Chloe Popescu
Welcome back everybody I'm Chloe Popescu and an agent from UTA and I will be one of your MCs on this week's C Space Storyteller stage. A very cool Public Service Announcement before we get into the next session, CES has made it really easy for you to navigate between see space and the Las Vegas Convention Center this year. There's a dedicated C Space shuttle that you can catch to go in between all the venues and this is the fastest way to get from C Space to the rest of CES as quickly as possible. We will now get back into content. And back into our next session which explores the notion of global aging, lending itself to the greatest business opportunity of our lifetime. Marty Swant or reporter with Forbes will lead a discussion with JoAnn Jenkins, CEO of AARP and Natalie Schneider, VP of Digital Health at Samsung. Please join me in welcoming Marty, JoAnn, and Natalie to the stage.
JoAnn Jenkins
Good afternoon everyone. Our world is changing constantly and at an increasingly rapid pace as leaders in the technology industry, you are the major drivers of our population and that change, but there's another driver of that change. We want you to consider today. the aging of the population. This year people age 60 and older will outnumber children age five and under for the first time in history, demographers predict that in countries that are aging well, more than half of the children born today will live to be 100 years old. And some researchers believe that the first person ever to live to be 150 is already alive today. Today in Japan it's the only country in the world where those age 60 and over comprise 30% or more of the population. But by 2050, 62 other countries including China will reach that same milestone. While much of the conversation around global aging focuses on the challenges that societies face in dealing with it. We believe there is a much bigger story to be told a story that intertwines with innovation, with technology and with opportunity. In fact, we believe that global aging is the greatest opportunity.
JoAnn Jenkins
It has the power to transform markets and spark new ideas across every sector of our economy. We're here at CES because we believe that a growing older population is a key driver of economic growth, innovation, and new value creation. At AARP, we're disrupting aging. We're challenging the conversation about growing older by challenging outdated attitudes and stereotypes and sparking new solutions so that more people can choose how they live as they age. And we do this by being everyday innovators in aging. As part of our social mission. We collaborate with tech companies, startups, and established companies to spark innovation that spans generations and empowers people to choose how they live as they age. Our message To them, and to you, Americans, ages 50 and over represent an $8.3 trillion in economic activity. So you ignore the 50 plus market at your own peril. People 50 and older have an enormous positive impact on the economy and on the social ties that binds our countries together. As the number of people 50 grows, the age cohort is transforming markets and sparking new ideas, products and services across every sector of the economy. And as people extend their work lives, they're fueling economic growth past the traditional retirement age. They earn wages, spend more money, generate tax revenue, give back to social causes and create demand for products and services that stimulates job growth among all generations. And at the same time, they're challenging those outdated myths and stereo Types about how aging affects the economy. According to a your piece just released longevity economic outlook, people 15 over contribute 8.3 trillion to the US economy and create an additional $745 billion in value through unpaid activities such as volunteering family caregiving, resulting in an overall contribution on an annual basis of an over $9 trillion in 2018. alone. The economic activity of people 50 plus supports that 88.6 million jobs in the US generates 5.7 trillion in wages and salaries and accounts for 2.1 trillion in federal, state and local taxes. And while people 50 and older, comprise 35% of the population, the account for more than 40% of the GDP in 2018. And they supported 44% of jobs may And trade and transportation and health services feels if they were a country, they would be the third largest economy in the world behind the US and China. So it's not surprising then that as we look ahead to 2013, when the first millennials will near the age of 50, the numbers will increase even more dramatically, and 2018 people 50 and older represented 56 cents of every dollar spent was by someone age of the age of 50. But by 2050, that number will increase to 61 cents of every dollar will be spent by someone over over the age of 50. And by 2050 Gen Z will begin turning 50 and the annual economic contributions of people 50 and older will grow from that 8.3 trillion in 2018 to 28.2 trillion by 2015. And there is another major contribution of older people make Through unpaid activities such as caregiving for aging parents raising or helping to support grandchildren and in volunteering, and they're seeking technology solutions to help them carry out those responsibilities. In 2018 people 50 and older spent 140 billion dollars on technology. Tech demand amongst this age group is expected to surge in the coming decades reaching nearly 640 $5 billion by 2030. business leaders and entrepreneurs need to develop and build strategies and marketing products and services to older Americans and to recognize the value of multi generational workforce. At AARP, we have a long history of working with established businesses and startups to develop new products and services to help them do just that. In 2016, we