No overarching theme this post. Often, life is a series of miniatures.
Boomers represent an untapped niche market
Retiring baby-boomers, who have travel high on their list of priorities, represent a major opportunity for hoteliers.
Catalog the above as No News News. I’ve been screaming about this for years.
Tech savvy? What a surprise. Marketers will probably screw it up, however. There’s a big difference between someone using the web to fashion a vacation, and advertising on social media.
NostraChuckus predicts the future again and again:
Your Home: Boomer Build
"When we're building for people 55 and older, we're finding that this particular client comes in knowing exactly what they want. They're transitioning to a new lifestyle. They're coming from a home where they may have raised a family in a bigger house in suburbia," said Frank Barbera, custom homebuilder.
Barbera's development, reserved for "active adults, 55 and better", caters to the boomer generation and allows the prospective buyers to customize virtually every aspect of their home to suit their new lifestyle.
NostraChuckus years ago:
Selling Universal Design To Baby Boomers/Aging In Place (PDF)
Past generations tended to get excited about modern conveniences that would make their lives easier. They'd walk into a planned housing unit and exclaim, "Look! It's got this and this and this and this!" The more features, the better. The more 'planned,' the better. It was time to start a new life. Time to be rewarded for all the hard work, and relax.
Not so with Baby Boomers. We take most modern conveniences for granted. And we don't want to start new lives, but continue the lives we already have.
Baby Boomers will be anticipating a seamless transition. Instead of "Look! It has this and this and this," we'll be sniffing around for friendly, useful spaces. You'll want us to say, "Look! There's a perfect place for my pottery wheel," or "There are plenty of windows and sunlight. My house plants and indoor herb garden will do fine in here," or "Good. I can put up big, deep shelves for my books and CDs," or "Here's the perfect room for our side business on Ebay," or "Here's a place where I can soundproof a recording studio or entertainment center," or "This oversized back door is great because I can roll my bicycle in and out without squeezing and jerking it around - and the extra-wide hallway means there's plenty of room so I can just lean it against the wall and we won't bang into it every time we walk past it."
The Venza…
Mis-marketing to Boomers: Toyota
by Matt Thornhill
Targeting Boomers and consumers over 50 can work for you, but you have to get it right. There may be other issues with the Venza that are affecting sales volume, but this campaign isn't helping.
- For the 11 months immediately preceding the campaign launch, Toyota sold 36,051 Venzas.
- For the 11 months since the launch, Toyota has sold 31,535 Venzas, a sales decline of 12.5%
Yup. My take from last July:
Non-Diversity = Solipsism
Spots that star Millennials but, at least from what you tell me, are targeting Baby Boomers. I guess if you want to target Millennials, you should get a bunch of Baby Boomers to star in the ads, and have them talk about their kids.
You should take a look at this – Dr. Joseph Coughlin at his best (which usually is always):
… Thousands of Americans aged 55 and older are going back to school and reinventing themselves to get an edge in a difficult labor market…
Campus Continuum focuses solely on developing, marketing, and operating university-branded 55+ Active Adult Communities that are tightly integrated with their academic hosts.
… Boomers naturally appreciate large, easy-to-read type on price tags and signs. If your customer has to pull out her glasses to read a tag, that doesn’t bode well…
… Gardening Homeowners are 11 percent more likely than all homeowners to read the home and garden pages of the newspaper and eight percent more likely to read the food and cooking section. They are eight percent more likely than all homeowners to watch documentaries on television, six percent more likely to watch local morning news, and eight percent more likely to watch reality talent shows. Twenty-seven percent of Gardening Homeowners listen to adult contemporary or news/talk/information radio…
… Though universal design benefits people of all ages, the aging of the population is an important driver of the field. Universal design enables residents to stay in their own homes and neighborhoods for as long as possible, and supports their continued participation in social life.
… Universal Design is a blueprint for inclusion that exposes unwaveringly the injustice of "exclusion by design." It demands that human difference be accounted for in real concrete acts. It requires that those traditionally excluded precisely for their difference be given voice at every stage of tool, environment, and policy creation...
I haven’t invoked 
Car Spots Driving in the Wrong Direction
Automakers are turning to buyers like 64-year-old Martin Friedman for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks.
Ford Fiesta Sales Slump Despite 'Groundbreaking' Social Media Marketing Campaign