I was curious where OpenlyGray.com was going when I saw a social media post about it from a business gal pal.
Was it a site for older people with Gray Hair?
Nope!
I ‘got it’ and smiled.
It’s way cooler than that!
It’s a movement.
It’s an attitude adjustment about aging! (Lord knows we need one.)
Thanks to the longevity revolution we are in a unique time and place in history. Until now many in their 50’s 60’s, 70’s, and beyond believed it was time to stop.
That isn’t the thinking of older adults today at all!
I Invited Lee St. James and gal pal Brooke Stachyra of Openly Gray, to join my show to share their purpose with Openly Gray and their big disruptive plan!
Lee St. James is the Co-Founder /Creative Director of Openly Gray
Lee is a Cannes award-winning, multidisciplinary CD who has led major brand content development for over 20 years. From strategy to conception through execution Lee believes in partnering cross-functionally to build consensus and ensure projects meet all milestones, deadlines, budget, and business results requirements. Accustomed to fast-paced and start-up environments. He is constantly onboarding new technologies and innovative processes while ensuring compliance with corporate and client standards.
Brooke Stachyra handles Partner/Client Success for Openly Gray
Brooke is a social media consumer specialist. Proud former NBC Page, longtime (recovering) journalist-writer, and storyteller with a million tales! NBC News, Time Inc/People Magazine veteran. Former content creator for Church and Dwight brands Arm & Hammer, OxiClean, and Trojan. Social media contributor for the American Cancer Society and CUNY. Grown X woman, lover of all things 80s. Name that tune champion! Foodie and travel enthusiast, bougie barganista, and expert in anything about Bravo’s Real Housewives.
They are on a Mission to Loudly Call Attention To These Facts
The Gray Market has $8,000,000,000,000 (that’s trillion) waiting to be seen
For the next 30 years,
10,000+ people will turn 65.
Every. Single. Day.
In our conversation Lee said,
“When you turn 50, this is something that we observed years ago. We being the royal we, we observed years ago that you turn 50 and all of a sudden you become invisible. You become invisible to the opposite sex. You become invisible to your friends, sometimes even your family, but definitely to the marketing world. Marketers are taught from day one that you go after the 17 to, say, 45. Sometimes people switch it to 17- to 54-year-old market, but then after that, you stop. “
“Well, times have changed, and as you mentioned, there’s $8 trillion in assets at play that are controlled by what we call the gray market, which is 50-plus. To put that in context, we saw a great little snippet about if you put this in context, this would be if the gray market in the U.S. was a country. It would be the third largest GDP in the world.”
“There’s so much more to this audience and that’s why we are Openly Gray. And there are two sides of the organization. One is called OpenlyGray.com. We are marketers. That’s our goal. We want to get clients to start recognizing this audience and not leave all that money on the table.”
“On the other side of the coin though, we’re advocates. So openlygray.org is an advocacy organization, anti-ageism, pro-helping people grow older and grow into the next phases of life. And even there’s an offshoot called Cozy Homes Community where we’re trying to help build communities for 50 plus folks.”
It’s a big mission for Openly Gray who feel their biggest hurdle is to get relatively young brand managers and clients who are still in their 30s and maybe 45 to recognize that this is an audience that they are missing out on.
Brooke said,
“It’s unfortunate, but what Lee is saying is absolutely true, that you have the people that are in the power that are making the decisions that are creating the content aren’t seeing us. We are invisible and we have to make them see the dollar sign. There is expendable income. There’s money.”
I’m personally passionate about encouraging people to transform how they think, feel and act, to embrace and enjoy and celebrate whatever stage of life they’re at.
And like the folks at Openly Gray say, it doesn’t matter how much hair you have on your head or what color it is or whether you have any of it all, it’s the mindset and the attitude!
Enjoy learning more about Openly Gray and their growing movement that’s not stopping anytime soon in this podcast of our live conversation on The Debbie Nigro Show. If You’d rather read than listen the audio transcript is below.
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
0:00:00
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show.
7
0:00:03
and you met me at the perfect time. You want me, you want me, I want you, baby.
4
0:00:08
Oh, we know timing is everything, right? Some people are right on time, some people are very early, and some people, hey, it’s just never too late.
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0:00:15
So, hi, everybody, I’m Debbie Nigro.
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0:00:16
Welcome to my show. I’m always trying to stay ahead of the curve, and I’ve got a great story for you coming up and a couple of cool guests, something I discovered, I think, early in the game, and I want you to know about it.
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0:00:27
But first, let me just share with you guys that I’m very proud to have two wonderful sponsors for my show. Like if you need a pool or a pool guy, you need Vinnie. Okay? You need a Vinny! Vinny is the V in V Groppa Pools and Gunite Pools of Westchester and beyond. They are the high-end backyard design professionals and Vinnie is like the most down-to-earth guy in the world. But if you’re going to do anything with your backyard, you need to call Vinnie. They fly him in like all over the place to design backyards. So it’s gunnitepoolsofwestchester.com. And then there’s that amazing female entrepreneur that I love supporting, Marcie Manfredonia, who’s got three companies that we rotate talking about on the show, one of which I’ll bring up today, which is CBDlivenatural.com, where she’s got pretty much all the education you need if you’re thinking about CBD or haven’t used it before, it’s what I use whenever I blow a body part. I’m a huge fan of CBD. Check it out, CBDlivenatural.com.
Okay, so living. Yes, many people are living a lot longer these days. So what does that mean for the world? I’ve got to be honest with you. I am so excited to introduce my next guest because it’s something I’ve been trying to support message-wise my last 20-something years of my life. I caught this wave early that getting older does not mean you’re anything other than getting more wise. I never understood why people bashed people because they were older. I’m like, what are we doing here? So anyway, I spot this openly gray as a title of something that’s happening because I saw something that my gal pal from business, Brooke Stakira posted, and I love Brooke, and I know she’s always onto something cool with social media, and I’m like, what is this? So the play on words, openly gray, got my attention, and I smiled, but I’m like, okay, what are they doing here? Are they going to be a site for people with gray hair? I’m like, ah, I said, it’s way cooler than that, okay? It’s an attitude adjustment, it’s a movement. It’s a wow.
Thanks to the longevity market, somebody’s got to do something about all this. So I want to introduce you to two people, Lee St. James, who is kind of one of the leads on this, and Brooke Stachyra who’s also up there on top of the header of Who’s Behind This. Both of you, welcome to my show, Openly Gray. Let’s talk about it.
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0:03:08
Thank you, Debbie.
3
0:03:09
Good morning, Debbie.
1
0:03:10
Brooke, let’s talk first since you and me are buddies. Hi.
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0:03:15
We are buddies and I am so happy to hear your voice. I love you. I totally love you. You’re just that person that when I see you at an event, if I see you out on the street, you’re so vibrant. We get each other. You and me, we get each other.
1
0:03:30
Yeah. So good to connect with you again, Brooke. You know, time goes by and we lose each other a little bit, but thanks to you, I got to see all about what’s happening with this Open Lee Gray and meet now the lovely and talented Lee St. James. Lee, you’ve got some big background in the ad world.
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0:03:47
Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that. Oh, don’t call me.
1
0:03:53
Sorry, continue.
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0:03:54
I’m sorry, that’s my southern and me and my mother would reach out of the grave and smack me if I wasn’t respectful.
1
0:04:04
No, it’s so funny. Lee, Lee, Lee! Stop there because this is an important piece of the puzzle for your openly great platform, which is really about attitude, right? And getting people on board that, hey, people are living past their 60s, 70s, 80s. This is a New World Order here and there’s like, you know, $8 trillion on the table here for anybody who wants to respect.