created a RP innovation labs to engage with startups to bring the best solutions to the marketplace. to scale for the benefit of all Americans, regardless of their age, we've encouraged are all entrepreneurs to keep the power of the 50 plus market in mind when they're designing all of their products. We offer in kind services to a select group of startups as we assess their potential for transformational social impact through market innovation. And we've chose a small number of startups to work with us in a more long term way to drive impact for people 50 Plus, through our a RP hatchery ventures, which uses AARP resources and expertise to bring the best of these ideas to scale. So I invite you all to learn more about these products and partnerships by visiting the AARP booth here at CES. The longevity economy outlook shows older Americans have growing economic strength and a commitment to caregiving and volunteering that benefits everyone. consumer technology and innovation can improve healthy and wellness for aging. Adults and empowering people to choose how they live as they age. And we urge all of the businesses and entrepreneurs to recognize the growing economic power and the potential of 50 plus market and to become the drivers of innovative solutions that help all of us live better lives as we age every day. Thank you.
Marty Swant
Yep. No, thanks for the intro. And thanks to everyone for being here. And I'm really excited about this talk. Because as you're talking, I'm like, wow, I'm only 18 years away from being 50. And my parents already at that age and as as I mentioned, backstage that they're members of AARP. And so it's, it's interesting thinking about technology from this multi generational perspective. And so I wanted to start off and I know you gave a great business case for why people of you know, older generations are profound for business. But when you're thinking about CES and the future of business and the future of technology, like what are some of the things that you are most excited about? And why is technology such a ripe area for business?
JoAnn Jenkins
Well, I think the thing that we're most excited about is to see the energy and some of the existing businesses but new startups who are helping to drive innovation in the household. So many of our 38 million members tell us that they want to continue to live in their own homes that they want to age in place. And so having technology solutions that allow people regardless of their age to continue to live in their own home, is is so exciting, particularly around medication management, about fall prevention, about the use of technology in some of the smart homes. I think, is it an exciting time for to be over the age of 50 and I think it's an exciting marketplace opportunity for businesses, and so many of the solutions we see are coming from millennials who are trying to address issues that they see that their parents or grandparents are having. But it's also I think, you know, I often say what's good for the old is also good for the young. And so we see a lot of the solutions that are just as helpful for a mom and dad with young kids who are trying to make sure that they can visually visually see what's happening in the room where that particular person is, as it is for some older person to be able to do that. And so I think that you know, if we can get across that message that you are really designing ageless solutions that help people across multiple generations.
Marty Swant
Yeah, that's interesting, cuz like thinking about everyone thinks that, you know, younger generations are the first to adopt off and whether it's smartphones or social media and stuff like that, but seems like in some ways, especially let's say like with hearing tech and voice tech, some of the older generations are among the quickest and most eager to adopt these things. I know parents have said Well, Google assistance in their house and they love their fit bits and stuff like that. But talk about love to hear from you, Natalie as well, when you're thinking about the demographics that you're working with the Samsung and health, how do you think through what these different generations need?
Natalie Schneider
Yeah. So I think there's a lot of misconceptions that are just, you know, quite frankly, not serving us well right now. And a lot of the tech that's been designed for seniors and advertised is embarassing because seniors don't want geriatric tech, you know, that screams I'm old. They want inclusive tech. And what inclusive tech means is it it makes accommodations for inevitable declines in hearing and vision etc. But I think that the areas that you know, show the most promise are those that provide services to enable seniors to age in place as JoAnn mentioned, that's a huge trend and the research shows that nine out of 10 Medicare members would prefer to stay in the home so we moving from a situation whereby used to move straight from your home, kind of two nursing home but now you're moving from home to services to senior to assisted living and finally to nursing home. So companies like Papa that, that connect college students to seniors to help them set up tick that that's one area another is caregivers and accommodating the 45 million caregivers in the US that have a responsibility for caring for for a parent or senior. The third area which is some of the area I'm most involved in is health and wellness, medication adherence. You know Detecting and managing chronic conditions and lastly, rehabilitation in the home. And so I think those are the areas and enjoy and also mentioned safety and security. So whether that's full detection or even technologies that allow for facial recognition to tell who's who's visiting, those are all areas that I think offer very rich opportunities.
