Boomers

Boomer Men and Gray Hair

To be gray or not to be gray, that is one question being considered by millions of Boomer men.

And that is the question being answered by Combe Incorporated, manufacturers of Just for Men hair coloring and its new Boomer-focused product, Touch of Gray.

The newest advertising campaign develops the marketing theme of "For the Generation that Rewrote All the Rules."

I find this new campaign irresistible to address because it raises many fundamental questions about generational marketing and underlying consumer motivations most accessible for this product category.

First of all, why would Boomer men choose to engage in the traditionally feminine cosmetic act of hair coloring? Would it be for vanity? For fear of aging? How about because this generation of men has always been rebellious and defied traditional social expectations? We became "Mr. Mom." We turned from barbers to hair stylists. We started cooking.

The latter reason is the primary motivation that Combe's advertising team attempts to tackle. The newest TV spot begins with obligatory nostalgic news footage from the sixties with a background music bed from Cream's classic hit, "Sunshine of your Love." And then forceful narration:

"The generation that swore it would never get old ... didn't. Welcome to the summer of life. And now there's an official hair treatment of the summer of your life. New Touch of Gray from Just for Men. Lets you keep a little gray. Works gradually. Just comb in, rinse."

Then the energetic Boomer protagonist laughingly invokes the sixties with, "Never trust anybody over ninety."

The announcer finishes with a declarative, "Keep a little gray with new Touch of Gray."

Let's deconstruct this TV spot from a pro and con perspective.

On the pro side, the ad's creators use nostalgic black & white imagery from the sixties, ostensibly from a festival setting such as Woodstock and then surfing imagery, tapping into positive remembrances of The Beach Boys and sixties' surfing culture.

Cut to the present, and an aspirational Boomer male is running toward the camera with the surf behind him, surfboard tucked under one arm. Other aspirational actors, male and female, surround our hero. They play the hoops. They play in a garage band. This juxtaposition of the past with the present can become a powerful motivator. It demonstrates life continuity and the relevance of past to present. It reminds us of the good times.

Using aspirational models is a good strategy. The protagonist male could be in his late forties or early fifties. His love interest is a younger woman, which for many men in mid-life is reality, or at least fantasy-reality. (My female counterparts in Boomer marketing will likely not appreciate this traditional middle-aged male stereotype of the "younger woman" — and for good reasons.) His friends all look healthy and happy. It's a racially mixed tableau. So we have an idealized view of active aging.

According to research conducted by John Martin, Matt Thornhill and The Boomer Project, Boomers like to think of themselves as younger than reality. The older the Boomer, the wider the spread between reality and aspiration. So, for example, a 50-year-old male might think of himself as 45. A 60-year-old male might see himself as 50. Thus, using younger, aspirational models makes strategic sense, based on opinion research.

Now the cons.

This ad is a perfect example of generational pandering. The creators probably assume that their brazen appeals to nostalgic feelings will function more or less like the ringing bell that causes the operantly trained dog to salivate. Very Pavlovian.

Requisite peace gestures, the traditional victory V using the index and middle fingers, provide further caricature of the generation's culture. (How many Boomers have flashed you the "peace sign" recently?)

The ad also communicates an underlying message that Boomer men haven't grown up ... by choice. We're living an extended adolescence in the summer of our lives, even though most of us are actually in the autumn of our lives.

Then the real groaner: "Don't trust anyone over ninety." Ha. Ha. I can't think of a better way to demonstrate inane age denial and reinforce stereotypes of Boomer men as immature and self-centered.

The idea of not trusting anyone over thirty is a mythic generational caricature that has been encoded as if fact. In my book, I call this "mobilization of bias."

The taunt was uttered by Silent Generation member Jack Weinberg in 1965 during an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. Leader of the Free Speech Movement at The University of California, Berkeley, Weinberg gave this sharp retort in reply to a reporter's insistence that older adults were manipulating his organization. He didn't buy his own comment, and his cynical snap at a reporter did not become the chosen mantra of a generation.

Frankly, most Boomers did not truly believe the silliness of this idea. We all knew 30 was inevitable — and, in many ways, desirable. The aphorism became a popular media stereotype of Boomers to dramatize succinctly the generation's countercultural defiance around more serious issues such as racism, sexism, governmental cover-ups and environmental destruction.   

The bottom line on this ad's approach: The creators are unlikely to be Boomers themselves. Their "sociological filters" accept Boomer stereotypes as facts, and they built their advertising creative strategy with the same sensitivity to nuance that Caucasians have shown when trying to create truly insightful ads targeting African Americans. They don't get it. And even though some Boomers probably signed off on the ad's concept, these decision makers may not fully appreciate the subtleties of successful generational marketing.

This gray hair issue comes down to a fundamental decision most Boomer men will make, either overtly or subconsciously, and that is the decision, or not, to color hair.

The following photo from a few weeks ago shows me with much whiter hair than reality because of the sunbeam on my hair.

This gives me a good glimpse of my potential pate in a few years. Next to me is Deane Drury, a friend and colleague for many years.

Deane had silver hair 20 years ago when he was in his forties. Silver hair was part of his successful persona, and I doubt he ever seriously considered hair color. He looked distinguished then; he looks distinguished now.

