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The Mettle Of Good Journalism

By on May 3, 2018 in Media, News
Photo Credit: The Globe and Mail

Photo Credit: The Globe and Mail

Because of my former profession as a communications consultant, it is only natural for me to remain a news junkie even after my retirement. The media coverage of the recent van-attack tragedy that happened in Toronto on a beautiful Monday afternoon showed the real mettle of good journalism. The best media outlet, in covering tragedies, would be one which was not only able to be first, but also accurate and compassionate at the same time without unnecessary sensationalism.

The Globe and Mail claimed that it was not the first media outlet to report the number killed in the Toronto van rampage on April 23. Nor was it the first to report on a Facebook page purportedly operated by the suspect Alek Minassian that referred to dark online forums used by trolls and violent misogynists. But it claimed that the publication focused on getting the correct information. This might be true, but when all print media now also have digital versions, the speed of reporting is almost as important as the accuracy.

I did not find out about the tragic news until about 4 p.m. that afternoon, and I immediately relied on CP24 for the latest news. The live news conference quickly put together by the Toronto police at around 4:30 p.m., involving the Deputy Chief Police Commissioner Peter Yuen and representatives from the three levels of government, was impressive as it pretty much summarized what the tragedy was all about and what the casualties were. At that early hour, we still did not know the name and motive of the alleged killer nor the identities of the victims. But the most important reassurances have been delivered: although nine lives were claimed at that time, the over 15 injured victims were frantically being helped at Sunnybrook Hospital which declared Code Orange for its emergency department; condolences were conveyed on air by the police and government officials; the public was asked to stay away from the stretch of Yonge Street from Finch to Sheppard in order to allow the police to carry on with the investigation; a suspect was arrested by a brave traffic cop without a gunfire being shot. What was most reassuring was that the Federal Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale informed everyone that this tragedy did not appear to be one that would threaten national security.

Under such circumstances, I was glued to my TV set while glancing at numerous social media feeds to get the latest updates. After watching all the national news networks –  Global News from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. followed by CBC News and CTV News that evening – CTV News was the first to report on the name of the arrested suspect and his identity as a Seneca College student. CBC The National was the first media outlet to confirm a Facebook post by the suspect shortly before he started the van rampage. This post unveiled the digital trail which indicated that the suspect could have been motivated by the misogynist hate group INCEL (involuntary celibates). When Police Chief Mark Saunders gave the second live update news conference on CP24 later that evening upon his return from New York City, he was already able to update the public that the death toll had by then climbed to 10 and the name of the suspect was also disclosed although the first name was mistakenly given as Alex instead of Alek.

The Facebook post was actually already reported much earlier than the evening news by numerous social media. However, nobody in their right minds could have believed these sources and verified whether they were true stories or fake news. So CBC was not the first to report on the Facebook post and the INCEL association, but they were the first to confirm that this rumor on social media was true and they verified that with Facebook as well before reporting on the news. CTV News was the first to confirm the name and identity of the arrested suspect via their Ottawa reporter which surprised me.

Kudos to CTV and CBC for fast and accurate breaking news. I was disappointed with Global TV News not only because they were not able to be the first, but also because of the lack of empathy in the reporting. Although one news anchor was covering the tragedy live on Yonge Street and the other in the newsroom, neither one of them showed grave concern on their faces. Instead, the ambulance-chasing attitude and goofiness on air were major turnoffs.

After the initial shock and update on the first day of the tragedy, my attention was then turned to the print media on the second day to see which reporter or media outlet was able to give the best in-depth report. The best reporting prize on the aftermath, in my opinion, should go to John Ibbitson of The Globe and Mail, whose article, The Truths Canada Needs To Remember, was a beautiful commentary on the attack that brought tears to my eyes. As he wrote, “We will remember that violence against the innocent brings out the best in Canadians, not the worst….What matters is, once again, we have collectively been wounded. And, collectively, we will heal, as we have healed in the past, by mourning and supporting, rather than accusing…We are not going to let anyone take our peaceful, free, diverse, safe streets away from us.”