Marty Swant
And I know Excuse me, I know the atmosphere here on the you know, the stage is focused on marketing. It's, it was interesting looking at the winners of you know, a lot of the Cannes Lions innovation awards this year, a lot of those speaking to the point of inclusivity a lot of the awards that won this year were, you know, in some way shape or form using inclusive tech, you've got you know, Xbox, it has its controller for it for people that maybe have physical disabilities and, and back to hearing I know there's some stuff there, but when you're thinking about marketing and the role that it shows for innovation, How do you think about including that within marketing? Like how early do you think about marketing and product design when it comes to this multi generational approach?
JoAnn Jenkins
Well, I'll start, I think one of the things that we try to do in our a European innovation labs is, is to bring the customer in at the beginning to talk about the solutions we're trying to create. And certainly we have our marketing folks, they are with us as we're thinking about how do we convey or communicate this particular product or solution to the customers that we're trying to serve? And more than likely, they're multi generational. It's not just and if we could sort of get out of that. We're designing this for a 50 year old 60 year old, more to we're designing products for people at different life stages. And so what would happen if we were to get builders to start building homes from the beginning that allowed people to stay in their homes throughout the course of their lifetime? Right? than developing it. And then and then creating a time period in which you're, you're having to make a decision of whether I can retrofit my existing home or move to another place to be able to do that. But I think we've seen in that marketing space and and earlier last year, we launched a project with Getty Images to really put together a collection of photographs and images that conveyed aging in a very different way. differently than then my parents or my grandparents age, and 50, and 60. And 70 looks totally different than it did just 15 or 20 years ago. And so that has been a huge part of how do we change that perception? How do we disrupt aging and get people out of that mindset that once you hit a certain age, that everything is wrong? And I think you know, you have examples here at CES of product creators and people who are working here that are over the age of 50, and many aspects still living their best lives. And I think we have to get marketers, and branding people to start thinking about life segments and life stages rather than a numerical number.
Marty Swant
Yeah, makes sense. Even thinking as a millennial, it's I'm 32 now. It's it's such a broad swath of like, it's just like a generalization. And like, a millennial living in New York, like myself is very different than millennials living in other parts of the country. And so it makes a lot of sense, even for parents in the Midwest or wherever else. And so that makes sense why you'd want to kind of get rid of that, that, that lateral way of thinking about people right. Natalie, I'm kind of curious, this this focus of like this multi generational approach of design and like this, folks with Samsung, I know you guys are doing a lot of really neat stuff in the wearable device space. And is that something that's newer for you guys? Or is it something that's been around for for a lot longer, like how has it shifted over the last few years as these discussions have kind of bubbled up and so on?
Natalie Schneider
What Samsung's trying to do is figure out how can we use consumer grade technology in ways that allow people to age in place or allow kids removed, say from the hospital into the home. And I'll give you one of my favorite examples around cardiac rehabilitation. So we know that in the US about a million people have a heart attack every year. And about one one in five of those will die in the subsequent crunchier from from another heart attack. And the ironic thing here is that cardiac rehabilitation is actually incredibly effective at lowering your risk of dying from a subsequent attack. But hardly anyone does it because it's a real pain to get to the hospital or to get to a clinic. So we put our heads together with Kaiser Permanente and those guys have world class medicine. Samsung's got world class technology, we say what can we do with this population, which is Primarily older. And what came out of many, many, many whiteboarding Sessions is taking a Samsung smartwatch and building a Samsung app that can be used on on any phone and moving cardiac rehabilitation into the home. So overcoming kind of that major barrier, or, or hurdle. And it's been incredibly successful. We've improved readmission rates from from 15% to below 2%. And it's now the largest program of its kind. So I think those are the types of innovations and technologies that I'm incredibly excited about finding one particular problem and really getting to the root of why does that problem exist? And in this case, it's primarily around behaviors and convenience. And how can we use some of the existing technology that people have in the home or that's on them that they wearing And and repurpose it for different different needs.
