In This Issue:

• LETTER FROM MARY
• CHECKING IN WITH ANDY COHEN
• HEALTH CARE OF THE FUTURE?
• DR. FURLONG'S TAKE
• AGING IN PLACE TECH WATCH
• SAGE ADVICE FOR ENTREPRENEURS
• FROM THE BOOK SHELF
• ON THE NEWSLETTER FRONT
• BEST BOOMER TOWNS WATCH
• SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
• MARKET FINDINGS
• NEWSWIRE

LETTER FROM MARY

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I hope and trust all is well with you. We are excited by the profile of our upcoming What's Next Conference in Chicago on March 19, 2010. We have focused on the themes of "Go-to-Market Strategies" for boomers and beyond. We are pleased to announce three keynote speakers who have access to and deep understanding of the boomer market and the workings of distribution into that marketplace. They are: Kevin Donnellan, executive vice president and chief communications officer of AARP, Mark Graham, senior vice president of technology for iVillage.com and Dr. Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.com.

For boomers who have invested so much of their net worth into their homes, it will be interesting to learn the research about the trends in the housing marketplace. Kevin will be speaking on the topic of integrated marketing. We learned at the American Advertising Federation conferences that brands increasingly are looking into strategies that can incorporate print, online and mobile, across an integrated platform. The room on the topic of integrated marketing was filled to capacity. We attended with Stuart Rosenthal, publisher of The Beacon Newspapers and president of NAMPA, the North American Mature Publishers Association. We had a booth at the event where more than 72 brand managers stopped by to learn how brands could work with the 50+ customer. We hope to include some of these brand leaders at What's Next.

We know that research and data is one of the reasons attendees come to What's Next. This year we are pleased to announce a session called "Breakfast with the Analysts." We will have an automobile expert Michelle Krebs, senior analyst of Edmunds.com, who will provide an overview as to what boomers are looking for in cars. Expect to see high sales for the Honda Insight Hybrid, which is a 5-door (hatchback) model, because of boomers pursuing hobbies such as surfing and biking as well as the growth of boomers moving into grandparenting and caregiving. On the Aging in Place front, we have Laurie Orlov, founder of the Aging in Place Technology blog returning to give us an update on the research about this vastly expanding marketplace. Laurie has recently been featured in Business Week and The New York Times. She has become a strong resource for both businesses and entrepreneurs entering the market.

Another analyst will be Greg O'Neill, PhD.,director, National Academy on an Aging Society. Greg has one of my favorite charts (at right) that shows the growth of the boomer market. We will also feature Jody Holtzman, senior vice president, research and strategic analysis at AARP. I am not sure anyone has a better lens on the data related to the overall boomer market than Jody. Also expect to learn about the trends in consumer directed health care from Steve French, executive vice president and managing partner of the National Marketing Institute and Brandon Daniell, co-founder and chief innovator of Abeo Partners.

We will be including an "author, blogger, analyst " lunch. We are pleased that Mark Miller, author of the upcoming book, "The Hard Times Guide to Retirement," and well-known journalist and author Gail Sheehy, author, journalist, lecturer and AARP ambassador for caregiving, will be two of the authors you might join for lunch. We are also inviting our keynotes to stay for lunch and to host tables and are doing an RFP for other authors and bloggers to join us.

It is always delightful to learn "who got a deal done" at What's Next 2009 and "who found a new position" by making a connection at the conference. We will share some of the deal-making stories on the website. If you would like to join in as a marketing partner, please let us know. We can offer a discount to your employees or your members. We are grateful to have as sponsors AARP, Abeo Partners LLC, Microsoft, Caring.com, firstSTREET, Immersion Active, ReadHowYouWant, SeniorCareMarketer.com, Southwest Airlines and Taheima Wellness. From them, you will learn about their "go-to-market" strategies and how they are growing their business despite these recession times.

