Continuum Crew – Engaging Consumers > 40 has moved into new offices on Maiden Lane in San Francisco. Maiden Lane has been the launchpad for a number of successful agencies.

The new agency, founded by Lori Bitter, former President of JWT BOOM, is the only completely integrated agency focused on consumers 40+. She is joined by three partners, also from JWT BOOM: Patrick Mercier, EVP Interactive; Amy Ruff, EVP Client Services; and James Wood, EVP Operations; plus an experienced staff of mature-market professionals.

“Maiden Lane is a fantastic location for our crew – it is a stimulating environment without an ounce of corporate underpinning,” laughed Bitter. “You have the beauty of the boutiques like Hermes, Chanel and Marc Jacobs, plus the people-watching at the cafes and bistros. It is as though someone dropped a little European street into heart of San Francisco’s Union Square. When we were moving in, there was a classical opera singer performing at the Gates in the Lane.”

Find Continuum Crew at 111 Maiden Lane, Suite 540, in San Francisco, or online at www.continuumcrew.com.

Continuum Crew – Engaging Consumers > 40 has received the Gold Award for Best Web Site for a 50+ Housing Community for a site developed for Trilogy by Shea Homes, an active-adult developer based in Arizona.

The Gold Award was announced at the Best of 50+ Housing Awards Gala at the National Association of House Builders’ national 50+ Housing Symposium in Philadelphia, PA. The site, www.trilogylife.com, bested entries by national developers Del Webb and Brookfield Homes.

The site was produced under the direction of Patrick Mercier, EVP Interactive, of Continuum Crew and former Senior Producer of JWT BOOM. The trilogylife.com site has also been awarded an Addy and Outstanding Achievement for Web Site Development by the Web Marketing Association.

Continuum Crew – Engaging Consumer > 40 is the nation’s only fully integrated communication firm focused on the mature consumer. The Crew has more than 15 years’ experience specializing in new ways to capture the imagination of older consumers, earn their trust and influence their purchases. They are located on Maiden Lane in San Francisco.

Continuum Crew – Engaging Consumers > 40 launched a new web site and blog, www.continuumcrew.com and www.boomersinthewild.com. Continuum Crew is the nation’s only fully integrated communication firm focused on the mature consumer. The Crew has more than 15 years’ experience specializing in new ways to capture the imagination of older consumers, earn their trust and influence their purchases.

The Crew’s expanded services include The Boomer Lab and The Senior Lab, where consumer listening, research, web site analysis and usability, and trend sighting are undertaken for a wide range of industries, including senior and active-adult real estate; technology products; health care and medical devices; and packaged goods. Other new services include Boomer and Senior immersions, product development, consulting, and speaking, in addition to the agency’s full range of off- and online creative and engagement services.

The team recently received the Gold Award for Best Web Site for 50+ Community for a site developed for Trilogy by Shea Homes, an active adult developer based in Arizona. They are located on Maiden Lane in San Francisco.

Continuum Crew – Engaging Consumers > 40 has announced that Shelby Jones has joined the firm as a Media Buyer, managing both online and offline campaigns. Jones is the former Assistant Media Buyer for JWT BOOM in San Francisco, and the Media Intern for JWT’s Technology group, also in San Francisco.

Jones has a Bachelor of Science degree from San Jose State University, majoring in advertising and speech communications. She was the President of the Spartan Ad Club, a Dean’s Scholar, and served as the Advertising Director of the Spartan Daily.

Continuum Crew – Engaging Consumer > 40 is the nation’s only fully integrated communication firm focused on the mature consumer. The Crew has more than 15 years’ experience specializing in new ways to capture the imagination of older consumers, earn their trust and influence their purchases. They are located on Maiden Lane in San Francisco.

Starting a company when the rest of the business world is shrinking or budgeting very conservatively seems counterintuitive. But then Baby Boomers have been driving the small-business start-ups during this recession. Lori Bitter, CEO of Continuum Crew, and an expert on Boomers and what drives them, decided to do just that.

Bitter, the former President of JWT BOOM, founded Continuum Crew, the only completely integrated agency focused on consumers 40+. Following a surprise closure announced in January, Bitter set about creating the agency of the future to communicate with the nation’s oldest consumers. Three partners, also from JWT BOOM, join her: Patrick Mercier; Amy Ruff; and James Wood; and an experienced staff of mature-market professionals.

“The structure of this agency is very different from the firms we’ve all been part of before; it is driven by changes in media, consumption, the role of the consumer, and the need to both listen in new ways and to communicate in very different ways,” said Bitter. “We continue to provide a full range of traditional agency services to our clients – who include many firms who chose to follow us to Continuum – but we have the best set of online communications tools created for consumers over 40. And it isn’t just about the tools. We have the research, experience and insights to create relevant engagement strategies and communications.”

Patrick Mercier, who leads the Interactive team, is the former Senior Producer for JWT BOOM, garnering numerous awards for web sites and online campaigns. He has worked for Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Grey SF and Real Branding.

Amy Ruff is charged with Client Services and is the former Client Director for JWT BOOM. She and Bitter also worked together at Age Wave Impact, a mature-market focused agency in Emeryville, CA, owned by Boomer guru Ken Dychtwald.

James Wood joined the JWT BOOM team as Creative Services Director after a stint as Group Production Manager for Leo Burnett’s studio in Chicago. He is responsible for Continuum Crew’s Operations and day-to-day management.

Continuum Crew works with a national roster of clients in retirement community and active-adult real estate, retiree associations, packaged goods, software, health care, medical devices and death care.

On July 8, Media Bistro reported stats from iStategyLabs for Facebook.

The report says that there have been rumors that “younger users are being alienated by their parents joining the service. And this data seems to prove it.”

All jokes aside, my grad school stats text “How To Lie and Cheat with Statistics” seems apropos here. At the very least, this is opinion-bending—at its worst, it is faulty analysis and logic.

Media Bistro chose to headline this article, “Next for Facebook: Early Bird Specials?” While my initial response is some sort of primal scream, this really is “everything old is new again.”

Apparently Facebook’s key advertising demographic is age 18-24. That demo is now outpaced by 25-34 (60.8% growth) year olds and 35-54 (190.2% growth) year olds, and then there is the dreaded 513.7% growth in the 55+ demo.

“That puts a damper on Facebook’s 70.8% overall growth, which looks good on its face but doesn’t bode well for advertising.” (The site also experienced 142.4% growth in Atlanta, but we aren’t blaming the South for its demise!) [Read more →]

The past 15 years have been an uncharted journey. I started learning about the demography of our country and particularly the mature population as I was launching the original Medicare HMO programs.

My grandparents raised me, so speaking to seniors in a relevant, respectful manner was second nature. All the while we were talking to clients about the wave of Boomers who would be moving through the Medicare system. Little did I know I would be working for Ken Dychtwald’s team at Age Wave Impact – the author of the books that informed our client strategies.

Age Wave Impact, and now JWT BOOM, are history. The team at Continuum Crew steadfastly believes in the power of research-informed strategy for engaging mature consumers across all available media. No one does this better than experienced mature market experts.

While seniors and even Ikes, or the Silent Generation, seemed “knowable” for many marketing professionals, the Baby Boomer generation has presented a far greater challenge. Without ongoing research, a thorough understanding of generational influences, life stages, cultural anthropology and developmental psychology, we are a 20 year cohort of endless contradictions. Even knowledge and expertise cannot always explain the hairpin turns taken by the different segments of this population on their way through the aging process.

So when our clients ask, “What are Boomers like?” we stifle a smile. They are both like and unlike generations aging before and after them. [Read more →]

Continuum Crew has had several months of celebration – new clients, client successes with new campaigns, and of course, completion of our wonderful office on Maiden Lane in San Francisco. But today we are very excited about the launch of our new website, www.continuumcrew.com and blog, “Boomers in the Wild.”

Boomers in the Wild is an important part of the expanded services provided by Continuum Crew, which includes consulting, product development, and trend spotting in the boomer and senior space, in addition to the full complement of agency services provided by this team at JWT BOOM. We continue to offer a complete suite of research services, and now have expanded that to listening, observing and monitoring trends in the mature consumer market and reporting those to our clients and followers.

Watch for a new trend report from The Boomer Lab on the top trends for 2010. The Boomer Lab and The Senior Lab at Continuum Crew are also currently focused on 40+ consumer user studies in online media, and our proprietary approach to helping clients analyze their sites to maximize the results of their campaigns.

Join us in a virtual celebratory toast!

Just read this great article about Baby Boomers and retirement from the Examiner. It has some eye-opening data and information as Baby Boomers continue to gray:

As Baby Boomers age and become grandparents themselves, Grandparents Day is taking on a whole new symbolic meaning of how we age, how we parent and, ultimately, how we grandparent.

According to data from Grandparents.com, 54 percent of today’s grandparents are Baby Boomers. Almost 38 million grandparents are younger than 65 years old. To keep this in perspective, remember there are about 78 million Baby Boomers.

That’s a lot of grandparents and prospective grandmommies and daddies out there. To read the rest of the article, go to Examiner.com…