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Buy our book, Boomer Consumer today |
| Voted "Best of the Best" Business Books in 2007 by CORBIS.
Available and in stock online at Amazon.com, BN.com and at Barnes & Noble stores in major markets.
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There's more. Oh, yes, there's much more.
On the Web:
Check out the Boomer Project web site, where we archive our published content and tell you how to line up Matt Thornhill and John Martin as speakers.
Visit the Older Dominion Partnership, a Virginia-based consortium of businesses, not-for-profits, universities and government agencies planning 10 to 20 years ahead for the Age Wave of aging Boomers.
In the Boomer Consumer blog, we venture beyond the topic of marketing to Baby Boomers into Boomer finances, family structure, sociology and the science of aging. |
| About Us |
The Boomer Project offers the most thorough and up-to-date portrait of today's Boomer Consumer. How can we help?
We offer consulting to help companies and organizations develop their "50+ plan." If you don't have one, you better. It's the only demographic segment that will increase in size over the next decade, growing some 23% while the 18-49 segment stays stagnant (Census data, baby).
We also conduct on-site programs, where we educate your marketing and/or customer service personnel about how today's Boomer Consumers think, feel and respond to your messages. These day-long sessions include insights obtained from our on-going proprietary national research among Boomers.
Contact us to learn more about all of our services.
Email: info@boomerproject.com
Phone: 804.690.4837
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| January 29, 2009
News & Insights from the Boomer Project
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Dear Matt,
The business headlines get more depressing by the day. Declining revenues... Panic and recriminations... Ponzi schemes of unprecedented scale and audacity -- and that's just Congress. Where's a company to turn in a downturn like this?
You know the answer, and we know you know because you're reading this newsletter. As Matt Thornhill writes in his 'Wanderings" column this issue, Baby Boomers represent one of the few growing markets around. While many advertisers remain fixated on the stagnant under-50 market, the 50+ market grows by leaps and bounds. And, while Boomer assets have been hammered by the downturn, their earning power continues mostly undiminished.
The trick to reaching those Boomers is understanding what they want in the current stage of their life cycle, and how to appeal to their generational sensibilities. In the articles below, we provide glimpses into new and emerging markets in which generational analysis sheds new light.
James A. Bacon
SVP-Publishing
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 Feature Story
The End of Housing Excess
Tighter lending standards aren't the only reason people are buying smaller house sizes. Millennials and Baby Boomers are redefining the American Dream -- and it doesn't require 3,500 square feet for a three-person household.
After six decades of demanding ever bigger houses, Americans have reversed course. Whether due to economic hardship, evolving lifestyles or an interest in environmental sustainability - or all three -- Americans are settling for smaller dwellings.
In 1950 the average size of a single-family home was about 1,000 square feet. In 2007, the average size topped out at 2,521 square feet - even though average household sizes had been shrinking. Then, in the third quarter of 2008, the average size of new single-family homes took a dive - to 2,438 square feet. Those figures come from Gopal Ahluwalia, director of research for the National Association of Home Builders, by way of USA Today.
Tighter lending requirements undoubtedly are a critical factor in the new-found frugality of American homeowners. But we see longer-term trends at work as we view the housing market from a generational perspective. We think that significant segments of the American population are adopting new values and priorities. No longer do they embrace the aesthetic ethic of what urbanologist Kenneth Jackson called the "crabgrass frontier" of large single-family houses on large lots dependent upon automobiles for reaching every destination.
Observers have been predicting for a year or two that the era of McMansions is fading into history. A recent article in the Nashville Business Journal suggests that there is a generational component to the story. In effect, Millennials and Baby Boomers - the two largest generations -- are formulating different definitions of the American Dream. Read more.
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 NYT Gets the Boomer Fevah
The Gray Lady tailors new column to its core demographic.
We're pleased to see that in these parlous times of shrinking newsrooms and truncated news holes, that the New York Times has assigned a writer to cover Baby Boomers. Michael Winerip ran his inaugural column, "Generation B," in the Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009, edition.
As loyal readers of Jumpin Jack Flash know, Matt Thornhill has been laboring in this vineyard (excuse the cliche, but Boomers do account for the bulk of serious wine drinkers in this country) since 2004. But as persuasive as Matt is in front of a conference audience of hundreds, his reach can't match that of the Gray Lady (1.4 million Sunday circulation), so we're delighted to see the coverage.
Winerip, the former "parenting" columnist, promises to be an entertaining writer. He has a gift for turning a phrase, such as this one:
Baby Boomer doesn't give off the same nuance as "The Greatest Generation." A thousand sun-dappled villas in Tuscany can't touch the rows of plain white crosses on the bluffs of Normandy.
