Boomers

Volkswagen, Baby Boomers, and the Future of Automobiles

Fast Company magazine recently published an article entitled, “The Germans Are Coming: Volkswagen’s Drive to Succeed in America.” The upbeat article suggests that author Ellen McGirt thinks generously of her new friends at Volkswagen Group of America (VGA). She professes highest regard for Stefan Jacoby, CEO of the American division, partly for his rock-star vibe and European-bred charm.

Here's how Ms. McGirt describes VW’s torchbearer in the U.S.: “Hardworking, exacting, and exceptionally likable, he has crisscrossed the United States like a presidential hopeful, donning cowboy hats for promotional videos, eating corn dogs at auto shows, fielding and answering pointed questions from dealers and the media.”

But the peripatetic chief executive has another quality worthy of accolades from a magazine focused on fast companies: Jacoby has cojones. He has set a challenging sales goal for his organization: “800,000 units a year in the United States by 2018, a nearly 300% increase from current levels.” That’s raw ambition in the face of a depressing crash in U.S. auto sales of 36% during the last two years.

Not only will Jacoby’s organization need to contend with a rapidly downsizing and rightsizing U.S. auto industry, very much in survival mode and gearing up to rip pounds of flesh from foreign competition, VGA must also mix it up with voracious foreign competition from upstarts Hyundai and Kia and stalwarts Toyota and Honda.

The article’s solitary reference to critical historical roots of this automobile brand arrives early in the article:

Volkswagen, originally a beloved, albeit quirky, counterculture brand, has never seemed to fully grasp the American market. When Jacoby took over the U.S. operation in 2007, Volkswagen (including Audi) was clinging to a 2% share of the U.S. market, down from 7% during its Beetle heyday in the 1970s.

I beg to differ with “never seemed to grasp the American market.” Volkswagen more than grasped the American market when Boomers were just becoming drivers, arriving in adulthood and looking for counter-cultural transportation to match revolutionary passions associated with the 1960s. Few foreign brands have achieved such notable status with the generation. The VW Beetle paved the way for small, foreign, economical cars to storm the U.S. in the following two decades, a straightaway that Toyota and Datsun would also race, laying rubber across the continent.

An advertising campaign created by Bill Bernbach, the late and legendary copywriter who led the “creative revolution” in advertising in the late 1960s and early 1970s, stands today as one of the most admired print and television ad campaigns of all time (and received honors from Advertising Age magazine as the best campaign of the 20th century). 

I write with a modicum of authority about “share of heart” earned by the Volkswagen brand among its primary demographic back in the mid-1960s through 1970s. My father gave me a used Beetle as a high school graduation present. It is the only car I ever named. Long-term friends who knew me then still refer to my VW as “The Blue Badoinke.” My Volkswagen wasn’t just a mode of transportation; it was part of my identity. More broadly, the car and its minivan sibling are intertwined in the mythology of a generation’s rise to consumer dominance.

Jacoby, the senior executive at VGA, is a young Boomer, or member of Generation Jones (as is writer McGirt). At 51, he would not yet have arrived at puberty when his future employer was grooving all the peace and love—in, on and around its vehicles. He was too young then to understand what this car meant to adoring (and sometimes mechanically frustrated) young Boomer owners, then crisscrossing the country on perpetual road trips.

And this is the crux of a dilemma: senior leadership of VGA may not be fully embracing an enormous sales opportunity because the team lacks institutional understanding of that opportunity.

Karl Mannheim, the father of sociology, makes an important distinction in his writing about how generations become constituted. There are essentially two types of “memories” that impact impressionable youth: appropriated and acquired.

“Appropriated memories” are those we learn vicariously from others, usually members of older generations. Most reading these words possess appropriated memories of World War II, which we’ve gathered from movies, books, history lessons, parents and grandparents. Sure, we have knowledge of that war, and maybe even a vicarious sense of the emotional context, perhaps learned from movies such as Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. But we don’t share the intensity of emotions about that war typical of our parents’ generation.

“Acquired memories” are those events we live through as our brains mature into adulthood. As Mannheim stressed, acquired memories in adolescence and young adulthood are much more powerful and enduring than appropriated memories. Acquired memories shared by a generation are far more inspiring and long lasting. Acquired memories during chaotic times can shape a generational personality—and a consumer mindset.

We can assume that contemporary leaders of VGA have appropriated memories of those turbulent days when the Volkswagen Beetle was synonymous with youth culture. They may be aware of the trajectory of the brand in the U.S. once the car gained a cult status among sixties’ youth. Perhaps they’ve seen Bill Bernbach’s famous magazine ad depicting the Beetle in white space with a terse and accurate headline: “Think Small.”

But it’s doubtful that most today leading the corporate charge to achieve 800,000 in annual U.S. sales by 2018 have acquired memories of the Beetle’s emotional relationship with core Boomer customers.

I submit that if the German automobile company fully intends to achieve its lofty sales goals, then its senior leadership should reengage the U.S. Boomer market. It is possible that a well-designed Jetta or a new VW sedan— sporting luxury, environmental and technological features in demand by Boomers today—could gain status with an older, more discerning, and wealthier Boomer market.

Boomers are already responsible for over 40% of luxury car sales, and I predict that the car destined to become synonymous with their 50+ stage of life will include some of the attributes of the original VW Beetle: smaller, more maneuverable, irreverent, rugged, adaptable to active lifestyles, economical to operate, kind to the environment, and just plain cool to look at by today’s standards. 

Born from 1946 to 1964 – Baby Boomers Turn 46 to 64 in 2010

 

Last summer something interesting occurred to me. In 2010, a demographic symmetry arrives.

Americans born between 1946 and 1964—the birth years sociologists have traditionally used to delineate the Baby Boomer Generation—range in age, youngest to oldest, from 46 to 64. The demographic contrivance of 1946 to 1964 becomes the aging reality of 46 to 64.

Millions of Boomers may be asking themselves a rhetorical question Beatle Paul McCartney first intoned in his 1967 hit, When I’m Sixty-Four.

Will you still need me?

Families and friends will still need their 64-year-old Boomers. And, undoubtedly, businesses will still need all their Boomer customers—even if many businesses avoid targeting aging markets.

Demographic and economic exigencies cannot be ignored. Boomers represent 26% of the entire U.S. population, with one in three American adults being Boomers. This generation of Americans has had a long history of being the nation’s dominant consumer segment. Boomers today contribute about 40% of all consumer-spending, and the generation controls roughly 70% of the nation’s assets. That’s an unassailable business case.

But can a generation be a business target?

Diverse and distributed as they may be, Boomers are bound together by a compelling sense of their generational reference group.

Steve Gillon, Ph.D., author of Boomer Nation and a nationally acclaimed academic and historian, observed that not all generations possess a common identity that can be so widely understood and shared:

While past generations have shared common experiences, they developed only a loose sense of generational identity. Largely because of their size and the emergence of mass media, especially television, Boomers are the first generation to have a defined sense of themselves as a single entity.

