Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 487)
TUESDAY 8 MARCH 2005
8 MARCH 2005Mr Mervyn
Kohler, Mr Steven Sadler and Mr Robert Diamond
Q480 Baroness Hilton of Eggardon:
Just an aside on packaging, some packaging works well—fruit
juice cartons are opened easily whereas milk cartons seem to fall
to pieces when you pull back the plastic thing; nuts too, a lot
of nut packets open easily—I am not a peanut eater—so
there is a lot of variation. I would have thought that could be
a selling point, that some people could be promoting the ease
of opening their packaging perhaps, not just for the elderly but
more generally perhaps, it is an irritant for us all. My question
really is about the fact that promoting things for elderly people
does not have the appeal and glamour that it has when promoting
things for young people; do you think the Government should be
doing more, either to provide information or to encourage initiatives
and firms in this direction? Should there be more in the way of
Government initiatives on this front? There are financial implications
for Government of course.
Mr Kohler: I think we have simply got
to find some tool somewhere that actually breaks the log-jam which
we have been exploring over the last hour this morning, and we
have somehow got to make the older population a little bit more
aware of its own capacity to influence the marketplace as well.
Many of the products aimed specifically at older people tend to
have a kind of doom flavour about them, do they not, in the sense
that you are marketing this because you, the purchaser, have a
disability of some sort. We are all in denial about that, none
of us actually want to say we are now old or disabled, we need
help, and so on and so forth, so something has got to change.
Somewhere it would be useful to be thinking of some sort of quality
mark or something of that nature which could be attached to goods
or services, such as the crystal mark that the Plain English Campaign
have used—though I have not got a great deal of confidence
in that, but energy efficiency ratings and things like that. There
would then be some recognisable consumer message associated with
that particular product which shows we actually thought about
this in designing it for an older person.
Mr Diamond: If I could just build on
that, I have experience of working and living in the US and there
they have a consumer body known as the AARP or the American Association
of Retired Persons, which operates as a commercial and almost
quasi-political body in influencing manufacturers to listen to
and be responsive to the needs of an ageing population. My perception
is that they do a very good job and they have truly harnessed
people power in using the power of their members, of which they
have many in the US market. I sense in the UK we lack a single
consumer body—rather ironically, outside of the listenership
of Classic FM or the membership of Saga—we literally lack
a harmonised consumer body that can go to manufacturers or service
providers and put meaningful pressure on them. In terms of whether
the Government should do something, I have to say that my preference
would be for something which is more self-regulated within the
industry. Within the marketing and advertising industry it happens
to be the case that there are a number of effective bodies who
are involved in self-regulation of the industry and I think those
bodies could do a lot more than they do currently to educate,
inform and guide their members.
Mr Sadler: I am not a marketeer, but
if I could comment on a theme which seems to have a remarkable
effect in terms of our sort of product, and that is about, if
you like, humanising the story behind the product and the marketing.
We have had experience of lots of case studies—and I am
thinking particularly of the Scottish council we referred to earlier—where
they had older people who were allowed to live independently rather
than moving to residential or nursing home care. It was not that
they had a problem with nursing home care, of course, but a lot
of people wanted to live independently. There were a number of
case studies, but if I could mention one in particular, it was
a case study of an older couple, the chap was in the early stages
of a dementia condition and the lady had a mobility problem. Until
that point the standard social care solution was going to be to
separate that couple; they had effectively been joined at the
hip for many years, they had survived two world wars and heaven
knows how many grandchildren and offspring, they had this fantastically
rich history behind them, yet our solution was going to be to
separate them and move them. The point I am making is that the
outcome meant they were able to live at home for three or four
years longer together before they had to take another step. The
reason I am mentioning that story is because we use that as a
case study for designers, the same young designers that we have
been talking about, who can be vulnerable to not capturing these
needs. Some of the designers when we use this case study end up
with tears in their eyes, so the point I am making is that if
you can humanise those stories rather than a broader marketing
message and show the rich history behind the end user, you can
get quite a strong message across. If you can pick up those various
success stories, roll them out and publicise them that might be
one initiative we can take, but that one has such a powerful effect
it sticks in my mind vividly.
Q481 Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior:
Where is the United Kingdom in relation to other developed countries
in terms of its progress towards helping aged people in developing
products? Are there lacunae that we need to really identify and
do something about or alternatively are we leading in certain
areas that we should be very proud of? Where are we?
Mr Sadler: That is a good question. I
have the luxury of sampling quite a few different countries because
of the nature of our work, and you see a great deal of innovation
in certain countries such as Holland and Japan and, to some extent,
in the United States. My personal perception is in that in the
sort of technology we are dealing with in terms of telecare and
support in the home, the UK very much leads, which is fortunate
for the UK, but there are examples where we do not. I am thinking
there of telemedicine, monitoring of bodily vital signs and so
on where there is some very new technology, and we are working
to bring that into the UK and integrating the system rather than
developing home-grown solutions. It is fairly patchy and broadly
my perception is very much that we could benefit hugely from selective
telecare components.
