Identifying new markets is vital for a company’s survival and growth. In fact, many times it’s the markets that aren’t so obvious that prove to be profitable for brands. Marketers at Panasonic say they are spotting new trends and identifying prevailing needs among a more seasoned generation—consumers who are 65 and older.
“We started to think about what we can do with technology to help seniors,” says Steve Safier, president of the health and wellness division at Panasonic North America. He says that although many people do not immediately connect technology and seniors, tech meets several needs of this often untapped market. Inventors at Panasonic are creating technology to fill numerous unmet needs in the senior community, such as tools that monitor patients’ health remotely and make seniors’ lives easier.
Recently, however, the marketing team at Panasonic realized that technology can do more than help with a senior’s physical health. “Through technology, we want to create a dedicated customer base that’s getting value out of our service and is using it to spread love in their families,” Safier says.
Marketers at Panasonic realized that one major demand for seniors is the need for engagement and interaction—especially with younger members of the family. “Everyone, I think, can get excited about having a meaningful interaction with a child,” he says. “If we do something fun with a child, then we get to connect, create shared memories, show love, and spark interactions. So we wanted to create a platform for people—especially seniors—to connect with children.”
Safier says the solution was HomeTeam, an app officially launched in September that “enables grandparents, parents, and children to interact from any location through reading books and playing games while on video chat.” He says the idea is that families read one of the more than 1,200 books and play games while talking to each other through a pop-up chat—a feature that provides interactions to seniors from family children who are far away.
So in the spring the marketing team at Panasonic rolled out an integrated digital marketing campaign—one that included a targeted mix of print ads, digital banners, bloggers, and social media. Safier says that HomeTeam isn’t just a tech tool but a marketing instrument that’s allowed Panasonic to reach its target demographic—and beyond. “We started to expand our reach to not only 65-plus but going down to younger and younger people; we started to realize that it’s not only the grandparents, but it’s also parents,” Safier says. “So parents wanted to connect their parents with their children. And then also parents who themselves want to connect—maybe while they’re traveling or who are in the military—want to engage with a child. So once we got onto the value of connecting through games, books, and video chat, it expanded the reach and the kinds of people who responded to our [marketing efforts] and to the product.”
So far the results, Safier says, have been encouraging and promising. “Right now we’re still in our [fledgling] days,” he says. “But we’ve seen a major ramp up in downloads, and we’re working the funnel so that we can convert people to paid subscriptions,” he says. Safier says that marketers also are getting lots of attention from influencers who are becoming advocates. “We’re seeing great interest among the influencers and bloggers and great interest among the customer and potential customer base,” he continues. “They’re writing very positive things about HomeTeam. But they’re not only writing about it but are using social media to send the message out to everyone—which certainly helps us. And my personal favorite is that they’re using it at home, taking pictures of their kids using it. It shows this real engagement and adoption.”
Safier says the he and his team hope to take that user-generated content and weave it into future marketing campaigns at Panasonic. “Over time we’re probably going to work to capture these experiences and then use it in our more formal marketing channels,” he says.
Even with growing interest among varied demographics, Safier says that his team will never forget their main goal: “We started out and we continue to support seniors. We’ll always continue to think about the next thing that we can do to help seniors. And we are dedicated to help seniors live as well as possible. Technology enables us to do that.”