We have learned much on the road this fall by attending the following events: the Forum One Communications conference on social marketing, the NAMPA conference for publishers, and the WomanSage conference. At Forum One, we were very inspired by the stories of how companies are using online communities and mobile marketing to engage customers and to create sales. We were taken by the stories of how REI, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Obama campaign successfully used these technologies. At WomanSage, we hosted a panel of women who were launching new businesses aimed at boomers and seniors. This theme was also featured in a story in Business Week on boomer entrepreneurship that included Mary Tennyson from our panel. You can read more about Mary's entrepreneurship below. We are tracking the unemployment numbers for boomers, which are continuing to be challenging. As a result, we are looking into business and franchise opportunities for them. It was really impressive to see the large numbers of women at WomanSage who were part of their "Reinvent, Renew" program. As to NAMPA, if you want to place an advertisement in context for this market, take a look at their publications. They have a very good sense of what is happening in the local senior communities.

As we move toward Thanksgiving, I want to say thanks to all of you who provided support and care this fall. On Sept. 8, we lost my mom at 87. She had lived a long, vibrant and happy life. She was a tennis champion in her youth and never lost her vital spirit. She was only seriously ill for about five weeks. It was a passage that was difficult for all of us to endure. What made it easier, was the amazing support, love and care from friends and family. She will always be with us in our hearts.

May you and your family have a wonderful holiday.

All best,
Mary

PS: If you are looking for a great read, try Ken Auletta's new book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It. It is a blueprint for how the new world of advertising and marketing works on the web and an amazing read about one of the best business stories in Silicon Valley.

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CHECKING IN WITH ANDY COHEN

We checked in with Andy Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Caring.com, about the company's recent acquisition of the Gilbert Guide -- a move that improves his company's ability to tap into the expected growth in the family caregiver market, which currently numbers 34 million.

Cohen pointed out that the two companies were a great match, given that they complement each other.

"Consumers that are looking for help need a lot of information to make good decisions and they also need to find good local resources and Gilbert Guide has built the most comprehensive eldercare directory," he said. "Caring.com has been focused on the information piece. We have a lot of contacts and checklists on all different aspects of eldercare. So it was a natural. Now we are able to provide both information and resources. And they were in San Francisco, which is where we are, so that made it even better."

A press release on the acquisition points out that that Gilbert Guide has been a Caring.com featured site since March 2008, so the companies already had a positive working relationship.

"We just really liked what they were doing on the directory," Cohen said. "There are some other housing directories, but we didn't see one that had housing and non-housing. Housing directories are great if you are looking for a nursing home, but often people want to keep their parents safe in their own home, so they're looking for individual care (or) social workers, and Gilbert Guide was the only directory that had the housing and non-housing."

As a result of the acquisition, Caring.com members will be able to access Gilbert Guide's comprehensive housing guide and extensive directory for aging parents and loved ones.

The acquisition also means that Jill Gilbert and Jason Gilbert will be joining Caring.com as vice presidents, a development that Cohen sees as a huge plus for the operation.

"They're very talented and they've built a great company so we're really excited to have them as part of our team," he said. Cohen added that he has been working with the Gilberts for about a year. They will report to Cohen as they work on further expansion and development of the guide.

"We have 34 million people who are caring for aging parents today and right now with Gilbert Guide and Caring we're reaching a million of them," Cohen said. "So we are trying to get as big as we can as quick as we can because we think there is tremendous opportunity in reaching the next 33 million people."

Certainly the growth potential is there. AARP sees the caregiver market expanding to 50 million by 2020. Even today, that market dwarfs the markets for brides and new moms (see accompanying chart) -- a fact that should be of growing interest to advertisers.

"Advertisers are very interested in addressing this market and before we were around, there wasn't really a place for them to go," Cohen said. The acquisition means that advertisers will not only have a more comprehensive site available to reach their market, but also one that Cohen says is about to experience solid growth.

"It will definitely be growing," Cohen said. "Between the two of us, we'll have about a million visitors per month." (Since its founding in 2007, Caring.com has clocked more than 5 million visitors). More visitors, of course, will make the site even more attractive to advertisers, Cohen noted.

Cohen pointed out that the caregiving market has two major segments: spouses, often an older woman caring for her husband; and adult children -- also usually a woman -- caring for her parents.

"We're just seeing the numbers growing dramatically in terms of people looking for help and good caregiving," Cohen said. "As the population ages and people live longer there are more and more people who need care. So this is the front of what I think is going to be a very large wave of people."

MORE: Read Laurie Orlov's view here.

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HEALTH CARE OF THE FUTURE?

