Stages Not Ages

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing those who serve midlife adults is the language used to engage them. Terms like “senior,” the “elderly,” even “older adult” carry negative connotations that usually suggest diminished or declining capacities. Terms like “retirement” are irrelevant in today’s world of extended, healthy and active life spans. Marketing leaders believe that active older adults are best reached by appealing to their core values, interests and lifestyle choices rather than by targeting their chronological age. Many midlife adults who are active, engaged, adventurous types respond best to experiences that promise them the same. Interestingly, there are plenty of 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings, not to mention 70-somethings, who are also outgoing individuals who will respond favorably to these kinds of expansive experiences and opportunities. Organizations like public libraries that effectively market themselves to midlife adults acknowledge this life stage as a time of exploring options, making new connections, learning new things, re-tooling skills for the next “adventure,” and sharing talents. By targeting midlife adults with promotional campaigns that speak to a life stage and not an age, organizations will also attract people of all ages who share similar interests and lifestyles.

Recent Marketing Efforts from California Libraries

Through a partnership with Skyline College, the Daly City Public Library offered two 9-week Wi$eUp programs which focused on financial literacy issues facing Boomers. Collections were also expanded at all four branches with the addition of relevant reading materials of interest to Boomers.

Boomers, who work in Palo Alto but live elsewhere and therefore do not often use the Palo Alto City Library, were offered 5 lunch-time Feed Your Head programs that featured experts on brain fitness and healthy aging from Stanford University Medical Center. A blog was also started and podcasts of the brain fitness programs were created so individuals unable to attend in-person could still benefit from the information provided.

The Santa Monica Public Library designed and delivered a program series called The Living Room Project which showcased 28 different educational and cultural programs for older adults that resulted in a total combined attendance of 1592 people. Programs included: Intro to Yoga, Intro to Salsa, Armchair African Safari, a classical piano concert, a lecture on Alzheimer's, and a folk music concert. They filmed 3 of the 28 programs as webcasts and posted these to the library’s website to extend audience outreach.

Marketing Your Own Efforts

Once you’ve started positioning your own library as a hub for midlife adults and productive aging, it will be important to tell your community about those efforts. To help get the word out, the ‘press kit’ resources that follow can provide the foundational information needed to spotlight your library and this project. In addition to traditional media approaches, don’t forget the power of the Internet. The key to Internet success is ubiquity: making your project known across a multitude of web sites and discussion forums. Your library’s own web site is the hub but the various social networking tools suggested below can help create spokes that highlight your TLA50 project while also driving people back to the larger context of your library’s web site.

• Press Release Template: Add your own program information to the press release template (doc) and then send it to local newspapers, bulletins, etc.
• News Article: Write an article, using the press release template, and be sure to add information about the specifics of your own TLA50 project. Publish in your own newsletter or distribute to other media sources.
• Social Media Post: Send a blast to your constituencies about your various TLA50 activities on an of the following channels: Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube