The housing market is in a free fall and consumers are snapping wallets shut, but home appliance makers are taking advantage of the moment to re-tool with new products targeting the coming growth market in aging baby boomer customers. The Wall Street Journal reports that big manufacturers like General Electric, Siemens and Whirlpool all are designing next-general products that embrace universal design principles:

In the kitchen, General Electric Co. is designing ovens with easier-to-open doors and automatic shut-off burners. A joint venture of Germany’s Bosch and Siemens AG has introduced a glass cook top for its premium Thermador brand designed to prevent boil-overs. In the bathroom, Moen is trumpeting new grab bars that can support a 350-pound person, and Kohler is devising easier-to-handle faucet levers. Minnesota-based Truth Hardware reports booming sales for its remote-controlled window motors.

The Journal also mentions efforts by automotive companies, including Ford and Nissan, to design cars for older consumers.

American companies are coming around to the importance of universal design. But during my recent visit to Japan for the Silver Market Phenomenon conference, I was struck by just how far ahead Japanese companies–and consumers–have moved in this area. One presenter at the conference cited research indicating 75 percent of Japanese consumers are aware of universal design principles, and most major companies there already are integrating U.D. ideas into their products.

No I can’t ….

One more bit of evidence that media and advertisers don’t value marketing to older audiences comes from Adweek magazine, which reports that older staffers at agencies are feeling the sting of age discrimination:

Earlier this month, a judge set a December trial date for a $30 million age-discrimination suit by a Universal McCann media exec, George Hayes, against the agency and its corporate parent, Interpublic Group. Hayes says he was fired by a younger boss who believed young people at the agency “got it” when it came to new media in a way that older staffers did not. In addition, Hayes claims, his former boss viewed “age and experience as a hindrance, rather than a benefit.”

The two sides seem ready to go public with the private concerns of a generation of industry execs fearing displacement at a time they should be in their peak earning years.

Valid or not, the contentions of Hayes — a former evp, client services let go at age 53 — ring true for a large number of other executives on the street who are arguing their relevance.

On the client site, Adweek notes that chief marketing officers are getting younger all the time, and that this may be driving the move by agencies to the age cleansing apparently under way. The article’s worth reading, as it offers an insight into the mindset of the advertising business.

If you’re in the Tokyo area the first week of October, consider attending The Silver Market Phenomenon symposium, which will look at the challenges posed to business and societies by the global age wave. The symposium is tied to the publication of a book of the same name, which will be published in early September by Springer. The book is edited by Florian Kohlbacher of the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo and Cornelius Herstatt of the Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg, in Hamburg.

The book examines at the growing 55-plus population globally, and considers why the market is still underdeveloped from a product a service standpoint. I contributed a chapter–which I’ll be presenting at the symposium–titled “The End of Mass Media: Aging and the U.S. Newspaper Industry.” The struggles of the newspaper business is one of my favorite topics, due mainly to my long, sorry history as an ink-stained wretch. The essay traces the importance of Boomers in mass media in the U.S., and how the newspaper industry has failed to grasp this audience’s ongoing importance as publishers struggle to make the transition to new digital platforms.

Other contributors you probably know include Chuck Nyren on the role of advertising agencies in marketing to boomers and Dick Stroud on the importance of Web 2.0 to Boomers.

If you’d like to learn more about the symposium, download the flier here [pdf file].

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO) confirmed for the first time that it is planning a magazine for older Boomer women, but said the launch is on hold due to the slow economy.  No timeline for launching the new magazine has been announced. The news surfaced in Women’s Wear Daily, which reports that the magazine’s working title is “M.” Earlier reports on this can be found here.

Strategy consultants Kevin and Shawn Coyne offer a provocative take on the Boomer retirement hype industry in an article and video interview at BusinessWeek.com. After combing through the numbers, they point out that 78 million Boomers won’t all be retiring at once, and that what some have called a tsunami really will look more like a rolling wave. Upshot: the market for retirement services looks less like a 78 million-person opportunity, and something more like 29 million. As a result, they argue, the growth rate in retired individuals will be much lower than thought, with financial services companies the big losers as they battle for market share to justify their huge investments in this market.

The Coynes argument rests of a few key assertions:

• The actual number of “true retirees,” which excludes those who never worked in the first place, will reach only 46 million in 2017.
• More Americans will choose to work beyond the traditional retirement age of 65
• The growth assumption is less than 3%, and the more likely growth rate is under 1%

My take: It’s always useful to cut through the hype about the Boomer market, where generalizations tend to be taken as fact. But the Coynes’ analysis uses too rigid a definition of “retiree.” The real demographic issue isn’t who has retired from a job and who has not –it’s about the undeniable age tsunami. The challenges of retirement security and health care issues are real and will be defining questions for business and government in the years ahead.