With congressional health insurance reform plans in the news, politics has taken center stage in the debate over health care. But what does the future hold in terms of how medicine itself will actually work in the years ahead? Jennifer Kilian and Barbara Pantuso provide some clues in "The Future of Health Care is Social," a slide show and an article in Fast Company that draw on frog design's people-focused design discipline. As Kilian and Pantuso see it, future "family health managers" will be able to use health and life science technology, linked devices and social networking platforms to make the job of managing their family's health care both easier and more time-efficient. In short, get ready for a higher-tech future at the household level.

View the slide show here.

And read the article here. here.

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DR. FURLONG'S TAKE

In a piece originally written as an op-ed for USA Today titled "Giving a Voice to Older Adults in the Health Care Conversation," Dr. Furlong looks at health care reform and AARP. An excerpt:

Boomers have been hit hard by the recession. When unemployment benefits run out, they are hard-pressed to find work at the salary and the benefit level to which they have grown accustomed. There is a lot of conversation about Medicare and seniors but the unique challenges facing older women are often overlooked. Who are these forgotten women? They are living alone; their children have moved out; they are experiencing complete ennui after many years of living for the job. For these women, the cost of COBRA benefits is huge, and they often can’t afford it after a few months, instead going through their 401K to pay for health care expenses.

When these women talk about health care, they told me that their solution, the only option that so many Americans have when they are sick or injured, is to go to the emergency room. We all know what that does to health care costs. What these women want and need is the option to enroll in health care coverage at a reasonable price, which for a single older woman would be about 10 percent of her monthly income.

When we listen to the needs of the caregiver, we dispel the myth regarding the greatest “wealth transfer” of our time. We learn that in some cases caregiving costs run up to $160,000 a year for two parents, overleveraging the family income within two years. The adult children have family meetings to discuss what will happen when the VA benefits run out in less than a year, and the parents still need round-the-clock care. Maybe the children use a reverse mortgage for a few months, and then all seven kids chip in to pay the rest of the caregiving costs.

Ethel Percy Andrus would be proud of today’s AARP leadership, which continues to reflect the complex needs of the members. She would want to know the nuances of the pain that the members feel: the frail senior who needs the protection of Medicare and Social Security; the downsized boomer who needs a new path toward a career and some protection for health care during the transition and beyond; the stressed caregiver who is caring for elderly parents and is also putting in 30 hours a week managing all of the paperwork and benefits. All of the needs of these constituents need to be represented in the proposed health care reform plan, which is why AARP is advocating for reform that will improve health care coverage for older adults. Our flawed health care system desperately needs reform, and the proposed changes would benefit older adults across the board.

Read the entire piece here.

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AGING IN PLACE TECH WATCH

This month, Laurie Orlov ponders Business Week's special report on aging in place and concludes it really is special, mainly because it could help create markets by stimulating awareness. Read the entry on her always-excellent blog here.

Want more Orlov? Check out her thoughts on why large vendors don't invest more in technology for seniors here and her ideas about how companies can effectively market to an older audience here.

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SAGE ADVICE FOR ENTREPRENEURS

Find the USA Today series here.

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FROM THE BOOKSHELF

OK, we don't have an actual bookshelf here at the newsletter -- it's more like a virtual one. But we do have a book excerpt, this month from Dr. Carol Orsborn's memoir, The Year I saved My Soul, published by VN Books.

Orsborn’s book gives voice to the inner thoughts of many men and women of the boomer generation who have found themselves testing their spiritual principles against recessionary times. A senior strategist with VibrantNation.com, the leading website devoted exclusively to smart, successful women over 50+, Orsborn is the author of 16 books for and about the boomer generation.

Heeding the (downsized) Call

There are many reasons to write a book -- to attempt to become immortal, to help people to save the world, to make money, to get a Ph.D., to find a cheap alternative to therapy. And after 15 books, thinking I’d tried them all, believed I needed never to write a book again.

But I was wrong. I missed one reason. I needed to write at least this one more -- this time for the only real reason to have ever written a book in the first place. To save my soul.

Over the many decades of my life, I have been inspired by mature women writers like May Sarton, Elisabeth Ogilvie, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and all of the gifted spiritual seekers who have spoken to me.

But while my heart responds to these books as though I’d conceived them myself, they could not have been written under circumstances more different than my own. These books were written by the ocean, in the forest, in the desert.

