Editorials

Monday’s big news was that Apple might finally be making the Beatles music the company has purchased available to iPod users. Speculation was that there would even be a “Yellow Submarine” iPod which would come pre-loaded with Beatles tunes. This all sounds like a successful money-making plan, but I’d like to give Apple, absolutely free of charge, some marketing advice which they’re going to need if they go ahead. 

We’ve owned not one but two iPods for at least two years. One was a gift, the other we purchased. One member of the household has a Ph.D. in computer science and had a long successful career in the software industry. The other one once passed the California Bar exam (admittedly a few years ago) and also worked in a high-tech business. But it’s taken us all this time to get the durn devices loaded with a few “songs” (Apple-speak for music of all kinds) and “podcasts” (Apple-speak for, among other things, recorded radio programs). Why? There are a lot of reasons, being too busy high on the list, but number one is a common trial of modern life: small print. 

Small print? Yes. In order to get the gadgets working, there’s a point at which you have to register the serial number on the portable device (about as long as my index finger and as wide as my thumb) over the Internet via your desktop computer. We won’t ask what Apple does with this information, which is probably nothing good. But it turns out that the serial number is engraved, in mini-micro-print, on the shiny metal plate on the back, completely impossible to read with my naked eye and also long enough that it’s hard to remember if I could read it.  

Each of us over the two years has started the installation, gotten to the place where one must find and type the serial number, and given up because we absolutely could not see it, even with the aid of our excellent reading glasses. We don’t have unusually bad eyesight, just the usual middle-aged pattern of needing first off-the-shelf readers and ultimately more powerful ones from the optometrist. 

We finally achieved our goal over the weekend by using a very bright light and a powerful magnifying glass in addition to glasses—one person squinted at the number and read it aloud while the other typed it in. Such contortions should not be necessary. 

Here’s some news for the Apple marketeers: many, many Beatle fans are now over 40. This is not just the original generation which we’re a part of. It includes many of our children, who grew up singing “Yellow Submarine.” You know you’re getting on in years when even your kids need reading glasses, but it’s a reality. They’re just going to have to make those serial numbers much much bigger for all of us. 

The teeny-weeny print problem is not just Apple’s, to be fair, and it’s not just the deliberately deceptive small print in airline ads and on credit cart applications. I got some over-the-counter generic ear drops recommended by my doctor, and the only word I can read on the label, even with my glasses on, is WARNING. Since I can’t figure out what I’m being warned about, I haven’t used them yet.  

There’s a bigger marketing lesson here too, a demographic primer. When the baby boom generation was young, mass marketeers assumed that their biggest efforts should be directed at the 18-35 market segment. But the elephant is moving through the python, so to speak, and now the big bulge is soon to be over 60, if it’s not there already.  

People who were youthful fans of the super-loud have gone on to become jazz aficionados, even when they still like the Beatles. What a friend’s father used to call “tootsie shoes” are yielding shelf space to two-inch heels and walking shoes in many successful stores. The alternative papers of the ’60s and ’70s became entertainment weeklies in the ’80s and ’90s, subsisting on ads for night clubs and sex, and now the chains which swallowed them are losing money as the old boomers stay home and watch videos or go to exercise classes.  

Since this is the editorial page and not the business or lifestyle section, a few political morals should be drawn here as well. It’s apparent that many of our leaders, for better or worse, are getting older: just look at the Berkeley and Oakland mayors, though not of course San Francisco’s. Right now the brightest star in the Washington firmament is Grandma Nancy, who was born before the baby boom took hold. This phenomenon would argue against Barack Obama’s staying in the presidential race until the bitter end. It’s true that John Kennedy was even younger, but he was riding the crest of the boom, and he made a few youthful mistakes before his tragic end. Obama’s time will certainly come, but perhaps not yet. 

On the other hand many aging boomers still cherish the image of their youthful selves, which might draw them into the Obama camp, since he’s the youngest candidate. Many boomer liberals also believe that the signal accomplishment of their generation was the end of government-enforced segregation, if not of racism, which gives Obama traction as the sentimental favorite for those who would really like to see an African-American, even a non-traditional one, as president. 

Older boomer-generation Democrats who are pulling out of the pack include John Edwards, about 54, and Hillary Clinton, about 60. Each has pluses and minuses, but both are in the big demographic pool along with George W. Bush. Of the Republicans who have been discussed as candidates, Mitt Romney is about the same age as Hillary, Rudy Guiliani is four years older. It looks like John McCain might be out of the picture, but in any event he’s considerably older than the boomers at 71 or so.  

There’s still one Democrat who might be able to have it all. That’s Al Gore, who’s managed to capture the one issue which has gotten the attention of today’s young, global climate change, while still maintaining credibility with his own numerous generation. He continues to say that he’s not running, but if the others end up cancelling each other out, he might just make himself available.