However, as that paragraph also suggests, he does come across as defensive and apologetic about Boomers, implicitly conceding by faint praise that some of the criticisms leveled against them just may have some merit. Moreover, it's not clear from his first column that he has any great themes in mind, such as, oh, I don't know... the looming generational warfare over Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare entitlements!!!
While welcoming Winerip into the fraternity of Boomerologists, we also applaud the NYT's business savvy. Boomers are the core demographic for print newspapers these days. And underneath Winerip's column, stripped across the bottom of the Sunday Style section, is an ad for... Gucci. Even in a recession, Boomer consumerism dies hard. |
Just the Facts, Ma'am
Mother's Little Helper
All that sex, drugs and rock n roll didn't ruin the Boomers after all. They seem to be handling the stresses of contemporary society better than younger generations.
I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper
-- Rolling Stones, 1966
It's not a good time, from an economic perspective, to be a Baby Boomer. Home values are plunging. 401k plans have been eviscerated. Traditional pension plans are grossly under-funded. While their financial prospects deteriorate, Baby Boomers have kept a remarkably up-beat attitude. If their savings run low, it's not the end of the world. They'll just have to work a few years longer. Which is OK, because that's what most of them were planning to do anyway.
Still, given how the financial meltdown affects Boomers and the Silent Generation disproportionately, you'd think that older Americans would be experiencing a lot more stress and anxiety than younger generations in a time like this.
The Rolling Stones penned a big bit in 1966 skewering the Valium addiction among the Silent Generation mothers of their era. But, pop psychology to the contrary, survey data from BIGresearch suggests that stress-related maladies such as migraines, depression, anxiety and insomnia are far more prevalent among the younger generations today than the supposedly pill-addled Silents or even their Baby Boomer offspring.
Judging by the BIGresearch data, Gen Xers and Millennials are far more stressed out by life than their elders. What's not so clear is why. One possibility is that stress is related to a generation's stage in the life cycle, tied to the ravages of hormones or the roller coaster ride of alternating love and despair, or simply the learned ability to control one's emotions. Another possibility is that Americans have developed increasingly fragile psyches over the successive generations. By this theory, Millennials, whose parents nourished their self esteem by never subjecting them to failure or disappointment, are less prepared to cope with hardship.
We have no idea which theory is the correct one, or whether some other explanation lurks out there. But we'll keep our eyes peeled for evidence that points one way or another. A generational proclivity to anxiety and depression, if it exists, is a fundamental trait that every marketer and advertiser needs to understand.
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 Where's the Toga Party?
Not all Boomers are planning encore careers. Some are aiming for encore education, creating a huge new market for educational products and services.
"Animal House," the comedy classic starring John Belushi, was set in 1962. But the anarchic attitude of the n'er-do-wells at the Delta House fraternity reflected the Baby Boomer zeitgeist of 1978, the year the movie was released. Boomer college kids of that era went on to graduate (well, most of them did.... eventually), get jobs, marry, raise kids, and... go back to college. Adults aged 50 and older now account for 3.8 percent of U.S. students enrolled in courses at degree-granting colleges and universities, and that number is increasing, according to Mary Beth Lakin, associate director for the center of Lifelong Learning at the American Council on Education. Read more.
Speaking of Lifelong Learning...
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, established in 2001, now collaborates with 123 institutions of higher education across the country to open up college classrooms to older students, many of retirement age, to pursue learning for the sake of learning -- no homework, no exams, no course credits. The educational market for Boomers is poised for take-off!
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Wanderings
Not Gone, But Forgotten
 by Matt Thornhill
When consumer spending plunges, retailers need a competitive advantage to survive. Here's one: Try a little customer service!
There's a cartoon where a young retail clerk enters the store manager's office and says, "There's someone out there calling themselves a 'customer' wanting something called 'service.'"
In these troubling times with retailers suffering declines, bankruptcy and - in the case of Circuit City - liquidation, perhaps a return to delivering good customer service is in order. Wait, let's make that a command: Deliver good customer service or die!
Retailers should view Circuit City as a cautionary tale. Media reports say that the self-afflicted mortal blow occurred back in 2007 when the company fired some 3,000 top-earning store sales people as a cost-cutting measure. Customer service did more than disappear: It got hired by Best Buy. Deep cuts in costs are de rigeur right now, but short-changing customer service could prove fatal.
Customer service as a differentiator is not new, especially to Boomers. We live in a commodity-glutted world. A good cup of coffee isn't found exclusively at Starbucks. But a latte hand-crafted by your favorite barrister somehow tastes better than the one cranked out by the crew member at Mickey D's. Think about high-end department stores - Saks, Macy's, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom's. They all carry the same brands, assortments and quality, but Nordstrom's is different because its employees are known for unmatched customer service. Read more. | |
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