Amen!

 

 

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Mad Men No More

By on February 26, 2018 in Advertising, Marketing Campaigns, Media
Photo Credit: Dan Burn-Forti

Photo Credit: Dan Burn-Forti

I do not envy the jobs of advertising executives and creative minds. In this digital era, consumers try to skip ads and tune out commercials. That’s why Amazon’s Kindle and Netflix have become so popular – there are no ads when you peruse your newspapers on an e-reader and streamed movies are commercial-free.

Before I retired from the public relations industry, I’ve always said that advertising is not as effective as public relations because the latter specializes in telling stories, not hard-selling a brand, products or services. It looks like the advertising industry has finally caught on – most ads and commercials nowadays, particularly online, are focusing on story-telling or sharing experiences. Nevertheless, it’s still hard to find one that appeals to baby boomers.

There are, however, three ad campaigns that are an exception: Questrade, HSBC and PepsiCo.

Prior to the series of prime-time TV commercials on asking your financial advisors tough questions, nobody has probably ever heard of Toronto-based online brokerage Questrade. Its current marketing campaign includes two TV spots with an investor asking their portfolio manager a difficult question about fees and the negative effect on their retirement savings. This immediately became a “grabber” for a lot of boomers who could immediately relate to the manager’s dismissive answer. The tagline “It’s time to ask tough questions about your money” just sinks in deeply for boomers and soon-to-be retirees. Print and out-of-home executions similarly feature some of the difficult questions Questrade wants customers to ask their current financial advisor, and include the hashtag: #Ask Tough Questions.

See Questrade TV commercial below:

According to the company’s COO Stephen Graham, the campaign is meant to connect with consumers who know less about the brand and push Questrade’s robo-advisor platform.

Marketing Magazine reported that while the pointed questions seem to take direct aim at the big firms with huge fees, Graham said the intent was not to directly target the competition but portray the real questions and concerns that were unearthed during research. He was spot on about the campaign being a real conversation and the honesty, behind asking the uncomfortable questions, resonates well with consumers.

The second example of strong advertising is the global jet-bridge “The Story of Human Ambition” print campaign prominently visible in 20 airports around the world. With 24 creative executions, the thought-provoking print campaign explores different themes and perspectives on what ambition means to different people in different places. This supports the global financial institution’s goal to inspire people to realize their hopes, dreams and ambitions, and in doing so, positions itself as a natural partner to support them on their journey.

According to Andrea Newman, Global Head of Marketing, Wealth and Brand Communications, at HSBC, “With this campaign, we want to poke or nudge our customers to stop and think about their own broader ambitions and reflect on where they are going in life.” I’ve always admired J. Walter Thompson’s approach to making airport jet bridges a unique communications channel associated with the HSBC brand for the last 15 years. The print campaign, particularly the photos orchestrated by Dan Burn-Forti, a New York photography agency, always makes me stop and admire, but more importantly, think about its relevance to my own life.

My last example of effective advertising is PepsiCo’s current Chinese New Year short films exploring millennial kids’ relationships with their boomer parents. AdAge profiled a 15-minute ad for PepsiCo’s Lay’s revolving around a successful actor who never manages to make it home for the holidays. The ad stars Lin Gengxin, a rising Chinese star, and it was produced by local agency Civilization. There is also a family pup, named Le, or “Happy,” a character in the Chinese version of Lay’s name – a brilliant nod to the arrival of the Year of the Dog in the Lunar New Year.

There are at least two other PepsiCo short advertising films around the same theme of inter-generational tensions and love between parents and children that got circulated on YouTube and resent many times among my Chinese friends all over the world. All of these films feature big-name or rising stars in China who are also popular everywhere among Chinese communities. The films are telling touching stories and pulling the heartstrings of boomer parents. The word-of-mouth endorsement and YouTube fever around these commercials are solid evidence of the campaign’s success.

