July: Unused Ether

Miscellany I didn't get around to blogging this month because I was too busy or too lazy:

Sense of Style: The entertainment industry is finally noticing women over 40

Are you missing out on the boomer market?

In Act 2 of Life, Doing Work That Matters

Baby boomers and seniors volunteering for Peace Corps in bigger numbers

Communes for grownups: Co-housing for Boomers a growing trend

The Graying of the Great Powers

Dick Stroud writes: Engaging with the over-50s: It's about lifestyle not age!

Yours Truly quoted (more or less accurately, a few points perhaps taken out of context): Baby boomers become the forgotten consumer (The Kansas City Star)
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June: Unused Ether

Inter-ActiveAge

ActiveAge.org is a virtual think tank and consortium of organizations involved with aging issues in The U.K. - specifically Scotland. 

My book Advertising to Baby Boomers has been selected as a reference.  It's in heady company.

Read about ActiveAge - and it's connection to the work and philosophy of Dr. Joseph Coughlin.

While much of the content is password protected, click around the site.  There are a dozen or so PDFs available to the public.
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And minutes after I post the above - a fun, fascinating interview with Dr. Coughlin pops up on The Boston Globe web site:

Answers on Aging

Too busy to blog.

And I will be for a week or two.  So read some other blogs:

Brent Green screams about small fonts and even smaller minds at REI.

I like this post by Mark Miller because I talk about the same stuff in my presentations:

What’s interesting here is that most traditional media continues to run away from valuable older audiences.

I likewise talk about what Carol Orsborn is ranting about:

I wonder how many marketers get lost in the forest of the 50+ wilderness of nuances and terminologies, decide that these demographics don’t respond to advertising and decide to target their efforts to younger consumers?

Dick Stroud is fiddling with Google Ad Planner.  I signed up - but don't have the patience.

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn starts off talking about the Ad Age piece by Peter Francese - and ends up talking about my book.

Carol at MarketingHerbs likes the first four chapters of my book.  I warn her to stop reading.

Matt Thornhill will rag on me if I don't link to him.

and ...

Lucas Conley says he's sending me a copy of his book.  Do you think I'll like it?

The Silver Market Phenomenon Set For September Release

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

The current shift in demographics – aging and shrinking populations – in many countries around the world presents a major challenge to companies and societies alike. One particularly essential implication is the emergence and constant growth of the so called "Silver market", the market segment more or less broadly defined as those people aged 55 and older. Increasing in number and share of the total population while at the same time being relatively well-off, this market segment can be seen as very attractive and promising, although still very underdeveloped in terms of product and service offerings.

I contributed a chapter to the book.

To support the release, there will be an International Symposium in Tokyo:

This first-ever global forum unlocks the secrets of the silver market phenomenon and focuses on innovation, product and service development, technology management, marketing and business models for the 50+ market.

Generation BUY

You probably should skim a recent Viacom press release.  There's not much new there - and what made me chuckle was that they admit that there's not much new.  Nothing like a press release about nothing new:

Breadwinning Boomers Responsible for Multi-Generational Brand Decisions, TV Land's 'Generation BUY' Study Finds

It's all tied to a new survey commissioned by TV Land.  They learned that there's nothing new.  So, I guess that's new.

Mostly it's stuff I've been saying for years (as have others).  I did choke over their slicing and dicing of Boomer cohorts:

Study Reveals Three Boomer Spending Traits: "Promiscuous Purchasers," "Free Agent Shoppers" and "Savvy Switchers".

Reminding me of this old, moldy post of mine:

It seems that every time a marketing firm decides to specialize in Baby Boomers, we get more "strange tribal groups." It's quite an odd phenomenon. With tongue firmly in cheek, I warned about this in my book - predicting that eventually they'd come up with 76 million cohorts.

And their old, new survey reminded me of this new, old survey.

I guess it's like the old saying, "If you don't have anything new to say, say it over and over again."