Q482 Lord Broers: Can I come back
to the point about IT solutions, and then I would like to probe
what Mr Diamond said about the American Association of Retired
Persons because I link the two together. In terms of IT products,
in this country there is a reluctance, a sort of fear, as Lord
Soulsby was saying. In the States I would say it is otherwise,
the grandparents are the experts and Florida is filled with people
surfing the net—at least, that is my impression. Are there
things we can learn over there about this, or have I had a false
impression?
Mr Sadler: If you talk specifically about
IT and internet access I think that is absolutely right. Whether
that relates in some respects to distances in the United States
I do not know, but if I cite one example, the success of telemedicine
in the United States, it was very much driven by the physical
separation of the cared-for person and the carer, doctor or whoever,
so geography has an impact there. There has been the suggestion
that that has been the cause of some of the interest in the internet
because you have grandmother physically dislocated by some distance
from other family members and so on. I do not know if I have answered
your question, but I think that is one factor.
Q483 Chairman: I suppose one of the
differences there is that geography intervenes in this country
in that you are dealing with very small numbers, whereas in the
States a very large proportion of the population live in dispersed
situations.
Mr Sadler: It is a larger market than
the UK.
Mr Diamond: That affects both the development
and then also the selling and the marketing of a product, because
obviously you can amortise your costs over a much greater universe.
The only other comment I would make, having at the end of last
year gone to speak at a conference in Palm Beach, Florida, which
appears to be the spiritual home of the retired senior in America,
is just about being inclusive. I think there is a perception that
the American culture is more inclusive of an ageing population
and certainly there is great provision made, both in Palm Beach
but also in other areas as well, for elderly consumers in terms
of how they shop and where they shop and so on. Again, how much
of it is driven by the geographical size of the country or by
the volume of consumers that manufacturers can then afford to
invest in, I do not know, it needs further discussion.
Mr Kohler: Or indeed, as Lord Broers
was suggesting, the part played by the American Association of
Retired People who have succeeded in championing the older population
in the United States and putting a very positive face on the idea
of ageing in society. It is a matter of great regret and sadness
that Help the Aged has been unable to emulate that percentage
rate in the United States.
Q484 Baroness Emerton: This is a
question on fundraising, particularly aimed at Help the Aged.
Every charity is experiencing difficulty in fundraising, but I
wonder, is the climate in relation to the older population making
it more difficult in fundraising and are the public, in relation
to the expectancy of a longer life, inclined to be more generous
in their fundraising efforts or not?
Mr Kohler: No, I do not think they are.
It is a fairly widely shared axiom in the charitable world that
fundraising for children and animals is much easier than any other
causes, and I am sure that fundraising for older people is fairly
far down the track. We struggle, particularly, to get corporate
sponsorship and fundraising from industry and commerce; the association
for a company with an organisation representing older people is
not yet seen to be particularly exciting, with one singular exception,
which is British Gas, who recognised that their customer base
was largely the older population and were quite happy therefore
to build a link with Help the Aged, and there is a power company
which has got a similar link with Age Concern. In terms of public
appeal, I think older people do have a fairly low profile and
low pulling power in charitable terms. In disaster situations
such as on Boxing Day last year, one hears so much about the children
who have been abandoned and things like that, and the media is
not covering the older population who equally got involved in
that way.
Lord Turnberg: I just wanted to ask a question
relevant to what this Committee is about, which is the scientific
aspects of ageing, and we are interested particularly in ensuring
that good research is pursued into ageing, and also in ensuring
that the fruits of research are applied. We have been discussing
predominantly the application of what we know and how that can
get out to the population we are talking about, but it seems that
we need better drivers to ensure that the technological developments
that we were hearing from Lord Drayson are put in place, and we
need better drivers to ensure that those who can market these
to the relevant audience are able to do so. What advice would
you give us that we should put into our report that would help
all of that? It was not on the list of questions, but really if
we are to write a report we want to make a series of recommendations
that will have an impact. I personally quite like the idea of
following the American Association of Retired Persons as a lever,
but what about others?
Q485 Chairman: This is your moment.
Mr Sadler: It is interesting to look
at this because you can bring this full circle back to funding
issue that we talked about, in the sense that the Government is
already doing quite a bit. If you look, for example, at the issues
on independent living where pipeline funding is there, that is
a very good start to the process, but I think the issue that comes
up time and time again is whether there is the facility to make
sure we actually go ahead and deliver this? So where is the audit
mechanism to make sure that with the £80 million of extra
funding that has just been announced, at the end of the day we
are not just priming the pump but are able to pipe the water,
and I think you can cut that all the way across the elements we
have been discussing today. For example, the awareness of engineers
and training initiatives, you can take lots of one-off exercises
and you can prime that funding for that technology and take the
initiative of training, the point being that it is the continuity
of much of this that matters, so that for future generations the
training of engineers is on the agenda, to design for different
end users. In the same way the marketers, when they do their training,
need to understand the scope of the various market segments. I
see these things quite often as one-off initiatives rather than
as something that is embedded and learned. I think therefore that
the continuity element is vital. If we take a prime example, there
should be a recommendation on the audit process that follows up
on the granting of funding we talked about earlier.
