Of Cranberry Bread and The Myth of a Generational Technology Divide

My holiday period scorecard?

Thirteen slices of cranberry bread. More sandies than I care to count. Sips (or was it gulps) of Washington wine that brought a calm end to a frenetic year.

And insights that will make me a better marketer in 2012.

What did I learn in those brief moments when I wasn’t stuffing my face?

The fact that the supposed technology divide between generations is bogus. 

My first inkling?

Soon after receiving her first iPad, my mother-in-law downloaded an app and streamed music that filled a room. She shouted out the ingredients for a holiday dinner, then gleefully taught the rest of us the shortcut of using three fingers to zoom in and out on her tablet.

My mother-in-law is 82. Oh, and she has been using a Kindle for three years and in 2010 learned the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system in about three days.

The second sign?

The same sister-in-law who passed off my gadget time as trivial did not let her first smartphone out of her hands, much less her sight. Sure, she was doing many of the activities we were doing in 2007, but gone were the feature phone, triple-tapping, and inability to effectively reach the Internet and all it has to offer.

My sister in law is 55. Her 65-year-old husband says that he is next up for a smartphone.

Judging by the statistics, my focus group of one is representative.

According to Nielsen, we are on the way to 56 percent of U.S. seniors using the Internet in 2015 versus 45 percent in 2010. eMarketer says that 31 percent of seniors accessed social networking sites in 2011, with an estimated 36 percent projected to use them by 2013.

After younger adults, the segment with the second fastest-growing smartphone penetration rate is those aged 55-64. Smartphone penetration among this older group is only 30 percent, but it jumped 5 percent in the third quarter of 2011.

Tablet ownership among those older than 55 climbed from 10 to 19 percent between fall of 2010 and summer of 2011.

For marketers, these behavior changes provide unmatched opportunities to reach Boomers and seniors with personalized campaigns that will move product and drive loyalty. My in-laws each commented on ads they were seeing and were well aware of QR codes.

We’ll look back at 2011 as the Year of Mobile Commerce during the holiday shopping season. Those who purchased in great numbers likely skewed younger, but that may not always be the case as older wireless device owners take advantage of the convenience and knowledge that smartphones and tablets bring.

As for me, my gadgets are the ideal January tools to find weight-loss solutions.

(first posted on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2012/01/03/of-cranberry-bread-and-the-...