Selfless baby boomers switch careers

Study shows majority of boomers looking to make a difference:

Kevin Corke of NBC News has put together a short piece about Baby Boomers wanting the second acts of their lives to be more meaningful by finding jobs that are socially responsible. It was prompted by a Princeton Survey Research Associates International study.

A few of the findings:

· 78 percent wanted to help the poor and elderly.
· 56 percent wanted to work in health care.
· 55 percent wanted to work in education.

I guess I've just hung out with too many friends who've always had altruistic goals, altruistic lives, and didn't pile up the dough: teachers, social workers, government employees, artists. The 'me generation' tag I always thought was lots of B.S.

If you are interested in finding a more meaningful vocation, check out Civic Ventures.

All this, of course, has and will have an extreme impact on advertising and marketing to Baby Boomers. David Wolfe, Brent Green and others (including Yours Truly) talk about this in our books, blogs, and when we do business consulting. We all have different takes on how to advertise and market to Baby Boomers, but there is a common through-line: Baby Boomers are not a bunch of age-deluded, self-obsessed hedonists.

Implications of the latest Baby Boomer milestone...

I don't know how long this good one by Bradley Johnson in AdAge.com will be 'free' - but give it a click. Maybe you'll be lucky. It's practically the introduction to my book, plus a few chapters:

The 50-plus group today makes up 39% of the U.S. adult population. But the group this year will account for half of auto sales, and that share will increase to 53% by 2010, said Art Spinella, president of consultancy CNW Marketing Research.
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So maybe boomers will downsize a bit in retirement, but they still will own large homes loaded with ... stuff. For decades to come, baby boomers will remain the consummate consumers.

About time AdAge starts paying attention to Baby Boomers.

Book News: Advertising to Baby Boomers selected by AEF

The Advertising Educational Foundation has selected Advertising to Baby Boomers as a Classroom Resource. Only twenty-five titles have been chosen over the last six years. They include A BIG LIFE (in advertising) by Mary Wells Lawrence (Alfred A. Knopf), How Brands Become Icons by Douglas B. Holt (Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation), and Contemporary Advertising by William F. Arens (The McGraw-Hill Companies).

View the complete list.

I would like to thank AEF for selecting my book as one of their educational resources. This is quite an honor.

The 2007 revised and updated Advertising to Baby Boomers is available directly from Paramount Books.

A Few Good Newsletters

If you're a newsletter fan (I think of them as email blogs), there are a handful of insightful ones about advertising and marketing to the 50+ demographic:

Matt Thornhill of The Boomer Project puts together a fun newsletter full of juicy, informative stories.

The Mature Market's newsletter has links to lots of original and reprinted articles from around the world. Find out how other countries are dealing with advertising and marketing to Baby Boomers.

Mary Furlong's newsletter comes out infrequently, but is always worth the wait.

One I don't subscribe to is Dick Stroud's newsletter. That's because his blog is an every day stop for me.

There are others - but they tend to be exclusively promotional newsletters touting the companies. (I call them opt-in spam.) Who needs a slightly different ad showing up in your mailbox every month?

New Baby Boomers Magazine?

In an earlier post I talked a bit about magazines targeting Baby Boomers. Here's an interesting piece from the New York Times about Harold Whittlesey McGraw III and his accomplishments at McGraw-Hill. An excerpt:

McGraw-Hill is investigating a number of growth initiatives tied to BusinessWeek, both online and in print. One idea is a magazine aimed at baby boomers, according to several people close to the discussions.

Good for Mr. McGraw. (And he's a Baby Boomer, btw.)