10 August 2005

Those Selfish, Money-Grubbing Baby Boomers

Andrea Coombes of MarketWatch has put together a trenchant article about Baby Boomers and their value systems. In this case, it has to do with inheritances:
Bequests of another kind
Money is low on the list of what boomers hope to inherit

Seventy-seven percent of boomers said understanding their parents' values is very important, 65% said enacting their parents' last wishes is key and 34% felt receiving their parents' sentimental treasures is very important, according to a telephone and online survey of about 1,200 boomers, conducted for Allianz, the insurance company, by Harris Interactive. For this study, boomers are those 40 to 59 years old.

But just 10% of boomers said it was very important their parents bequeath financial assets or real estate.
No surprise to me. Probably a big surprise to many media pundits who trash this generation.

And according to Carol Goar of The Toronto Star, Baby Boomers north of here are just as self-obsessed and money-grubbing:

Boomers look past bottom line.

08 August 2005

Marketplace: Marketing to Boomers

American Public Media's Marketplace had a feature last Friday morning worth listening to. If you do — how interesting that the last line is one of the major themes of my book. Good to hear that other folks are on the same wavelength. In this instance, it's a professor of television/advertising at Syracuse University.

04 August 2005

Boomers Beyond:Marketing to a 50-Plus Audience

This month's feature article in ADVANTAGES, one of the magazines offered by The Advertising Specialty Institute, is Jennifer Zorger's Boomers Beyond: Marketing to a 50-Plus Audience.

Oprah Winfrey ("Queen of the Boomer Demographic") is on the cover. Yours Truly is liberally quoted in the article.

Oprah & Chuck on the same pages.

Hey, I'm the selfless sort. If Oprah's name cozying up to mine will boost her career, I'm glad to help.

03 August 2005

Boomer Marketing Basics

Brent GreenBrent Green, marketing/advertising creative director, consultant, and author of Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers offers this crash course in Boomer Marketing Basics.

An excerpt:
Boomers resonate with marketing messages that help them process their lives. Although they still maintain youthful idealism and verve in many ways, they are now middle-aged adults with middle-aged value frameworks.
Brent calls it the 'cliff notes' version of his book. I think it's more like a script for one of those minute-long versions of famous plays. The characters and dialogue go whizzing by, it's frenetic and fun, but...

Absorb it, get your bearings - then tackle the unexpurgated folio. You'll be thoroughly engrossed and enlightened. (And if you have a consumer product or service, you might even learn how to make a lot more money.)

02 August 2005

Marketing to young people is fun!


Bill Virgin, a fellow I read regularly not simply because he's my local newpaper's top business writer — but because he's such a troublemaker — has this to say in today's Seattle P.I.:
Marketing to young people is fun! You get to talk about cool ideas and hot fads and pretend you can actually predict what the next trend will be!

Marketing to old people, by contrast, is boring -- too boring to bother with, except for three inconvenient facts: There are a lot of old people out there. The number of old people is growing. And they're the ones with the money.