Starts at 60 Founder zeros in on overlooked boomers

08/29/21 • 43 min

“This consumer is 50 per cent of private wealth in Australia. Ninety-four per cent do research online before making significant purchases. Fifty-five per cent of all leisure travel spending is in this category normally. And that's got pent-up demand written all over it.” -Rebecca Wilson, Founder, Starts at 60

Starts at 60 CEO and Founder Rebecca Wilson was watching her parents on their road to retirement when she realised this generation had been largely forgotten within the marketing pie.

From humble beginnings in a bedroom at home, Rebecca has grown Starts at 60 into a powerful voice for Baby Boomers and a platform with almost 1.5 million monthly users.

Targeting boomers and doing more than okay

Today, it’s Australia’s largest digital media brand for the over-sixties and backed by some impressive advertisers and investors, including Channel Seven, which owns a 30 per cent stake in its flagship platform.

According to Rebecca, the power of this generation as content and product consumers is blindingly obvious, even though they were largely being overlooked at the time she was forming her idea for a niche digital media platform.

“Everything that was in the media was Kardashian, Kardashian and Kardashians and ...sitting back from it as a marketer that was working with clients who wanted to talk to this generation and knowing there was nowhere that was consistent or reliable to speak with them through...I had a hypothesis, so I started a little blog,” Rebecca explains. “I started writing for the audience and gathering an audience. I think it started with $5 Facebook spend a day to grow the audience. And they...read the content and they signed up for the site. And really it was the right time to do that.”

Content that funnels with precision

Starts at 60 is part traditional newsroom, part marketing company and part marketplace, but the model is constantly evolving and making waves.

“We in fact know that we play a role in building and driving a voice for over sixties, but that we have to be there for the marketers and the brands that speak to them as well,” Rebecca says. “We have to get the right goals and achievements for those brands. So our job is to sit between the consumers and the brands and curate a conversation.”

This episode is the ultimate masterclass in tailoring content with laser-sharp focus to a specific target audience.

It also demonstrates how storytelling interweaves with digital marketing and even the vertical integration of products, including within the travel industry.

Winning eyeballs online

Dishing up the goods to make your boomer pitches sharper, It’s PR Darlings co-hosts Jo Stone and Greer Quinn are deeply delving into the machinations of this niche media juggernaut.

Rebecca offers all sorts of insights including why stories that work in print form, fail to win eyeballs online.

This episode’s jargon gem is PTC, or "piece to camera". If you’ve never considered PTCs in your pitch to TV journalists, stay tuned until the end of the show to hear Jo and Greer provide suggestions on how you could do this.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode of It’s PR Darlings, please share, subscribe and review.

It’s PR Darlings is produced by Jo Stone from Sticks and Stones PR and Greer Quinn from Forward Communications.

Starts at 60 links:

https://startsat60.com/

The Boomer Guide Rebecca references:

https://mail.startsat60.com/p/6T9R-387/download-the-starts-at-60-boomer-guide-202122

Previous Episode

At Home with magazine maven Kelly Baker

“We are a country of people who are very obsessed with travel...Australians are hardcore travelers...We're also a country who are obsessed with real estate...COVID-19 swept into town, which altered real estate quite dramatically, and also prevented us from traveling. So accordingly, it's not that surprising that we would start to get even more involved in our homes and more au fait with real estate markets in general. And NewsCorp is smart. And it knows what to do when these things occur...they saw that straight away. And here we are with At Home flipbook Real Estate.”

During the past 18 months, our homes have become, not just places where we live, but also places where we work.

We’ve all become obsessed with stories about skyrocketing property prices.

And watching live-streamed auctions on a Saturday is the new reality-TV binge.

So after a year of belt-tightening and closures across media outlets, News Corp Australia came out swinging, launching its new property platform and magazine lift-out At Home in January.

It’s PR Darlings has the great pleasure of welcoming At Home Editor Kelly Baker onto the podcast.

Kelly’s edited and contributed to some of the country's best-known titles, including Body and Soul, Nine Honey, New Idea and Who Weekly, to name a few, during her illustrious magazine career.

PR professionals and aspiring magazine writers tune in – Kelly’s opening the door wide-open to It’s PR Darlings’ listeners so you can learn how to pitch a winning cover shot or craft an enticing story.

But just because it’s magazine-style, doesn’t mean it’s not anchored on the principles that govern all media: news values.

“It's news-based lifestyle,” Kelly says. “It's not just pretty houses that we happen to stumble across that we like. Everything is tied back to a ‘newsy’ hook.”

You’ll also hear about Kelly’s journey to earn her hard-won skills and the mentors who’ve taught or supported her along the way.

Finally, today’s jargon gem is the complex media convention known as “backgrounding”. It’s different to “off-the-record”, although some people confuse the two. Listen until the end to find out what it is, when to use it and how to do so ethically. This is a technique that’s applied during very specific circumstances and not to be misused. It's a high-stakes strategy and one we believe is best suited to the more "seasoned" professional.

