databasics; Fountain of Youth - AARP marketing

American Demographics, Sept, 2000

AARP woos reluctant Boomers with a high-priced makeover.

When Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC in 1991, the move didn't actually reduce the number of calories from fat in a bucket of the Colonel's drumsticks and thighs, but consumers were no longer confronted with the "F-word" on the chain's storefronts and napkins. Taking a page from the same playbook, when the American Association of Retired Persons began to revamp its image in 1998, it decided to officially rename itself AARP, getting rid of that "R-word," which research showed was increasingly irrelevant to its current and potential membership.

The name change was just the beginning of a major shift at the powerful 42-year-old organization. This month, AARP will begin a five-year re-branding program, involving its first ever, large-scale advertising campaign, a retooling of its direct mail appeals, a makeover of Modern Maturity (the free magazine sent to all members), and the launch of a new publication in early 2001. The ambitious makeover is part of a larger effort to attract its next generation of members: The 78 million Baby Boomers who will decide whether or not AARP remains the pre-eminent voice of older Americans.

Supporting this crucial undertaking is an intense research and data mining effort, which AARP began in 1997. Since then, the organization has spent in excess of $500,000 on proprietary research (including 33 focus groups, six electronic dial testing sessions, two nationwide surveys, a minority-group survey, and an internal survey of AARP employees and volunteers) seeking ways to make itself more valuable to a new generation. "Boomers right now think of AARP as more for their parents, but we think we can change this," says Bill Novelli, the organization's associate executive director for public affairs.

Change comes at a steep price. AARP plans to spend $100 million over the next five years on advertising alone. The campaign - created by ad agency Greer, Margolis, Mitchell, Burns & Associates - will be rolled out in phases. Beginning in September, image-oriented ads are scheduled to target opinion leaders through media outlets such as Time, BusinessWeek, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, AOL, and CNN.com. In addition, minority prospects will be targeted via publications such as Ebony and Hispanic. The creative in the ads will disproportionately portray younger subjects, within, or close to, the Boomer age group, in order to explode stereotypes of the AARP member, according to David Mitchell, a partner at Greer, Margolis. Eventually, as the campaign progresses towards 2005, ads will morph into harder recruitment pitches with greater emphasis on the specific products and services that AARP offers.

The amount of time and money spent on research for this re-branding campaign reflects the critical juncture at which AARP now finds itself. The first wave of Boomers turned 50 and became eligible for AARP membership in 1996. Now, more than 10,000 Boomers hit the big five-o every day - each receiving the association's "dear friend" mailing to varying degrees of horror or delight. About 32 percent of eligible Boomers have accepted this invitation, compared with 42 percent of the 55 to 59 age group, and 46 percent of all persons over 50. While people have always joined at higher rates as they get older, AARP needs to make a special effort to reach this generation of Boomers, who coined the phrase "don't trust anyone over 30," and who have traditionally resisted the effects and trappings of aging every step of the way.

The association began its concerted effort to capture Boomers with a research project in 1998. The goal of the study: To find out whether AARP could actually incorporate the Boomer segment into the organization with any success, or whether an entirely new organization, separate from AARP, was necessary to lure this cohort into a seniors group. "We started very general exploratory research in 1997 to find out what Boomers' life aspirations were, what challenges they expected to face as they aged, and what they knew of AARP," says Linda Fisher, associate research director of the organization. "Then we moved onto the defining study of the campaign in `98, which really set the course of our overall strategy."

In order to find out what Boomers thought of AARP, and whether there was a way to persuade them the group was relevant to their lives, Fisher and her colleagues held electronic dial testing sessions in Atlanta, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon. Each session consisted of 100 participants, half aged 45 to 59, half aged 60 and over. Respondents were presented with various visual depictions of actual and possible AARP activities, products, and services, and registered their positive or negative responses with an electronic dial. Following these sessions, focus groups were assembled to glean further insight from the dial session data. Finally, a 1,400-person national survey was completed by Wirthlin Worldwide to inject the larger picture into this detailed data.