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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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June 1, 2010
News & Insights from the Boomer Project |
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Dear Matt,
Note to Readers: Our little spring hiatus is over. We'll be publishing Jumpin' Jack Flash with more regularity.
While we've been "dark," it seems the Boomers lost their market mojo. Generation X and the Millennials are finally poised to displace them as the most important market demographic in the United States, ruining the entire marketing-to-Boomers movement. That's the impression created by a new report by PriceWaterhouse Coopers in the March edition of its Retail & Consumer Insights report.
What's worrisome is that they might be right, as you can read in our first story below.
But if Boomers are slipping into the marketing shadows, you wouldn't know it yet by Apple's ad campaign for the iPhone or by the increasing calls for Boomer models supplied by the Ford Agency, both of which we profile in this issue.
Media giant NBC and advertising heavyweight Procter & Gamble haven't gotten the message either, launching the new online destination for Boomers, "Life Goes Strong." We comment, of course.
Thankfully, the fight isn't out of Boomers overseas, as French 50somethings take to the street to protest raising the retirement age from 60 (that's right, 60) to 61 or 62. Oo-la-la.
-- The Editors
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Economic Trends
Boomers Will Be Supplanted...by 2020
The Baby Boomer generation, which powered consumer spending over the past two to three decades, may be showing its age. Concludes PriceWaterhouseCooper in the March edition of its Retail & Consumer Insights report: "[Boomers] will not be in a position to lead the way out of this recession as they near retirement and conserve savings."
This business expansion will not follow the script of the the retail boom that followed the dot.com recession, when Boomers were in their peak earning years and quickly resumed their pre-recession spending, says the report. "The need to save and invest for the future will compete with spending at retail in a way it never has before for this generation." The up-market segment of Generation X (ages 29 to 45) and the leading edge of Generation Y (Millennials, ages 10 to 28) will lead the recovery.
Here is how up-market Boomers and up-market Gen Xers responded to a PWC survey:
Doing more shopping at discount/value retailers:
Boomers - 17%
Gen Xers - 15% Buying only items needed in the near term:
Boomers - 21%
Gen Xers - 12% Buying fewer things:
Boomers - 36%
Gen Xers - 32% Shopping less often:
Boomers - 36%
Gen Xers - 29% Buying only things I truly need:
Boomers - 47%
Gen Xers - 38%
One caveat: PWC may have published its report in March 2010 but it drew from surveys it conducted in the first half of 2009, so the numbers are more than a year old.
We recently reviewed some U.S. Census projections and came upon some evidence that strengthens the PWC conclusions, even though they don't cite these figures themselves.
If one looks at the total head count today (projected) of U.S. residents in the Boomer age segment, there are approximately 76.5 million "Boomers." This includes the 76 million born here, some 7.5 million immigrants ages 46 to 64 this year, and reflects the death of about 7 million Boomers so far (see Boomer Death Counter for their current total).
Generation X, those born from 1965 through 1982 (or thereabouts), was a smaller generation overall due to lower birth rates. But the total depends on the cut off date -- shift the end date a year one way or another and 4 million go from one generational label to another. We've seen Gen X as only those born from 1965 through 1979. Of course it's smaller with those dates.
The more important point is that this particular generation has seen much more dramatic increase in its size as a result of immigration.
Let's set Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials at 20 year intervals, to equalize them, and then look at how they have changed in total size over the last several decades, due to immigration.
Click to Enlarge |
As you can see, the smaller Gen X is now as big as the Boomer generation (stretched to include 1945 as part of equalizing all generations to lasts 20 yeasrs). Millennials, too, are as large, but keep in mind their media age is only 20 in this cut -- the youngest half are ages 10 to 19.
But it doesn't take a consulting firm like PWC to see that change is afoot in this decade -- Boomers will indeed see their dominance erode and be overtaken by Gen X and up-and-coming Millennials.
The Boomer Line: The PWC data doesn't strike us as particularly enlightening. Boomers are increasingly worried about retirement, and their spending may be competing with their need to save.
Our look at the Census projections offers a more compelling reason to think Boomer are soon to start waning as everyone's most valuable consumer.
Note that we don't advise ignoring them -- 80 million or even 75 million are a big audience. The key is to figure out hwo to include them, even though despite their best efforts, they've grown older. |
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Case Study
Apple Polishes the Boomer Market
Here's what we mean by not ignoring Boomers.
 We often think of Apple as the youthful computer company that originated in Steve Jobs' garage and came to epitomize "cool" through edgy design, cutting-edge products and its buck-the-establishment "1984" Super Bowl ad. But Steve Jobs is 55 years old now, and he, or someone on his team, really understands the Boomer generation. Writing in a MediaPost blog, Anne Mai Bertelsen praises Apple for jumping ahead of technology and lifestyle-brand competitors, who are "myopically focused on the youth market," in understanding how to reach Boomers. As examples, she cites Apple's iPhone television spot, "First Steps."
The "First Steps" ad shows an iPhone view of a baby's first steps while a young mother's voice-over explains how she records and sends the video to her mother and grandfather. The tagline: "We would never have shared all that without the iPhone." The snapshot story, Bertelsen writes, "brilliantly signals key multi-generational benefits of the 3GS iPhones: capturing and sharing important family milestones."
The Boomer line: The script never alludes to age. It direct viewers' attention to the practical benefits of owning Apple's products. No wonder Boomers represent a third of all iPhone users.
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 Marketing
The Boom in Boomer Models
Apple may steer clear of portraying Boomers in the flesh, but plenty of other advertisers are happy to. Just don't expect to see gray-hairs with crinkly eyes and ample bellies. Advertisers want their Boomers glamorous, or at least wholesome and healthy looking. And the Ford Models agency, which represents some of the world's hottest supermodels, is getting into the act.
Juliette Branker, 53, works two jobs: as a customer service agent for Lowes and as a model for Ford. The agency has tapped her to model clothes on the Today Show five times. She doesn't exactly earn supermodel salary, according to a New York Times trend story, but $800 for a couple hours of work beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Writes the Times:
Ford has long employed middle-age "classic" models, but it wasn't until two years ago that the numbers got big enough for the agency to create a freestanding division. In the mid-1980s ... the agency had 12 classic models in New York; by the mid-1990s, 18. That had grown to 40 by 2008, and today there are 54 - a sign that despite the Great Recession, boomers continue to have more buying power than most.
The Boomer line: The New York ad agencies are finally figuring out that Boomers relate to other Boomers in advertising. Just don't limit us to ads for incontinence, dentures or erectile dysfunction.
Maybe you've heard, we buy iPhones, too. |
 New Media
What Boomer Women Want
Two heavy hitters, NBC Digital Networks and Procter & Gamble, are partnering to offer a new online destination for baby boomers, "Life Goes Strong." As the corporate press release puts it, this network of websites will celebrate topics and passions "at the center of this dynamic generation's everyday lives." The network currently includes verticals devoted to family, style and technology, with more categories to come. "Knowing that more than a third of all internet users are adults between 45 and 64 years old, we saw an opportunity to work with Procter & Gamble to create a site network that can actively fuel this age group," said Devin Johnson, veep of NBC Digital Networks. P&G points out that boomers are a powerful demographic with an annual spending power of $1 trillion. The collaboration allows brand marketers within P&G and beyond to engage with this group of consumers. Needless to say, we agree with the market analysis. The question is, if they build it, will the Boomers come? The layout is clean and easy to navigate, and content consists of short, magazine-style articles on such topics as: - STDs After 50
- How Old Is Too Old For a Miniskirt
- Mean Girls No More
- How to Save Your Wet Cell Phone
The Boomer line: The players know their business, but we're not sure yet if they know Boomers. Being of a "certain age" doesn't bind us together. P&G's mothering destinations work for any new mother, no matter her age. But there's precious little that connects Boomers as an "age group." We're connected by life stage or life styles, not similar ages.
On top of that, the initial content is bland. The beta version has no strong voice or point of view. It's least common denominator stuff that may work for mass media like television but it's not what people gravitate to on the Web.
Look, we like the big picture thinking behind the website, but we think there is work to be done on the formula before it succeeds.
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 Viva France
Ah, the French.
Paris, brie, wine, St. Tropez, Cannes. What's not to love?
Why the government's decision to raise the retirement age from 60 -- yes, that's right, 60 -- to something horrible like 62. If that's not worth a good protest march, what is?
Mon dieu, sacre bleu! Perhaps rather than comment extensively on this development, and predict the date when this will happen in the U.S. (and it will in some quarters, trust us), let us instead point you to an informed discussion on the topic, arranged by The New York Times.
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