A successful marketing campaign should always have a positive impact on the company’s bottom line. I’m not sure how much new business has the Questrade commercial generated, but according to a recent Euromonitor International report on China, Coca-Cola still maintained its leadership in soft drinks in 2017, albeit with a slightly shrinking value share compared to that in 2016. The Globe and Mail also reported that the fourth-quarter profit at HSBC Bank Canada dipped 20 percent lower than a year ago while its global parent has been shedding jobs and undertaking a turnaround strategy. Sexy and thought-provoking ads might resonate with consumers, but still might not be enough to make the cash register ring.

 

 

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Aging Population A Blessing Instead Of A Burden

By on July 25, 2017 in Demograhics, Finance, Marketing Campaigns, Media, Retirement, Travel, Workplace

retirement-travel-destination-ideas

It’s encouraging to see that The Economist has been focusing more on the positive aspects of aging populations in the last few years. As recently as three years ago in April 2014, the publication has dedicated a cover story to “A Billion Shades of Grey,” advocating changes in government policies to help accommodate the aging population. But the tone of that cover issue was more doom and gloom than positive – the concern about economic stagnation caused by the huge wave of baby boomers’ retirement was loud and clear in that story.

Then, in the April 9, 2016 edition of The Economist, the tone has become more positive with the article titled, “Older Consumers Will Reshape The Business Landscape.” The article advocated that companies should speed up in targeting this expanding “grey” market and cited examples of businesses around the world with innovative ideas appealing to older consumers. I’ve also echoed this view with my blog post last year titled, “Marketers Gradually Understand Potential Of Boomers.”

So I read with great delight the Special Report on The Economics Of Longevity in the July 8-14, 2017 issue of The Economist again. The report has basically argued that “if employers, businesses and financial services adapt to make far more of such people (the older population), big economic benefits for everyone could follow.” Employers need to change their attitudes towards older employees – ageist recruitment practices need to be discarded and corporate cultures have to change. Instead of reducing productivity and, therefore, hurting the economy, academics have found that older people in multi-generation teams tend to boost the productivity of those around them, and such mixed teams perform better than younger, single-generation ones.

The publication also argued that the second thing that needs to happen is for the benefits of longer, healthier lives to be spread much more equitably. There is currently too much of a gap between the rich and the poor among the older generation, and the best way to resolve this issue is for governments to invest in public health, offer universal access to healthcare and provide high-quality education for everyone. Although the report cited Canada as a good example of a country that manages to attach great importance to such matters, we see and read Canadian media reports everyday that lament how the older generation has not saved enough and cannot afford to retire.

I believe there is a third thing that needs to change: the marketing community and the media need to direct their energy and attention to the greying population. Over the last decade, there has been lacklustre progress in marketing to older people because this is not perceived as sexy. Young people continue to dominate marketing departments and think that the best place for the old is out of sight, out of mind. Although change is in the air, it is not happening fast enough. From aging rockers such as The Rolling Stones who can still fill huge concert arenas; to recent retirees who take on second careers as giggers and entrepreneurs; to older consumers who display young and active tastes in adventure travel and dating websites, “the new old” is defying old age and refusing to disappear into their sunset years.

In fact, The Economist is asking for a new branding of those over 65 but not yet elderly. The youngest Canadian boomers turn 51 and the oldest turn 70 this year. I used to call those people aged 65-70 “leading-edge boomers” and the younger ones “trailing-edge boomers”. But, perhaps, the marketing community can put their heads together and start coining a sexier term. Don’t call this group seniors although they are technically senior citizens. Baby boomers are starting to retire in large numbers in better health and with more money to spend than any previous generations. We feel much younger than our parents did at their age, and most of us have no intention of quietly disappearing from the world. The sooner the market can respond to this huge opportunity, the better our economy will be.

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America Has Picked Poison

By on November 15, 2016 in Demograhics, Media, Politics

hillary-concession-getty-640x480

It’s been exactly a week that the whole world has still been digesting Donald Trump’s shocking win in the U.S. Presidential Elections. I went to bed at around 1 a.m. on elections night when Hillary’s loss was inevitable. On Wednesday, the day after the elections, together with many of my American, Canadian and Asian progressive friends, I felt despondent and depressed. It was a sad day for America, for democracy and for us women!

