There's some exciting news from the Boomer Project this month.

In addition to fielding two national surveys this month with our partners Southeastern Institute of Research (SIR) and Survey Sampling International, we're launching our new SIR/Boomer Project Marketing Pulse :30 Survey.

It's an on-going survey of marketing professionals from across the country. Every two weeks the participants take a 30 second survey about the latest trends and activities in marketing to Boomers. The instant results are shared with the panelists and consolidated results will be shared in this monthly newsletter, as well as on the Boomer Project Web site.

As a subscriber to this newsletter, you get a special invitation to participate in the first SIR/Boomer Project Marketing Pulse :30 Survey. Just follow this link.

More information about this new service can be found below in "Take :30."

The second article this month reports on how companies are already turning the future problem of retiring Boomers into a new opportunity. Read "Your Problem, Our Opportunity" to learn more.

There's also a short article about two experts on aging and generations. We suspect you know one of them because he's in the media as much as Madonna. The other one you need to know if you want to be really smart about aging Boomers. The article is called "Beyond the Ken."

Our own calendars are filling up with more and more companies and organizations who want to gain insight into Boomers and marketing (and go beyond the Ken). If you know of a company or organization who might be interested in hiring us to come speak and train, just contact us to learn more.

As usual, let us know if you have something you'd like to get off your chest.

Wonder what other marketers are thinking or doing when it comes to targeting Boomers over 50?

Well, now there's a quick and easy way to find out.

This month we're launching the SIR/Boomer Project Marketing Pulse :30 Survey. Every two weeks we'll conduct a 30 second poll of our pre-selected panel of marketing professionals from around the country and see what they are thinking and doing.

Panelists are invited to participate, and those that do get instant access to the poll results, as well as a summary of each poll sent to them when all the data has been collected and analyzed.

It's an insider's guide to the best and most current marketing approaches targeting Boomers over 50.

To be selected as a panelist, you must make marketing decisions for a company or organization that is actively targeting aging Baby Boomers. If you are interested in participating, please email Matt Thornhill.

The panel will be limited to 300 top marketers from around the United States, in a cross-section of businesses and industries.

To help get the panel started, all 1,450 subscribers of this newsletter are invited to participate.

Then look for the first poll results in next month's newsletter,as well as on the Boomer Project Web site.

Here's a recent CNN/Money Magazine article identifying the size and scope of the problem, "Corporations Woo Baby Boomers."

We here at the Boomer Project first became aware of this impending exodus from the workforce when we heard Dr. David DeLong speak at the Governor's Conference on Aging in Massachusetts. DeLong is the author of "Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce."

He shared scary stories about how half of all federal employees will be eligible to take early retirement within the next handful of years. On the one hand, that actually sounds like a good thing. On the other hand, think about our large, complex bureaucratic departments with no one left who knows how things are supposed to work. Think FEMA after Katrina, only across every federal agency. Now are you scared?

Rather than sit on the sideline and worry, IBM has turned this into a business opportunity of enormous potential for them. In recent weeks they've announced a new group to help companies manage an aging and retiring workforce. Cleverly named the IBM Business Consulting Services Human Capital Management group (IBMBCSHCM??? -- and we thought the Pentagon had acronyms!), they will (according to the press release):

"...provide companies with diagnostic tools based on advanced analytics, strategies and methodologies to understand their employee base in real-time, retain employees, transition knowledge and transform business processes to cope with the demographic change and significant skill shift."

And his name isn't Ken Dychtwald.

If you want to get smarter about aging Baby Boomers, you need to know Neil Howe, co-author of "The Fourth Turning" and other books on the relationship between generations and history. Neil runs LifeCourse Associates and helps companies gain a better understanding of generational differences and relationships.

While Ken Dychtwald may be a media darling and a spokesperson for Boomers and aging, his voice is but one. There are many, many others with insights and counsel that go far beyond the cohort-specific work by Ken.

In fact, there's an entirely different school of thought as reflected in the work of David Wolfe, author of Ageless Marketing. His insights are that Boomers will act like their elders when they get to be that age. In other words, you can predict how Boomers will behave later in life if you know Developmental Psychology. It's human nature, after all.

Ken Dychtwald says Boomers are different because of their common history and cultural experiences. You can predict how Boomers will behave if you understand the experiences they've been through -- how they were nurtured, if you will. Listen to Ken explain some of this during a radio interview with the Motley Fool. It's good stuff.

Neil Howe, however, goes one further than Ken and puts the Boomer generation in historical context. Which enables us to then better understand not just Boomers, but Gen X and the Millennial Generation as well.

You could say Neil is both Nature and Nurture.

And highly recommended reading.

FOR THE RECORD: The Boomer Project seeks to be like Switzerland in the "Nature vs. Nurture" insights into aging Boomers. This neutrality means we support all theories and use them in our research on how Boomers respond to marketing and advertising messages today. We're not trying to supply all the answers, only the answers to the questions about marketing and advertising.

Which puts us way beyond the Ken.