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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. |
| 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 5, 2010
News & Insights from the Boomer Project |
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Dear Matt,
We're back, ready to share insights and opinions on the world of marketing to Boomers. We didn't mean to take a hiatus from publishing, but some things are simply out of our control.
Our client work kept us too busy.
We're still busy, but we've reallocated some resources to make sure Jumpin' Jack Flash graces your in box twice a month.
We promise.
-- The Editors |
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Career Advice
10 Reasons Boomers Need to be in Your 2010 Plans
 For the last two years, the Marketing Executive Networking Group has polled its members to learn about the issues on the minds of top marketers. Both surveys included questions about the "most important marketing segment." Both times Boomers topped the list. Higher than Women or Hispanics/Latinos.
We wonder, though, how many of those marketing executives even have a marketing plan that includes Boomers. Our bet: practically none.
Twenty Ten (get used to it, trust us) is going to change that. Years ago, David Wolfe, author of Ageless Marketing and one of the most visionary marketing minds out there, was asked when marketers would wake up to the older demographic. He said, "When there is pain." That is, when business softens and marketers realize more money is in the hands of the older half of the population -- the one they've been ignoring.
In the last year we think marketers have experienced enough "pain" to their bottom line to examine the opportunities of targeting Boomers, or those over 50. To help in that examination, we offer 10 reasons Boomers need to be part of your marketing plan in 2010.
- You will build your career and legacy on their backs. (We thought we'd start with a personal reason to motivate you to keep reading.) In 2020, the marketing leaders in organizations will be the ones that figured out how to make their products or services relevant to the over-50 crowd. That's because the over-50 crowd will grow 21% in size in 10 years. The 18-49 crowd will remain the same size. We're not making this up. It's Census data.
- They buy things. Lots of things. Overall, the over-50 crowd outspends the under-50 crowd by $400 billion. That's more than Walmart sells annually. Want some of that action?
- They try new things. Boomers were raised in front of the TV; they are not "set in their ways." They'll buy your product if you make it relevant. So make it relevant.
- They are easy to reach. They read newspapers. They watch TV. They listen to the radio. They are easier to target than younger generations.
- They think they are in the middle of Middle Age. With a median age of 54, Boomers are far from being done. They don't think they will reach Old Age until age 75 or so. You have plenty of years of strong revenue from their wallets.
- They use the Internet. They search, they shop, they buy. There may not be as many of them on social networking sites, but they are online -- just as many and just as often as younger generations. You can sell to them online.
- They have grandkids. Some 40% of all Boomers are already grandparents. Over 55% of all grandparents alive today are Boomers. They spend money on their grandkids, practically without thinking. It's like taking candy from a grandbaby.
- They are control freaks. They control their parents' consumption of healthcare and their kids' education. They are a sandwich generation that likes being in the center of it all. Think "ham." They like to influence everyone's purchases -- family, friends, Facebook buddies.
- They like advertising. Sure, they are skeptical, but they are also fans of good advertising. They will respond to your effort if it speaks to them.
- They are the future. "Old" is where the action is for the next 20 years and Boomers are the new "old." New products, businesses and industries will cater to the new "old." Will you?
Put Boomers into your 2010 plan and demonstrate you've got 2020 foresight.
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Retirement Village?
The Future of Senior Living
 A recent NPR story occasioned by the 50th anniversary of Sun City, Ariz., sparked some thoughts about the future of Baby Boomers' retirement lifestyles. Sun City revolutionized America's thinking about retirement, enshrining the idea that senior citizens wanted to live an "active" retirement, and they wanted to do so in a community that catered to them with golf courses, club houses, craft and activity clubs, and age restrictions. No families with noisy children allowed. The formula proved a hit with the G.I. Generation, and even the Silent Generation. Now developers are betting vast sums predicated on the assumption that soon-to-retire Boomers will want the same thing -- only with more square footage, granite countertops, greener features, Internet cafes and continuing ed classes. Del Webb, developer of the original Sun City and now part of Pulte Homes, is building Sun City Festival, a "resort-style community" 25 miles west of the original. Living there, says the Del Webb web site, "is like being on vacation every day." We suspect that businesses that invest heavily in new products and services on the assumption that the Boomers' retirement will look like the Silent Generation's retirement, only greener and more cosmopolitan, will find themselves wishing they hadn't. Indeed, we believe that the ideal of retirement as a period of active, happy, care-free living may have peaked with the Silent Generation. It's not clear what will replace it, for Boomers have not begun retiring in large numbers, but future retirement will be constrained by the following:
- Few Boomers have saved sufficiently for a Sun City-style retirement, and what they have saved will be eroded by the soaring cost of medical care.
- To Boomers, staying "active" doesn't mean playing golf and tennis -- it means working. Boomers will work longer (a) because they have to financially, and (b) because they want to stay mentally and socially engaged.
- Boomers say they want to "age in place." Rather than segregating themselves from society in gray-haired suburbs, they want to stay involved in the communities where their family and friends live.
While a minority of Boomers are exercising more and eating more nutritious food than previous generations, the majority aren't.
- Overall, Boomers are experiencing more obesity, diabetes and other chronic medical conditions -- and the disabilities that stem from them -- than preceding generations at the same age. Many Boomers will have lifestyles that are far from active.
We will keep our eyes peeled for clues of where the Boomer retirement market is heading, and let you know what we find in future editions of Jumpin' Jack Flash.
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| Some 2020 Foresight?
 We got tired of reading all those assessments of the "Uh-Ohs," as we like to call the last decade, as 2009 came to an end. So we decided to write an assessment of the Twenty Teens, as if it is now the year 2020.
Read it and decide for yourself how to leverage the future we envision, or how to prove to us we're way off base. In any event, please save the column and send it back to us in December, 2019.
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