Six months ago, I was so confident of Hillary’s win that I booked my condo’s party room and a caterer for an all-women celebration party to take place on the evening of November 11. I figured that a celebration on elections night would have been impossible due to how late usually the voting stations closed and the time difference between the West and East coasts. I also thought that two days after elections night would have been perfect because that would have given us one day to catch up with our sleep and in the very low probability of Hillary’s loss, I could still have canceled the party and caterers with 24 hours’ notice.

In spite of FBI Director James Comey’s announcements regarding the so-called new evidence that might be linked with Hillary Clinton’s email investigation, twice within two weeks leading up to the elections, all mainstream media, pollsters and political pundits still predicted that Hillary would have a huge win. The New York Times‘s editorial and OpEds in the week leading up to the elections not only predicted that Hillary would be the winner, but began speculating on who President Clinton would pick as members of her cabinet. Even The Globe and Mail followed the same train of thought. On the day before the elections, the reputable statistics-driven news website FiveThirtyEight, which never got their predictions wrong in previous Presidential elections, forecast that Hillary’s chance of winning was 71.4 percent versus Trump’s 28.6 percent.

Only two people were right with their predictions – journalist Henry Louis Mencken about a century ago and filmmaker Michael Moore in July 2016. Mencken said in The Baltimore Evening Sun, on July 26, 1920, “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.” That day has finally come some 96 years later!

Michael Moore first predicted Trump’s victory in July during an interview on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher. He repeated his prediction on his website, writing: “This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full-time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump.” In an open letter titled, “Midwest Math, Or Welcome To Our Rust Belt Brexit,” Moore said Trump will win the hearts of voters in the Upper Midwest by attacking Clinton’s stance on free trade and policies that have “royally screwed the people of these four states – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” Moore was bang on even though he said never in his life has he wanted to be proven wrong more than he did four months ago.

The world’s biggest nightmare eventually happened as a bombshell – not only did Trump win, but he managed to sweep the swing states as well as break the Democratic firewall in traditionally blue states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin! I went to bed on Wednesday morning with a broken heart and a last image of John King’s electoral map on CNN before I switched off my TV – a sea of red against patches of blue. I woke up just in time to watch Hillary’s concession speech. It was difficult to hold back tears but I didn’t lose it.

What really got me was that this election’s results have made me lose faith in the mainstream media, in pollsters and in the U.S. electorate! How could everybody be so wrong? In spite of Trump’s lewd remarks and his track record of sexually groping women, Hillary Clinton was unable to galvanize female voters any more than previous Democratic nominees. According to The Globe and Mail based on exit polls conducted by Edison Research on behalf of a consortium of U.S. media organizations, women voted for Hillary at a similar rate to their support for President Obama in 2012. They gave her a 12-point margin, 53 percent to 41 percent. Among her own demographic group, white women, 53 percent voted for Trump while 43 percent voted for Hillary. Trump’s distasteful remarks and allegations of inappropriate touching did not seem to have hurt him at all with that demographic.

In spite of Trump’s blatantly racist remarks and his promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico and crack down on immigration, Hillary’s support among Latino voters actually declined slightly at 65 percent compared to 71 percent for President Obama in 2012. Hillary dominated with black voters, tallying 88 percent versus Trump’s eight percent. But it was still a decline compared with the 2008 and 2012 elections, when African Americans supported Obama at 95 percent and 93 percent respectively.

Hillary didn’t do that badly with young people, but could not match the excitement generated in previous campaigns by President Obama or perhaps even Bernie Sanders. At 55 percent among 18-29-year-olds, she trailed President Obama’s 2008 numbers by more than 10 percentage points. Boomer and seniors voters, aged 45 and up, were solidly for Trump, but at rates comparable to the results for Mitt Romney in 2012.