Marty Swant
That's really neat. Yeah, some, how does it differ? Let's say like when you're thinking about this maybe question for either of you, when you're thinking about marketing some of this technology to people and say here in the States versus maybe, maybe a Samsung product in South Korea, like because I know that there's cultural differences, you know, a lot of people live, like, live their family versus here, you know, a lot of lot more people put their family members sometimes in nursing homes, whatever, but like, how does it How does it shift the way that you market the products?
Natalie Schneider
So I'm not a marketer, so probably not qualified talking about how we do marketing at a technical level. But it's a really tricky question because if you get too precise around the segments, you end up having very schizophrenias brand. So how we've thought about product design, brand marketing, is not to specifically create products just for seniors. That's not necessarily what they want. They want great product that removes friction, that works, that works in a way that they live, they live. So from the way we use color theory to pairing up auditory cues with some of the other sins to haptics that are more forgiven and don't don't require very precise movements. Those are all things that are inclusive design, but quite frankly, you know, they're just great design principles.
JoAnn Jenkins
And so AARP is only in the US but we have influence in terms of our thought leadership worldwide. But you know, our 38 million members, we're very fortunate to have ATM, the magazine, the most read magazine in the country, we surpass People Magazine two years ago. So I'll throw that point out. As well as how do we do that in an online fashion? I think, you know, for our audience, it's it's space books, it's blogs, it's pop ups, it's newsletters. And so we're seeing a an increasing number of our members are getting their information and content from a European only in digital form. And so we're seeing that growing at a much, much faster pace than it was two years ago. And so right now we're in this marketing space of we're marketing both in print and in online, in audience, to our members in communities and also on a National Space delivery of our products and services and the and the advocacy work that we do.
Marty Swant
Sure, I know there's video though. There's a video I think that we're going to show that has a bit of context to some of the stuff that they've been working on. Can we show that or? I think they showed it right Oh, sir. Wow, I already forgot. I'm like Do we have two videos but I'm just want to make sure we didn't Forget about that. So I wanted to use that to tee this up and ask what are some of the trends that you're noticing? More broadly, when you're thinking about the adoption of these technologies? Maybe what are some of the things that the either the marketers or the entrepreneurs in the room maybe aren't already thinking about?
JoAnn Jenkins
Well, I think for us, what we're seeing is the the adaption of use of technology. So I think it's a fallacy just to assume that people over the age of 50 don't use technologies. I know I myself have two cell phones, two iPads, two computers. And I couldn't imagine going through the day without one of those devices. That's probably good and bad to be able to do that. But I also said as I see, I see our 50 to 65/70 segment really getting more and more comfortable in the in the use of technology and being online and wanting their content delivered to them through that device. And I think our 75 plus still likes that print material and information coming through the mail. And I think we as as an organization, as a business have to continuously adapt to the way our members want to receive our content. And we're certainly in that space of thinking about streaming and those kinds of other entities, where our members are showing that they have an interest in growing.
Natalie Schneider
And I think a trend, this is not so much in terms of technology usage, but technology opportunities, I'm going to circle back to the aging in place or thriving in motion when it whatever we want to call it. So we mentioned that there's this huge trend. And in fact, there was a terrific article in the Wall Street Journal that claimed that senior housing may be the largest miscalculation in recent history. And that's because there's all the senior housing that's been built, but people are, you know, wanting to stay in their homes longer and longer and are able to do that because of the technologies that are coming out. But if you think you know, if that's if that's the trend, what are the problems that are going to arise. Well, the problems are that, you know, a third of the Medicare population lives alone. So their their issues around combating social isolation, communication, transportation. second issue is around elder orphans, so the one in five, that perhaps don't have a spouse or kids to take care of them. And lastly, the issue around multiple chronic conditions, about half of them have three or more chronic conditions and very complex care regimens. So you start to look at kind of the confluence of, of all of those things and an undeniable trend, and the tech business opportunities really start to become much clearer around a communication, social isolation, medication adherence. I think those types of things so developing solutions that are meeting specific needs not necessarily Filling filling your parents homes with sensors so they feel they feel spied on, you know, I don't think I think that's where people go when we start thinking about technology. But things that really kind of empower, empower people to live live vibrantly in their own homes for much, much longer.