Thank you for tuning into It’s PR Darlings. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe and review.

It’s PR Darlings is produced by Jo Stone from Sticks and Stones PR and Greer Quinn from Forward Communications.

Kelly’s social links:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kellybakermedia?s=20

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-baker-a046b02a/?originalSubdomain=au

It’s PR Darlings

www.itsprdarlings.com

www.sticksandstonespr.com.au

www.forwardcomm.com.au

Socials:

https://www.instagram.com/itsprdarlings/

https://www.facebook.com/ItsPRDarlings

https://www.linkedin.com/company/it-s-pr-darlings/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo-stone-youngleson-562809104/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/corporate-communications/

Contacts for story ideas:

jo@stick...

Next Episode

Wrapping up Season Two + a shameless plug for Medianet X IPRD crisis comms webinar

Wrapping up Season Two and a shameless plug for our upcoming webinar in partnership with Medianet

🦠 During this wrap-up of Season Two Co-hosts Jo Stone and Greer Quinn have heard from journalists and industry leaders about the way the pandemic is changing work lives, media content, newsworthiness and even shaping how our news is delivered.

🦠 It’s becoming clear that Covid-19 isn’t going away within the foreseeable future and businesses need crisis management plans that can adapt as quickly as mutant strains. So during this mini-episode, Greer and Jo also talk about an upcoming collaboration with Medianet to present a webinar with live Q+A on the topic “Crisis Communications for a Covid World”. Event link here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/crisis-communications-for-a-covid-world-tickets-168883459975

COVID is the gift that keeps on giving.

Greer: We’ve found that even 18 months on, we’re still helping clients with crisis strategies and internal and external communications issues almost every month,” Greer says. The pandemic isn’t going away and if you think that because you’ve managed to dodge a COVID catastrophe so far that you’re in the clear, think again.

Jo: It’s awful because we sometimes get calls in the evenings or on the weekend from organisations desperately seeking PR help because a crisis never seems to happen during office hours during the week does it! And more often than not, they’ve never even thought ahead about how to handle adverse media coverage or a COVID-10-caused crisis.

Greer: In recent weeks we’ve seen influencers breaching COVID-19 restrictions for parties and brands then subsequently publicly dropping them. We’ve even seen well documented super-spreader events that have led to humiliation and reputation damage for attendees and organisers.

Jo: Yes, we’ve also seen organisations facing staff backlash over mandatory vaccinations.

Greer: So in this short podcast, we’re wrapping up Season Two with some of the top takeaways from our guests and we’ll end with our top three tips for PR crisis planning in the pandemic.

Jo: Let’s start with Andrew Drummond from AAP – that was a great insight into this vital Australian news wire service, which is a bit of a secret weapon to have in your PR tool kit.

Greer: The news deserts he was talking about across Australia are only broadening after all the COVID closures, so Andrew’s pitching brief will be a huge help if you want some AAP traction. NewsCorp’s AT Home magazine flipbook is a direct response to the pandemic and Editor Kelly Baker told us that PR people need to know that while it’s lifestyle-focussed, it’s still anchored in news values.

Jo: And it was magic talking to Mel Carrero from Spell – talk about a brand at the cutting edge. What they’ve been doing with content creation has been so innovative – there are a lot of ideas in that chat PR’s can learn from. It was also great to hear from Starts At 60 founder Bec Wilson. Her platform is the largest in the country for the over 60’s and there is a lot of pent up demand in the travel sector particularly so that’s a consumer group that shouldn’t be overlooked for lifestyle and travel products.

Greer: And of course, there was the interview with Daniel Doody from Studio 10. He was all about the media release and the pitch – and there are amazing national opportunities for the right story.

Jo: In each episode, we demystify a little bit of jargon from the media world – things like noddies, embargo and backgrounding and in this episode we are turning the tables a bit, but I guess the jargon term for this segment could be COVIDIOT – someone who ignores or breaks public health orders. And if you are in a comms role for any business or organisation, you know that it only takes one COVIDIOT to cause a crisis. So with this in mind, we thought we would give you the PR Darlings top three top tips for crisis communications plans in the era of COVID.

Greer: These are just a couple of the things we’ll be discussing in an upcoming webinar in collaboration with Australian media database company MediaNet on October 6, 2021, which is all about crisis communications, albeit with a COVID twist. Now, Medianet is a must-have service for PR firms – their database keeps you up-to-date with all the platforms, papers and programs in the Australian media, but also all the contacts you need. This brings us to our first crisis communications tip – making sure you have updated contacts. You need to know the journalists who are likely to be working in your patch. You don’t want to be scrambling for a mobile number at the last minute.

Jo: Updating contacts is also important for your internal team. ...