With so many retirees in Florida, more than one in five voters are over 65 and voted 57 percent to 40 percent in favour of Trump. The youngest group, the Millennials, opted for Hillary at 63 percent versus 27 percent for Trump. But this group only constituted 10 percent of electors in Florida.

There was no surprise that the divide between urban and rural was a big part of the national result. In cities larger than 50,000 people, Hillary won 59 percent of the vote, while her share declined to 45 percent in suburbs and 34 percent in smaller or rural communities. Even though white people may compose a declining share of the U.S. population, they still make up by far the largest group, and they were key to Trump’s victory – white people favoured Trump by a margin of 58 percent to 37 percent. His margin among whites without a college degree, 67 percent to 28 percent, is the largest since the election of 1980.

Another surprise came when everybody thought that Trump’s victory represented a revolt of the economically marginalized. But, in fact, Hillary had a health lead among lower-income voters. Those who earn less than $30,000 voted for Hillary by a margin of 53 percent to 41 percent over Trump. Trump led at all levels of annual income above $50,000. Who would have thought that his margin was largest at the middle-income level, $50,000 to $100,000?

We can analyse why Hillary lost to the most minute detail after the elections, but according to early exit poll results, 42.1 percent of eligible American voters stayed at home and only 57.9 percent voted. If these early numbers stay the same during the final tallying, the voter turnout was slightly higher than the 57.5 percent in the 2012 Presidential election. Hillary’s numbers continue to rise among the popular votes, but they did not matter because Trump won convincingly in the electoral college votes. The polling industry is facing difficult times right now having been proven so wrong over and over again – Trudeau’s win in the Federal elections in Canada last year, Brexit and now the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections!

Among the many mea culpas from the mainstream media, the most convincing excuse I’ve heard so far is that their arrogance has led them to underestimate Trump’s chances of victory. Jonathan Kay, Editor-in-Chief of The Walrus magazine, explained on CBC’s The National earlier this week that the entire mainstream media considered Trump and his crazy remarks as a side show which, in fact, had so tragically taken over as the main show. The media’s arrogance also led them to totally miss what the American people have been saying. The mainstream media, most of whom are progressive liberals, underestimated the anger of white American voters. They might have sent reporters to the Rust Belt and the swing states, but they were not really listening! Once again, the coastal states of the Eastern Seaboard and California do NOT represent America and Trump’s win was a wake-up call.

I believe that Van Jones of CNN best summed up the biggest reason for our despondence after the elections – how could parents wake up the morning after Trump’s victory to explain to their kids why a bigot, a bully, a misogynist and a rapist has won the elections to become the 45th President of the world’s most powerful country? With his victory, America has just lost its moral compass – perhaps Trump was right when he once said during the campaign that “I could stand on New York’s Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I still wouldn’t lose any voters!”

But the fight for democracy, equality for all and women’s rights must go on! As Kate McKinnon, who played Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live, said after singing “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.” Vermont  Senator Bernie Sanders also advocated a positive approach, “What you do now is get heavily involved in the political process. When millions of people stand up and fight back, we will not be denied.”

Already, the American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America have teamed up to form a new national group of leading Jewish and Muslim Americans – The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council – to jointly advocate on issues of common concern. Americans are also pouring cash into organizations that could be under threat during the Trump administration, or that support minorities that could be the target of hate crimes. Forbes magazine reported that the American Civil Liberties Union pledged to contest Trump if his administration follows through on campaign pledges to deport undocumented immigrants, ban the entry of Muslims, and punish women for abortions. Since Trump’s win, the organization and its affiliates have seen more than 33,000 donations totaling over US$1.9 million to aid its fight. The fight for moral justice has just begun. Let’s hope that our U.S. neighbours down south will show Trump and the world that America is much better than this ugly election!

