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I was born in 1963 which makes me a Baby Boomer. ‘64 is the last year for baby boomers to be considered baby boomers. There are a lot of connotations that come with the two words that describe a generation of babies born after WWII. The funny thing is, I’m sure there are a lot of us baby boomers out there who don’t think of ourselves as Baby Boomers. A few years ago I met this guy who has since become a good friend. We are members of a local car club. He pegged me to be in my late twenties when I had actually had just turned 41! He was floored when I told him my real age. I had to show him my i.d. to prove it. Anyway, his miscalculation wasn’t solely based on my physical looks but also on my attitude. I’ve never been comfortable fitting into a mold. Anyone who knows me can verify this. For example, last year in commemoration of 30 years of punk, I wore a Mohawk for 9 months. I’m no rebel nor do I feel it necessary to bring attention to myself. In fact, I have come to realize that it’s a misnomer to think that people covered in tattoos, or wear outrageous clothing/hair are vying for your attention. On the contrary, it seems that they/we are more introverted. However, I am sidetracking. My point is that there is a very large segment of our population that marketing doesn’t get.
Baby boomers grew up in 3 different eras, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. I know I am much different having spent my adolescent years in the latter part of the 70’s and into the 80’s. Echo and the Bunnymen were a lot different than say Hendrix. Or Cyndi Lauper and Janis Joplin–complete opposites. I will listen to any of these artist and feel Time After Time is a great song as is Hey Joe. Both are from completely different spectrum’s of music, yet are well within the baby boomer’s field of vision. It takes more to sell us baby boomers on financial stability than Dennis Hopper and the Spencer Davis Group singing Gimme Some Lovin’ (check it out on youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eS6isp7Uao). Baby boomers want one thing, INFORMATION. What’s it going to do and how’s it going to make my life better? We’ve heard it all before. We know all the tricks and have been around the block a few times. Don’t talk down to us. Remember who invented the personal computer in their garage, who developed the first browser, who the last three US presidents were and are—all baby boomers! So maybe take notice of who is buying your products or services next time you do some market research. The 18 to 34 year old’s don’t have the wisdom and disposable income that we do.
I went to school during the 80’s and grad school in the early 90’s. Things were a bit different back then. After 9/11, I remember hearing Tom Brokaw saying “our lives have changed today and we will never be the same.” He was right. Our lives have changed dramatically. I don’t think anyone can put their finger on any one thing that has changed. We all still wake up every day, take our showers, eat our breakfast the same as always. But in the back of your head we all share that feeling when you first turn on the radio or TV in the morning and you ask yourself just before you turn it on, “Is the other shoe going to drop?”
9/11, the war in Iraq and Afganastan, the economy, the political right fighting the left, unemployment, global warming – all these things have definitely played some havoc in our lives. How are we dealing with all this stress? How has our culture changed in the last 9 years? The changes have been subtle, but if you were to compare our nation with who we were before 9/11 I’m sure what we would see would astound us.
Before 9/11 it was clear, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. No longer can we define ourselves or America so simply, in marketing terms. Granted, we have never been what we pretend to be in advertising. But after 9/11 things changed and it has become a bit unsettling.
I’m an anthropologist first, and everything else follows. Anthropologists are trained observers, constantly absorbing the culture in. You can’t help it. It just happens. I argue the change I have observed in our culture is one that has become more damaging than 9/11. We have become a nation of fighting, bickering, snot nosed, media junky rat finks! We are imploding on ourselves and don’t have the right mind to stop.
Has marketing picked up on this change in our culture? Yes and no. It’s clear that the effects of global warming, for example, have created sustainalble products to market, and during the 2008 campaign we were inundated with political muck that predicted the downfall of the American way of life if we didn’t vote for candidate X or Y. This is partially what advertising and marketing is about. Some things however, have been flying under the radar and very little is being done about it. For example, ten years ago most Baby Boomers were still working. Since 2006, each hour 330 people are turning 60! What does that say about how our society is changing and where our culture is headed? Have we taken the time to recognize this fact or are we as a nation so busy arguing over each other about Obama’s policies or Rush Limbaugh’s latest “bafoonary” or Palin defending her daughter from David Letterman that we can’t see the forest for the trees? In a time of viral advertising and corporate board members demanding their company have a presence on Facebook are we missing the mark? In a word, YES.
For the last 10 years we have all been asleep at the wheel. We have decided to no longer be proactive but instead we have let the voices of a few speak for the many. However, if we turn off NPR, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Democracy Now, Rush and all the rest, iPhones included, what we are left with is our own thoughts and beliefs. The American culture is a reflection of the diversity it is made from. Our thoughts and beliefs as a nation is what makes us American. As an anthropologist, I understand the importance to respect these attributes that makes us a nation. If advertising can in some way market this lost respect, maybe we can see the forest before the next shoe drops.
