Love At Any Age

It's a bit off-topic. Let's call it a 'focus group' - that way I can get away with blogging it.

My friend Susan Silver got in some great ones on The Today Show today:

Love At Any Age (If that arrow in the video below doesn't work.)



Here's something about Susan. Why she's not writing sitcoms anymore, why ad agencies aren't banging on her door to create spots targeting women in their fifties, sixties ...

Me vs. We

Last week I read a piece of marketing advice:

"Baby boomers have always been considered the 'me-generation,' and that doesn't change with age."

It's this type of reckless gibberish that is useless to marketers, and ultimately harmful to their clients. I wrote a chapter about it in my book. Here's a bit of it:

Baby Boomers were stigmatized when we were in and around our twenties, early thirties. Sure, we were ‘me’ back then. Barring tragedies like war and all sorts of catastrophes similarly horrifying, most young adults are me, me, me. Self-obsessed to the nth degree. They have to be. It’s the period for figuring out who you are, making something of yourself, being mostly selfish, mostly self-obsessed. Not such a bad path to take when you’re young and getting your bearings. If you don’t, you might not survive. Some of us went a bit overboard and didn’t survive – but it was a small percentage.

What happened is that there were so many of us in the 1970s when the term ‘me generation’ was coined that it ended up being the zeitgeist of the industrialized world. This image followed us. As we hit our late thirties, forties, fifties, and now some of us banging into our sixties, we were too busy to bother about this silly ‘branding’ of ourselves.

Today, Baby Boomers are two or three times removed from being a “me” generation. What constitutes self-actualization when you are twenty-five is different than when you are fifty-five. In your twenties a person thinks they are the picture. As you get older, you see yourself more and more as a picture that is part of a bigger picture.

Talk to some folks in their twenties, thirties. They are now in that ‘me’ stage. It’s healthy, smart for them to be so. I was just like them thirty years ago, get a big bang out of them, admire their boundless creativity, energy – and self-obsession. These ‘me generation’ twentysomethings today will become a ‘we generation’ in thirty years.

(page 171, Advertising to Baby Boomers)
(c) 2004, 2007 by Paramount Market Publishing

I could go deep into all sorts of profound stuff, like Shakespeare's The Seven Ages of Man and Maslow's Hierarchy, but that would take scores of screen scrolls. So this'll be short ...

Here's a piece I blogged about in 2006:

'Me Generation' becomes 'We Generation' in USA Today:
Will boomers really give something back? They already are. Nationally, boomers (33%) have higher volunteer rates than either seniors (24%) or young adults (24%), reports the Corporation for National and Community Service. This is the most schooled and traveled generation in history. It has much to offer by the giving of its time. The number of American volunteers rose to 65.4 million last year from 59.5 million in 2002. It is projected to reach 70 million by 2010, driven by aging boomers who want to make a difference.

Recently the New York Times weighed in on the subject. Sounds like my book:

Generation Me vs. You Revisited
Yet despite exhibiting some signs of self-obsession, young Americans are not more self-absorbed than earlier generations, according to new research challenging the prevailing wisdom.

And today Mark Miller (a one-day colleague and every day intelligent, nice guy) talks a bit about this stereotyping silliness in his Chicago Sun-Times column:

Boomers give plenty of financial help to kids, parents
Baby boomers often are stereotyped as self-indulgent -- a generation endlessly fascinated with its own needs and interests.

Then there's this:

Selfless baby boomers switch careers

Back to that quote:

"Baby boomers have always been considered the 'me-generation,' and that doesn't change with age."

A quote from Yours Truly:

"When a marketing, advertising, or PR person starts talking about Baby Boomers in sound bites and clichés, he/she is treating you like a baby. Don't listen. Simply put on your iPod, and smile and nod."

PR Firm Comes Out of Five-Year Coma

Last night I had - ready to go - this long, nasty post about a really silly article in Ad Age. It talks about a 'new' survey with absolutely no new or useful information - along with the most simplistic and addle-brained crunching:

The Misunderstood Generation

But I looked at my blog and saw a handful of negative posts in a row and … well, I didn't want to sound like a sourpuss over and over. So instead I tossed up a playful, innocuous one about a couple of upcoming conferences and a book due out in the
summer.

Then in the morning I visited my pal Dick Stroud's blog - and he'd done it for me:

Edelman - where have you been for the past 5 years?

"We really set out to blow up some myths," said the exec VP-general manager of Edelman's Boomer Insights Generation Group. "The longer that marketers keep treating boomers as a huge mass as opposed to individuals, the longer it's going to take them to enter the market."

Give me strength. This is 101 marketing. I cannot believe this has come as a shock to Edelman and its clients. Have these guys been in a coma for the last 5 years?

Good. Let Dick do the dirty work. My hands are clean. (Unless someone breaks into my computer and finds the draft - which isn't much different from Mr. Stroud's astute invective.)

Ad Age should do a bit of research before printing tired assessments of Baby Boomers and how to advertise to them. They don't have to go very far - just read some recent pieces in their own publication - by their boss, Rance Crain:

Calcified Advertising Agencies

Rance Crain Makes Perfect Sense Yet Again

The Tale of Two Conferences

I mention a certain European country a lot in this blog. There are all sorts of reasons for this. Go ahead and pick one.

Now I'm mentioning it again because my good friend and colleague Brent Green is headed back there for a marketing conference. I'm jealous.

And I love the monochrome design for the pics on the web site. (Click "Sprekers" when you get there.) Brent is quite the handsome rascal - circa-1900 - don't you think? (If I'd been the designer, he'd be sporting a handlebar moustache.)

As far as international speaking engagements this year for Yours Truly, there's only one I've been invited to so far (but it's early) - Japan in October:

The Silver Market Phenomenon: Business Opportunities and Responsibilities in an Era of Demographic Change

Organizers:

Konrad Osterwalder
United Nations University
Tokyo (UNU) Japan

Chihiro Watanabe
Tokyo Institute of Technology
(TokyoTech) Japan

Cornelius Herstatt
Technical University Hamburg-Harburg
(TUHH) Germany

Florian Kohlbacher
German Institute for Japanese Studies
(DIJ) Japan

Associate Partner:
World Demographic Association (WDA)

I contributed a chapter for the book.

Eons: An Almost Obit

It's always fun being the smartest kid on the block. Almost as much fun is saying that you're the smartest kid on the block - and backing it up with empirical evidence (scroll past the first post).

Well ... I wasn't the smartest kid on the block when it came to handicapping Eons - just one of a slew of smart kids. Many of us marketing to 50+ pundits knew it was god-awful from the beginning. And non-marketing to 50+ sources likewise pooh-poohed it.

Eons is in its death throes. In a desperate move, it's now letting riff-raff in.

Okay, I'm kidding. Some of my best friends are under fifty …

And a bunch of whippernsappers, even with their ageism intact, make some good points (and a few ex-Eons members chime in), although much of what is said I've been saying for years.

Here's irony: Even another social networking site is positioning itself as the 'new' Eons - attempting to steal away the paltry number of people who are on Eons and turn it into an 'alternative' Eons. Nothing like following in the footsteps of failure. Too, too weird.

The sad part of it all for me: If I keep this blog on topic, I won't have Eons to kick around anymore.

Or I'll cheat. Maybe when the ether settles, I'll write a long post or article about the demise of Eons. I have a bunch of juicy, sort-of-insider stories - where I'll change the names to protect the guilty.