Kaizen in Mature Age Marketing

Kaizen = continuous incremental improvement.

Much of business success is based on spotting a good concept being well executed , and improving on it  -- or targeting a more appropriate niche, or different geographic area.

Several years ago a Dutch initiative Bellendoejezo  ( http://www.bellendoejezo.com/ )  provided “phone coaching” to older phone users covering topics such as  predictive text, creating contact groups, enabling Bluetooth and exploring mobile internet.

The coaches in this operation were 12 to 16 year old students.

More recently a US based service has been initiated by actress Florence Henderson  (if you remember her as mum Carol in The Brady Bunch you are definitely in their target market ).  The Floh Club ( www.flohclub.com ) offers  membership plans to Seniors for telephone based computer support for a wide range of technology issues – problems with Facebook, Skype, instant messaging or ecommerce.

The Floh Club appears to be age-neutral in the selection of their support staff, which will result in the average age of the staff being well under that of their target market.

The latest operation to emerge is a great illustration of targeting the mature age niche, in both the market and the human resources to serve the market.

In fact Tree Rings ( www.treeringsllc.com )  positions itself as providing “Age-Sensitive Contact Center Services for Baby-Boomers – founded with a single goal of hiring baby-boomers – retirees and seniors – who want to work part-time or full-time providing telephone support  and other support services for companies who sell to and service retirees and senior market consumers.”

I have written many times on the benefits of “age-appropriate employees” when targeting mature age consumers. Bellendoejezo and Floh Club took the avoidable risk of an age-based disconnect between their customers and service providers.   Tree Rings have turned the potential disconnect into a significant “first to market” advantage.

The challenge for companies wanting to successfully target the mature age market, either exclusively or within a range of products and services aimed at a wide age demographic, is to observe the progression from Bellendoejezo to Floh Club to Tree Rings, and to implement their own improved strategy.

To contribute to this process, this blog will commence a series of case studies of  innovative mature age marketing.  Let the Kaizen begin.

Maturialism – What the?

Being committed to the study of marketing to mature age consumers and niche marketing, jointly and severally as legal jargon would state it, I was attracted to the latest world trend in marketing, as spotted and defined by trendwatching.com.

The trend is called MATURIALISM -- coined from “mature materialism”.

Here’s the link for all the details:- http://trendwatching.com/briefing/

While some examples in the Briefing drift towards the racier end of the “mature adult” definition, the Briefing should be a thought-provoking read for all marketers who include mature age consumers in their current or prospective target market.

The summary of this trend, and the opportunity it provides, is best stated by trendwatching.com :-

For grown-up brands that are in tune with consumer values, MATURIALISM creates juicy opportunities in the years ahead. Mature consumers expect communications and innovations to be candid, to have personality and passion, and to sometimes push the boundaries, i.e. they expect brands to become mature, too.


Niche offerings of course have been successfully connecting with, and catering to audiences on their level for years. We've dubbed this TRIBEFACTURING in the past: adding attributes and features to existing products that make them more practical (or cooler or even naughtier) for specific user groups, while signaling to those users that the brand 'gets it’.


So now is the time for mainstream brands to move with the culture, to loosen up a bit, and yes, have some fun in the process




Do you have examples of marketing that confirm or dispute the existence of the trend to "mature materialism"?