When The New York Times devotes nearly the entire front page of its Style section to new hearing-aid designs and baby boomers' attempts to get over the stigma and start hearing well again by embracing the new technologies, you know the industry has entered a new era. Attracted by expensive marketing campaigns launched by Oticon and Phonak to promote their user-friendly thin-tube, open-fit behind-the ear hearing aids, the Times did a comprehensive survey of the new hearing-aid landscape and the high-concept designs that are attracting aging but still-hip consumers with enough money to spend $7,000 or more on a pair of hearing aids. It's one of the best and most readable surveys of the current state of the hearing-aid market that I've seen and is the kind of thing that will help jump-start an industry that's settled for single-digit growth far too long in a global market that should be growing by ten to twenty percent a year.
The article surveys the latest data on the increase in hearing loss due not only to the aging demographic but also to the worsening environmental noise that the World Health Organization and other groups have identified as a looming public health crisis. It also embraces some of the giddiness in marketing I've made fun of before, calling the minimal sleek design of the new hearing aids "akin to sexy underwear" because nobody knows you're wearing it unless you want them too. Phonak with its new Audeo family of hearing aids gets the most attention, and rightly so, because the company has done a bang-up job of bringing some fun and energy along with good design into the market. I didn't get their ads initially, which included startling images such as a man with a bloody beaten face, but their new AudeoWorld web site is worth checking out because it gives better descriptions of the kinds of customers they are seeking - adventurers intent on living life to the fullest with our without hearing loss. And the front page of the AudeoWorld site has the best picture I've seen of someone wearing one of the new thin-tube BTEs: you practically need a magnifying glass to see that the model is actually wearing one of the new Audeo hearing aids.
Posted by David at 10:48 AM on Jul 14, 2007 in COPING, HEARING AIDS
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