11 July 2009

Advertising to Baby Boomers (Preface & Intro) Free Download

Scribd I tossed up the Preface & Intro to my book on Scribd as a free download:

Advertising to Baby Boomers (Preface & Introduction)

advbbcover It’s culled from the original PDF from Paramount Market Publishing – so it includes the TOC and some blurbs.  (I’m not quite as wonderful as the ‘praise’ page suggests – but most of you know that already …)

The whole thing is easier to read if downloaded.

10 July 2009

Advertising Has Removed Music's Soul

adrants_logo_blue Trenchant post by AdRants’ Steve Hall:

Advertising Has Removed Music's Soul
steve 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:

vwbus Invoking "The Sixties"

Ameriprise vs. Fidelity Financial Redux

More In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

adapter Boomer Nostalgia

Food fights, Balloons and Dancing Gorillas

07 July 2009

77 Truths About Marketing To The 50+ Consumer

An updated edition of the influential 77 Truths is now available:

KM 77 Truths About Marketing To The 50+ Consumer, 3rd Edition
a brief guide to marketing to baby boomers
migliaccioby 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 growing 77Truthsmarket 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.

Boomers are a once in a lifetime opportunity

ss A piece in the Small Business section of USA Today by Steve Strauss:

Ask an Expert: Boomers are a once in a lifetime opportunity
usatLike 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: 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.

30 June 2009

Memed again.

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):

jfMedia 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
chimp1… 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.
jcm (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:

advbbcover 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.