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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? |
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. We tweet: Follow us on Twitter.
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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| September 28, 2009
News & Insights from the Boomer Project
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Dear Matt,
This week we have our collective blood in a boil over two things.
First, in our last issue we asked you, dear reader, to let us know of marketers who come to mind for doing a particularly effective job of connecting with today's Boomer Consumer. Guess what? Two of you offered opinions, out of 5,400 readers.
Ah, but we're not at all upset that only two responded to our request for input. We're upset that apparently no marketer out there earns kudos for effectively reaching Boomers. How sad is that?
Our second beef is with those marketers targeting Boomers and older adults and only think they are interested in age- or health-related issues. In a clever article in the Boston Globe, writer Joe Kahn watched the evening news on NBC and ABC a few weeks ago and counted dozens of age- and health-related messages targeted to older viewers. Kahn, a Boomer who writes trend and pop culture for the Globe, pokes fun at the commercials -- deservedly, we might add.
The larger issue is that marketers must think older consumers do not buy cars, food, electronics, home improvement products, or take vacations or use credit cards. No one over 35 is ever in any of those commercials. Guess what? Ignore Boomers and we might just go away.
That is, spend our money elsewhere.
-- The Editors
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Targeting Boomers
Enough With the "Why;" Let's Focus on "How"
 [From this week's Engage: Boomers column by the Boomer Project's Matt Thornhill]
When we started the Boomer Project back in 2003, we decided to focus on what we called "the second question." The first question was, of course, "Why market to today's older Boomers?"
Recent contributors to this column [Engage: Boomers] have addressed the "why" quite effectively.
Our point-of-view from the beginning was that marketers who woke up to the economic power of the Boomer generation, even beyond age 50, would then ask the next question: "How do we engage Boomers now?" We wanted to be there to answer it.
Fortunately, there were enough healthcare and financial services clients to springboard our marketing consulting and research business forward from those early days, but precious few marketers beyond those categories. Until recently.
...continued
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Case Study
Targeting the Health of Older Boomers
 When is it too early to target age-related health messages at Boomers? Good question. Depends on the age-related issue.
The hearing aid companies, and related battery companies, have been at it for a few years now, focusing on those Boomers who suffered hearing loss from standing too close to the speakers at one too many Bachman Turner Overdrive concerts in the 1970's.
Recently Bausch & Lomb launched a new advertising effort in support of Crystalens, an interocular lens that corrects cataracts and your vision at the same time. Their target is both seniors and today's older Boomers, according to their press materials.
The accompanying Web site, which has a TV commercial you can watch, is fairly straightforward and informational. The commercial itself is simple "problem/solution" and the casting is good -- an attractive, thin, active older woman, perhaps in her late 60's, and her husband.
The only issue is whether or not Boomers see themselves as old enough to be even thinking about cataract issues. The Mayo Clinic says the top risk factor for getting cataracts is trips around the sun: the more trips (the older you are), the more likely you'll develop cataracts.
Boomer Bottom Line: Our sense is that an age-related issue like cataracts seems like a problem Boomers probably won't think about encountering until they reach 70 or so. Only the leading edge Boomers are 63, and the median age is 54, so 70 feels a long way into the future for most of the 76 million Boomers.
Targeting Boomers is premature and not likely to generate any immediate results.
Having said that, the functionality of these new lenses is pretty incredible -- and exactly what older Boomers will want -- fix the cataracts and make it so there is never again a need for glasses or even readers. Outstanding!
Longer term, we see a clear future for Crystalens (yes, yes, the "clear" usage is a little lame) and other products that can help Boomers look good at any age, or grow older with grace and aplomb.
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Reaching Boomers
The Future of TV: Surf's Up!
 The new fall TV season is upon us, woe is us.
The 26 or so new shows being offered this fall from all of the various networks fall into a handful of usual categories:
- "Family" situation comedies
- "Friends" situation comedies
- Detective "Who Done It" dramas
- Medical dramas
- Sci Fi dramas
- Jay Leno
While not all of it is dreck, it is another year of everything new is old once again. We've seen this before. Many times. Melrose Place? Puh-lease.
The dilemma facing TV executives is that shows with "universal" appeal are few and far between, given that entertainment "on demand" is but a mouse click away. It is literally impossible to please everyone with a single TV show (see for example, the first Jay Leno episode, with Jerry Seinfeld, Oprah, and Kanye West!?! -- who finds all three equally worthy of their attention?).
At least the CW doesn't even try to reach older consumers, focusing 100% of its programming on the young and impressionable.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Boomers, the original TV generation, are watching less TV than ever before. In fact, according to a study done in May, Boomers now spend more free time online (12.9 hrs per week on average) than they do watching traditional TV (11.8 hrs per week on average).
Maybe that's why NBC has made it possible to watch their entire network schedule for free online.
That's right. Surf is indeed up.
Boomer Bottom Line: TV's role as the lead media dog, even for Boomers, is
behind us. To reach Boomers, put your money online first, then expand
into TV only to reach those you don't get online.
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