JoAnn Jenkins
Yeah, the other piece I would add to is the use of voice technology. I think you're starting to see the advances in technology and how we can use voice whether it's on a phone or a tablet, or some other kind of device in the house. It not only is making it easier for them to learn to use and adapt to that kind of technology. But I also think it's helping to address the issue of isolation and isolation, regardless of age is one of the biggest issues that we're going to have to face worldwide. being isolated and alone is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. On the same kind of health crisis as if you had high blood pressure or diabetes, or some other kind of major disease to be able to do that. So the use of voice technology and being able to communicate, whether it's with a loved one or someone you don't know, or even perhaps a bot, I think some of the research that we're seeing in the activity related to voice and music and sound is, I think, really promising in a number of areas.
Marty Swant
It was really interesting, it reminds me of there's, it's been around for a few years now Replica where you can put in a lot of text messages and voice into a like from a loved one and in a way, like recreate them in a way through a bot. I know it's controversial in certain ways, because the person no longer is around but can see how using technology, in that sense could bring back at least some of that social application. And so it's thinking about emerging tech. It's funny when you're talking about the, you know, the technology spying as I kept thinking about almost bought my parents a portal Facebook portal for Christmas last year I thought I don't know if I want them to have that like just showing up all the time cuz I do wonder sometimes about like what is good for them and what isn't good for them in terms of having too many devices in the home and and but there are other really interesting uses like with VR and you mentioned voice and stuff like that. I know that you guys are doing some really cool stuff in the in the VR space to help people maybe that have Alzheimers i think is one One example is when if you could talk a bit about how you're thinking about emerging tech. And you can talk a bit about more about the incubator that you guys are working on.
JoAnn Jenkins
So one of the things we obviously that our members are most concerned about as they think about the future is whether or not they're going to have some kind of dementia related disease, whether that's all timers or some other kind of form of dementia. And I think the work that we're doing with a couple of the companies that in our booth is around the use of music for people with Alzheimer's and for ALS and how it can be ring back memory and vocals, in many aspects some of our research are showing. We've also been having conversations with companies in the UK, who are actually building virtual homes. And so if you have someone in your family or you a loved one, and these, this old timers house is actually a virtual house that is practically clear glass and the inside, because if you have dimension you're looking you're looking for where you have to go to the bathroom to the bedroom to the kitchen. And those walls that are built up in a traditional house is really frightening to someone who might have dementia. And so one of the examples in the UK is that you walk in the front door and everything is clear. And then you can close shades or Windows or curtains to be able to divide that up but you're coming in and you're thinking I need to go to the to the bathroom, and you can actually see what that facility is it's a much more calming feeling for dementia. And so how do we so and and this particular home is connected to a loved one and to their physicians office so they can see whether or not the person has actually gone to the restroom whether or not the person has actually gotten out of bed, whether or not there there's been a fall in the house if in fact the stove has been turned on to be used. And so you're seeing an increase use of that kind of technology and centering and including that into food consumption. That is really leading to better solutions as people are thinking about, you know, if hopefully that we can get to some kind of relief in this dementia space some.
Marty Swant
So we're out of time a lightning round, like one word each, like what's one big trend that you're going to be looking out for this this next year?
Natalie Schneider
Aging in Place
JoAnn Jenkins
Okay. I would say looking for solutions around caregiving, and allowing people to to be able to assist someone who needs care whether it's a friend or a loved one.
Marty Swant
Awesome. Great. Well thank you all for being here and thanks for listening.
Natalie Schneider
Thank you.