Through a serendipitous meeting yesterday, doing some work on another conference, I got invited to a BBQ in Queens yesterday (my first visit to the Borough). Whilst there, I had a good chat with the main host, a 70+ year old gentleman who talked about his media habits and how so many companies just did not get it these days. The sort of things he does:
- ripping all his CDs to the hard-drive, to run through his planned house-wide network
- buys much of his new music digitally
- ad avoids on the web using ad blockers
- watches all TV programmes online, from DVDs or via DVR. Only watches the news, sports and Lost live. He only watches Lost as his wife insists on watching it live and not the next day
- listens to new radio, such as Live365; he finds it brings him all sorts of goodies, such as jazz from the 20’s or 30’s. He pays a subscription to be ad free.
He loves how the web can bring him the long tail of music (he has a music degree), how technology lets him avoid intrusive ads and choose services which are subscription based or low ad level. He watches TV and entertainment when and how he wants. So it’s not just the teens the advertisers have to worry about changing behaviour, it’s all ages.
Interesting, I have more and more seniors ordering from me. Well I am assuming they are seniors or close to it. They are grandparents.