Thus, we have the Boomer male market, typically bifurcated. Some will consider coloring their hair. Some won't. (The "freak flag" of this decade and beyond may be silver hair, proudly on display. And if you don't understand what I mean by this, you're not a Boomer.)

If not pandering with simplistic portrayals of this generation, what could be some powerful underlying motivators for hair coloring? Several ideas come to mind.

One of the greatest anxieties among middle-aged Boomer men today is the real fear of marginalization or irrelevance. Ageism is a threat in many industries, and older men may be prudent in choosing hair color to look slightly younger — a touch of gray. The field of advertising comes to mind. Career success sometimes depends on not appearing old or out of date.

Second, a large number of Boomer men are looking for new love and a fresh start. With divorce rates so substantial in this generation, it's not uncommon for men to be starting over with new significant-other pursuits in their fifties. This pursuit often invites a makeover.

Going back to the Eric Clapton-Jack Bruce-Ginger Baker song, one lyrical line stands apart: "I've been waiting so long to be where I'm going: in the sunshine of your love."

Boomer men have been waiting so long to be where they're going. They're entitled to make the choice to color gray, or not to color gray, without social condemnation, either way. Hmmmm. The creative wheels are turning. There might be a way to use the nostalgic power of Cream's signature song with the lifestyle aspirations of Boomer men today — to, in effect, achieve the objectives of the advertiser without being so silly and superficial about it.

What's the "big idea" that would channel the force of this idea into a more productive and sophisticated direction? I'll let those making the big bucks from this advertiser figure it out without any further tutoring from me.

Advertising both reflects and shapes our beliefs. It sets our collective expectations for discrete groups of consumers. This interesting ad reflects outdated and largely irrelevant beliefs about Boomer men struggling with a cosmetic choice, a choice representing larger issues than mere vanity. The ad also shapes and reinforces a belief structure that diminishes a generation of men by not connecting with their true spirit.

But if it sells product, what the heck...

Clinton vs. Obama; Boomer vs. Joneser: the Split Personalities of 1946—1964 ... and 2008

The concept of generations has been a way of organizing and describing social and political phenomena for many decades, certainly for as long as the human race has had some semblance of mass media in which to foster collective awareness.

Contemporary sociological and marketing evidence is unequivocal: generations exist. They are self-defining; they have unique personalities; and they differentially assert their influences on social change and progress. Understand generational nuances; better predict the future.

But ill-defined labels and conceptualizations around generations can lead to heated debates among pundits.

For example, a new generational debate is underway with this election season. So it goes: the American demographic group born between 1946 and 1964 is not a single generation or generational cohort.

I began and ended my previous business book, Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, by focusing on the first ten years of the post-World War II birth boom. This is my generational cohort, a group I’ve observed and marketed to since we purchased hula hoops en masse. This is the group that came of age during the height of the Vietnam War and engaged in social / political protests of every stripe and color.

There is another cultural generation within the traditional demographic birth boom, bracketed by ’46 and ‘64. This group has been lumped together with the older half, much to the detriment of businesses and political parties trying to target marketing messages. This group has been called “Late Boomers” and “Trailing-edge Boomers,” but I am sanguine about the clarity and distinctiveness articulated by Jonathan Pontell. He calls this cohort Generation Jones.

Karl Mannheim, the father of sociology, observed that a generation is a social location in history that has the potential to affect an individual's consciousness in much the same way as social class. He delineates an adolescent intersection between biology and society such that “individuals who belong to the same generation, who share the same year of birth, are endowed, to that extent, with a common location in the historical dimension of the social process.”

The force and influence of generational identification can lead to enduring changes during adolescence, a “quite visible and striking transformation of the consciousness of the individual in question … a change, not merely in the content of experience, but in the individual's mental and spiritual adjustment.” Profound personal adjustments can reflect and augment “collective mentalities” that shape the future.

So, how could two generations exist in the time span that many influential pundits reserve for just one? According to Mannheim, “Groups which work up the material of their common experiences in different specific ways constitute separate generation-units.” Generation unit members elicit a common consciousness causing “the members sharing them to form one group.” Each unique group develops collective slogans, styles, norms, ideals, and experiences that serve “as vehicles of formative tendencies and fundamental integrative attitudes, thus identifying with a set of collective strivings.”

Collective strivings are the basis of what Mannheim calls “continuing practice,” meaning influential formative tendencies rising up from a generation early in adulthood persist through life. Once formed, a unique generation tends to assert commonly held values across the generation’s lifespan.

As Jonathan Pontell and other influential observers see it, Generation Jones came of age in the 1970s, not the 1960s, and this generation's values differ from Boomers enough to merit new conceptualizations of generational identity.

Jonesers’ significant cultural influences were different from Boomers (Live Aid vs. Monterey Pop Festival). Their macro economic and political challenges were different (stagflation vs. a buoyant economy). And their aspirations today, political and otherwise, are different (pragmatic vs. idealistic). From a business and political perspective, this cohort needs a different set of strategic insights for marketing effectiveness.

This is also why we need to think of Barack Obama (born 1961) as belonging to a different generational unit than Hilary Clinton (born 1947), although they are technically part of the same birth boom. Many of their core values are in alignment, as members of neighboring generations tend to be, but they are dissimilar enough from a generational perspective to warrant a different mindset when it comes to understanding the cohorts they represent.

Pontell and I are amicable colleagues, but he points out that his generation is bigger than my generation (and therefore, by implication, GenJones just might be more economically viable or potentially influential). We don’t agree on a few years describing the beginning and ending of our respective generational cohorts. But trying to settle an issue that can’t be settled is fruitless. Fundamentally, we agree there are two distinct cultural generations bracketed by the years 1946 to 1964, plus or minus a few years on either side.

I am of the opinion that all generational cohorts are of equal value; one is not intrinsically better than another. What you do with the insights available about unique generational personalities is a different matter. Failure to understand and capitalize on the strategic differences between them is the wellspring of missed opportunities and ineffective market performance.

Barack Obama is a Joneser; Hilary Clinton is a Boomer. For political and business insiders who truly understand how to tap into generational nuances, this insight proposes a plethora of possibilities that might even win an election.

Ultimate Boomer self-empowerment: becoming brain trainers via Posit Science

As someone who has been on the receiving (and giving) end of Boomer-focused marketing for over 50 years, many will thank me. My mother will thank me. My banker will thank me. My heart will thank me. My art director will thank me. And now, as I'm nearing that longevity hallmark when I will slip-slide into the years past 60 (but not quite yet), my brain will thank me.

The marketing theme for Posit Science is "Your brain will thank you." The San Francisco-based company provides other encouraging reassurances. "Your friends will thank you." "Your dog will thank you." "Your students will thank you." "Your clients will thank you." "Your colleagues will thank you."

What is the inspiration for all this forthcoming gratitude? Well, in the words of the company, "Posit Science strives to help people flourish throughout their lives. We do this by providing effective, non-invasive tools that engage the brain's natural plasticity to improve brain health."

Train your brain and you will reap the rewards of gratitude from all those who cherish you.

Since company founding in 2003, this team has done a lot of striving, first by introducing one of the first and most sophisticated cognitive training programs that focuses on rewiring the brain through enhancing auditory processing and memory. As part of a review panel organized by Kelly Greene of the Wall Street Journal, fellow reviewers and I found the Posit Science product to be of greatest value and clearly a league above less-sophisticated options currently in the marketplace.

Under the scientific direction of Dr. Michael Merzernich, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California at San Francisco, the company has continued to create category-leading software programs to facilitate healthy brain aging, as well as to address and mitigate cognitive impairments.

The company calls its most recent product Cortex with InSight, which focuses on visual processing and memory. The new product promises a number of other features that brain trainers will accrue, including "speeding up visual processing, sharpening visual precision, enlarging useful field of view, expanding divided attention, and improving visual working memory."

Real-world benefits include helping you quickly perceive momentary visual events that may have bearing on your survival (a careening car out of control, aimed at you), enlarging the field of view and thus helping you anticipate environmental changes (seeing the t-bone collision before it happens), helping you successfully divide your attention among multiple visual stimuli (adjusting the radio dial and avoiding the kid running across the street while evading the careening car), and improving your visual working memory (the other car, the radio, the kid, in that order), which is essential to navigating our hectic lives full of so many competing demands and information overload.

Not bad for an optimal 45 minutes per day of training.

Cognitive trainers navigate the software on a self-guided basis, and the program provides ongoing goals and performance feedback.

Posit Science is revolutionizing a field that is just at the launch stage. They have been enormously successful in attracting interest from media, and now they are reaching a critical mass of partners, clients and customers.

We might reasonably conclude that this is the decade of the brain, a time of convergence when neuroscience research from the universities and laboratories has found applications that lay people, equipped with laptop computers, can employ for long-term brain fitness.

I would like you to meet Jeff Zimman, a co-founder of Posit Science and the firm's CEO, who presents an articulate and insightful view of the role brain training will play in a generation rewiring the rules about aging.

Over seventy percent of this generation claims that the retirement stage of life is just the beginning of a new chapter of creativity and productivity, so cognitive training may be the exact "ticket to ride." Productivity in later life demands brain effectiveness. A self-empowering generation is going to appreciate getting cognitively ripped and shredded. And maybe it's a good time to add one more thank-you note to the Posit Science list.

"Your generation will thank you."

April 4, The Peace Symbol, MLK and Boomers

If you would conduct a worldwide opinion survey to discover one wish for the future of humanity shared across societies and cultures, chances are that universal yearning would be for peace. A world without war and strife, without sectarian violence, without the omnipresent threat of terrorism, certainly is among our most cherished but unrequited dreams.

Boomers attached themselves to this idealistic quest early in their adult lives. Some demonstrated for peace. Some molded lifestyles eschewing violence, whether through nonviolent civil disobedience or conscientious objection to military service. Some sought to influence national war policies through political engagement. Some joined the miliary to fight for long-term peace. Some joined the military as clergy or nurses. The yearning for peace became the theme of many rock and folk songs, with these lyrics among the noteworthy:

Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

— Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

For this generation, peace became preoccupation.

And one icon subsumed their hopes for a better future: the peace symbol. The graphic image tapped into a collective set of values emerging during a generation's youth, from antiauthoritarian attitudes to youthful thoughts of a more utopian society. To some it took on inspirational import about moral values similar to symbols of the world's great religions.

With its growing emotional and motivational subtext, the peace symbol eventually became a useful selling tool as businesses refined modern marketing techniques to create a Boomer revolution in product sales. Marketers quickly recognized the strategic value of co-opting the symbol for product positioning. So-called "head shops" filled initial consumer demand by offering peace symbols as stained glass sun catchers, silver necklaces, refrigerator magnets, t-shirts and myriad posters. Eventually so did K-Mart and Wal-Mart.

On April 4, 2008, the peace symbol turned 50. The story about how it has become one of the most recognizable symbols of the Boomer generation is significant.

In the spring of 1958, Gerald Holtom, a textile designer and graphic artist from Great Britain, set out to create a mark that could be used at protest events pressing for nuclear disarmament. In perhaps one of the most inspired days of identity design during the 20th century, the artist brought together semaphore symbols for N and D, surrounded by a circle representing the globe.  

On April 4, 5,000 people gathered at Trafalgar Square in London to support the Ban the Bomb movement and to protest testing and stockpiling of fissionable materials by the world's largest industrial powers. It was on this day that Holtom's memorable icon made its debut.

Protestors walked a few miles from the square to Aldermaston, location of an atomic weapons research facility. Their placards carried the succinct message of protest in this new and undefined symbol. Yet it needed no explanation, whether viewers understood the symbolic implications or not. Reactions were not always positive; some saw the devil in the logo.

The peace symbol quickly spread to other protest movements representing opposition to the Vietnam War, the quest for civil rights, a growing outcry against environmental degradation, and spirited marches for gender equality. The symbol persisted through Vietnam and onward into the debates about two wars in Iraq.

The peace symbol received overdue commemoration in a book published in April 2008 by the National Geographic Society, PEACE: The Biography of a Symbol. Author Ken Kolsbun observes that the symbol "continues to exert almost hypnotic appeal. It's become a rallying cry for almost any group working for social change."

Ironically, April 4, 2008 was the 40th anniversary of an event representing the severest liabilities of social progress: the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., who sought racial equality throughout his career. A pivotal figure in the American civil rights movement, Dr. King personified one facet of the grassroots peace movement with nonviolent protest marches, speeches and rallies. And the symbol marched with him through Selma and Montgomery, and Washington D.C. and New York, and finally to his destiny with a bullet in Memphis, allegedly fired by James Earl Ray.

April 4, 2008 was a good day for pause: to contemplate a symbol and how close or far Western society is from achieving the dream of peace. And it was a day to recall one of the most revered leaders in the history of the nation: how he knowingly sacrificed his life in pursuit of some of the noble ideals behind a symbol.

Intergenerational Equity and Boomers

Intergenerational Equity. My first challenge with this blog posting was to decide how to categorize the concept.

Is this topic about history, politics, sociology, marketing, health & fitness, media or science?

Yes.

These two words describe perhaps the most divisive and encompassing aging issue of the next 30 years. I settled on Social and Political Issues as the best categorical fit because that's the arena where this concept will take on emotional force similar to other words such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, entitlements, unfunded liabilities and so on.

The notion of "intergenerational equity" is a stimulating catch-phrase for some of the most important debates of our time involving the fundamental social contract between young and old, from now through mid-century. What is this concept?

Intergenerational equity is based on the belief that Boomers are about to bankrupt the nation as they enter the time of their lives when federal entitlement programs become accessible. David Walker, departing Comptroller General of the United States, has quantified "unfunded liabilities" in the neighborhood of $46 trillion by mid-century (also including monies owed for federal retirement, military retirement, military healthcare, and other related government obligations). 

This huge debt has to be paid by someone if we stay on the current path (and if pundits are correctly reading the crystal ball). Boomers will ostensibly hand this invoice to their children and grandchildren. Then this generation will die off having been good parents and grandparents but lousy ancestors. Our debt-ridden progeny will watch the nation's standard of living race in reverse.

Intergenerational equity is the mother of all guilt trips. It suggests that the Boomer generation has only one moral and ethical choice: to deconstruct the nation's entitlement programs so that younger generations will not be penalized by the size and cost of a rapidly aging society. It means that we accept what our parents would not: federal entitlement programs are a Ponzi scheme, perhaps history's greatest embezzlement, robbing from younger generations to pay for the hobbies and wasteful surgical procedures given freely to elders.

Intergenerational equity means cancelling the social contracts that help pay for some of the costs of growing old, becoming sick and eventually dying in America. And when we cancel these contracts, we ultimately "do the right thing" by lifting potentially crushing fiscal burdens from the backs of younger generations. We recognize that this nation does not owe, nor can it afford to fund the lifestyles of a geriatric leisure class.

The arguments in favor of intergenerational equity include:

1. Entitlement programs are unfunded liabilities backed up by IOU's in the form of government bonds. There are no trust funds in the sense of bank savings accounts. The ink is already red for Medicare / Medicaid, and Social Security starts costing more than it takes in through taxes around 2017.

2. Younger generations should not pay the healthcare and retirement costs of their parents and grandparents. The only equitable system is pay as you go, and that's not what Congress has done with Social Security and Medicare surpluses. They've spent the money already.

3. Medical breakthroughs are extending lives beyond the span originally granted us as biological organisms, and we are dying later in life of horrific and lingering diseases such as Alzheimer's due to society's growing technical mastery over other diseases such as heart disease and cancer.

4. It is the moral obligation of older generations to make the future better for their offspring, as did the GI Generation create a post-World War II economic boom that so enriched the lives of young Boomers. As this society careens toward bankruptcy, Boomers are creating the unprecedented circumstances where younger generations can expect a declining standard of living relative to their parents.

The arguments against intergenerational equity include:

1. Boomers have freely and without much complaining paid Social Security and Medicare taxes that are now benefiting older generations. The oldest Boomers have been paying these taxes with every paycheck for over 40 years; the youngest for over 20 years.

2. Boomers have enriched the overall economy with their wealth and free spending, creating booms in everything from housing to desktop computers. This generation's riches have greatly benefited older and smaller generations. For example, if you owned a house in 1970, you have enjoyed the benefits of a rapidly appreciating asset, thanks to Boomers flooding the market over the next 25 years. This generation's wealth has benefited their children, the 80-million Millennials, in the form of loving material indulgences from birth onward, college educations and now respite for some young adults returning to their parents' homes as "twixters."

3. So what if the primary economic engine of America becomes healthcare focused? The 20th century can be thought of as an automobile economy that created a national highway system, parking garages, suburbs, shopping malls, gasoline companies, car companies, and drive-through Starbuck's. This economy created millions of jobs in highway construction, real estate development, retailing, oil & gas exploration, and franchising. A healthcare economy can also create millions of jobs for physicians, nurses, biotech engineers, genetic researchers, and home healthcare aides. Technologies developed to prolong productive life (and engineer negligible senescence) have extraordinary market value and could be sold as exports to other countries, such as rapidly aging Europe, Japan and China. In other words, the money always comes from somewhere and goes somewhere.

4. Scare mongers leading this charge have personal economic interests in mind. If you study the composition of the Boards of Directors for some of the most outspoken advocates of privatizing entitlement programs, you'll discover mutual funds managers, investment advisors, and former government officials who would make fortunes as the U. S. government hands entitlements to the private sector.   

This blog posting is but a peek behind the curtain where the wizards of social engineering are pressing buttons that can easily frighten and confuse the public, just as the Wizard of Oz successfully intimidated Dorothy and her friends. But scare tactics and intimidation should not be the impetus for sweeping economic, social and political reengineering.

Intergenerational equity rolls off the tongue with a satisfying taste of moral rectitude, but this concept demands a full and articulate analysis by informed Boomers. Let's pull back the curtain hiding the wizards before we believe these naysayers and their strident stories of national financial collapse. Let's understand their motivations before we embrace their ideas.

Boomers, European Travel and Amsterdam

Amsterdam, The Netherlands—In Paradiso the lights were dim and the shadows blue. On a tall, modernistic alter a few solitary figures wriggled under a spotlight to the blast of rock recordings, while hundreds of young bodies covered the floors, silent, and motionless …

A September 5, 1969 article from The New York Times projected a dazzling spotlight on Amsterdam and the ancient city’s allure to a young generation of explorers from America. The article promised deliverance for the young and restless looking for adventure.

They came to Amsterdam because of its legendary permissive attitudes toward experimentation, whether social, pharmaceutical or reproductive. They came for cultural enrichment and to share revolutionary ideas about world peace and human equality. They came for compelling beauty and some of the kindest hosts in the world.

Amsterdam represented a new frontier for a youth cohort seeking peace in a time of war: a multitude growing disillusioned with the world spinning out of control. They filled Dam Plain with their sleeping bags. They talked about politics and unity in a time of dissolution and fragmentation; cultures from around the world mixed in harmony.

A succession of rock legends played music in Amsterdam that year: The Who, Janice Joplin, Stephen Stills, Pink Floyd, and Mick Jagger.

Ex-Beatle John Lennon came also to this city of promises to promote world peace through a seven-day bed-in with his new wife, Yoko Ono. Perched in suite 902 atop the Amsterdam Hilton in March of that year, John and Yoko spoke of peace as world media swarmed the room with curiosity and amusement.

From their parents these searching young people had learned to think independently. They had shared the historical problems of racial divisiveness and environmental destruction. They had arrived in young adulthood with deep emotional yearnings for a better world. Their common slogans, attitudes, and interests spread from individual to individual and country to country. Through diversity and creativity, they found a common consciousness influencing profound mental and spiritual adjustments within the hearts of individuals. Suddenly, this mish-mash of youthful travelers discovered their own salient reference group, and a generational identity formed. Members of the post-World War II baby boom became Baby Boomers.

What are the implications for business today?

Well, as they say, history can repeat itself. You will see a few graying flower children wandering the streets of Amsterdam today, but more likely you will see middle-aged Boomers, manicured and tailored and well off. They are the Sixties’ survivors who have built companies, have risen to senior executive ranks, and have become leaders of the free world.

They fill Four-Star and Five-Star hotels, take catered canal rides during sparkling sunsets and gaze upon unparalleled visual sensations left by Rembrandt and Van Gogh. They come to Amsterdam and The Netherlands to sample an international buffet of food, art and history. Some come to remember; others come to discover.

They are, nevertheless, still Baby Boomers, harboring many values that inspired them in youth — the nobler goals of world peace, environmental health, and leaving the legacy of a better world. Whatever their individual motives now, Amsterdam has welcomed an unprecedented number of them since 9/11—1.3 million American tourists in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

Dutch tourism officials probably know that Boomers can transform brands. Their monetary might helped build business giants such as McDonald’s, Nike, Apple, and Starbuck’s. They popularized places such as Aspen and Santa Fe. Now a graying generation with more time and money than ever is expressing a global wanderlust that could build another brand resonating from their youth, I amsterdam.

This Boomer, who never visited Amsterdam until he turned 50, feels fortunate to be a keynote speaker at Holland’s most important marketing conference, MWG Congres. On Valentine’s Day, I will tell conference attendees, many of them children of Baby Boomers, about their older siblings and parents — how this generation is transforming yet another lifestage and pouring money into brands that resonate brightly — why experiences reign and educational travel is booming.

We’ll explore possibilities for Boomer brands of tomorrow: how these future power brands will address the deepest yearnings of a generation determined to create meaningful and rich lives after the age of 50. Maybe one of those emerging Boomer brands will be their own country and a city where a generation once discovered some of itself.

Boomers, Alzheimer's and Aging Brains

Betty Friedan helped change our thoughts and language about gender relations. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped change our thoughts and language about racial relations. Now Dr. Peter Whitehouse is helping change our thoughts and language about aging – more particularly about our aging brains. And this is a very good time for another social revolution in thought and language. Seventy-eight million Baby Boomers are reaching a time in life when brain changes due to aging are inevitable and, with enough time passing, universal.

The language we use to describe the inevitabilities of cognitive aging tap into the deepest reservoirs of fear: senior moments, dementia, loss of self, and organic brain dysfunction. In particular, we think of two words with unspoken angst: Alzheimer’s disease.

In The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis, Dr. Whitehouse and his young literary protégé, Daniel George, address the very foundation of our cultural and social relationships to the most dreaded disease of modern times. First described in 1907 by Alois Alzheimer, this disease has grown into a “$100-billion-a-year marketing and research juggernaut, with more than 25 million afflicted worldwide.” The victims of this mysterious milady face ostracism, institutionalization, isolation, loneliness and dependency. The perpetrators of the Myths are comfortable with our collective fears because they inspire research budgets, drug sales, elaborate diagnostic testing protocols, and nicely decorated prison facilities.

Above all, the Myths perpetrators create another class of human being, the unfortunate mortals who are less-than-fully human because of diminishing memories, communication skills and competencies with the activities of daily living. They are dying brains without hearts.

To most of us, such a medical diagnosis is a decree worse than death itself. It is what we dread for our parents; it is what we fear for ourselves. The authors believe the time has come to change our language and our innate conceptions of cognitive aging

With more than 30 years of experience as a scientist and geriatric neurologist, Dr. Whitehouse has been at the forefront of the evolution of the disease we call Alzheimer’s. He has earned over a million dollars consulting with pharmaceutical companies about development of cholinesterase inhibitors, the contemporary silver bullets in drug therapies for early treatment of disease symptoms. He has accepted grants to support research and education in service of the same industry, valued at millions of more dollars. He has traveled the world to discuss the marvels of the coming cognitive pharmacopeia, again a benefactor of drug industry dollars.

And, finally, he has set in motion a pugnacious call for sensibility and a more informed public. As he portends, “(the book) is at root a book for Baby Boomers and health care professionals, and anyone else who wants to join me in bringing a new understanding to Alzheimer’s disease and taking control of their own brain aging.”

Taking control is a clarion call for the Boomer generation. Taking control is our legacy, and at exactly the right moment in the trajectory of our lives, Peter Whitehouse passionately compels us to take control of the source of our humanity, our creativity, our intellect, our personhood … our brains. He suggests we have choices if we have knowledge and wisdom. He suggests we have dignity if we change our paradigms. He suggests we have the power to change what it means to be human across the entire lifespan, up to and including the twilight months or years when some of us inevitably will confront the challenges of cognitive decline. He suggests we no longer need passively to resign to medicine’s most fearsome diagnosis, for either ourselves or those we love. He tells us we can deconstruct Alzheimer’s and together create a more humanistic, healthy and hopeful view of brain aging. That can be our generation’s final legacy.

To help us get from here to there (overcoming the tyranny of AD), the authors have written a new narrative about brain aging. By employing the transformative power of stories and anecdotes, buttressed by the precision of hard science, they take readers through a fascinating journey.

Unabashedly they stare down the mythmakers. AD is not a brain disease or a mental illness; symptoms we associate with AD are not simply a brain’s molecular breakdown occurring in old age but more often “a rainstorm that occurs throughout life.” A new conception demands this cluster of cognitive changes to become both an individual’s and humanity’s long-term responsibility, from personal health choices to taking care of the planet that sustains and, because of environmental degradation, poisons us.

Dr. Whitehouse challenges us that AD does not lead to loss of self, as we might have envisioned the plight of President Ronald Reagan; rather, persons with cognitive impairment are still able to be vital contributors to society until the final days of life. By evoking new paradigms about brain aging, we can allow people the noble opportunities to continue contributing. For example, Dr. Whitehouse is also a founder with his wife of The Intergenerational School, a farsighted institution that brings children together with wise teachers who are great repositories of life’s most important lessons.

If this book simply accomplished the objective of “creating a new cultural narrative that can shape the way we age in the twenty-first century,” it would be an important work worthy of careful review and contemplation. But the good doctor and his protégé take their work even further by creating a new model of living with brain aging. Dr Whitehouse unveils everything we need to understand, from preparing for a doctor’s visit to knowing how to live successfully with aging across the human lifespan.

So, in the end, he teaches readers how to “think like a mountain.” For example, Boomers can climb the first peak by rethinking mortality. Instead of elevating “anti-aging” as the highest purpose for our credit cards, Dr. Whitehouse suggests that the energy (both psychic and monetary) for self-preservation can instead be directed at “becoming agents of great change in the world,” the final expression of Boomers’ highest aspirations in youth. Another peak to scale is self-indulgence that costs our health. So simply he suggests eating well, exercising judiciously and eliminating bad habits that foster disease.

This seminal book isn’t just about Alzheimer’s or the Myths that infuse the disease with too much power over our collective consciousness; it is the most intelligent work thus far about our generation’s final crusade, the quest for wisdom in our longevity.

Boomers: 1968 ... 2008

1968. You already know the front page news from that year, spun in fury and acrimony.

But, did you know that the Boomers’ popular baby doctor, Benjamin Spock, faced indictment for conspiring to violate draft laws? A B-52 loaded with hydrogen bombs crashed at North Star Bay, Greenland? American soldiers fought the 77-day Siege of Khe Sanh, the longest and bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War? Thirty-two African nations threatened to boycott the Olympics because of participation by South Africa, then mired in apartheid? An epic battle between students and police in Paris left 1,000 injured? Carlos Castaneda published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, a provocative book having nascent influence on the developing recreational drug culture?

If Leading-Edge Boomers have only one thing in common, they have that year. One year never defines a generation, but survivors of 1968 know something changed — something deep and fundamental — something that can still influence their thoughts, actions and reactions today.

With the arrival of 2008, we finally have the collective perspective of 40 years. It’s a very good time to look back once more, and former NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw has taken the initiative.

When Brokaw’s publisher sent me his newest book to review, I already knew that any book attempting to deconstruct and delineate the Sixties is destined to become a lightning rod for controversy. That tumultuous decade remains an omnipresent exclamation point of unfinished business in today’s red-state/blue-state psyche. That decade is still beloved and berated with emotions hauntingly uncensored when aroused.

Uniquely present at the unfolding of a cataclysmic period, a young and ambitious news reporter travels the decade, which he defines as beginning in 1963 with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and ending with the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. This journalistic neophyte encounters giants of a social and political revolution, from Reverend Martin Luther King to Bobby Kennedy. His eyewitness accounts contribute to a media culture that uplifts the human spirit by, for example, pressing forward the promises of a racially inclusive zeitgeist. He is simultaneously a party to degradation of the American Experience by presenting searing black & white footage of violent urban confrontations between protestors and police.

In all its distilled complexity, this book drives at something critically needed in today’s national conversation, as another momentous political year ending in eight begins to unfold ... and perhaps unravel. Boom! isn’t just an interesting history lesson, or a reporter’s personal accounts from his front-row seat, or a reunion of the decade’s most provocative characters. The book is a concrete manifestation of one of that decade’s most intense lessons from the feminist movement: the personal is the political.

As Brokaw acknowledges: “When I decided to write about the causes and the effects of the Sixties on a disparate group of Americans who had experienced the triumphs and failures of that time, I realized that I was stepping back through a looking glass in which images and memories are shaped by very personal perceptions on matters large and small. It was not going to be an easy assignment…”

Perceptions of the Sixties, including Tom Brokaw’s, inevitably underscore a realization that every part of our personal lives reflects and reacts to the macro political and social events swirling around us. A narrative of the Sixties today mirrors the consciousness of millions who individually lived through the turmoil, who questioned their paradigms, who took sides, who played the cards of social change, who engaged and withdrew from an “in your face” parade of protests, placards and high purpose. We were all perpetrators and victims, and our reflections are inherently personal, and the residual is inherently political … and visa versa.

Like the decade it represents, Brokaw’s Boom! asks us to search for perspective about a time so perplexing. It requires readers to think again about Martin, Bobby and John, to return to Richard Nixon and LBJ, and to reconsider Havens, Hawn and Hayden. It forces those who were there to recall raw hate over Vietnam and a moment of global awe as a tiny blue planet rose from the moon's horizon. The book nudges thoughtful readers to reconsider their noblest moments of psychological growth and to beseech acceptance for personal mistakes: our days of arrogant naiveté. This book demands that we pay attention to seedtime for what we are now and what we’ve evolved to become as a nation.

Boom! is inherently a Boomer book. For those on the leading-edge who were old enough to understand fully the turmoil their lives had become, both personal and political, it is detail and depth from a journalist with an inimitable backstage pass. For those members of Generation Jones who were too young to have gathered sufficient self-awareness as the decade unfolded, it is wise counsel about that which may have never been fully assessed or understood. Yet, for those who were born after the Sixties, it’s where we’ve been; it’s also explanation for why we are who we are now as a nation. It’s an interleaving mélange of images, instructions and incantations from the most galvanizing decade of the 20th century. At the epicenter of all this was 1968, so, fittingly, a book for our time, this year, right now.

Boom! must be controversial, an imperative. Any book about the Sixties must be contentious. Yet, given unresolvable differences about the merits of that fiery decade, we are still capable of gleaning vital lessons about constructing a better nation tomorrow.

This was Tom Brokaw’s challenge in Boom! Voices of the Sixties, Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today. It is a challenge well met.

Rock Music, Boomers and Dan Fogelberg

"...and I'm in Colorado when I'm not in some hotel, living out this life I've chose and come to know so well." — Dan Fogelberg, August 13, 1951 - December 16, 2007

Boomers and rock music are synonyms. We trace our lives with music. Some of our songs are hard-edged and confrontational. Some are soft and poetic.

Yesterday, one of our softest poets died. Dan Fogelberg passed away at 56 following a three-year battle with advanced prostate cancer.

Dan created part of the sound track of my life beginning in 1972. When I was grieving the departure of a girlfriend in college, Dan brought me closure with "Be on Your Way." When I was discovering new love with my future wife, Dan sang "To the Morning" in the background. When I realized the follies of my youth and looked ahead to the responsibilities of adulthood, he gave me perspective with "There's A Place in the World for a Gambler." When the urge came to own a piece of Colorado mountain property, Dan offered his sage counsel with "Long Way Home (Live in the Country)." When my father passed away, Dan further elevated my appreciation and gratitude for Dad's life with "Leader of the Band."

After the announcement three years ago that Dan was cancelling a concert tour because of advanced prostate cancer, I felt as if a brother had just received such a horrific diagnosis. Like thousands of others, I sent him a get well note:

I finally hugged my father before he left. I finally found peace after lost love. I finally claimed a purple mountain for my soul — all this because of your musical journey, always more than lyrics and melodies. I finally discovered gratitude and grace. Your music is timeless; your heart, boundless. If you should dispair, remember it's part of the plan, then set it free. Here's the hope you've given us ... back at you. Let it shine, brother.

My great good fortune was to have seen Dan perform live shortly before his fatal diagnosis. The stage did not have set embellishments we associate with big musical acts: just a bar stool, a majestic grand piano and overhead spotlights. The rustic Paramount Theater on Colfax provided a simple, rustic, honest context that is Dan's overriding message. His perfectly tuned passion and joy came through every soulful song. We left the theater feeling better about our lives, having witnessed in two hours a pure distillation, exoneration and exaltation of mortal existence.

As the Boomer generation ages, we will continue to lose great musicians and poets like Dan, and these moments will cause survivors to pause and ponder their gifts. We could not have been fully Boomers without them.

Boomers, Silverprint Colorado, A Positive Culture of Aging

This photo features three optimistic Boomers. You probably recognize the Boomer in the center. On your left is Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, and on your right is Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.

Tres Boomers, photographed by Raymond Speer, associate publisher of 50 Plus Marketplace News, became the cover photo of a recent issue of the newspaper.

You may not be familiar with this governor and mayor yet, but you will soon get to know them better as the world’s media focus next August on Denver, host of the Democratic National Convention.

Three Boomers have a message for you: Our state is going to beat your state.

What I mean by this is simply a promise that Colorado will be doggedly persistent in transforming the aging of the Boomer generation into a strategic focus and an economic opportunity. Many states are talking about it; few are taking substantive action.

I was honored to be one of twelve delegates who represented Colorado at the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. Delegates, reflecting over 150,000 contributors from across the nation, brought their passion and ideas together around a unifying theme: The Booming Dynamics of Aging.

But without active engagement by the current president and Congress, the possibilities for high-impact implementation policies and funding became doubtful. The aging of the nation is simply not at the top of the list of political priorities, not yet.

However, after the Colorado delegation returned home, we decided not to disband but rather to keep meeting and discussing how we can transform lofty resolutions adopted in Washington into local policies and action.

After two years of planning and generous contributions of time, resources and energy, Colorado introduced last November its strategic vision called Silverprint Colorado. Our goal is straightforward:

Colorado will establish a culture for positive aging addressing the needs, contributions and opportunities for all its older residents.

Certainly this vision addresses our intentions to provide quality care and assistance to older Coloradoans late in life. But it’s also a revelation about economic opportunities.

As I discussed in my keynote address, Colorado has exceptional prospects to capitalize on aging in the areas of tourism, housing, spirituality, healthcare, biotechnology, the arts, the green movement, and education, to name a few.

In some business areas such as tourism, Colorado is already a national leader. (In various surveys, Colorado ranks among the top five travel destinations preferred by Boomers.) In lesser developed business areas, such as education, new public and private collaborative programs are creating the infrastructure and underpinnings for future success.

Our kick-off event attracted an overflow crowd and participation by political, civic and business leaders throughout the state. Special guests included Dorcas Hardy, chair of the 2005 White House Conference on Aging, and Robert Blancato, chair of the 1995 White House Conference.

In their remarks, both Dorcas and Bob generously acknowledged Colorado as a state that is setting the standards by which other municipalities will judge successful adoption of a “positive culture of aging.”

Colorado has a mile-high vision for aging; we have broad-based support; and we have an entrepreneurial drive that’s endemic of the new west.

If you live elsewhere and I’ve stimulated your competitive instincts to challenge Colorado's preeminence as the nation’s most hospitable state for Boomers and pre-Boomers, then, frankly, we all win.