would appreciate it if you would increase the size of the print. It took me a little while to go find my glasses to read your comments, which I always find very interesting…
Point well made with great clarity, insight and reflection. The opportunity you stress is not only one for savvy marketers, but more importantly, your insights should cause us all to be more caring and sensitive human beings. Bravo!
Great column on HOW to sell to this aging group. I think the great challenge will be WHAT to sell. There are a couple of obvious categories: (1) anything that makes people look and feel younger and (2) financial services that help people manage their money through retirement. While it is true that the Baby Boomers will be the richest generation overall, it is also true that most Baby Boomers are woefully unprepared for retirement. I expect to see an increased demand for Certified Financial Planners. I would also expect an Internet version of the Family Office concept to be developed, serving the tier of upper middle class Americans who can’t qualify for clientship with Genspring and the other big players.
I believe that sensativitiy training is so important, and that it should be mandatory in some business environments. I once worked for a housing authority in the Seattle area and participated in a seminar which guarunteed that we would understand what it felt like to be a refugee in a strange country once we completed the tasks required of us. It was an unbelievable experience! And, I am proud to say, our team took first place in achieving what was required to pass the tests. Since that day, I have been much more aware of many other instances that deserve awareness when it comes to being sensative to others circumstances. Thanks for the article!