Readership this month jumps up quite a bit as we've had an onslaught of new subscribers. Welcome to all our new friends (and we hope you know your Rolling Stones song and album titles).

This issue will focus on two topics: First, Perception vs. Reality when it comes to marketing to Boomers over 50. For most marketers, it's been just their imagination, running away with them. We try to get them back on the right track.

Second, we'll look into where Boomers are going to live during their later stages in life. Here's a hint: the article is called Emotional Rescue and not "Bridges to Babylon." We'll talk about what this might mean for real estate developers, home furnishings and home improvement.

As always, if you have another point of view on any of this, let us know. We'll share it with our readers next month.

Lastly, we have exciting news about the August 2004 wave of our national survey of Boomers, when we'll introduce the Boomer Marketing Index, a quarterly tracking study on the attitudes, impressions and responses Boomers over 50 have towards marketing and advertising messages.

Matt Thornhill
The Boomer Project

When we set out to learn more about Boomers over 50 and their attitudes about marketing, we thought we'd uncover a mis-informed stereotype or two. Turns out from our first wave of national research that Boomers over 50 are very different from previous generations of "seniors." Virtually all stereotypes aren't just wrong, they'll lead you down the wrong path altogether.

For example, 50 isn't old anymore. Far from it. In fact, it's early middle age, according to Boomers themselves.

Real estate developers and agents are slowly awakening to a new way of thinking when it comes to where Baby Boomers are going to live out their lives. The buzzword is "Aging-in-Place" or AIP.

That means not moving to Florida or Sun City or Palm Desert, like the last generation of retirees did. It means finding a maintenance-free or low maintenance home where they live now. And "home" usually means not far from where the children -- and now, grandchildren -- live. Not isolated from the rest of society with others their own age.

To Boomers, "home" also means where their lifetime of connections can be found -- from work to church to neighbors to family to friends. Boomers spent their lives making emotional connections. They won't break them now as they begin thinking about where they want to live in their later years.

Since "home" is also a place, it's interesting to see what builders in Georgia are already doing...

Survey Sampling International and the Boomer Project announce a new quarterly national survey of Baby Boomers and their attitudes, opinions and impressions of marketing and advertising-related issues.

The survey will track responses to a series of questions about how Boomers over 50, as well as Boomers under 50, feel about marketing and advertising as it relates to them. In addition, each quarter we'll include specialized questions about a particular industry or category.

Learn more about this exciting and informative study -- and what category is in the first wave...