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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 15, 2009
News & Insights from the Boomer Project
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Dear Matt,
This issue offers four pieces to enrich your understanding of marketing to today's Boomer Consumer.
Enjoy.
-- The Editors
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Trends
Anybody Getting Marketing to
Today's Boomer Consumer Right?
 We are often asked by clients and prospects to cite marketers out there who are doing a great job of marketing to today's older Boomer Consumer. While we have a few that we mention, most of the time we find ourselves grasping at straws.
Sure, there are the pharma and financial services folks who have been focusing on older Boomers, some of whom "get it."
But our question to you, dear reader: Is it really that bad out there for everyone else? Are there national brands or marketers who "get" the older Boomer target audience? (Wait, wait, before you send in the new The Beatles: Rock Band product marketing as an example, read the next article.)
Send us your thoughts at getsit@boomerproject.com and we'll share what you tell us in the next issue.
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The Beatles: Rock Band
"When I'm 64" Indeed
 The hype leading up to the launch on 9/9/09 of the new Rock Band video game featured the music from the Beatles was pretty big, with stories predicting the product would sell out on the first day (it didn't). But the media coverage after the launch has been larger. Perhaps even out of control.
The review in The New York Times was off the charts and a little freaky:
One Friday evening last month I invited a gaggle of 20-something hipsters (I'm 36) to my apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to try the game. After 15 minutes one 25-year-old said, "I'm going to have to buy this for my parents this Christmas, aren't I?" After nine hours we had completed all of the game's 45 songs in one marathon session. On Saturday afternoon, I woke up to watch a 20-year-old spend three hours mastering the rolling, syncopated drum sequences in "Tomorrow Never Knows." Thirty-six hours later, near dawn Monday morning, there were still a few happy stragglers in my living room belting out "Back in the U.S.S.R."
Before you want to make a social commentary about young people "investing" 36 straight hours of their lives playing a video game pretending to play the guitar, consider this comment on the NYT web site:
In the 70s we laid around on the couch and passively listened to LPs. In the 80s and 90s we were transfixed by music videos on the boob tube. In the early 00s we sang along with the karaoke machine. And now we virtually interact with the artists via video games. Entertainment has evolved. To those who see this latest trend as troubling or creepy, I'd suggest you open your minds a little and realize that the medium is the message.
One blogger offered a more pragmatic assessment of the game and the Beatles' role in the cultural history of America -- it's not just a Boomer thing after all:
The Beatles remain relevant as a band not because our parents' generation holds them up as the pinnacle of the form. It's not even because their music has thoroughly influenced all of rock and pop. They remain relevant because a significant portion of each successive generation has fallen in love with their music. Some people might love that music solely as misplaced nostalgia for a 1960's that never really existed, but it's untenable to claim that everyone loves them for that reason. You can love the Beatles because you think they wrote really good songs. You can appreciate the unique and undeniable influence they've had on pop music in isolation from whatever other cultural impact they've made. To say otherwise is just kind of silly.
AdAge has a thoughtful piece on the power of the Beatles "brand" beyond Boomers. In it, they report:
Rapleaf, an online brand consultancy, did a study of its social-media user audience and found the Beatles had four times as many fans as Michael Jackson did before he died, and more fans than Elvis, Madonna and the gloved one combined. The average age of a Beatles fan was the second-youngest of the four chosen musical celebrities; the band was the most popular in the 18-to-25-year-old group.
Boomer Bottom Line: Let's look at The Beatles: Rock Band not as a bright shining moment in Boomer marketing, but a shrewd move by a smart marketing organization that wanted a product with broad appeal, across the ages, so to speak.
Most are fearful that marketing to Boomers means an entirely new, additional effort and budget. Not necessarily. The trick is to develop programs that cut across everyone, including Boomers.
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Change You Can Live With
More Evidence of the New Fru
 The lasting recession has led some Boomers to downsize their homes, selling their McMansions for more modest accommodations, according to a recent story in The New York Times.
We are not economists, although we sometimes play one on TV, and therefore we are not ready to jump on the downsizing bandwagon and claim it as a pervasive trend. That's because we think the real estate market will not return to the year-over-year growth enjoyed in recent years for another decade or more.
This is a supply and demand issue: Not enough Generation Xers were born to buy all the real estate owned by Boomers. Not enough demand means prices don't go up. Growth in real estate values shouldn't kick in until demand is greater than the supply, which we think won't happen until enough Millennials get further along in their careers and income levels -- when the oldest of them reach 40 a dozen years from now.
Boomer Bottom Line: On a personal level, it might mean taking the long view on your current real estate investments. For companies and marketers, it means money is there to be made in home maintenance and repair. Especially as Boomers reach the age where it is easier to sign a check than wield a hammer.
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Saving for a Rainy Day?
 Has the recession changed consumer behavior for good?
In one sense, yes, definitely for the good. Until 2007 the savings rate in the U.S. had been falling for two decades, hitting an all-time low of 0.3% in 2005. But the bail-out announcements a year ago have changed that.
In a recent survey, Boomer households say they intend to save an amazing 12% of their income when the recession ends. The study, by financial services firm AlixPartners, finds that all Americans plan to save 14% of their income. If this happens, a new global economic order is at hand. Think about out -- a permanent decrease in consumer spending of 14%? Talk about a slow-down. Consumer-driven businesses will suffer.
Even if these findings are colored somewhat by the emotions of the day, Americans are definitely speaking loud and clear: They believe the "new normal" for the American economy going forward will be more like the responsible savings habits of the 1970s-80s. Not like the 2000s.
Boomer Bottom Line: We've said it before, businesses need to find ways to offer meaningful value at whatever price point they offer. That's what consumers will spend money on. Those in the business of managing money for savings and investments -- the financial services industry -- looks poised to prosper with this large intake of new money.
Ironic isn't it? The industry that precipitates the recession is the first to benefit from the shift in consumer behavior. Ugh.
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Grandparent for Life
This past weekend was Grandparents Day. A big day for Boomers, for sure.
Would you believe that about 40% of all Boomers are already grandparents? Some 55% of all grandparents alive today are Boomers. The median age of a Boomer who is a grandparent is 54 years old. Bruce Willis is 54. So is Debra Winger. Not your image of a grandparent, huh?
 We have relationships (as members of the Advisory Board) with two terrific grandparent-targeted media vehicles -- Grandparents.com, and GRAND Magazine (published online only). Both have nice offers running.
 At Grandparents.com you get a free "100 Free Things to do with Your Grandkids" download when you sign up for their free newsletter. GRAND is running a free subscription offer this month, so if you are a newer grandparent, sign yourself up.
Boomer Bottom Line: Once a grandparent, always a grandparent. It is one life stage Boomers connect with emotionally and permanently. Marketers on the ball are figuring out how to tap into the Grandparent economy. It's ripe for the taking.
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