Beginning in 2003, my business blog for Creative Services, Copywriting, Consulting, and Speaking. You'll find all sorts of information about the current trends in advertising and marketing to this unwieldy, diverse demographic.
Trenchant post by AdRants’ Steve Hall:
Advertising Has Removed Music's Soul
When a musician pours their soul into their work, it has deep meaning and, as a listener, we feel that meaning. When that same music appears in a commercial, it's as if every bit of blood sweat and tears that went into the creation of that music is minimized to a point where the work has almost no meaning at all.
Lots of takes by lots of folks on the same subject:
An updated edition of the influential 77 Truths is now available:
77 Truths About Marketing To The 50+ Consumer, 3rd Edition
a brief guide to marketing to baby boomersby Kurt Medina & John Migliaccio
77 Truths shares over 25 years of insight by each of the authors into some of the special views, preferences, likes, and dislikes of the growingmarket of baby boomers.
I haven’t seen this new edition – but I’d better order one soon because my copy is a disheveled mess from frenetic flipping, corner creasing, Jackson Pollock-like coffee spilling, and Picasso-like underlining and scribbling.
A piece in the Small Business section of USA Today by Steve Strauss:
Ask an Expert: Boomers are a once in a lifetime opportunity
Like it or not, the Boomers have been at the forefront of a variety of important issues and events: Vietnam, the sexual revolution, civil rights, the self-awareness movement of the '70s and the health craze of the '80s, to name a few. These are people who will always see themselves as open-minded and young. Willing to try out new ideas, the Boomers are a creative entrepreneur's dream.
Not much new, but it’s good to know more people are catching on.
I left a comment: 
Nice piece. I've been screaming about this for six years - in a book, a blog, press interviews, during speaking and consulting gigs. The real issue: marketing and advertising folks grasping the fact that Boomers are not disengaging - and will be buying non-age related products for the next twenty-odd years. If you target this group for toothpaste, computers, clothes, food, nail polish, sporting equipment, toenail clippers - anything at all (almost), and you do it with respect and finesse, they will appreciate and consider your product.
The whole point of this blog, the book, my consulting, my speaking over the last six years: To kick-start the revolution.
So, it’s working (or at least word is getting out):
Media X: Wasted on the Young
by Jack Feuer
Which is why, brothers and sisters, we need a communications Strawberry Statement. We need a new revolution. A corporate rebellion, not a cultural one.Boomers are going to have to go back to the barricades and do what we do best: Force the issue. If there aren't bodies in the streets, there's no truth in the communication and no value in the channel … Track down the creative directors responsible for all those asinine, tie-dyed, surfer music spots and shove their Smartphones up their service entrance.
I’ve never been quite that graphic. I’ll scratch my head in public, but not my ***:
NostraChuckus Scratches His Head
… In this age of digital ephemera, where things zoom by, just as quickly zoom into oblivion, are forgotten, or even worse, never seen, when these same things zoom by again and again and again, they’re all, all of a sudden, brand new.
More from Media X (and Yours Truly if you follow the links):
We aren't now and never were a Generation just about Me.
You think we're brand loyal.
(A second favorite excuse of agencies is: “Baby Boomers don’t change brands.” Nyren dismantles this excuse nicely with examples of brand switching, and he further acknowledges that in cases where loyalty to a brand does exist, marketers who do not target Boomers give them no reason to change.)
And the next person that hires Dennis Hopper to star in their commercial will find their house thoroughly TP'ed … Find somebody else to represent the Sixties. Stanley Owsley would work.
(Again) Boomers are going to have to go back to the barricades and do what we do best: Force the issue …
A chapter in my book is all about that:
I’m going to try to motivate you—to rally the troops. If you are a creative who is a Baby Boomer, those troops would be you.
Cloned. Memed. I like it.
Thursday 16 July 2009, Olympia, London, UK:
50+ Marketing Seminar
The 50+ Marketing Seminar brings together a wealth of experience and knowledge from the UK's experts on marketing to the 50+ and mature markets.
I know three of those experts:
Kevin Lavery: One of the founders and currently Managing Director of Millennium, the UK’s leading specialist marketing consultancy for the 50+ market.
Reg Starkey: A former President of the Creative Circle, Reg’s work has been recognised with national and international awards. He has published one book for Millennium, ‘SAMPLES OF ONE’ and contributed to two others on the mature market, as well as editing their B2B magazine CIRCUS throughout 2008.
Dick Stroud: In July 2003 I started the world's first daily blog that is dedicated to 50-plus marketing. Before running my own companies my career included working for IBM and PA Management Consultants. At the dawn of time I collected a first-degree in Electronics and an MBA.
We all contributed to Circus Magazine (PDF). Kevin, Dick, and yours truly are members of IMMN. I’ve blogged about Kevin, Dick, and Reg dozens of times:
Kevin Lavery: Why we should be marketing to the over-50s
London & Marks & Spencer
After The European Speaking/Consulting Tour it was off to London for a good mix of business and pleasure - so much so that it was hard to separate the two.
InTwoFocus
If you’re here you’d better pay attention to what’s happening over there:
InTwoFocus is Europe's first Web video marketing agency specialising in the 50-plus marketReg Starkey blogs…
Creative problem-solver Reg Starkey is now blogging for CreativeBrief.com:
Reg's practical experience of working with many of the world's most acknowledged advertising agencies has now been combined with an in-depth knowledge of the important and neglected mature market. His knowledge and consultancy in this sector is sought by discerning clients in a broad range of sectors.
So this should be a good one. Too bad I won’t be there to heckle them from the gallery.
Invoking "The Sixties"
Boomer Nostalgia