I’ve seen Flash do some pretty amazing stuff out there. One of the best uses for Flash has been in the fashion industry. There are a few nice sites out there that look really cool. Try this one for example, www.extre.gr. However, what is Flash’s real purpose? Is it to sell you on a brand? Yes. Is it to help you understand how forward thinking a company may be? Maybe. Is it to make you frustrated when the page takes forever to load (and when I say “forever” I mean over 10 seconds)? NO!
Lets face it, Flash is over. There is no real need to have Flash on your site unless you’re a web developer. Then you can have all the Flash you want because you want your clients to know that among other things, you can design some cool stuff. Other sites that can get away with Flash are companies like Coca Cola, Gatorade, Levis, Disney and Apple. Why? Because these guys and all the other Fortune 500, don’t need to be humble. They can do what ever they want. So yes, make us ooh and ahh at your sites. But the rest of you out there, forget-a ’bout it. I mean it. You can’t compete with the big guys and we don’t want you to. When we go to your web sites we want information and maybe some pretty stuff to go with it. But basically we are using your web sites to either find the cheapest wing nut, or best camera review, or a great vacation spot. We don’t give a rat’s you know what if you can afford $$ for a really cool web site that blows all your competitor’s sites out of the water. Here is the secret that your marketing people don’t know, your web designer wont tell you and your account can’t understand; it only takes 3 to 5 seconds of me waiting for something to happen before I click on the next link to take me out of here. 3 to 5 seconds! To put this in perspective, think how much you paid for your web site. Let’s say you paid $25,000. Now did anyone tell you at any point in the process that all that money would be dependent upon your site’s ability to load under 5 seconds? NO!!! Oh, and don’t get me started about trying to market your web site with all those really cool apps whirling and twirling around. I’d rather spend my time getting water boarded. So please, next time you get a knock on the door from Mr. Flash, tell him or her you don’t need their services any more.
Back in the mid 90’s I worked for a web development firm in Chicago. I was the marketing guru because I had a solid marketing background I’d picked up from The Quaker Oats (I will be posting soon about a little product acquired at the time I was there, Snapple). Our company philosophy at the time was people want to find the information they had come to your web site for within 3 clicks or less. This is what we sold to our clients – 3 clicks or less. The client understood this concept because they too were used to web sites burring their information. Web site architecture was a common enough term in the industry, but not everyone practiced good architecture. We prided ourselves on understanding how the average client would approach their web site and how to deliver the information as easily and simply as possible.
Today, sites are a lot more content rich, but the basics are still the same. The average person wants to find reviews on a certain band or what the weather is going to be in Bombay over the weekend. The first place most of us go to is either Google, Yahoo! or MSN. We leave it up to the search engines to do our searching. And that is OK with me. However, the front on which your battles for results are no longer being fought with site coolness, they are being fought through marketing efforts via the big three search engines. The ones who have been getting this for the last 5 or 6 years are the ones who are winning with big returns.
The point in all this is to enlightn those who currently promote or hire programmers who know the latest and greates in web design. Don’t be fooled into thinking that your clients are going to want C# and Flash progammers. They are going to want SEO specialist and web marketers. True, we will continue to need C#, J#, ASP.NET and others to do the programming, but the focus is now turning to “how are you going to market my site so I rank higher than my competitors?” Be ready to know how to answer.
A few days ago I was talking with my wife who had been on Facebook earlier in the day. She was complaining about accepting a request from someone she thought she recognized. It all seem legit. But in the end, it was someone promoting their website. She was somewhat peeved that this had happened to her. Spam on Facebook, ugh!
I explained to her why this was happening. Three letters, SEO. I had a feeling this was coming. SEO is on the brink of becoming a senonomous with spam. I’ve been bouncing this around in my head for a few days and realized that there needs to be a meeting of the minds. I’ve never really thought about SEO has a philosophical quandary, but now I feel there are some issues that need to be addressed.
Back in the dark ages of the Internet things were simple. The Internet was a place where equality reigned and the playing field was even. It didn’t matter if you were a Fortune 500 company or some guy working out of his or her basement. If you had something to say, sell, or offer you had just as much a chance as anyone else to be heard. Do you remember all the hoopla over keeping the Internet commercial free?
The playing field is no longer even. It has been torn up and replanted with everything imaginable. Twitter, Flicker, Flash sites, Non Flash sites, Skype, Facebook and thousands of other time consuming apps, sites and Tweets. How do we manage to navigate through all this clutter? We have become slaves of Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. We only click through search results that appear on the first and possibly second page of one of the big three search engines. Imagine all the sites that don’t make it. Millions! And the reason they don’t make it? Because they haven’t read today’s latest SEO trick, or they don’t have deep pockets to pay someone else to read and deploy the latest SEO tricks. And what is the latest SEO prey? Social Networking. Sites like Facebook are suffering from SEO backlinks, people trying to get you to click on the link to their site thus bumping them up on the search engine results page (SERP). I want it to be known, I am now predicting that soon, SEO specialist and web marketers, such as myself, will begin to be thought of as hucksters, much like spammers were.
