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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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| Can't Get Enough of that Baby Boomer Stuff? |
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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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| May 21, 2009
News & Insights from the Boomer Project
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Dear Matt,
Last week in Tampa Bay we experienced the first general public Boomer conference that worked. The Florida Boomer Lifestyle Conference pulled in well over 200 participants from the region, mostly business owners and managers. The topics and speakers informed attendees about the Boomer opportunity and our sense was that most left at the end of the day with lots of ideas and a bounce in their step. Anyone out there thinking about putting on a Boomer conference should follow the model of the Tampa event, which started by lining up sponsors that could help bring in a crowd. We know the conference succeeded thanks to the efforts of Michelle Bauer at Common Language. Be warned, it wasn't a small undertaking, but at least it was a successful one. Also, this week we've decided to join the Twitter revolution. Starting today we're going to post "tweets" on all things Boomer-marketing focused as it happens. To follow us, just go to our profile page and click "Follow" (or join Twitter so you can follow us). We promise to make it worth your while. -- The Editors
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Case Study Back to the Future (Again)
Remember "New" Coke? Now we've got "old" Pepsi.
PepsiCo doesn't call its resurrected sugar-sweetened Pepsi and Mountain Dew beverages "old," of course. That would sound stale and flat. PepsiCo calls them "Throwbacks."
The intent, says Pepsi spokeswoman Nicole Bradley, is to give Baby Boomers a reminder of what the drinks tasted like back in the 1960s, reports the McClatchy News Service. "And for Millennials, [the products] are something new."
Back in the days of Boomer youth, Pepsi sweetened its soft drinks with sugar made from cane and beets. In the 1970s, the industry shifted to high fructose corn syrup sweetening. In recent years, though, corn syrup has lost its price advantage as the ethanol industry has bid up the price of corn. Additionally, nutritionists have implicated corn syrup as a major contributor to the national obesity epidemic.
A Pepsi Throwback ad on YouTube doesn't mention any of that. Rather, it evokes the '60s with a bass-voiced narrator, psychedelic graphics and a dancer with a huge Afro hairstyle. The ad closes with the tag-line, "Made with Natural Sugar."
The Boomer Line: We're thinking that Pepsi, a savvy generational marketer, is making a virtue of necessity. Substituting cane sugar for corn syrup would save money and preserve profit margins. Why not dress up a switch from one sweetener to another as a Baby Boomer nostalgia play? PepsiCo doesn't want to replay the "New" Coke fiasco of some years back, though, so the company is soft-peddling the roll out.
For now, the plan is for the "Throwback" versions to be around for a limited time. But you can bet your sweet bippy that if the market responds favorably, "Throwback" won't be just for Boomers anymore.
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Markets
 Paying for Aging in Place
In selling "aging in place" products to Silent Generation seniors, the optimal marketing path may be through their caregivers: their Boomer children. Such devices are designed to help the elderly live independently by monitoring their health with sensors, notifying caregivers in case of falls or emergencies, or even turning off stove tops that have been left on too long.
Often the cost falls upon the children. According to a recent Caring.com study, 45% of adult children caring for aging parents are providing them with financial assistance - spending more than $5,500 per year for out-of-pocket expenses. Many of these caregivers are far from affluent: 31% said they may have to delay retirement, while 43% said they have cut back on extras like entertainment and vacations. A big question for the marketers of aging -in-place products and services is how willing Boomers are to pay for peace of mind. The AARP Healthy@Home study found that three quarters would not be willing to pay more than $50 per month. In its own study, Clarity, a provider of communications devices for the elderly, reported that while 51% of Boomers believed that technology could help their parents, only 14% had looked for any. Laurie Orlov, publisher of Aging in Place Technology Watch, takes the position the Boomers can afford to pay, no matter what they say. She notes that Boomer households fork out substantial sums monthly for cell phones, broadband service and cable TV. Throw in NetFlix, health club dues and other routine recreation/ entertainment, and they typically spend $300 per month. Writes Orlov:
"We are talking about $93.93/month to connect to an aging parent in another city, remind them to take their meds, and offer them a wearable link to a service or person in the event of an emergency. ... Split the cost among two adult children (baby boomers have more siblings than prior generations) - now it's $47."
The Boomer Line: It strikes us that Orlov failed to refute the AARP and Clarity survey findings. The Caring.com study makes it clear that "incidental" expenses can add up to much more than $93.93 per month. Still, Orlov has highlighted a unique challenge associated with this emerging market: persuading people to spend money on products and services on their parents, not themselves. Following Orlov's reasoning, Boomers can be guilt-tripped into signing up. We'll keep our eyes peeled for examples of how marketers are positioning their aging-in-place products to elders and their Boomer children.
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Markets  Laying out Green to Be Green
As organic farming moves from a passion of aging hippies into the agribusiness mainstream, the marketing of organic goods is getting more sophisticated. To get a sense of changing consumer preferences, researchers with J.D. Power and Associates reviewed more than 50,000 online "conversations" on blogs.
The purpose of the study was to see how consumers valued private label brands of organic products. In the course of their research, researchers found that attitudes toward organic products differed by generation, reports The Packer, a trade publication.
Baby Boomer consumers tended to emphasize the health benefits of organic food, but were also the most price-conscious consumers.
By contrast, Generation X consumers purchased organics because "they wanted the best for their families," The Packer says. Millennials were more focused on the environmental benefits, and they tended to be the least price conscious.
The Boomer Line: We're a little surprised by the findings. In a national study of green attitudes and behaviors we conducted last year, before the economic downturn, we found that while the younger generations strongly hewed to green values, they were also more price conscious - presumably because they had less income.
Boomers, by contrast, were more willing to express their values through their wallets. Our study focused more on overall green behaviors and not specifically on organic foods. It is possible the generations may apply different criteria when it comes to organic food - health benefits, for instance - than they would with other green products.
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