These women asked themselves the big questions, about friendship, purpose, the joys and limits of family, health, death and the meaning of life. They received answers from the whisperings of conches, nightingales in berried bushes and the squish of mud beneath their toes

I wanted to ask the big questions, too. But for the past couple of years, I’d been forgetting to -- sometimes for long periods of time. For I was not a beachcomber at the seashore, but rather, a senior executive in a global marketing firm. I spent my days performing, explaining, defending. And worse, I could already see the writing on the wall. The company was going to need to cut employees to make its numbers, and there was a giant bull’s eye on my back. At my age and stage in life, the last thing I ever expected was to be downsized from my corporate job. But when the economy hit the skids, a whole class of marketing industry "thought leaders" -- people whose contributions sprung from R&D rather than P&L -- found themselves suddenly in the pink, as in pink slip.

I knew I was at risk because when it came to corporate life -- however cool the job title and physical set-up -- it turned out that I had no crust. I was innocent and naïve about corporate dynamics -- far more so than my years and title indicated. The truth was, I still smarted over things that people did to each other, by “people,” I mean bosses, boss’s bosses, subordinates, suppliers, clients and all the other denizens of the corporate neighborhood.

Some of it was small and petty but still got to me. Like the switching of desk chairs. From the outside, all the chairs looked exactly alike. But in reality, most of the chairs were broken. Some wobbled. Some lurched backwards. I started with a disaster of a chair that was so low, I would have had to start typing with my hands above my head. On my first day, I demanded and got a new chair. That was the last time I sat steady in that office as while I had never actually caught anybody in the act, that chair -- and many others requisitioned thereafter (until I finally eventually gave up and “made do”) were surreptitiously traded by sunrise.

As it turned out, this was amongst the least of the indignities that were to inspire the recognition that my soul was in need of serious and immediate attention. I began writing in my journal every night after work to do everything within my power to transform myself from victim to witness -- and it wasn't until the year was nearly over -- having at last discovered my own happy ending as Senior Strategist with VibrantNation.com -- that I thought to share this with an old friend, and my former agent, Patti Breitman. Was there something in this for others? Patti's response excited and alarmed me. "This is a brave book" were her exact words. What I didn't know at the time was that Patti was making plans to throw herself back into agenting, and that the words I shared with her spoke to her personally. Life is full of surprises.

The I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of divination and philosophy which has been an important teacher to me, and about which I've written in a number of my books, has the perfect words to describe my response: "Oh oh. Hah hah!" Four words that by the end of my year, had come to contain everything one needs to know about saving one’s (downsized) soul.

Adapted from The Year I Saved My (downsized) Soul: A Boomer Woman’s Search for Meaning...and a Job (VN Books) by Carol Orsborn, Ph.D., senior strategist with VibrantNation.com, the leading website devoted exclusively to smart, successful women over 50+

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ON THE NEWSLETTER FRONT

No, not this newsletter, the SocialVoice newsletter from LiveWorld. Bryan Person, the "Social Media Evangelist" at LiveWorld, checks in to note that the concept of "Social Everywhere" is catching on in a big way. He notes in the newsletter that Google has just launched its Sidewiki product that allows website visitors to leave comments about a company and its services and that Facebook now claims more than 300 million active users. That means that every Web page is social and that customers are talking about brands online, Person says. "The key question then becomes: What is your business doing about it?" Person notes. Good question.

For answers, check out the newsletter online here.

And to subscribe go here.

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BEST BOOMER TOWNS WATCH

Nancy Shonka Padberg, founder and president of Bestboomertowns.com reports that the last live "Best Boomer Towns" show aired Oct. 29 on voiceamerica.com, the leading live Internet talk radio service. That show spotlighted St. George, Utah and Aiken, S.C., as the final two of the 21 most desirable boomer retirement towns based on such criteria as having excellent health care, proximity to a university, airport access, fine dining opportunities, low crime, cultural activities, beautiful weather, an active lifestyle, average cost of living and a range of home sizes and prices. You can still listen to that program and all 25 previous programs, which will be available on the voiceamerica.com site for a year, by going here.

To find out more about the 21 Best Boomer Towns, read Padberg's blog and subscribe to the Best Boomer Towns newsletter visit www.bestboomertowns.com.

