Builders urged to pay attention …

Excerpts from a recent news article:

Builders urged to pay attention to what Boomers want
by Cecilia Chan - Jun. 6, 2009
The Arizona Republic
Developers of retirement communities will need to adapt to the changing lifestyles of Baby Boomers to continue to attract them in the future, an Arizona State University expert says.

… "One of the issues for the industry is if they keep building these humongous cities with amenities, is this what they want?" Waldron said. "Some researchers show Baby Boomers don't want to be segregated and they want to continue working."

…  In the report, local developers and experts note that retirement communities will have to change to draw a new kind of retiree. For example, the report points out that the number of 55-plus people working from home has increased sharply, more than doubling over six years to 13 percent in 2007.

Sounds familiar.  Excerpts from my book, originally published in March, 2005:

… Past generations tended to get excited about modern conveniences that would make their lives easier. They would walk into a planned housing unit and exclaim, ‘Look! It’s got this and this and this and this!’  The more features, the better. The more planned, the better. It was time to start a new life. They wanted to be rewarded for all their hard work, and relax.

Not so with Baby Boomers. We take most modern conveniences for granted. We don’t want to start new lives, but continue the lives we already have.

… Baby Boomers will be anticipating a seamless transition. Instead of ‘Look! It has this and this and this’, we’ll be sniffing around for friendly, useful spaces. You will want us to say, ‘Look! There’s a perfect place for my pottery wheel’ or ‘There are plenty of windows and sunlight. My house plants and indoor herb garden will do fine in here’ or ‘Good. I can put up big, deep shelves for my books and CDs’ or ‘Here’s the perfect room for our side business on eBay’ or ‘Here’s a place where I can soundproof a recording studio or have an entertainment center’ or ‘This oversized back door is great because I can get my bicycle in and out without squeezing and jerking it around, and the extra-wide hallway means there’s plenty of room so I can just lean it against the wall and we won’t bang into it every time we walk past it.’

… When developing or molding a community for Baby Boomers, start with the concept of neutral. Do not confuse this with sameness. For example, when designing an indoor community space, do not assume that it will be used mostly for Bingo. Fashion it with flexibility so that it may be used for almost anything.

Read the complete chapter (PDF):

C H A P T E R  F O U R
Give Boomers Room for Choices

Country Joe & The Fish, Dylan, Sixties Cinema … & Chuck

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with advertising.
____________

Amazon.com has upgraded (at least they think so) its author/publisher services.  I now have my own author’s page – with a slightly mangled RSS feed and a Chuck Nyren Forum (which I hope remains devoid of discussions).

I’ve written one book, two versions.  However, while filling in all the do-dads there was a link to View and edit our list of your books. Being the curious sort, and wanting to know if I’d written any books I’d forgotten about, I clicked. Up popped over a dozen books.

The search engine found every mention of ‘Chuck Nyren’ in all Amazon.com books. I wrote a chapter for this one, wrote sections for this one and this one, blurbed this one, was quoted in this one and this one and this one.

There were surprises.  I have no idea what’s written by or about me in this one:

Contemporary Business
by Louis E. Boone , David L. Kurtz
Opening new doors of possibility can be difficult.  CONTEMPORARY BUSINESS 13e gives students the business language they need to feel confident in taking the first steps toward becoming successful business majors and successful businesspeople.

I’m in awe of myself, whatever’s in there.  Last I looked the book costs $126.94. 

But the oddest surprise was finding a quote in this one:

Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties
by Dave Saunders
Direct Cinema … offers a meticulously researched study of a significant period in the history of North American documentary film.

A sentence from the book and the quote:

 

The author found an online article from 1997 (so don’t expect those embedded links to work):

Country Joe and The Fish
Author: Chuck Nyren
Published on: September 1, 1997 
For CJ, Fish and the gang the enormous popularity of this Anti-Vietnam War Anthem proved to be somewhat of a mixed blessing, overshadowing the rest of their truly inventive and wondrous music.

Golly gee willikers (I mean, “Far out!”). I might have to reevaluate who I really am, reinvent myself, add this impressive credential to my professional persona: Sixties Political and Counterculture Pundit.

I like the sound of that. 

Boomers key to economic recovery

The Chronicle Times:

Boomers key to economic recovery
Baby Boomers should be renamed Economic Boomers … they hold the key to America's economic recovery and … the best thing American business could do right now is market to boomers.

Other news pieces floating around make the same points.

Nice to see the press and a handful of business industries catching up.  I talked about it all six months ago:

Baby Boomers & The Economic Collapse
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.

And in an online presentation posted January 3rd (about 17 minutes in):

2008 Review: A PowerPoint
Not necessarily the biggest stories about advertising and Baby Boomers – but ones that intrigued me, that I believe will be influential.

Another quote from the Chronicle piece:

So, the best thing any business in America could do right now is to learn how to sell to Boomers. It's not just good for business -- it's good for the economy.

From my November blog post:

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.

Baby Boomers Bolting From Facebook

Not that it matters or anything’s changed – but surprise, surprise: Baby Boomers are decamping that most famous of digital digs.

Inside Facebook
Fewer Users Over 55 Coming Back … the number of active users over 55 actually decreased by over 650,000 … In other words, users over 55 who joined the site earlier this year haven’t been coming back as much in April and May …

 
Why it happened, why it doesn’t matter to marketers and advertisers:

Is roiling ether the best place for advertising?
The big buzz phrase today is social networking.  Because Boomers are worried about their work-related competencies, all of a sudden they’re diving into Facebook, LinkedIn, are Twittering, etc. to find out about it all and make connections.

Snake Oil In Cyberspace
As far as Boomers being tech/web Luddites - I’ve been dispelling that silly myth for years - in my book and blog (Advertising to Baby Boomers, first published in early 2005).

But monetizing social networking sites … well, they still haven’t been able to do that with the Millennial and Gen Y demos. What makes anybody think you can do it with Boomers?

The Forgotten Market Online

Christina Binkley of The Wall Street Journal is all over the paucity of online shopping for 35+ (that’s age, not size) apparel for women:

The Forgotten Market Online: Older Women
New Fashion Sites Target Youth -- Though Most Web Apparel Sales Are to Women Over 35

Dick Stroud blogged it last week:

All of this would be OK if it were not for the facts. 45-54 year olds spend twice as much online as their daughters. Not surprisingly the average age of an online customer at Saks.com … is 42.

Christina and Dick have nailed it – so I’ll simply link to a few bygone babblings:

Chico’s and Younger Women

Marks & Spencer Redux

Demand for older models grows