Baby Boomers & The Economic Collapse

Lots of folks have been asking me about Baby Boomers, the economic collapse, and how you should now advertise and market to this demographic.

The how hasn’t changed.  Simple answer: Make sure you have the right guts around to trust.

And if you’ve been hopping around this blog for the last three and a half years, or read my book first published in early 2005, you’d know that the what likewise hasn’t changed.  Unfortunately, not too many have paid attention.

A large chunk of Baby Boomers were never planning to retire.  Now, another huge chunk won’t be able to retire.  That’s a lot of people still in the work force – and they’ll be staying there for another ten or twenty or thirty years, contributing mightily to the economy.

And if you work, you buy. What do you buy? Almost everything.  Clothes, appliances, computers, toothpaste.  The list is endless.  Regular, ol’ stuff.  Stuff almost exclusively marketed to twentysomethings with ad campaigns that don’t resonate with middle-aged consumers. 

What Baby Boomers will still be buying but not buying as much of: houses and condos in retirement villages, financial services, expensive vehicles, expensive vacations. Health-related products and services will be the only ones to remain steady, or grow.

So sell them clothes, appliances, computers, toothpaste.  This way you’ll beat the competition.

Keep Preachin’

----- Original Message -----
To: nyrenagency
Subject: Keep Preachin'

Keep preachin' brother because some still refuse to hear.

My students presented a campaign geared to baby boomers to a group of judges at the National Student Advertising Competition. When we mentioned your book as proof that boomers don't like flashy ads, some 25-year-old copywriter/judge from **** West told them, "I can't believe boomers don't like slick ads."

So, keep preachin' and maybe they too will one day hear.

B*** A********, Asst. Professor (at a major university in the northeast)

Boomers in Black & White

Sometimes I think advertising odd.

Lately, Baby Boomers are all in black & white.  Here’s a spot for Sprint cell phones – and it’s obviously targeting boomer technophobes (although I’m not convinced that this is a crucial market):

I already talked about this one in a PowerPoint presentation:

  (Click the pic for the video)

A Lipitor spot:

(Again, click the pic.)

Print ads aren’t immune to this ashen epidemic:

I’ll admit that some of the above ads are wrapped in broader campaigns produced in black & white.  Even so …

For many years we’ve been portrayed as immature, vapid middle-aged folks who think we’re still teenagers living in the The Sixties.  Mad Ave’s new take on us is that we’re merely characters in a handful of Woody Allen movies.

Vibrant Nation & Blyth Times

A few days ago Peter Himler sent me a link to a blog post about VibrantNation.com:

We Don’t Need More Social Networks. We Need More Purposed Social Networks.

It’s not a social network where you make friends and share pictures and videos and write on each other’s walls …

My good friend Carol Orsborn is involved with VibrantNation.com:

The social network for affluent boomer women (generally over 50) launched in January of this year and has been in an advanced beta or quiet stage of growth since. While its membership numbers are still in the “low thousands” according to CEO and founder Stephen Reily, the site is about to hit a fast growth period with the relaunch and some new strategic content efforts, including the addition of Boomer Marketing expert Carol Orsborn as a senior strategist.

NostraChuckus predicted all this, of course.  Here’s a snippet from my book, Advertising to Baby Boomers:

 
Yesterday Myrna Blyth emailed me about this and that – and my more-significant-than-I-am other leaned over me, grabbed the mouse, and spent a good fifteen minutes sucked into Myrna’s new blog, Blyth Times. 

I sent Myrna a link to VibrantNation.com.

Are women over fifty taking over the world???  They seem to be taking over mine …

---

Update 11/16/08: Read Carol Orsborn’s blog at Vibrant Nation.

Connecting older people to the world

Technology columnist Victor Keegan of The Guardian has a pretty good take on a few subjects I’ve been talking about for years:

Connecting older people to the world
Reared on rock'n'roll and the Spectrum or BBC computers, they are technically savvy with high spending power. Most have no intention of retiring quietly, a fact that technology companies are only just realising.

Pulled from the cover of the 1st edition of my book (March, 2005):

 

 

 

 

“Another new (website) aimed at older people is finerday.com, the owners of which have taken trouble to make it easy to use but have spoiled it with an entry procedure that will defeat most older people since it involves having to memorise a pattern of squares within a grid. No thanks.”

Dick Stroud has vetted finerday.com. I left a comment.

And I’ve talked at length about a certain cell phone.  Here’s Mr. Keegan’s menacing prediction:

“Manufacturers had better turn over a new leaf soon or the wrath of the baby boomers will know no end.”