2
0:04:22
It’s 50s too, it’s not just 60s, 70s, 80s, it’s 50s. I’m 55. I’m part of this movement. You know, Lee very easily convinced me to be a part of this because we’ve worked together in the past and he is brilliant.
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0:04:37
Absolutely.
1
0:04:38
And you’re right, I’m sorry, it’s 50s, it’s even 40s. I mentioned Lee and I’m going to let you talk, I apologize. I mentioned that back in, you know, a long while ago I started this thing called stillababe.com. It’s an attitude because I saw what was happening, how the world was treating women in particular who are getting older. I’m like, okay, you’re gonna buy into this? So that’s kind of what you’re saying right now with what you guys are doing that you in fact have have hit on that mindset that needs to be reinforced that we know as time goes on that people need to be reminded they should be happy in their own skin wrinkled as it may be that they you know just keep dreaming keep doing use the wisdom use the ingenuity use the experience and that you’re harnessing this energy in under one umbrella is that correctly that’s pretty much it in a nutshell
2
0:05:29
Debbie and it’s very much like your attitude with Still a Babe.
“When you turn 50, this is something that we observed years ago. We being the royal we, we observed years ago that you turn 50 and all of a sudden you become invisible. You become invisible to the opposite sex. You become invisible to your friends, sometimes even your family, but definitely to the marketing world. Marketers are taught from day one that you go after the 17 to, say, 45. Sometimes people switch it to 17- to 54-year-old market, but then after that, you stop.
Well, times have changed, and as you mentioned, there’s $8 trillion in assets at play that are controlled by what we call the gray market, which is 50-plus. To put that in context, we saw a great little snippet about if you put this in context, this would be if the gray market in the U.S. was a country. It would be the third largest GDP in the world. That’s how big we’re talking about this audience. And they’re virtually ignored by all brands. It doesn’t matter what kind of brand you are, whether it’s an automobile maker or, you know, Metamucil or a supplement or a pharmaceutical thing, because then there’s varying shades of it. You can even be marketed to, but then marketed to poorly, you know.
So a lot of pharma brands just show the shiny happy couple on the beach and they think that their job is done.
“Well, there’s so much more to this audience and that’s why we are Openly Gray. And there are two sides of the organization. One is called OpenlyGray.com which we are a bash at least. We are marketers. That’s our goal. We want to get clients to start recognizing this audience and not leave all that money on the table.”
“On the other side of the coin though, we’re advocates. So openlygrey.org is an advocacy organization, anti-ageism, pro-helping people grow older and grow into the next phases of life. And even there’s an offshoot called Cozy Homes Community where we’re trying to help build communities for 50 plus folks.
So anyway, it’s a big mission for us. I think our biggest hurdle is to get relatively young brand managers and clients who are still in their 30s and maybe 45 to recognize that this is an audience that they are missing out on.”
1
0:08:29
Okay, stop there. Stop there. I have a plan. We need to start our own small country. Okay? Because you just said we’re like a small country, right? So let’s start our own country and only let people who get it handle the marketing. It’s very simple.
3
0:08:44
“It’s unfortunate, but what Lee is saying is absolutely true, that you have the people that are in the power that are making the decisions that are creating the content aren’t seeing us. We are invisible and we have to make them see the dollar sign. There is expendable income. There’s money.”
1
0:09:08
I never could get this though. I get it because most of the people who work in the ad agencies who are at this point in time, I guess, what you’re talking to are not of the age where they would get it because they’re not old enough so they don’t get it so they don’t get it. But then you can’t have anybody in the agency who’s the right age because nobody will hire them. So we’ve got a level problem.
3
0:09:23
And we are examples of people who used to be in the agencies that are now doing our own projects because they’ve been taken over by that age group. Our whole thing is connecting with them, listening and having them listen to us and we’ve been doing that. Lee has contacts, I have contacts, the people in this group are still connected to a lot of these agencies and so we’re saying, hey, you’re missing something big, talk to us, we have the marketing experience, we’ve got the contacts and we’ve got great content.
