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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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| August 31, 2009
News & Insights from the Boomer Project
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Dear Matt,
You may think it is the end of the summer, but you'd be only half right. It's really the end of the year.
Regular readers know that we think the New Year starts on Labor Day in America, as families get back to the business of educating kids, and businesses get back to the business of making money.
It's been a busy summer with the contentious talk about healthcare reform and all the nostalgia about 1969. Perhaps Ted Kennedy's death is a suitable exclamation point to a summer spent looking back to the 1960's as much as looking forward to $9,000,000,000,000 in debt (it's bigger when you use zeros, isn't it?).
Post Labor Day will be interesting and probably dramatic on many fronts, from politics to economics. Is the recession over? Will consumers spend this holiday season? Is Obamacare alive or facing its own "death panel?" We'll keep watch and report from a Boomer marketing angle, as appropriate.
Meanwhile, this issue is a grab bag of observations, insights, commentary and fun facts to know and tell about marketing to today's Boomer Consumer.
Let's end this year with a bang, shall we?
-- The Editors
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Trends
The Mysteries of Advertising to Boomers
 We started the Boomer Project because we realized as Boomer consumers reached age 50 and beyond (and outside of the coveted 18-49 age demo), they were dead to most marketers. Or, marketers were automatically treating them as if they were "seniors."
At the time there were few if any articles in the media about "Boomers" or other generations. That's changed, and now the media uses generational names as short cuts to describe vast populations of consumers, sometimes accurately. Sometimes not.
For instance, recently Adweek's Mark Dolliver penned a thoughtful piece on advertising to consumers age 65+. These consumers are known as "seniors" in most cases, and referenced correctly in the article as members of the Silent Generation (born from 1925-45, more or less).
But some cub reporter summarized the article for a posting on another site with a headline "Advertising to Baby Boomers Can Be Tricky Business."
What a doofus. There is nothing tricky, just mysterious. Boomers are ages 45-63 in 2009. Not a single "Boomer" is over 65. The Adweek article, good as it is, isn't about Boomers at all.
Chuck Nyren, friend of the Boomer Project and world-renown advertising curmudgeon, has a nice visual summary of the problem the Adweek article addresses.
 A second mystery comes from an article in The New York Times about More magazine, designed from day one for women 40 and over. Today More finds it difficult convincing advertisers that their older female readers are worth the investment. To wit:
"...so advertisers penalize More for its age: The average More reader, age 51, makes about $93,000, around $30,000 more than the average for Vogue, Allure or Harper's Bazaar, according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence. But More has hardly a luxury ad in it."
As the publisher put it, "The media departments have their segments, and I don't know how it became 25 to 44 - excuse me, so I'm invisible?"
No, you're dead. At least to decision-makers inside most agency media departments, who are under 30 themselves, and think anyone over 50 is nearly dead, or certainly not worthy of attention.
Boomer Bottom Line: Apparently the task of enlightening marketers about the Boomer opportunity isn't complete. Time to redouble our efforts, people, especially in light of the recession.
Boomers are not done being consumers. Not by a long shot. here are some key facts:
- According to McKinsey, Boomer households will outnumber younger households until 2016, or seven years from now. And then, it just means younger household have caught up.
- The latest figures from the Consumer Expenditure Survey have Boomers outspending younger generations by $400 billion. That's more than the annual sales of Walmart.
- U.S. Census projections show the 50+ population increasing by 23% in the next 10 years while 18-49 grows less than one percent.
Marketers looking to bounce back after this recession should be developing programs to attract Boomers. And there's no mystery in that. |
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Looking Back and Forth
Over Woodstocked
 My, hasn't August been a walk down memory lane!
Story after story have harkened back to that glorious weekend in Bethel, New York in 1969. Thankfully, there have been a few commentaries that offer something other than a glowing recollection of all things Woodstock. Two notable ones:
And our favorite is this letter to the editor about a piece in The New York Times:
Woodstock: Give It Up!
Published: August 23, 2009
To the Editor:
As the 30-year-old son of a man who attended Woodstock in 1969, who has seen his father in the background in documentary videos, I say, please, Boomers, let it go (" 'Mad Men' Crashes Woodstock's Birthday," by Frank Rich, column, Aug. 16)!
I don't commemorate Pearl Jam's "Ten," or the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, or any of the peaceful three-day concert festivals I've been to over the course of my teenage years and 20s, and neither should you.
Woodstock was a concert, nothing more. It was peaceful. It was fun. The peak of the hippie movement was two years earlier, in San Francisco.
All of the great artists at Woodstock did not need the concert to make them great, and neither did the boomers who attended.
Jonathan Carey
San Francisco, Aug. 16, 2009
 And now, this past weekend brought us Taking Woodstock, which thankfully, according to most reviews, isn't actually about the concert as much as it is a coming of age story.
Perhaps a sign that this fall will bring about a new focus beyond 1969, the movie bombed at the box office. It got creamed by The Final Destination, a teen scream flick destined not to make many "must see" lists of Boomers.
Boomer Bottom Line: Since 1970 was a pretty lame summer, we are hopeful that next year we won't spend so much time looking backwards but can get on with our lives. All in all, we think trippin' down memory lane is going to be so last decade by the time 2010 rolls around.
Which won't be soon enough.
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Boomer Business
Serial Entrepreneurs and Other Observations
John Martin, co-founder of the Boomer Project, wrote a recent op/ed piece on how Boomers will create more small businesses over the next 10+ years, and therefore, more jobs, than any other age group.
The economic development implications alone are worth reading it. Unfortunately, as we compose this newsletter, our ISP and the Web site with the article aren't communicating, so we can only link you to the general "Opinion" page. From there, search for John Martin's piece published Sunday, August 23, 2009.
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Matt Thornhill, the other founder, also contributed a piece on the media consumption habits of older Boomers, for Media Post's Engage: Boomers newsletter. Thornhill will contribute new columns monthly.
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