Dear Matt,
Quite a week on Wall Street, huh?
Our favorite black humor of the week is
"What are the only two positions to take in today's market?
Answer: Cash or fetal."
It's certainly sobering to watch your
401k turn into a 201k in one week's time.
The implications for marketers focusing
on Boomers are significant in the short term (uh, consumption
will grind to a halt), but also important for the long-term as
well.
That's because now more than ever
Boomers will plan on delaying "retirement" beyond age 62 or 65
until some to-be-determined date in the future. Driven more by
financial need now than personal wants, this means millions
more Boomers will stay in the workforce longer, earning more
money, but also spending more money. Plus, they'll contribute
more to Social Security and delay applying for benefits
longer.
A recent analysis by McKinsey concluded
that if the average age for Social Security benefits was
delayed by some 18 months, it would remain solvent
forever.
Maybe we can take it off the table as
an issue to be solved by Congress ("the opposite of pro
is con, the opposite of Progress is..."). Turns out the
marketplace will solve it for us.
October 2008 will be remembered as the
month the market convinced Boomers work is better than
retirement. Mark our words.
Report on the Focalyst
Forum
For the last few months we've been
encouraging readers of this newsletter to attend the Focalyst
Executive Forum that took place last week in New York City.
Having gone ourselves, we want to report on the good, the bad
and the disappointing.
The good was the networking and spending time
with other attendees and the sponsors. The bad was that it was
split into multiple "tracks" and we couldn't benefit from
every presentation.
But most important was the
disappointment. That's right, our overall assessment was that
the event did not meet expectations. And our expectations came
from the outstanding content at the first Focalyst Forum back
in 2006.
To be fair, today is very different than 2006. Back
then, Focalyst was a joint venture between AARP Services and
the Kantar Group, WPP Group's research organization. Today it
is housed within Kantar's MillwardBrown and AARP Services is
gone. Back in 2006 the event had one "track" and if memory
serves, almost all of the presenters were companies and
organizations sharing their successes and failures in
developing marketing programs targeted to Boomers. Focalyst
shared findings from their expansive survey of over 30,000
consumers from early 2006.
The original event wasn't trying to educate us about
Boomers, or why they are important. Instead, it assumed those
paying the $1,895 retail admission price had already figured
that out and were ready for real hands on learning. In 2006,
the Forum delivered.
Last week, not so much.
Many of the presenters simply provided Boomer 101
type content -- J. Walker Smith of Yankelovich gave an overly
enthusiastic presentation where he kept telling us (or
to be more accurate, yelling at us) that Boomers are
important because of "the NUMBERS." Thanks for that
tidbit.
Focalyst reported on a new national study among
Boomers. But the total sample size was only 324 people. A
far cry from 30,000 last time. Plus, the margin of error for a
sample that small is practically larger than this week's stock
market decline.
Other presenters told us Boomers are online,
environmentally responsible, fed up with the financial
services category, not going to live in assisted living or
nursing homes, and respond to marketing that makes them feel
younger than they are.
Few, if any, offered practical insights, and more
importantly, implications for marketers. In our not-so-humble
view the most productive and useful conferences are ones that
show the attendees what works and what doesn't, and what they
ought to be doing next. Even the futurist who presented didn't
deliver a plan of action for marketers to take advantage of
the future he portrayed.
Now, it could be we're jaded, having been focused on
Boomers since 2003, long before the current mania began.
If anyone out there attended and has a different point of
view, please share. Just email
matt@boomerproject.com and
we'll report next month.
*******
Remember, another way to stay on top of all the important
news and our commentary on understanding Boomers is to
subscribe to our blog,
Boomer Consumer :: The
Blog. We try to post new content several times a
week.
Just click the link and scroll down until you see a place
to type in your email address on the right side of the page.
You'll get an email on those days we post something
new.