Mr Kohler: I think there is room for
looking at the way in which we construct some of our education
and training packages for people who are involved in this area
of work. The point about the good news story that I will tell
the Committee about is the design age unit down at the Royal College
of Arts which has been running now for about 15 years or so, where
the students are encouraged—not encouraged, they are pretty
well compelled—to actually sit down with a group of older
people to talk about the product they are thinking of designing
so that they are able to get the feeling from the end user of
what to put into the designing and thinking process behind it
all. It must be possible to actually replicate models of good
practice like that in a wider way.
Q486 Chairman: Interestingly, in
the Royal College of Art it has been significantly supported by
charitable donation rather than by public funds or industrial
funds.
Mr Diamond: In a similar way we took
a project to Central St Martin's School of Art and Design, which
I think is one of the top art schools in the UK, and two years
ago we held a competition there and we sponsored a place for individuals
to reinterpret how marketing and advertising to an older consumer
might work, and we then commissioned an individual to develop
some specific campaigns. Just coming back to your question about
specific detail, I have a strong preference for education rather
than legislation and I think that certainly in the community that
I work in, within the marketing world, of which advertising is
a subset, there are a number of existing trade bodies who I think
could work more effectively to raise awareness of the facts, to
raise aware of existing initiatives and existing organisations.
One educational organisation that on a commercial basis I have
been desperate to build a relationship with is the University
of the Third Age, who I perceive from my parents and in-laws and
am informed by the UTA themselves are almost building elements
of what the AARP have successfully built in the US in terms of
skills transfer, membership and so on. I think that precious few
marketers—unless their parents are members—have ever
thought about the rather crude but commercial opportunity of partnering
with an organisation like the UTA, who themselves would need to
be a little more open to commercial conversations than they have
been in my experience. I think that is an opportunity where education
coming through existing training bodies could be very beneficial.
Q487 Lord Drayson: I would just like
to explore one aspect which we have not touched yet around entrepreneurship.
In the context of Government policy, obviously successive Governments
have put a lot of effort into encouraging young people to think
about being self-employed and starting their own companies and
so on. Do you think there is an argument to say that the Government
should put similar efforts into encouraging older people, who
perhaps have retired from a career in industry, to go into business
as an entrepreneur and targeting this particular market, given
that they will better understand their market, being of that age,
but also research shows that people over 50 who start companies
tend to be more successful than people under 50. I would be interested
in your views on that.
Mr Kohler: I think it is certainly very
true that the Government puts very little effort into the older
population in relation to the world of work altogether. The number
of re-training courses and things like that available to older
people is pitifully small, which is why we still have this pretty
large problem which the Government has been making much of over
the last couple of months of the number of elderly people on incapacity
benefit. They are unemployed, to all intents and purposes, not
necessarily incapable of work, but there are not the schemes and
the offers to encourage them back to the workforce. You are quite
right, the dimension in which they would be coming back to the
workforce would be as a self-employed individual, or setting up
one's own business, but the support mechanisms are just not there
from any publicly funded source of support.
Mr Diamond: It is a very interesting
topic, and as an entrepreneur putting together my board non-executives
at the moment, it is amazing how few people of my own generation
feature on it. I think that clearly the experience that might
have been gained in the work environment over a number of years
should be allowed to flourish in an entrepreneurial way and, while
I believe that entrepreneurialism really cannot be taught, it
is something that people can grow up with and experience. In many
ways it is about providing people with the opportunity to express
their inherent and latent entrepreneurial nature without feeling
that they are compromising whatever pension plans they have in
place or whatever benefits they may be receiving. I think it is
very, very powerful and while I am aware of Government initiatives
to encourage entrepreneurialism amongst younger people—aware
but not having experienced any of them—I think there is
a profoundly interesting opportunity to provide a platform. Again
I come back to the University of the Third Age, which I know only
a limited amount about, but that has a non-commercial goal which
almost performs against the entrepreneurial spirit, which is that
we all have different skills and by sharing our skills we all
have more boats and we all become more capable and talented. I
do not think it would be a large step to apply that to a more
commercial and entrepreneurial environment. It is very interesting.
Chairman: You should get them to read about
Voltaire who, at the age of 74, made a killing in the Swiss watch
market by spotting a gap in the market—an amazing story.
However, we ought to stop now; it has been a very interesting
session, very helpful, both your written comments and the discussion
we have had which has been an excellent discussion. If there occur
to you thoughts or answers to some of the questions that we have
thrown out willy-nilly, where you think I would like to have said
X or Y and I did not really think about Z, please do get in touch
with us by e-mail or through the Clerk and give us the benefit
of your thoughts, that would be much appreciated. In the meantime,
many thanks.
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