I wish to delcare at this point in time, I will never abuse the social networking community to gain a higher search engine ranking. There, I said it and feel much better. I may lose out on some good traffic, but I have an ethical choice here – to be faithful to what the Internet once represented and to promote my sites through diplomatic and non intrusive ways. Que America the Beautiful.
Friday is graduation day for my five year old son. He’s graduating from Montessori kindergarten to first grade. He is very excited to say the least. I would like to take this chance to sell you on the idea of Montessori school. If for nothing else, it will give your child a sense of worth like nothing else.
We started him in this school three years ago. Montessori works on the idea of three year segments. The first three years he learned about discipline, service to others, manners, order, the exterior self, and then other things like writing, reading, adding, subtracting, conjugating a sentence, Spanish, etc. It is the craziest thing to see a four or five year old sitting with a book and reading it! However, this is not what I want to focus on. Rather my son’s ability to understand the world around him in ways I have yet seen some grown men and women comprehend. He already understands the difference between a good action and a bad one. He understands compassionately the indifference people may have towards someone who is homeless and begging on the street corner. The life lessons he has learned at five are astonishing. Have we as adults been so caught up with work and family and the never ending economic worries that we have lost what is most important in life?
If we separate ourselves from what “seems” important, and what really is important, maybe we will be better at understanding the world and our place in it. Do we really think that in 10 years, 15 years, or 20 years from now what we just tweeted to our audience is going to matter? All the attention to social networks, what’s the craziest video on YouTube, or what are the Dem’s, or Republicans saying now? – are these things really that important in the world as a whole? I say this because I believe we need to keep a clear perspective on things in life and that’s what our children give us. Let’s make sure what we give them in return is something that is just as precious.
Every Spring it seems I have great expectations for cleaning out all the old junk that has accumulated in our house. This upcoming weekend is our neighborhood yard sale. So it’s time to go through the accumulated junk and see what needs to be sold and what should be listed on Craig’s list and what should go on eBay. The three choices offer a lot of challenges. In the end it is the ROI that matters, right?
A yard sale has a lot of up front labor cost. You must decide what is going to be sold, tag it, and then put it out for potential customers to make their offers. You should also have a gimmick that will set you aside from all your neighbors thus creating a better chance for a sale. I always park my old ‘57 BelAir out front with some funky items hanging from parts of the car. This attracts my customer and all I need to do now is sell them something they don’t know they need yet. In the end it’s a lot of work but on Sunday night after setting all the items that didn’t sell to the curb with a sign that reads FREE, there’s a comforting feeling that a weekends hard work has paid of in tax free cold cash!
Craig’s List is the second option. I love Craig’s List, as do millions of others. Simple. That’s what it comes down to. I have an item for sale, someone has an unmet need, we are matched up and a transaction takes place. However, there still is a little labor involved. You cannot sell an item on Craig’s List with out a photo. This is where the investment of time is crucial. The photo must intrigue your customer as much as the item’s description. Without the two, you will not get any takers. The nice thing about Craig’s List is the local aspect of it. No dealing with packing up the item and taking it to UPS, FedEx or the post office once the item is sold.
Lastly there is eBay. I loved eBay when it was a deal for everyone. Now it’s just a big digital shopping center. There are little bargains left and it has become a hassle for both buyer and seller. I’ve recently sold a few items to test out a few theories I have about eBay. My main theory is that if you describe an item with tounge in cheak, you are more likely to attrack more attention and therefore bids. I even sold my leftover chicken dinner on eBay. It sold for $.99! What a deal. The problem with eBay is that it is not a good place to sell items with little value, under $50 or so. The reason is people are not willing to pay a lot for shipping. Hell, I don’t want to pay $10 shipping for something that cost $25. As a seller, you must also invest in a box, packing peanuts, tape and then the shipping. Oh and don’t forget time invested. Is it really worth roughly 30 minutes to photograph the item, write the description, pack the item once sold and then take it to the shipping provider? That’s a lot of time. I feel eBay is not the best return on investment option. In fact, I think it’s the worst.
So, this Spring I will be out in my front yard with a beach umbrella, a lounger, a cold beer in hand and my son running around for entertainment. Need a good pair of slightly used Air Jordans size 12?
I just downloaded the WordPress iPod Touch app so I can start blogging while I’m behind the wheel of my car. Well, OK not going to be doing that. I have to admit that this app is very cool, and free. Compared to the other apps that may cost anywhere from $1.99 up to $5.99, this is a steal. Plus if you are going to be using or are currently using WordPress as your doorway, why not use their public domain software? Another nice benifit is the ability to publish to more than one blog. Happiness.
I’ve been waiting to add content to a few areas of this site because I am looking for input from a few otheres before I start writing. Please be patient and stop your worries.
I’m continuing with developing the stöogez website. I’ve been working with Dreamweaver and Fireworks to make things look and work well. I think the site’s look and feel are coming together. People I have asked like the simplicity, which has been my goal all along. Once I get the site developed, I will be discussing the reason I feel simpler is better. I want to begin a movement entitled, “No Flash.”
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