I’ve launched my post-retirement career as a senior citizen influencer, as I’ve described previously. I’m doing it by joining an age 60+ soccer team, proclaiming myself “famous”, and promoting products made by companies who will theoretically pay me for my unsolicited efforts to sell their stuff to old people.
My first game was perfect. I played passably and our team, Shades of Gray (11, not 50), lost. But that’s not important. Most important was the establishment of my street cred by acquiring content of me in a uniform, brandishing logos of corporate giants like Adidas and Nike, and building my personal brand by emphasizing to my teammates and opponents — and now you— about how enviable, authentic, and influential I am.
A crucial component of any successful influencing campaign, or “influenza” as I call it, is choosing which products to endorse. My previous essay proposed several options appealing to my target market, including adult diapers and pill crushers. But for this first effort, I chose something that, after trying one, is now my favorite drink of all time: BioSteel.
Sports drinks are staples of celebrity endorsements as are clothes, beer, and inexplicably, insurance. But the only one of these things people over 65 might care about is insurance. That’s why the enterprise of influencing senior citizens requires out-of-the-box thinking as well as speaking loudly and writing in big fonts.
Believe me: I’ve tried ALL the sports drinks (influencer tip: NEVER mention your prospective client’s competitors by name). But I’ve never tasted anything like BioSteel. Maybe because my favorite flavor, Mixed Berry, is unidentifiable. It comes in an opaque container so I’m not sure what color it is either. It tastes blue. Who cares?
What matters to me is that BioSteel is cold, wet, “good for you and the environment” (says so on the label), and made in the USA. But here again, the only thing most old people care about among all these factors is it’s American. It could be lawn mower oil. Put a flag on it and they’ll drink up.
Which leads me to the final, most crucial component of any successful senior citizen “influenza”: a clever, viral-ready slogan/meme. Leveraging the elderly’s irrational and simultaneous fears of both participating and missing out, my slogan is “If you don’t drink BioSteel, you’ll die out there. If you don’t love it, you may already be dead”.
The meme (above) features me and the product unavoidably displayed on and near me (essential). Dramatizing my authenticity, expertise, and legitimate influence, I’m standing on the field my sport is played on (in this case, soccer), holding an implement associated with that particular sport (ball). The meme is suitable for print i.e. Birds & Blooms, Readers Digest, and Prevention, which is what my customers read, not that online crap.
I’m also targeting the “Aging” category here on Medium. The vulnerability of these writers/readers to any influence is dubious because the articles posted there — like “The Vanishing Art of Letter Writing” and “I’d Like to Have a Destination Funeral” — lament changes, “people nowadays”, and the dystopian horrors of contemporary media, though most of them ironically spend their days watching TV or listening to AM radio. On the plus side, they do watch sports if you count baseball and “Wheel of Fortune”.
Now that I have a game under my belt and pictures to prove it, I could get injured, quit, or get killed any time and continue being an influencer forever. Which reminds me: I have to talk with my niece about assuming my online identity after my corporeal demise. She’s looking for a different job and it would work for me too. Because unlike Heaven, the Internet is actual evidence of an afterlife.
