Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Two: Make Me Beautiful Again

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

Our next idea for a business Baby Boomers would undoubtedly like: a truly responsible and trusted interactive Internet site focused on beauty, health, and fitness fixes for people aged 50 and older.

And Yes, there are several existing sites which purport to do this. But we think they're not keeping their promises to our Gray Population for several reasons:

*** Many sites are linked in one way or another to pharmaceuticals and/or costly and sometimes risky medical procedures.

As we've said elsewhere, there are current assumptions among (23-year-old?) marketers that once a human being passes some invisible Maginot Line into Old People's Land, he/she is prey to every disease ever discovered - and some we think the marketers just made up.

 

They believe we Navel-gazing Oldsters spend our entire existences obsessing about these diseases and how many pills we can pop to cure them or prevent them or ward off evil spirits aligned to them or . . . . Well, what can one say, except that these pharma-friendly assumptions are wrong - and idiotic - and insulting - and maybe downright sadistic. And that most of us over age 50 are thoroughly sick and tired of being seen as sick and tired.

The site we propose - our working title is Make Me Beautiful Again - will have nothing whatsoever to do with pharmaceuticals nor with diseases per se. Its purview would, however, include beauty and fitness-related services, including those administered by some medical and dental professionals. Tooth-capping and implantation should be in our sights, for example, as should procedures dealing with baldness, unwanted hair removal, treatments for improving skin, and exercise and diet regimens.

 

*** Many existing sites excessively promote the products and services of small groups of advertisers.

Make Me Beautiful Again would maintain an honest, neutral, and totally unbiased stance towards specific companies, product lines, treatment regimens, and practitioners.

Indeed, at the core of our proposed site's activities would be empaneling a group of trusted and intelligent guinea pig reviewers - perhaps 3 men and 3 women over 50 (including me) - to try out various products, health and fitness regimens, practitioner services, and the like and report back on their efficacy or lack thereof.

Everything tested and tried would be aimed at people over 50, not at the general population, and reviewers would be chosen based on their past histories as respected journalists, researchers, and purveyors of useful information.

 

*** Many current sites are skewed towards Celebrities, rather than the 99 percent-plus of us who aren't Celebs.

The already Rich-and-Famous don't need a site like this. They can spend their gazillions - and undoubtedly are doing so - on products and treatments the rest of us can't afford. Nor would we possibly want to, since so many aging Celebs seem to have chosen the cookie-cutter plastic surgery approach to turning back the clock. Alas, the resultant Franken-Beauty they've achieved is more likely to stop clocks than rewind them, relying, or so it seems, on equal parts injected pharmaceuticals, extreme weight loss, and rubber cement.

Not for us! Our site would focus on products, procedures, and regimens that are inexpensive, available, and accessible to all, aimed at fostering non-toxic and natural incremental improvements in how we feel and how we look. If only a movie star or Wall Street mogul could afford a product or procedure, we'll pass.

 

*** Most beauty and fitness sites are dull and dry, with a sell-sell-sell mentality.

While we wouldn't wish to obsess on Hollywood and celebrities, we'd be willing to utilize stories including them - or anyone else or anything else - as a means of spicing up the site and gaining interest throughout the Internet.

For instance, we might run a story which asks over-50 actors or politicians or sports figures what they do when they need to lose a few pounds quickly for a movie role-television debate-tournament appearance. I'd be interested in reading that. Wouldn't you?

But the site would strive to maintain a good balance between catchy stories and those that are primarily informational. And we'd avoid the hard sell like the plague. For example, if one of our reviewers tried out a piece of new exercise equipment that worked fabulously for him, we'd make sure to balance his positive opinion with information on any possible negatives or drawbacks to the product.

 

*** The majority of health and beauty sites have failed to take advantage of current Internet technology.

We wouldn't! We'd make sure to include podcasts, audio, interactive features like quizzes and reader sound-offs, as well as references and links to other sites and reading material.

 

So how would we monetize all this wonderfulness?

Clearly, there are many possible ways to do it.

While we've been vehemently against heavy-handed forced advertising of all sorts, I can see the site being sponsored on a week-by-week basis by product or service providers whose equipment, beauty products, dietary supplements, or beauty-related procedures have been favorably tested and endorsed by our reviewer cadre.

We might well allow such reputable marketers a non-intrusive place on the site, perhaps allowing them to run advertorials periodically - preferably written by us for quality control and to make sure they don't go over the line in terms of heavy-handed enthusiasm.

Or we might permit selling bits of material we produce - stories, podcasts, quizzes, or anything else - to other sites, including E-zines and media consolidators.

In any case, I think Make Me Beautiful Again is a business concept to which many Boomers would respond in a very positive fashion. It's an idea for a media service which is needed and would be widely appreciated by the "Gray Population."
 
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Why this sequence of stories?

 

With over 2 in 5 Americans already aged 50 or over - a proportion that may escalate to close to 1 in 2 Americans within a decade or so, it is imperative that our Gray Population no longer be considered a peripheral or specialty market, but rather be acknowledged for what it truly is: a vitally important part of the United States economy.

To that end, we need to encourage all sorts of new businesses, new products, and new services that our Gray Population actually wants and needs, as decided by the Gray Population itself, not by marketers and technologists decades younger.

We need to encourage Boomer-and-older entrepreneurs; help them as actively as we're helping younger Founders; and fund them at least as aggressively, via traditional venture capital and other means, as we're funding other groups of new business owners.

We're offering this sequence of articles in the spirit of generational solidarity and generosity - and we hope other writers, thinkers, and activists will generate and share ideas of their own.


Let the Boomer Renaissance begin!