Financial Planning: Meet Carol Seven Years Later

After seeing investments yo-yo a few years ago, lots of people are being cautious.  They’re scared:

Advisers' advising, but boomers not buying
Clients not interested in re-balancing, saving more or devising a financial game plan, survey finds
…Only 5% of boomers have formalized a written retirement plan, even though about half of the surveyed advisers said they suggested the idea to clients…

Before the yo-yoing, way back in 2004, Fidelity Investments had a spot targeting women.  Brent Green dissected it:

A Heroine For Our Time
Meet Carol...
Hippie
Preppie
Yuppie
Protester
Democrat
Republican
Mom
CFO
CEO
Cancer Patient
Cancer Survivor
Fundraiser
Spokesperson
Caregiver
And soon to be world traveler.

Sure, Carol is a composite success story.  There aren’t too many Carols in the real world.  That’s advertising – chunks of truth awash in aspiration.

But I remember thinking: It’s a bit early for this. Fidelity might be too ahead of the curve.  I wasn’t predicting the recession – just wondering if Baby Boomer women were ready to deal with their financial futures. The median age at the time was late forties, early fifties.    

The time has come.  Financial security is on the minds of many women in their late fifties, sixties:

More unmarried couples living together in retirement
…More than 7.5 million couples live together without tying the knot, and that number is growing. It may appear to be a simple arrangement, but can be full of complexities when it comes to money and financial planning…

While the number of couples living together has doubled over the last decade, there are very few legal and financial protections for them. So financial advisers recommend that unmarried partners build their own safety nets.

The Crystal Ball of Common Sense’s Prediction: Some smart financial planning company will figure out that there is a huge opportunity available: Targeting Baby Boomer women. 

Here’s a big surprise…

Wow.  For 500 bucks you can find out about what I’ve been saying for years:

Will Facebook Ever Drive eCommerce?
In spite of the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world have Facebook accounts, the ability of the social network to drive revenue for eCommerce businesses continues to remain elusive. eBusiness professionals in retail collectively report little direct or indirect benefit from Facebook, and social networks overall…

A few of my takes:

Foretellings
NostraChuckus, that uncannily somewhat accurate prognosticator who mostly deals with predicting common sense, is at it again:
Social Media/Word-of-mouth advertising/marketing on the web has been a washout…

5 Reasons Why 90% Of Social Media Efforts Fail

Is roiling ether the best place for advertising?

The Real Thing vs. The Virtual Thing

How do we get them there?
Average click-through rate was 0.051 percent in 2010…

My New Year’s Resolution
No more scratching my head and being completely baffled by social media marketing experts telling me that consumers want to talk about products, have online conversations about toilet paper or whatever – and have even more conversations with the manufacturers of products. What an odd, insulated view of advertising and marketing.

It’s certainly nice to see research finally catching up.

Carnival of Colleagues

Only a few months ago I was highlighting the authoritative work of Dr. Joseph Coughlin and Dick Stroud:

Two Experts, One Superb Article, One Superb Presentation
Each is worth its own post here – but we’re living in an era of austerity, so…

Now they’re at it again (or, they never stopped and I’ve been asleep):

Dick in Dublin

 

Joe in Cambridge

Brent Green keeps us on our toes with eclectic, fascinating guests on Generation Reinvention Radio.  He recently blogged about all episodes so far – so pick one.  Then pick a few more.

And Marc Middleton continues blogging for The Huffington Post.  This one is about marketing and advertising:

Stalking the Boomer Consumer
If you are trying to market to Baby Boomers as a whole, you are destined for failure. Baby Boomers are not a whole. They are a highly diverse, highly fragmented group of people born between 1946 and 1964.

I’ll have to do something impressive one of these days.

Long-Term Relationship Partner Gets More Ad Age Ink Than I Do

Top-notch Ad Age White Paper by Marissa Miley – sponsored by AARP:

50 and Up: What's Next?
The generation that defined youth marketing for Madison Avenue is readying for retirement. Here’s what they’re thinking, where they're spending their money and what marketers should know in order to reach them. Data from AARP's Baby Boomers Envision Retirement Survey, GfK MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer and Ad Age's MarketFinder.

Download The PDF

Quotes from Dick Stroud, Lori Bitter, Carol Orsborn, and Yours Truly are scattered about.

Dick emailed me, saying “I thought it was one of the best researched papers I had seen for a long time.”  So when he gets around to blogging about it the link will be right here.

But … my long-term relationship partner (that’s what I am in the report) has a whole section dedicated to her:

My bloviations are merely occasional light sprinkles.

I’m not sure I’m happy about this.  In high-profile celebrity marriages and relationships such as ours, it’s never a good omen when one gets more ink than the other.  Will this be the end of domestic bliss???

Read 50 and Up: What's Next?

New Old Dirt

I’m always digging up the same old dirt. Sometimes it’s other people’s old dirt, sometimes it’s my old dirt.  The funny thing is that it’s always fobbed off as new dirt.

New Dirt:

Boomers are Driving a New Entrepreneurship Boom
Contrary to what most of you might guess, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity over the last few years is not Gen-Y young upstarts, but Baby Boomers in the 55-64 year age group.

Old Dirt (culled from the Introduction to my book ©2005):

New Dirt:

The Unretiring Kind: Boomers Gear Up for Second Careers
This year the first wave of Baby Boomers hits the 65 mark. In the past, age 65 was like the red line on a car’s tachometer that warned you when you neared the engine’s maximum recommended revolutions. When the needle tapped the red line, it was time to back off the throttle and begin to slow down.  And retire.
The Boomer cohort, some 79 million strong, doesn’t see it that way.

Old Dirt (again, from my book):

 
New Dirt:

Baby boomers save at Preferred Hotels
A study conducted by Preferred Hotel Group found that baby boomers, that is, people born between 1946 and 1964, want to take their travel experiences to a new level, where experiential, active and thematic travel is at the top of their lists. Not willing to be relegated to a bus tour, the 77-million-strong U.S. baby boomer generation is proving they are young-at-heart with a passion for active experiences in global destinations.

Old Dirt (again, from my book):

 

 

Maybe I should bury copies of my book and let other people dig’em up.