Speaking To The Aging Consumer
It’s been pretty interesting lately to look at how companies have been aiming technology products at an aging population. Two I’ve noticed lately are the Jitterbug cell phone, and the Jumbo Univeral Remote.
I first saw the Jitterbug in a full-page ad in the New York Times book review – not exactly a mass-market publication. The headline on the ad is, “It doesn’t play games, take pictures, or give you the weather.” Then, “Introducing the Jitterbug. Simply designed to be the best telephone a cell phone can be. Nothing more. And nothing less. With service as low as $10 a Month[sic]. The world is complicated enough. Now there’s a cell phone that makes life simple.”
Nothing about the ad says “this is a phone for middle-aged and up people who think technology is too hard,” but every bullet point addresses it: the ear cushion “makes it easy to hear,” the screen is “bright and easy to see,” the sound is “loud and clear.” And the buttons are big – really big. One model of the phone only has five: “yes” and “no” buttons to access every feature, and three gigantic buttons to making a call, each of which can be labeled “operator” “mom” “911″ etc. for one-button calling.
If you look closely, you find that Jitterbug is brought to you by firstSTREET, a company that sells products “for Boomers and Beyond.” But nobody wants to buy a product that calls itself something for old people, so Jitterbug keeps it — well, not exactly subtle, but at least unsaid.
The other product I noticed is the Innovage “Jumbo Universal Remote,” which I bought at my local drugstore for $9.99. This is a big remote control – a really big remote. The packaging promotes the device’s ability to “replace all your remotes with one convenient unit,” as one would expect from a universal remote. But it also promises that you’ll “Never Misplace Your Remote Control Again!”
The Jumbo Remote is much subtler than the Jitterbug, but it’s still clearly marketed for older people – the themes of simplifying those complicated electronics, bigger & easier to see, etc. all speak to making technology more palatable.
Are these products actually easier? I don’t know about the remote; the one-button-call Jitterbug is undoubtedly easier within its simplified feature-set; the bigger Jitterbug doesn’t seem that much easier except that it leaves out features that could be confusing (I once performed a non-scientific survey of cell-phone users and found that the vast majority used fewer than 25% of the “features” of their phones – so if you’re ignoring the complicated features, you’ve got a Jitterbug already).
There are other products on the market that started out as simplifications or modifications aimed specifically at an elderly population – notably OXO “Good Grips” products. Originally designed to be easier to grip with arthritic hands (read the story here), the iconic big handle from the original vegetable peeler is now an industry gorilla, and OXO puts that handle on everything from corn-holders to gardening spades. But it’s the case of a product designed for one end of the age “bell-curve” that found universal applicability.
I wonder if, as the bell-curve shifts to the right, if companies will worry about appealing to the younger side at all. I don’t think anyone will ever want to buy a product that says, “I’m for old people, like you!” but these two are on the leading edge of marketing strategies that offer the benefits of technology while speaking much more plainly to vision, hearing, memory, and other issues of aging.
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