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

What could be more special than Whats Next 2010 coming up March 19 in Chicago, which you've already read about above? OK, so we're a little biased. But what you didn't read about earlier is that newsletter subscribers who sign up now will receive a 20 percent discount on their registration by registering early and using promo code FOM1. To register, simply visit this site.

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NEW MARKET FINDINGS

Spending power of baby boomers will increasingly be shaped by 6 underlying principles, or "cultural values," according to a series of research projects by Idea Couture, a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. These values -such as efficiency, social responsibility, and transparency-represent the characteristics 50+ consumers look for in products and services. Details here.

Boomers redefining love for themselves

Ah, boomer love. No rules, no regulations, no well-trod road to follow. Both men and women – well beyond childbearing years – want to couple, but not all of them yearn to wear a wedding ring. The first generation to celebrate seemingly ageless vitality and longevity is making up its love lifestyle as it ages, Abigail Trafford says. Details here.

America's recession-proof cities to retire in

These affordable metro areas offer sunny weather, jobs and a rosy economic outlook, Forbes says. Details here.

Boomers devote time and dollars to care for aging parents

Canada’s baby boomers are devoting their time and money to help their aging parents with everything from a drive to the doctor’s office to making financial and health decisions, reveals a new poll conducted for Investors Group. Details here.

NPR's New Wi-Fi Radio is a Baby Boomer's Boombox

NPR may have spent the better part of this year making itself into a leader in digital broadcasting, but with its new dedicated Internet radio, the organization is reaching out to its core audience--baby boomers. "We had been talking about doing something for our over-50 listeners for a while," says Barbara Sopato, director of NPR's e-commerce and consumer products division. Then, at last year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, she and other NPR representatives came across Jake Sigal's booth in the "Silvers Summit" section. Sigal's company, Livio, introduced a dedicated Pandora Internet radio last year--and now, in time for the holidays, the company is debuting a dedicated NPR radio. Details here.

How Americans are Saving Money in 2009

A recent Harris Poll shed light on exactly what American's are doing to save money and stay afloat in the still-struggling economy. The good news? Most Americans seem to have truly changed spending habits to become more frugal and realistic. The bad news? This means retailers, auto-makers, brick-and-mortar stores and ecommerce hubs are now struggling. Details here.

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NEWSWIRE

Health Care Reform's Missing Piece: Elder Care
With America's elders on their way to doubling by 2030, thanks to 78 million aging boomers, one might think health care reform would address the fragmented excuse for a long-term care (LTC) system needed to assist seniors as they become frail. But, said former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, "We're not there, yet."

Boomers Doomed to Disability?
Baby boomers are entering their 60s just in time for a new trend: disability. One in five 60-somethings need help with basic daily activities -- up from 13 percent just a decade ago. Various disabilities are up 40 percent to 70 percent in 60- to 69-year-olds, UCLA researcher Teresa E. Seeman, PhD, and colleagues find.

Boomers, Seniors Can Live Better by Planning a Retirement that Includes Some Type of Job
Baby boomers and senior citizens thinking about retirement may want to consider a temporary or part-time job. Those who do will have fewer major disease and will enjoy better day-to-day function than their contemporaries who choose to stop working altogether, according to a new national study.

Illicit Drug Use Among Those in Their 50's Nearly Doubles in Past Five Years
Cincinnati, OH, September 30, 2009 --(PR.com)-- According to a recent report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), illicit drug use among Baby Boomers has increased dramatically in the past five years. The report, An Examination of Trends in Illicit Drug Use among Adults Aged 50 to 59 in the United States reveals that “the rate of current illicit drug use increased from 2.7 percent in 2002 to 5.0 percent in 2007.” The report goes on to say “The number of adults aged 50 or older with past year substance use disorder (SUD) is projected to more than double from 2.8 million (annual average) in 2002 to 2006 to 5.7 million in 2020 in the United States.”

Older job hunters face hurdles
Most Americans over age 55 plan to work until they are at least 69, but many who seek a new job have a difficult time finding one, according to a new study by the MetLife Mature Market Institute. The study, called “Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime? The New Realities of the Job Market for Aging Baby Boomers,” combined a survey of more than 1,200 people ages 55 to 70 with in-depth interviews of job seekers and employment experts.

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