Dominant demographics and being the first generation raised with broadcast television gave Boomers a layered and complex sense of identity, the shared values of which continue to propel them into the future. I believe that a Boomer-sense-of-collective-self will inspire future marketing dimensions—and business opportunities.

The journey began for each of 78 million individuals sometime between 1946 and 1964. The long strange trip continues in 2010 as each celebrates a birthday ranging from 46 to 64.

A dynamic generation of men and women is aging—and changing through aging—and changing aging.

Indeed, the times they are a-changin’.

Avatar: A Mythic Movie for Baby Boomers

“You’re not in Kansas anymore, ladies and gentlemen,” cautions Col. Miles Quaritch, a sinewy, pugnacious antagonist in James Cameron’s instantly classic science fiction movie, Avatar.

Most American Boomers recall a powerful line from the first mega-movie to capture them as children: an eternal story of fanciful travel and even alien humanoids, a movie masterpiece called Wizard of Oz. Spoken by child actress Judy Garland, the original quote rings through the ages: “Toto, I have the feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Many glowing film reviews are being written about Cameron’s newest cinematic achievement. My filter for this movie is the same as the context of this blog, my books and speeches. I watched Avatar to understand how Boomer history, sociology and culture pervade the story, arguably the finest achievement of a director whose birthright is the Boomer generation.

What can Boomers discover and rediscover by simply investing 163 minutes watching this film?

First, Avatar is a blockbuster movie, wide and deep, thus encouraging multiple viewings to comprehend and appreciate tens of thousands of directorial nuances built into a technological feat of 3-D animation.

Epic movie events populate Boomer history. Many dotingly recall blockbuster films from their youth. Cinematic extravaganzas from the 1950s often showcased prehistoric monsters portrayed by men wearing latex rubber suits (and silly by today’s standards).

Perhaps the most famous of those blockbuster monster movies was Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, released in 1956 as an American adaptation of the original Japanese version. Filmed just a decade after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Godzilla was an allegory for irrevocable consequences that radioactive weapons could have on our planet.

Without ambiguity or subtlety, Avatar is a pro-environmental, antiwar movie and allegory.

Cameron’s awe-inspiring world of Pandora—its lush beauty, alien landscapes and ironically comprehensible flora and fauna—invites viewers to yearn for places of unspoiled beauty, tapping into deeply felt human needs for connection with the natural world. Mechanized assaults by humans on Pandora’s raw loveliness become more wretched in juxtaposition.

Clearly the director/writer of this movie has experienced and internalized antiwar messages of the Vietnam War era and even the bitter taste of environmental desecration symbolized by Love Canal. Visibly he has captured his revulsion for offensive war through a film that hauntingly intersects with two terrestrial wars today.

By probing the mystical, spiritual life of the giant blue Na’vi, Avatar champions a tribal narrative, recalling an Age of Aquarius when leading-edge Boomers became more sensitive to alternative lifestyles of Native Americans and Hindu mystics. As Boomers reached maturity, passage into independence for many also incorporated reverence for nature and unspoiled places, thus popularizing a renaissance in rural living and backpacking excursions into wilderness. Tribal ideals included exploration of new realms of spirituality and esoteric rituals designed to foster community while embracing inter-species diversity and racial acceptance.

It’s obvious to me that James Cameron is a Baby Boomer, not just because he was born in 1954 but because of his values. We can reasonably assume that one wellspring for his story was many movie experiences he must have had growing up. Like many of his generation, he learned to cheer for the underdog through epic stories such as Star Wars and Rocky. We may surmise that Cameron also must have felt deep indignation when beholding exploitation of land, native peoples, and wild animals as he watched Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves.

Through his portrayal of the Na’vi people on the planet Pandora, Cameron reveals cinematic influences that have led us to a more post-racial era. The director may have learned to identify more with minorities though movies that successfully amplified the social carcinoma of racism: great films such as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, In the Heat of the Night, and more recently, Mississippi Burning.

Many movie critics have bestowed actress Sigourney Weaver with accolades for her performance in this movie. Once again, this Boomer performer, who turned 60 this year, has portrayed a character with a strong feminist bearing: a protagonist determined to prevail over mean-spirited forces. Weaver’s Grace Augustine recalls other iconic female heroes (and Cameron characters) such as Terminator’s Sarah Conner (portrayed by Linda Hamilton) and Alien’s Ellen Ripley (also portrayed by Weaver).

Portraying aggressive and racist Col. Quaritch, actor Stephen Lang, born in 1952, reprises the historically endowed role of a gung-ho military antagonist. He reminded me of other complicated and angry men reenacting the Vietnam War such as Tom Berenger, who portrayed a harsh and hardcore staff sergeant in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (a fellow Boomer director).

Writing for The Denver Post, movie critic Lisa Kennedy observed that Avatar “conjures Boomer memories of Saturday afternoons spent in the company of Ray Harryhausen’s hydras, dinosaurs and cyclops.” This pioneering special effects genius has obviously influenced James Cameron with storytelling possibilities of stop-motion animation, now updated to achieve truly otherworldly movie experiences.

Avatar also conjures Boomer recollections of epic movies, heroic storylines, racial injustice, xenophobia, environmental desecration, feminism, antiwar sentiments, historical exploitation of Native Americans, and yearning to return to nature, to live in peace more communally.

This movie reminds us of when we were young and becoming more complicated members of a tribe, not just a generation. 

Susan Boyle, Baby Boomer Celebrities, and A New Culture of Fame

Popular culture favors youth. Celebrity favors youth. Many of today’s icons of the Baby Boomer Generation achieved fame before turning 30, certainly by 40.

And unlike older generations, where many youth icons faded away after age 50, Boomer icons persist successfully today: filling stadiums, such as Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Gene Simmons, and Bonnie Rait; and winning starring roles in movies, such as Richard Gere, Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep, and Sigourney Weaver.

The Boomer generation’s cultural hegemony is maintaining, even expanding celebrity status for those well past 50, including all the aforementioned artists who all turned 60 this year.

In Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, I raise another possibility for the future of fame, if not a wish: that this generation would be capable of recognizing and elevating artists who do not achieve acclaim until after the age of 45.

I propose this possibility as another tangible sign that Boomer dominance over popular culture will not soon fade as critics predict; rather, the generation would continue to influence paradigm shifts about aging and popular celebrity appeal. Perhaps for the first time in western culture, older artists might step to the international stage, also for the first time—talented individuals who rise above ageism, looks-ism and longstanding social barriers to reach acclaim after reaching a certain age.

Well, this week my wish has been granted.

Last April, an understated woman opened her mouth and sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical “Les Misérables” with nearly perfect pitch and clarity. The judges and television studio audience became enthralled, struggling to find congruency between what their eyes were witnessing and their ears were hearing.

Susan Boyle, age 48, a church volunteer from lackluster Blackburn, Scotland, became an instant celebrity. The YouTube video of her shocking performance on “Britain’s Got Talent,” the UK version of “American Idol,” has received over 33 million views and nearly 90,000 five-star ratings. According to Visible Measures, a company that computes viewings of Internet videos, her catalog of on-online clips has been watched over 310 million times.

Melissa Lonner, senior producer at NBC’s “Today” show, where Ms. Boyle performed on November 23, clarified the meaning of this watershed moment in her comments to the New York Times: “She is the perfect Cinderella story. She connects with the public and crosses over so many socioeconomic platforms. And she made a great record with songs that everyone knows and can relate to.”

But trouncing Simon Cowell, the cynical talent judge, is not the end of this Boomer woman’s remarkable accomplishments. This week her new shrink-wrapped CD, “I Dreamed a Dream,” sold over 700,000 copies in the United States; became the fastest-selling debut album in British history; and soared to the number one sales position in Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, and Australia.

Equally thought-provoking is the manner in which this album has been purchased. Ninety-four percent of the sales have been CDs, not digital downloads, which is counter to the prevailing trend where only 77 percent of music sales today are CDs.

The New York Times speculates why Boyle’s album has been acquired in greater numbers in the form of atoms instead of digital bits:

For many in the music industry Ms. Boyle’s sales are a reminder of a large and often forgotten audience: older listeners who, whether they are less tech-savvy than younger consumers or they simply prefer to hold purchases in their hands, favor CDs over downloads.

Coincidentally, this week Microsoft and AARP released a new study entitled, “Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation.” Michael Rogers, the futurist author, concludes: “Boomers want technology to fit the lives they have made and the values they hold dear. If their children are the technology pioneers, the first to explore new territory, Boomers are the settlers, arriving later to set up schools and libraries, to sink deep roots, and to build permanent structures.” 

Boomers know how to download music; many own iPods and have scads of MP3’s loaded on their computer hard drives. Yet, the soft touch of Susan Boyle’s voice begets the higher touch preference for a CD over a digital download. And for all those in the technology arena, often shaping their business decisions according to preferences of younger generations, this defining moment should be an adequate reminder that Boomers have the economic might and market dominance to shape the future of technology adoption and usage.

Susan Boyle’s new CD includes “I Dreamed a Dream,” the song that made her famous; religious hymns “How Great Thou Art” and “Amazing Grace”; and covers of popular Boomer rock songs by the Monkees, Rolling Stones, and Madonna.

In my book I also touch upon the underlying psychology that might be driving Susan Boyle’s meteoric rise to fame:

Although this generation’s impact has been significant in the entertainment world, Baby Boomers do not want their legacy to rely solely on the great work of rock musicians and Hollywood actors. They are certainly proud of the accomplishments of two famous Bruce’s—Bruce Springsteen and Bruce Willis—but the people they admire in their everyday lives include thousands of heroes who never achieve mass-market celebrity. These unsung superstars may be famous for their accomplishments in only a single quiet industry—and many prefer anonymity to celebrity—but they are nevertheless as important to the Boomer legacy as its Tinsel Town celebrities.

One of the uplifting possibilities of the Boomer generation arriving in later life is a realization that ordinary older people can achieve extraordinary dreams if given a chance. Society used to erect nearly insurmountable barriers before those who sought fame for the first time after the age of 40.

As the culture of fame finally admits older newcomers—those who have not spent months or years preparing for greatness, but rather have practiced their art and nurtured their dreams for decades, as has Susan Boyle—we witness and celebrate the complete realization of human potential across the lifespan, unimpeded by age or prior socioeconomic status. 

Boomer Nostalgia: Icons and Images

Peanut butter sandwiches with strawberry jam.

Alfalfa sprouts in salads.

Patchouli stick incense.

Hand-made, multi-colored candles.

A silver peace symbol as a necklace.

Stained glass lamps.

Indian bedspreads.

Faded, worn blue jeans and old cowboy boots.

These are the tastes, smells, sights, and textures of Baby Boomer coming-of-age memories.

These were not just objects extracted from the montage of their everyday lives back then; these were their icons, suggesting more transcendental purposes.

Natural living. Higher consciousness. Abundant health. Artistic expression. Heightened sensuality. Spirituality. Sexual healing. Laid-back comfort. Anti-authoritarian sentiments.

These material objects came to represent a more integrated life, greater focus, higher awareness, and spiritual well being.

Boomers intentionally added meaning beyond mere utilitarian purpose to the tastes, sounds, smells, and textures of their daily lives. Some journeyed to alternative realities through drug trips to discover extraordinary meaning in mundane, everyday objects and experiences. Some natural experiences of discovery became punctuation marks by virtue of novelty. Boomers were young then, and the world was still fresh.

 

As Boomers reach the 50+ and 60+ stages of life, these powerful images and experiences from youth gain renewed power when employed wisely. Boomers sometimes choose to reconnect with these icons—their mythology—to re-experience the freshness of those discoveries, at once simple in idea but complex in meaning and interpretation.

If you know the triggers to best achieve a heightened experience of your product or service, employ them.

Don’t just display your new bagel toaster; set the stage of experience. Replicate a famous rock album cover by juxtaposing with your machine a freshly toasted sandwich, brimming with chunky peanut butter and lusty strawberry jam.

Don’t just show a new home for sale, vacuous and void of furniture. Rather, before the next tour with empty nesters, light some glowing candles and a stick of sandalwood incense to add warmth to its rooms.

Don’t just gather political supporters in the name of social justice. Bring out yellow daisies, white doves, and peace symbols.

This is not to suggest that you should trot out sensual experiences from the sixties and seventies as blatant and obvious attempts to manipulate. Those who can talk the talk but did not walk the walk have done this too many times, and rather badly.
This iconographic dance is along a fine line.

Marketers often make the mistake that an advertisement should offer literal, and therefore, stereotypical reference objects about the group it is targeting. This can lead to a message that speaks down to rather than includes the target audience.

Playing the icons with the wrong tone or in the wrong context can suggest manipulation or condescension, somewhat with the same result as when an adult tries to use teenage slang and then fails to understand the subtleties of an expression.

Creative integration of those youthful icons into the experience of your product or service, in a way that does not summon conscious attention or suggest imprecise understanding, can reach into both the deepest wells of collective experience and many cherished remembrances.

Certainly, you are playing the nostalgia card by evoking these icons, as others have done with every generation’s peculiar cultural lexicon of foods, fashion, entertainment, and values. But the key to doing it well is the art with which you show—rather than tell—the story.

 

The objects of Boomer youth are the embodiment of stories about discovery, relationships, values and dreams—icons. Understand the objects contextually, and you will be closer to understanding their hearts.

Once you crack this code, then your product will become the priority, not just another discretionary choice.

In Memoriam: Dr. Gene Cohen, A Creative, Thoughtful Visionary For Boomers and All Aging Generations

Gene D. Cohen, M.D., Ph.D. has forever changed the field of geriatrics while successfully challenging misconceptions about aging as a lifestage of inevitable decline and loss.

His scientifically-derived conclusions and insights about aging brains are voluminous. His trendsetting research and thoughtful analyses are inspiring new industries. His influence will persist for generations as society evolves more optimistic models of the aging process.

A member of the Silent Generation at 65 (not quite a Leading-Edge Boomer by one year), Dr. Cohen passed away on Friday, November 6, 2009, after a brave, fourteen-year battle against prostate cancer.

For those in business and marketing, Dr. Cohen’s research and clinical observations provide exciting new insights into aging, while creating vast opportunities for new products and services and reframing outdated societal myths.

Here are a few of Dr. Cohen’s salient observations—insights not derived from wishful thinking or overly idealized beliefs, but from rock-hard scientific research, much of it emanating from the field of neuroscience:

1. Contrary to popular myth, brain cells do not stop forming after adolescence; growing new brain cells is a lifelong phenomenon.

2. The brain's ability to grow new neurons is a dramatic reason for optimism about the brain’s potential in the second half of life.

3. Older brains can learn new things, and they are actually better than younger brains at many types of intellectual tasks.

4. The brain and mental capacity continue to grow throughout life.

5. As humans age, we use both hemispheres of the brain more efficiently; the brain becomes vastly more creative as life progresses.

6. Adversity and loss that often accompany later-life actually encourage creativity by forcing change.

From the perspective of cognition, how do aging adults differ from younger adults? According to Dr. Cohen, aging brains become more adept in three forms of thinking:

• Relativistic thinking, where understanding is based on a synthesized combination of disparate views. Older adults abandon absolute truth in favor of more realistic relative truths.

• Dualist thinking, where contradictions in opposing views are uncovered and opposites are held in mind at the same time without judgment. In this way, opposing views can be accepted as valid.

• Systematic thinking allows the person to see the forest as well as the trees, rising above minutia to understand the bigger picture. The thinker is thus not trapped in personal and petty issues.

Throughout his long career, Dr. Cohen distinguished himself for his vision, kindness and unyielding commitment to the field of aging and improving health of older adults.

After graduating from Harvard College and Georgetown University School of Medicine, he began shaping the field of geriatrics through his work at the National Institute of Mental Health in the early 1970’s. He was the first chief of the Center on Aging and Director of the Program on Aging.

During his early years at NIMH, he took interest in minorities by supporting research on mental health of impoverished and homeless, leading to Medicare changes allowing for reimbursement of mental health services (beyond the original annual $250 limit).

He continued his commitment to biological, psychological and social issues in geriatric medicine at the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health where he served as Acting Director, helping grow the institute budget into the hundreds of millions and catapulting the field of aging into a global spotlight.

He authored over 150 publications in the field of aging including, The Creative Age: Awakening the Human Potential in the Second Half of Life, published in 2000 and most recently, The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain. The former book is groundbreaking in its revelations about creativity and aging.

Dr. Cohen also acted as the first director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at George Washington University where he held positions of Professor of Health Care Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

His hobbies reflected his professional interests. A blossoming game inventor after age 50, Dr. Cohen demonstrated that creativity and untapped potential are possible for older adults. His most recent game, Making Memories Together, assists families and caregivers of Alzheimer’s disease patients.

As I prepared this tribute, I recalled that someone once snapped a photo of Dr. Cohen with me at a meeting of The Society, a global think-tank founded by esteemed author David B. Wolfe and focused on business, marketing and aging. This photo memory is a wonderful gift from Dr. Cohen to all of us dedicated to changing aging:

Do not go gently, indeed. This is a lasting message from a man who has dramatically influenced the profession of aging, instilling more clarity about the unique contributions of aging adults in an aging society, and he did so while fighting prostate cancer for fourteen years.

Automotive Advertising to Boomers and Ford's Lincoln MKS - Burnin' for You

We can critically analyze many ramifications of “advertising to Baby Boomers” by surveying the fields of consumer psychology, generational sociology, cultural anthropology, and age demographics.

We can seek informed authorities on psychosocial development, cohort effects, life-stage interventions, brain changes due to aging, and emotional processing. We can do all this just to warm up.

We can also flip off all the left-brain analysis for a moment and just take a look at some ads that have powerful branding energy. So I’ve selected two ads for your viewing enjoyment, ads built around a rock ‘n’ roll spirit. Ads successfully reaching through media clutter to make consumers stop and take notice.

For many months I have been appreciating recent television commercials from Lincoln MKS. The first in this highly produced campaign features a cover of David Bowie’s signature song, “Space Oddity.”

Released within weeks of this post, the second ad has also caused me to feel the rush of “my music,” featuring a signature hit rock song from Blue Oyster Cult, “Burnin’ for You.”  

If you’re interested in further dissecting how to create effective automotive advertising targeting Boomers, perhaps I should first reiterate why you should think about it. Boomers are responsible for over half of all luxury car sales. According to a recent article in Barron’s magazine:

The median age of all luxury-car buyers is 52, by some estimates, and shoppers 50 or older account for the highest proportion of purchases or leases of luxury-car makers’ most expensive models; they have worked the longest, have accumulated the most assets and have money to spend on themselves.

Here are some thoughts about why Lincoln MKS may be squarely hitting the Boomer branding bulls-eye:

1) Lincoln MKS adds emotional catharsis to the spots by employing hit classic rock music from significant artists, including David Bowie and Blue Oyster Cult. Classic rock music can get our attention.

2) However, the music beds don’t just replay the old music; they update these tunes with performances by cover artists who deliver exciting new interpretations, and therefore bring new life to these old songs.

3) My colleague Chuck Nyren, author of the seminal Advertising to Baby Boomers, has often commented that classic rock music can be a deterrent to effective Boomer advertising since the music potentially pulls the viewer’s mind into a state of nostalgic rumination, causing the receiver to completely ignore the ad’s sponsor or purpose. (Great tune... but I’m now thinking about 1969 and a former girlfriend who symbolizes that song in my life.) This can be true, and Chuck has made a very astute observation, so…

4) Lincoln successfully integrates enormously powerful visual imaging with flawless editing to render the songs organic to the overall message gestalt. These ads create a state of suspense for viewers, making us want to keep watching. The television spots drive viewers forward with the speed they can expect from a Lincoln MKS.

5) The second ad featuring the Blue Oyster Cult tune centers its appeal on a mysterious new technology called “EcoBoost.” Although in 30 seconds we don’t know what this means, for those of us who are trying to incorporate “conscience consumerism” into our lives (and Boomers over-represent this burgeoning LOHAS market segment) probably the mere suggestion of new ecological advantages to be found in a Lincoln MKS 2010 is enough to inspire wanna-be Tesla owners (who can’t afford the hip car) to jump online for more details.

Lincoln MKS has, in my opinion, aptly demonstrated how to create a branding overlay that’s nuanced to attract Boomers but certainly can be seen as appealing to others who didn’t grow up with David Bowie and Blue Oyster Cult. We see great visual effects integrated with damn good rock music, leaving viewers with the simple impression that these cars are hot to trot.

I hope you enjoyed the Lincoln MKS ads as much as I do. If you did or did not, please let me know what you think.

For those of you who have become accustomed during the last year to reading blog articles here that are more like longer essays, I decided this time to give both of us a break. But if you’re interested in reading more, take a look at my newest article on Huffington Post about how age discrimination in the workplace can and shall be overcome (we hope).

The National Parks, Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan and Baby Boomers

My previous two posts reviewed the extraordinary lure of Europe to members of the Baby Boomer generation. Whereas Boomers are positively predisposed to travel to Europe, this generation is also today confronting enormous economic hurdles, making European travel less accessible and attractive.

One alternative for travel-hungry but budget-conscious Boomers unfolded before a national television audience beginning September 27 in a spectacular documentary series by filmmakers Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan: The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. During six consecutive nights and twelve hours of programming, Burns and Duncan shared chaotic and inspirational history of our national parks.

This story began in 1851 when white men first beheld a valley that would become known as Yosemite. Their primary mission then was to expel Native Americans from the valley. Twenty-one years later, in 1872, Yosemite became the first national park. A unique idea to preserve and protect wild and beautiful places eventually led to a park system that today encompasses almost 400 sites and protects 84 million acres.

Creation of almost every park required enormous political will, as nearly every acre represented economic opportunities for private interests, from lumber to mining and water resources to tourism. Almost every park owes its existence to a few passionate protectors who fought against powerful lobbies that would have preferred exploitation over preservation.

As these filmmakers wisely observe, the original idea of a national park system is unique to America. In the Old Continent, the most compelling and memorable natural landscapes tend to be owned by aristocracy and private interests, and if these places become available for the general public to experience, they do so because of benevolence and generosity of landowners. “Only a democracy could have thought that land could have been set aside, not for the rich and nobility, but for everybody for all time,” Burns said in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor.

In America, vast tracts of wilderness have been preserved for perpetuity, owned equally by all the nation’s citizens rather than a minority or elite. These landscapes constitute an incomparable bequeathal to the future and generations yet to be born. Whereas Europe has majestic cathedrals, America has majestic canyons and mountains of equal spiritual import – “cathedrals of God’s handiwork.”

The film trailer intones, “As Americans, we’re not only connected to this land, we’re connected by it.” And this is how Boomers became part of the history of the national parks. Many remember at least one special trip to a park shared with parents and siblings during the 1950s or 1960s.

I recall visiting Rocky Mountain National Park many times with my parents: a vivid tableau of majestic mountain landscapes, a pungent pine aroma from blue spruce following afternoon rains, a comical encounter with chipmunks begging for peanuts as we gazed at inspirational beauty from an observation point. This is how my parents taught me about the importance of wilderness preservation, at just about the time when Congress passed the Wilderness Preservation Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson 45 years ago on September 3, 1964.

These two filmmakers are also members of the Baby Boomer generation who reaffirm by their achievements many core values important to the generation. This includes respect for the nation’s pioneering traditions, drive to capture history artfully through modern media, commitment to an enduring conservation ethic, love of wilderness trekking through low-impact sports such as backpacking and cross country skiing, and veneration of shared egalitarian values.

Ken Burns, born in July 1953, is quintessentially an American born of the Boomer generation, still wearing a longer hair style reminiscent of the 1970s. Nominated for two Academy Awards and recipient of several Emmy Awards, Burns is son of a homemaker and anthropology professor. After receiving a B.A. from Hampshire College, he avoided a corporatized path to success but instead chose to become an entrepreneur and cofounder of Florentine Films. Since 1975 he has become an innovator of many of the most significant techniques in modern documentary filmmaking. His filmography includes several critically acclaimed PBS series: Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, and The Civil War, which set a benchmark for viewership on public television by attracting 40 million for the premiere in 1990.

Dayton Duncan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and is author of ten books, including Out West: A Journey through Lewis & Clark’s America. He has served as a consultant and writer for many of Ken Burns’ documentaries including The Civil War, Baseball and Jazz. He has written a critically acclaimed children’s book, The West, An Illustrated History for Children. He has also been a political operative in the Democratic Party, serving as chief of staff to New Hampshire Governor Hugh Gallen and as national press secretary for Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential bid.

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan can also be seen as a compelling invitation for Baby Boomers to preserve their legacy. Americans are “co-owners of some of the most spectacular scenery on earth,” Burns said. “And all you’ve got to do is go out and visit your property now and then, and make sure it’s being taken care of. And put it in your will for the next generation.”

Boomers and Travel in Europe on Just $500 Per Day

When you’re down and troubled
And you need a helping hand
And nothing, whoa nothing is going right.
Close your eyes and think of me
And soon I will be there
To brighten up even your darkest nights.

As we walked under a low archway heading down a narrow passageway on an ancient cobblestone street, I heard lyrics as true and clear as James Taylor had ever sung them. I assumed someone was listening to one of Taylor’s albums, perhaps in a nearby apartment, and his ballad echoed brilliantly off surrounding brick walls.

Then, at the end of the passageway, we came upon a young Italian street performer singing “You’ve Got a Friend.” He played percussion by stomping his feet, to which he had cleverly attached a maraca and tambourine. His voice rang melodic and pure. His interpretation of the classic James Taylor song lacked perfection only due to mispronunciation of a few English words – totally understandable and excusable.

And I thought to myself: Why would a young Italian street performer choose to cover James Taylor’s catalog and play these sweet, sentimental American songs just a few yards from a museum housing Peggy Guggenheim’s art collection... in Venice, Italy? 

We lingered, appreciating this young man’s joyful enthusiasm and interpretation. His performance earned a few discretionary Euros from us, and as we hesitated to enjoy his music, others near our age also stopped to watch this gentle performer. They also tossed coins in the musician’s open guitar case, which I estimate had accumulated at least 50 Euros.

Then the answer to my rhetorical question came to me. This performer understands how to leverage an economic opportunity obvious to anyone traveling in Europe during the last few weeks. Boomers are everywhere. And if you’re going to sing for your dinner, covering James Taylor is a smart choice. Boomers, both American and European, will happily part with their money for those who deliver authentic experiences.

This young man isn’t just a talented folk singer and guitarist; he’s also a shrewd businessman. And he could teach European tourism officials some valuable lessons in marketing to the vast U.S. Boomer market: It's called value.

As I traveled through Italy during mid-September, I encountered and conversed with Boomers who had chosen to dig deeply into their bank accounts to afford an increasingly unaffordable yearning: the Old Continent and all the rich beauty it offers.

Several days before exploring Venice, for example, I came upon a group of American Boomers who were involved in an educational travel experience under the supervision of a young Chicago-based artist. Poised and painting above Cortona in the Tuscan hill country, these aspiring artists had been learning the ancient craft of oil painting.

Except for the well-to-do, Europe has become barely an affordable travel experience during the last few years. And this sits in striking contrast to the way things were. Many who backpacked and traveled through Europe in the 1960s and 1970s remember the legitimate opportunity to discover European art, history and culture on merely five dollars a day.

As I write this, every Euro costs $1.46 American dollars. Budget hotels in some of Europe’s great cities can be found for a mere €120 per day (which works out to $175.00 U.S. dollars). A reasonable daily food budget might be around €100 for a couple hoping not to dine at ubiquitous McDonald’s restaurants. And the prudent travel budget needs to accommodate a few attractions and museums (or why bother). When you factor in the cost to fly to Europe, suddenly, a “reasonable” European vacation can easily require not $5.00 but $500.00 per day.

There are many reasons why Europe is so alluring to Boomers.

Art

Culture

Scenery

Agriculture

Cuisine

Europe may lose a significant share of its forthcoming Boomer business opportunities if somehow the European travel experience cannot be rendered more affordable. The great American middle class, hit hard by current economic realities and shrinking prospects for unfettered retirement assets, may choose not to travel to Europe in large numbers. Rather, American Boomers may opt to explore their own country or travel to foreign destinations where currency exchange rates and inflation are not so punishing.

In spite of the plethora of Boomers I saw during my travels through Italy this past month, a number of business owners confessed to me that Europe has been hit hard by global recession. Americans are noticeably in short supply. This may continue to be the future for Europe. And it's too bad because Europe used to be one of the Boomer generation's most economical friends.

Boomers and Business in the U.S. and Europe: It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll

Baby Boomers in the U.S. and Europe are changing aging as profoundly as they changed youth. Their demographic might, coupled with a revolutionary spirit, guarantees radical changes ahead for institutions and businesses worldwide.

Over 45 years ago this generation chose rock music as its preferred form of entertainment and a force for social change. And the soundtrack of their lives is still influencing who they are today, even as they age.

And I'm running down the street of life
And I'm never gonna let you die
And I'm never ever gonna get old

British songwriter and performer David Bowie, author of the lyrics above, built his renowned career around it. So did Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, and Phil Collins.

It is a thread connecting disparate members of a generation; it ties New Yorkers to Californians and the Dutch to Brits. That rainbow-colored thread is rock ‘n’ roll, the album of tens of millions of European and American lives: an audio collage of incense and peppermint; of jungle green, Agent Orange and blood red; of young and mature love; of peace signs and pro-life placards.

It is memories and money, idealism and capitalism.

And rock ‘n’ roll is today ushering Baby Boomers into their third age: For many, the beginning of an adventurous new life stage; for others, a long, slow slide downhill. But whichever view of a rapidly-aging Western society dominates, optimistic or pessimistic, Boomers mean money — lots of it.

By 2015, Boomers on both sides of the Atlantic will have a combined net worth of €17 trillion, the one-year gross domestic product for the US and the eurozone, combined.

Rock Me

In recent years, consumers have heard a succession of former hit rock songs become embedded in advertising.

Apple Computers began selling multihued iMacs with The Rolling Stones’ She’s a Rainbow. Wrangler Jeans drafted Fortunate Son, Credence Clearwater Revival’s anti-Vietnam War anthem. The Who’s Roger Daltry once sang, “The things they do look awful cold, (talking ’bout my generation), I hope I die before I get old.” And Boomers could only let out a collective gasp three decades after the song’s introduction when they heard Won’t Get Fooled Again in Nissan commercials.

Rod Stewart sells Pampers. Queen urges consumers to buy Aiwa stereos. Steppenwolf showcases Chevy’s ‘American Revolution’ with Magic Carpet Ride. Paul McCartney sells Fidelity Investments. Multi-millionaire Steve Winwood sells investment advice for Ameriprise. Bono, the charismatic lead singer for U2, sings hit song Vertigo to proffer greater profit margins upon Apple’s iPod.

Instant Karma: We All Shine On

The future of business with this insatiable generation is a set of possibilities, full of speculation and spin.

Earnest executives around the globe are strategizing in corporate boardrooms; entrepreneurs are dreaming up best-case and worst-case scenarios. Idealistic change agents propose halcyon visions of social evolution, an Age of Aquarius in gray tones. Disagreement abounds over which developmental pathways this fickle generation will follow.

Some critics view this generation’s alleged degeneration into materialism during the 1980s and 1990s as a presage of the future. Debt-ridden Boomers — purportedly over 25 million in the U.S. with net assets of $10,000 or less — will continue to tap into materialism, from Wal-Mart to Harrods, purchasing more and more and more, beyond necessity or practicality.

Boomer advocates, a less aggressive lot, see the future with the generation investing prudently in co-housing retirement communities, educational travel expeditions, grandchildren, and wellness pharmacopoeias.

A generation of wise mentors, attracted to learning, continuous self-development and social activism, will change the character of nations, making them wiser and kinder. Boomers will invest their social capital; Western countries will become much better places to grow old.

The one thing not being debated is demographic destiny. In 2010, about one-third of the U.S. population will be over 50. When 2020 rolls around, one in five American adults will be over 65. Half of Holland will be over 50 in 2012. Half of Norway and Italy already are.

The Boomer “age wave” will also have colossal impact in Europe, which already has 19 of the world’s 20 oldest countries. Over one-fourth of Europeans will be 65 or older in 2030.

Just as economists are predicting trouble ahead for Social Security and Medicare in the U.S., the Boomer aging trend will mean increased strain on European healthcare and pension systems.

Lookin’ Out My Back Door

Contrary to popular myth, Boomers have not been the only generation to challenge older generations and compel large-scale change. Young adults in the 1920s set many new standards for sexual liberation, obsessed about materialism, popularized self-improvement, and revered spiritual self-discovery and personal autonomy.

However, the Boomer generation is a byproduct of enormous population size connecting with art and technology at exactly the right moment in history.

Although the Baby Boom Generation is typically defined as those born after World War II and between 1946 and 1964, baby booms also occurred in Europe. The inclusive birth years of this generation in European countries are:
 
• France 1946-1974
• United Kingdom 1946-1971
• Finland 1945-1951
• Sweden 1946-1952
• Denmark 1946-1950
• Netherlands 1946-1972
• Ireland 1946-1982
• Iceland 1946-1969

A nearly universal and unexpected population explosion in the Western world dovetailed emergence of another phenomenon: broadcast television, reflecting and enlarging a generation’s unique sense of shared experiences.

Boomer children in the U.S. received steady doses of encouragement from the Howdy Doody Show and the My Three Sons. Many adult programs showcased idealized images of family life with Boomer kids as the centerpiece.

But the power of television to create generational consciousness around a continent and across the Atlantic found its true momentum on February 9, 1964.

By the time The Beatles debuted on The Ed Sullivan Show, six of their songs were playing continuously on the radio; two albums were running up the charts; and I Want to Hold Your Hand, a wistful ballad about puppy love, was one month into its dominance as Billboard Magazine’s No. 1 song.

The Beatles not only stimulated collective Boomer consciousness with messages of young love and social optimism; the Four Lads changed conceptions of everything from fashion to swagger.

Flaunting a thoroughly European sense of style, their mop-top hair looked weirdly out of place next to their crew-cut elders, and their lean legs finished defiantly in pointed boots. They boogied on Sullivan’s stage that night with focused exhilaration, as if to ease the mass hysteria overwhelming the television studio full of adulating teenage girls.

It was an incomparable moment of youthful celebrity uncorrupted, where rock ‘n’ roll became fully a generation’s chosen art form and a looking glass into the forthcoming countercultural years.

And 73-million Americans were watching all at once. The largest TV audience ever in the U.S. included the next generation of Boomer rock stars, most barely in puberty, sitting cross-legged in front of their TV sets — from Billy Joel to Gene Simmons of Kiss. Bruce Springsteen went shopping the following day and bought a guitar amp. “Most of us guys were screaming on the inside,” said Steve Van Zandt, guitarist for Springsteen’s E Street Band. “It was absolutely life-changing. There was no Plan B. There was no choice.”

Rock ‘n’ roll led the cultural bandwagon, and Boomers grew up confident, brash, independent and avid about owning things. They still are.

Never Get Old

David Robert Jones, a.k.a. David Bowie, personifies the dynamic changes guiding business today, a collective refocus on aging markets.

Bowie once tried to deny the reality of his possible irrelevance as an over-the-hill idol. But he is a chameleon who has adapted to change, continuously reinventing himself and updating an impressive catalogue — a 2003 addition to which is appropriately called, Reality.

Today he is comfortable with his musical shadow, with the person he is at heart: song-writer, performer, musician … Boomer. This 60-plus-year-old post-modernist rock legend isn’t finished rocking — not just yet — and neither is the generation that made him a star.

Feed Shark

The Personal is Mass Marketing: Boomers, Advertising and Social Commentary

Those who follow my writing know that I delve into many subjects concerning the social and political phenomena surrounding the Boomer generation. I have been confronted several times with a question: What do social and political issues have to do with marketing to Boomers?

Invariably, my answer is, “Everything.”

During my career, now spanning three decades, I have learned that some of the most powerful marketing strategies follow, reflect and sometimes move slightly ahead of larger social and political contexts in which we operate our contemporary lives.

This rings true when I see a financial services company heralding a novel life stage for Boomers instead of invoking an out-of-date construct called “retirement.” This rings true when an over-the-counter pain medication has less to do with overcoming pain than as an enabler of a continuing athletic lifestyle, long after joints have been barking their protests. This rings true when pundits reassign the birth year of a newly elected Boomer president (born in 1961) to another generation, rather than accept the dominant demographic delineation of his generational affiliation.

During the 1960’s and 1970’s the second wave of feminism inculcated a revolutionary idea that “the personal is political,” simply meaning that every aspect of our personal lives can be affected by the political environment in which we live and operate. Our personal lives can be conditioned by political and social forces. I submit that the milieu in which this Hegelian Dialectic occurs is often through marketing communications and mass media.

In contemporary marketing communications, Unilever’s Dove soap integrated “the personal” with “the political” through a spectacular advertising campaign designed to strengthen the brand by repositioning “antiaging” with a new product line called Pro Age. Dove set out to attract favorable attention from roughly 40 million Baby Boomer women, many of whom seek mitigation of wrinkles and other obvious cosmetic signs of aging but who also resent unrealistic and limiting portrayals of beauty.

Dove took a direct approach by unveiling a provocative new marketing idea: instead of demonizing or denying wrinkles and other signs of aging with illusions of perfection widely perpetuated by antiaging product marketers, Dove chose instead to celebrate aging by showcasing real middle-aged women, untouched by Photoshop or digital video equivalents.

In the spring of 2007, Dove unveiled its new campaign featuring magnificent photography shot by celebrity photographer and Boomer Annie Leibovitz. (Leibovitz, born in 1949, began her illustrious career in 1970 as a staff photographer for Jann Wenner’s iconic Boomer magazine, Rolling Stone, capturing memorable images of many rock ‘n’ roll notables such as John Lennon, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, David Cassidy, Sting and Bruce Springsteen.) The Pro Age print, television and Web ads feature full-figured women, none of whom are models and all of whom are over age 50.

Take a look at this television commercial, which was banned from broadcast television for being too provocative:

The stakes in the cosmetic industry are slightly greater than high. Antiaging skin care products have been projected to reach worldwide sales of $13 billion by 2010, yet Dove’s management found something disrupting through a study conducted in nine countries: “91% of women over 50 feel they're not represented realistically in the media.” By implication, Boomer women feel nearly invisible in typical cosmetic advertising that has traditionally glorified impossibly perfect complexions of girls barely out of puberty.

According to Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and author of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, “We're seeing a real shift in how people are approaching beauty. Up to now, it’s been about fighting aging with everything you have. Now you have a choice not to.”

Millions of Boomer women, most of whom grew up embracing the ideals of women’s liberation and other social movements to eliminate sexism from American business and society, are now pushing those cathartic values into the marketplace where antiaging morphs logically into Pro Age. The personal becomes political once again. Or visa-versa.

In a never-ending quest to be relevant and arresting, marketing campaigns invariably tap into a current zeitgeist about our complex social and political relationships. This became apparent again to me when I observed a recent ad campaign produced by Bacardi Rum, which I discuss in detail in a previous post.

A television commercial involves a young male protagonist walking through a stylish nightclub but simultaneously walking back through time. During one segue, he passes through dancing couples set in the 1940s or1950s, and viewers see a quick glimpse of an African American man dancing with a Caucasian woman. This image is historical revisionism because people of mixed races would not dance together in the 1950s or earlier – certainly not in large, mainstream public venues.

But historical revisionism about racial relations reflects a contemporary mindset of inclusiveness in American society, the capstone of which has been election of racially mixed Barack Obama as President of the United States. In a rum advertising campaign broadcast widely on television during the past summer, the advertisement’s creators reflect a larger societal context of a nation finally coming to grips with its demonic history of slavery. The Bacardi ad plays one small part in changing our “collective mentality” about men of women of mixed races being together.

Is the Bacardi mojito ad an example of marketing or social commentary? I submit: both. It is marketing because it positions the brand of Bacardi Rum in a favorable context, showcasing the libation as post-racial, inclusive and hip to current standards of correct social behavior. It is social commentary because this brief image announces the extent to which the nation has evolved in our collective acceptance of racial integration and interracial dating.

