Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea One: Airbrushed Identities

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

We start our sequence of Businesses Boomers Might Like with an idea suggested in our earlier story, Beauty and the Boomers.

We argued that there is a widespread negative perception of what the average Baby Boomer looks like, despite the facts that we are only in our 50s and 60s and are generally far healthier and more fit than previous generations were at this stage of life.

Much of this negative perception can be placed at the foot of Anti-Boomer rhetoric and propaganda, most coming from well-organized political cadres, with misguided economic agendas aimed at stifling the U.S.'s "Gray Population" of people aged 50 and older - even though (or perhaps, because) we now number more than 2 in 5 Americans, rising to close to 1 in 2 Americans within the next decade.

The only way to grapple with that part of the equation is politically and culturally, via the polls and our influence in the media.

But there's another, more easily tackled, reason that Boomers are perceived to be less attractive than we are - and doing that tackling could lead to the establishment of some very solid businesses which so far don't exist.

As we said in Beauty and the Boomers, we believe the vast majority of men and women in our generation look perfectly fine when you meet us and view us in person.

But we don't look particularly fine when our faces are translated digitally, whether on conventional television and film or via the newer and still-being-refined technologies like podcast players, still-photo phone cams, or communications services like Skype.

I will go a (perhaps important) step further and assert that a major reason - maybe The Major Reason - our "Gray Population" over age 50 seems to be utilizing these photo-centric technologies far less than younger people are has nothing whatsoever to do with our basic ability to use them and a lot to do with our fear that they will make us look yucky.

As we've said in previous articles, Boomers - and many of those older than Boomers - have been utilizing and been comfortable with computers and other digital technologies since such technologies were invented.

So if we are - all of a sudden - seemingly mass-reluctant to use smartphone still-cams, Internet podcasts, and telecommunications services with a central visual component as much as Plugged-in Youth are using them, it's likely there is something at work here other than "technology aversion," as some anti-Gray rhetoric would have one believe.

And that reason is: These technologies fail to translate Boomers' innate sexiness and gorgeousness into digital form.

You think we're being vain and ridiculous, Young'uns? Just you wait! Most of these technologies are not just "social," for one thing. They are widely used for business purposes, from remote conference calls to marketing to recruitment and hiring.

In fact, the business community - and media - and politicians - all have a very large stake in making sure that every new improvement in digital presentation and communications is utilized by the widest possible group of citizens, including the already 43 percent of us who are over age 50.

 
Yes, the Science is Almost Certainly There
 
The kinds of new services which we're proposing would offer customers the ability to enhance their basic attractiveness in video phone, video cam, and video player formats.

The user would submit either a still photo she/he already has on hand or have the ability to "scan" his/her face into the service.

If a scan were used, the customer would be able to "airbrush" it, the way digital magazine editors have done for years, until it is at the point of both attractiveness and recognizability with which the user is completely satisfied.

At that point the service(s), through whatever patented means they come up with, would store a facial "template," which could then be synchronized with expressions and speech patterns, so that it would become one's realistic and official "moving avatar" in podcasts and remote communications applications of all sorts.

I think the market for services like this would be beyond immense, provided they worked well, were easy to use, and were priced moderately.

I'd sign up in a heartbeat - as would pretty much every politician and political officeholder in sight; nearly every actor, author, and news personality; a large number of business people at all levels; anyone job hunting or offering jobs . . . . Well, who wouldn't sign up for something like this, if it worked right and were priced right?

The question then becomes, can it be done well? And with some concentrated R&D, we think it can.

A rudimentary search of the scientific literature shows that the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has held symposia on technologies very close to what we are proposing - so academic and government-based engineers have been working in this area.

Interestingly, the basis for this research seems to have begun with forensic studies. We all know about those age progressions police agencies do to help find missing children, figuring out what a child of 5 would look like at 15 or 25. Well, apparently, you can do the opposite and figure out what a current 75 year old would have looked like at 55 or 45.

Meanwhile, those other whiz-bang technologists connected with publishing and Hollywood have been doing serious R&D on digital aging and anti-aging for decades, in order to make their human subjects look more terrific on the page, the screen, or - more recently - the computer.

So can what we're proposing be done technically? We're very sure it can. And that it should be.


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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!




Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub