DON'T SKATE TO WHERE THE PUCK IS.
by Bob Ramsay
A quarter of a century back, my wife Jean and I formed a mid-life women’s running group to run the Marine Corps Marathon. Over its 7 years, JeansMarines took hundreds of women off the couch in February and trained them to cross the finish line in October at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington DC, into the arms of a waiting US Marine.
JeansMarines needed financial sponsors to be viable, so we approached Nike, Adidas, New Balance and other usual suspects. They all turned us down. Wouldn’t even meet with us. This made no sense. These were professional women. They had Gold Cards. They spent without limit on their running gear.
Nope. Not interested. Then a friend who used to work for Nike told me why: JeansMarines were too old. At age 40 to 60, we were ‘off-brand.’ Nike’s brand was 20-to-40 year olds. “But the people who actually buy Nikes are 40 to 60,” I countered. “Doesn’t matter,” said my friend. “20 to 40 year olds are who they want to buy their shoes.”
This was my first lesson in aspirational marketing. Why are most models thin? Why are beer drinkers always partying in beer commercials? Airline passengers smiling? Diabetics golfing? Because we want to be that too, no matter how reality proves we aren’t and will never be.
Flash forward to today. Jean and I love classical music. We especially love Tafelmusik and the Toronto Symphony. Their halls are filled with people like us. Old people with white hair. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of us. Orchestras and opera companies and dance and live theatres all face the old people problem: their biggest customers aren’t their brand.
Certainly, Tafelmusik and the TSO have created all kinds of ways to bring more young music-lovers to their concerts.
I get it that, like JeansMarines and Nike, we are the people who actually buy their product, yet they’ll run a million miles from marketing to us. In the almanac of life’s insults, this is pretty small.
But a new and much more worrisome challenge is rising up for OPGCs (Old People with Gold Cards.) It’s changing our lives as fast as AI, mainly because it is AI.
The idea is a subset of differential pricing, where a seller offers the same product or service at different prices to different customers. It’s been around for years. So if you’re a platinum card holder, live in a toney neighbourhood and own a flash car, you may pay more for that lawn mower at Canadian Tire than I do.
But what’s new and deeply insidious in the next chapter of differential pricing is AI pricing.
Delta Airlines is the pioneer of using AI to factor in all kinds of personal information about you, including what you’ll pay for a ticket up to your pain point. This has nothing to do with competition or supply and demand, but with things like…surprise, surprise, your age.
Indeed, AI pricing is just one more river you need to ford in order to ensure you aren’t paying more than the person seated beside you on your flight. You can’t fight this passively; you need to take active measures to protect yourself.
As one consumer protection article offers: “Privacy experts suggest clearing cookies, using incognito mode, or switching devices during flight searches. Booking directly with the airline may be beneficial, as third-party sites often collect more user data. Be cautious with loyalty programs that track spending habits, they could feed the very algorithms that lead to higher fares. When comparison shopping, refresh your session between searches or change devices to test for price shifts.”
If this all sounds too complex, it’s designed that way. You have to be both avid and adept on a computer to get beyond Stage One of fighting back, which many old people aren’t.
One piece of good news is the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is actively investigating how companies use AI to adjust prices for customers based on personal data, expressly including age. Experts cited by the FTC investigation admit that “prices might be getting personalized along dimensions that aren’t acceptable.”
In Canada, the Competition Bureau in June issued a discussion paper on algorithmic pricing which it defines as, “the process of using automated algorithms to set or recommend prices for products or services, often in real time, based on a set of data inputs.” This is why the price of a hotel room or a concert ticket can change while you’re booking it.
Among the many obvious dangers to consumers is the fact that we don’t know what drives the algorithm the ticket seller is using to sell to us.
Gone are those innocent days when you would know you’re being discriminated against because of your age and the whiteness of your hair.
Meanwhile…
1. People we can learn from. Even Leonardo da Vinci had a to-do list. And note how many of the entries are about getting an expert to teach him something. Plus Jonathan Haidt on the complete reworking of childhood. And Erica Komisar on sensitivity to stress.And George Clooney and Tilda Swinton on how to fight.
2. You’re the average of your five closest friends. Scott Galloway is a brilliant professor and observer of what counts in life today. Having close friends is one of them. He writes: “According to Pew Research, 61% of U.S. adults say having close friends is extremely or very important for a fulfilling life. The shares of people who say the same about marriage (23%), children (26%), and making a lot of money (25%), pale in comparison.” Here he is on the recent decline and fall of friendships between men. “Nearly 1 in 7 men today doesn’t have a single person he can call to shoot hoops, grab a drink, or catch a movie.”
3. Conspiracy theories. Why did National Geographic disappear its own documentary.? Why can’t Ivy League graduates stop hiring Ivy League graduates? Why dowe start reading too late for our own good? And why the rich are really different from you and me. And where did that $40 million in gold end up from the Pearson Airport robberyin 2023?
4. What happens when your ex makes off with your child? Every parent’s second-worst nightmare is happening to a Toronto woman, Heather McArthur, whose husband Loc Phu Le abducted their son and fled back to his native Vietnam. This happened a year and a half ago. On May 7, Toronto Police said he was “wanted in a parental abduction investigation” and asked for the public’s help in locating him. Ottawa seems unable to do anything to help. Here’s the story so far.
5. Life’s not all bad. Spend five minutes with the hermit thrush. Or this package deal ofkittens. Or this great Austrian restaurant ad for ketchup and fries. Or these teens (and baby.)
On a different front, The Slaight Foundation this week announced $13 million in donations to Canadian charities filling gaps left by USAID cuts. And the Weston family committed to buying the Hudson’s Bay charter for $12.5 million and donating it to the Canadian Museum of History.
6. The real problem? “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” Edward O. Wilson said that and Jonathan Haidt (him again) reveals how that’s changing our children’s brains.
7. Authority figures. This woman was stopped by the police. And these passengers still aren’t through security. And your therapist may be out of work soon. And Trump’s relationship with sex offenders is…complex.
8. New York Plays Ottawa. Canada wins. For the first time, the storied Explorers’ Club of New York is partnering with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society to host the Global Exploration Summit in Ottawa, September 12-14. Speakers include Louise Leakey,Roberta Bondar, Adam Shoalts, Mensun Bound, Gunjan Menon, Brian Cox and more. Details here.
9. There is no greater remedy for helplessness than helping someone else.Here is Ellen Bass’s Ode to the Courage of Tenderness, which can drop-kick any of us out of a funk.
10. “I just want to talk to a human being!” Well, now you can, at no cost, with GetMeHuman. That lets you skirt the tyranny of e-mail contact forms, talking with a BOT, or waiting on the line for hours.
Meanwhile, while you’re waiting, entertain yourself with some great AI dancing, Petula Clark’s Downtown, expedition dining, and the 100 Best Podcasts of All Time.
11. What I’m liking. Two books, distantly related. First, a memoir by Sleep Country Canada co-founder Gord Lownds on his fearful cocaine addiction. Cracking Up is not the usual ‘recovery memoir.’ Because Lownds was an entrepreneur, he controlled two things other senior execs rarely do: his calendar and the cash. It’s a searing story with a happy ending.
The second book is therapist Susan Raphael’s how-to guide “What’s Wrong With My Teen? Finding Answers to Teenage Addiction and Family Crisis.” As she notes: “You feel isolated. Overwhelmed. Afraid. The good news is: “You are not losing your mind. You are not alone. There is hope.”
You’ll get the next Omnium-Gatherum blog on Saturday, August 30, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. I’m putting down my pen for the next two weeks on vacation.