1
0:10:02
Oh my gosh. The people behind this, by the way, Lee, you, a Con Award winning multidisciplinary CD, led major brand content for 20 years, strategy to execution. You’ve been all over the world. You’ve got your co-founder Lee Brody, the force behind brands like Airborne and Zone Perfect and Sweet Leaf Tea and Tradewind. You’ve got Brooke, who’s been a social media consumer specialist, has a long history of all things that are happening and trending. Look at Matt Thornhill involved with you guys, the nation’s leading authority on marketing to older boomers. He literally wrote the award-winning book on the topic. Andrea Thompson created all kinds of incredible campaigns for the world’s largest brands and worked at the top agencies, won a Peabody Award. Muffy Clarkson, lead creative, much of Saatchi and Saatchi for 20 years, went to the Johnson and Johnson, Tylenol, St. Joseph, General Mills, Cheerios, I mean, come on, there’s major wisdom here. And I always thought, and I think you guys have to really figure this angle out, the collaboration between wisdom and youth. What does that look like when it’s perfect?
2
0:11:07
Sorry, Debbie, I missed the one word. It was the collaboration of…
1
0:11:20
Between wisdom and youth. What does the collaboration between wisdom and youth in this world we live in, what does that look like if it’s sadly not.
2
0:11:43
I mean, all we’ve done for at least the past 50 years is feed into this notion of the Pepsi generation. You know, that the only people worth listening to or talking to from a marketing standpoint are these younger folks. Because the belief is that they’ll, if we get them young, they’ll stay with us forever. Well, the one flaw in that is we’re the Pepsi generation. We’re the real Pepsi generation, you know. And guess what? We’re still with them, even though they ignore us. We’re still the most loyal consumer group on the planet. So, you know, it’s just kind of stinking thinking.
But to answer your question, I have five kids and so I’ve got a little multi-generational thing going on myself and it all boils down to listening and respect. And I find that when you’re listening with two ears and one mouth, you know, it almost always works out. It’s just we don’t tend to, as a world, appreciate that enough anymore.
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0:12:50
That’s why it’s pretty straightforward.
1
0:12:53
Yeah, you know, this movie is open…
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0:12:56
The other thing, Debbie, that I just want to add, having worked with Lee, you know, within the last 10 years, is that there’s a certain subtlety and finesse also when telling our stories and getting them to listen. And the thing is, this is a group of pros. When I worked with Lee, we had assignments like working on Trojan campaigns. And Trojan is owned by Church and Dwight, which is an extremely conservative company. They had purchased the company and given us the task of marketing to their, you know, to the people that are buying condoms and sexual aids and they wanted it done in a very prim way.
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0:13:53
So if we could do that, we could do anything.
1
0:13:56
I watched that actual, you sent me to a site that, I went on, I’m sorry, it was your site, I went and was looking at all the little videos were there and some commercials and I actually watched the Trojan one which was embracing the older generation. I was like cracking up. I was like, wow. Anyway, I just wanted everybody to join the Openly Gray movement that you guys are putting out there. We can talk, you can come back another time and we can do this more because
I’m all about encouraging people to transform how they think, feel and act, to embrace and enjoy and celebrate whatever stage of life they’re at. And it doesn’t matter how much hair you have on your head or what color it is or whether you have any of it all, it’s the mindset and the attitude.
I think you guys have written that just so perfectly. Please go to openlygrey.org if you want to see what these guys are doing about the movement, and then openlygrey.com if you want to see the business thinking behind it all. Lee St. James and Brooks Stachyra, thanks so much for taking the time. We’ll do this again, okay?
3
0:14:54
I hope so. Thank you, Debbie. I hope so. Thank you, Debbie.
1
0:14:56
Yeah, we’re going to do it again. We’re going to get more into it, alright?
Transcribed with Cockatoo