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Marketers Gradually Understand Potential of Boomers

By on April 28, 2016 in Demograhics, Luxury, Marketing Campaigns, Media, Retail, Retirement, Technology, Travel
Photo Credit: southeastdiscovery.com

Photo Credit: southeastdiscovery.com

I was both frustrated and pleased to read the article Older Consumers Will Reshape The Business Landscape in the April 9th edition of The Economist. I was pleased because I was flattered that an esteemed publication like The Economist shares pretty much the same insights as mine some nine years ago when I first started this blog. In 2007 on this blog’s home page, I wrote, “Very few companies have fully realized the immense opportunity that baby boomers present for their businesses. As marketers, we must consider the needs of this demographic now, more than ever, as the aging population increasingly grows in importance.” The British magazine echoed the same sentiments: “Yet companies have been relatively slow to focus on this expanding market – certainly slower than they were to attend to the youth-quake (a term coined by Diana Vreeland, the editor-in-chief of Vogue in 1965, to describe how baby boomers were shaking up popular culture).”

The Economist now replaced this term with a “grey-quake” instead. The potential of baby boomers as a marketing target is huge, not just in Canada, but worldwide. According to the publication, those over 60 constitute the fastest-growing group in the populations of rich countries, with their number set to increase by more than a third by 2030, from 164m to 222m. Older consumers are also the wealthiest and the over-60s currently spend some $4 trillion a year and that number will grow.

But I was frustrated because it seems like marketers have made very little progress in targeting the greying population. The publication pointed out that The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) calculates that less than 15% of firms have developed a business strategy focused on the elderly. The magazine’s sister organization, The Economist Intelligence Unit, found that only 31 percent of firms it polled did take into account increased longevity when making plans for sales and marketing.

I’ve always said that one of the main reasons for this lacklustre progress is because marketing to older people is not perceived as sexy. The other reason, as pointed out by The Economist, is that young people dominate marketing departments and think that the best place for the old is out of sight and mind. Apparently, Britain is no different from North America. A study by fast.Map, a marketer, and Involve Millennium, a consultant, found 68 percent of British 65-74-year-olds “don’t relate” to advertising that they see on television.

Because most greying baby boomers consider themselves at least 10 years younger than their age, the surest way of alienating them is to talk down to them or treat them as old. When Procter & Gamble repackaged some of its dental products as “selected for aged 50-plus consumers,” its sales plunged. In the U.K., Bridgestone made a mistake by promoting a new line of golf clubs as one for pensioners, thus producing poor sales.

However, The Economist said that “change is in the air.” A report by the Mckinsey Global Institute (MGI) points out that older consumers are one of the few engines of growth in an otherwise sluggish global economy. While BRIC countries are drastically slowing down in growth and millennials around the world suffer from the twin burdens of student debt and the lingering impact of the 2008 financial crisis, the older demographic seems to be the only hope for despondent marketers. MGI calculates that pensioners in the developed world spend an average of $39,000 on consumption compared with $29,500 for the 30-44 age group. The publication pointed out that “the old are becoming the new new thing.”

In Japan, NTT DoCoMo not only produced a phone with large keys and a big display screen, but also redesigned its marketing, promoting the new phones during bus tours for pensioners and providing classes in shops to explain the ins-and-outs of apps. Electronics manufacturers are also producing devices that are designed specifically for old people. For instance, Independa, based in the U.S., manufactures a monitor that sends an alert if something goes south for an elderly person, making it easier for the frail senior citizen to stay in their own homes rather than to move to nursing homes.

New, innovative ideas appealing to older consumers also appear to be on the rise in Canada. I’ve posted on this blog on November 11, 2014 about the launch of a Canadian venture, Blaycation (www.blaycation.com), a bucket-list travel adventure company providing customized, curated luxury-focused travel for baby boomers. Since its launch, the company has been doing well as an online travel planner for baby boomers and mature adventure seekers. Its website features over 20 personally-designed tours that include many exotic travel destinations and bucket-list adventures including an Irish Castle Aristocratic Experience hosted by the 7th Earl of Erne.

Although I remain skeptical about how long it has taken marketers to focus on the mature population, it is encouraging to see that companies around the world are making an effort to take the older population more seriously. Marketers should really take heed when one of the most influential publications in the world is hopeful that baby boomers will continue to change everything they’ve touched, including retirement!

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