My writing consistently juxtaposes complex social and political issues in the context of marketing communications. This point-of-view probably reflects my formative years after college working as a counseling psychologist, someone who constantly searched for motivations behind behavior. The behavior of advertising often manifests nuanced motivations that spring from our psychological evolution as social creatures: a hopeful quest for greater inclusiveness across races, cultures, nationalities and generations. Inclusiveness includes age acceptance and racial integration in the truest meaning of those ideals.

The personal is political. The personal is mass marketing.

Baby Boomers and Woodstock 2009

What does the Woodstock Music & Art Fair of 1969 have to do with 2009? Well, depending on your point of view, almost everything… and almost nothing.

The original Woodstock Festival has been ballyhooed as the defining Baby Boomer cultural event: a watershed moment when the generation symbolically came together for rock ‘n’ roll and rebellion. It was an unprecedented amalgam of party and protest.

Since the original festival, several previous anniversary clones have attempted to recapture the superficial manifestations of Woodstock, the mega-concert, if not the authentic spirit. Previous reenactments, ambitious as some were, have failed to live up to history’s ideals.

As the 40th anniversary finally approaches August 15-17, 2009, we can think of Woodstock as existing on three levels: 1) the merchandizing event; 2) the media event; and, 3) the sociological event.

Woodstock, the merchandizing event, is jamming away full bore and with some success. Dozens of musical compilations, documentary movie re-masters, and retrospective books have appeared on Amazon.com since May. Boomers and lovers of Boomer culture can shop for director’s cuts of the eponymous film documentary, a new book about the story of Woodstock by one of its organizers, and new musical compilations from classic rock legends Jefferson Airplane, Santana and Johnny Winter. Late August promises unveiling of a major movie comedy event, yet to be congratulated or criticized by critics: Taking Woodstock, based on the Elliot Tiber book (and directed by Ang Lee of Brokeback Mountain fame).

Woodstock, the media event, has yet to engage fully, but reasonable expectations place the seminal rock concert as a lead story in some national media. For example, I would expect CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 to include Woodstock remembrances as a story in its newsmagazine line-up on August 14. Acknowledgements of the actual anniversary should appear on network news broadcasts. A weekly magazine and major newspapers might feature the story, including pundits trying to grapple with “what it all means.” While I don’t expect the anniversary to pass unacknowledged by media, I also am not expecting the event to carry as much media heft as the 40th anniversary of Americans landing on the moon.

Restaging the event is a nonstarter. Michael Lang, one of the original four promoters of the 1969 festival, announced in March 2009 that he was planning a 40th anniversary concert. Then on August 3, 2009 he cancelled the tribute concert stating lack of money and sponsors as his primary reasons. When you consider that this anniversary has been on the radar for at least a year by those who are launching merchandizing spin-offs, a major concert announced less than six months out and canceled less than two weeks out points to an obvious conclusion: Woodstock 2009 never had enough momentum to succeed. And, quite amazingly, a Heroes of Woodstock concert, organized by the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts for August 15, had not sold out at the time of this post. This is a small concert venue by Woodstock standards.

Woodstock, the sociological event, is least likely to gain traction in 2009. By “sociological event,” I mean a collective reliving of what this event meant in the historical narrative of the last half of the 20th century — and what the 1969 festival means today in terms of the nation’s evolving values.

Woodstock was “three days of peace and music.” Mud and illegal drugs notwithstanding, it represented a rare moment when thousands of strangers congregated together, suspending fear and suspicion and feeling intrinsic connections with their peers, an unparalleled intermission of social harmony. Typical crowd behaviors, such as avoiding eye contact, suspended for three days, leading to everything from unabashed public nudity to strangers hugging and high-fiving. More important than actions were feelings: a sense that a generation had come into its own, an experience of optimism in spite of the divisive Vietnam War, a moment of idealism that innate human hostility and warring could be rocked into irrelevance.

It is unlikely that the spirit of Woodstock could have been recaptured again in 2009, whether or not an anniversary concert happened. Watershed events are rare and ephemeral for a reason. They come just once and change our nation, never to be repeated but in caricature or parody.

Most Boomers who attended (or claim they did) are now into their mid-fifties to mid-sixties. Aging has changed them across 40 more years of living. Their fervent sense of shared mission has dissolved with the years. Getting “back to the garden” now means growing vegetables in the backyard, maybe to reduce household expenses in a recessionary economy. 

Yet, some of the values associated with Woodstock persist within the heart of this generation. These include a belief in the perfectibility of the human condition, yearning for a healthier planet unscathed by industrial and consumer waste, belief in inherent equality across races and cultures, and an atavistic love of rock ‘n’ roll music that remains forever youthful in spirit despite aging bodies.

Three days of peace and music have become frozen in time, thawing only partially every five or ten years to remind us of how much a nation needed to change in 1969 and how much a generation wanted to be a change agent. It was one tangible manifestation of our youthful location in history, whether we were in Bethel, New York, or not. Its powerful messages of liberation didn't stay local but traveled organically across the nation, from college campus to university town.

Only history can judge if the ideals of an “Aquarian Exposition” in August 1969 have become part of contemporary value consensus. But this is certain: to some Boomers today,Woodstock still beckons with the spirit of those three days.

“We are stardust wishing bombers into butterflies.”

Boomer Apologists vs. Boomer Entrepreneurs

 

As a wordsmith for over 25 years, unique and powerful words matter to me. I love to discover yet another word conveying a commanding and complex concept, succinctly. When thinking of specific words, I also recall consequential times from my past.

I remember when a brash and brisk college roommate referred to everything as copacetic. This was his vigorous way of saying something is excellent. For awhile, copacetic became one of my favorite words. Successful conclusion of a college final exam was copacetic. An alluring brunette who I took to a rock concert was copacetic. You get the idea.

As my copywriting career became active in the 1980’s, another word came to my attention, a transitive verb that implied a powerful intersection of thoughts: juxtaposition. It means “to place two or more things together, especially in order to suggest a link between them or emphasize the contrast between them.” After I learned this word and began to use it — perhaps too liberally for a time — I started seeing many aspects of my experiences with a sense of juxtaposition.

And so I return to this word now because it works well to help describe what I’m going to convey. I will use this word with a favorite modifier: ironic juxtaposition. Two disparate news stories about the Boomer generation have appeared recently that can be thought of side-by-side, strengthening ramifications for each article.

First, the darker story:

A column in the Wall Street Journal reported an astounding development in the content of many college commencement addresses: from Colorado Senator Michael Bennet to Indiana Governor Mitchell Daniels, some keynote speakers have become apologists for the Baby Boomer Generation.

In his commencement address to Colorado College, Senator Bennet said, “We have limited the potential of future generations by burdening them with our poor choices and our unwillingness to make tough ones.”

As a retort to the Journal’s columnist, who essentially agrees with the apologists, I submitted my reaction to the sudden barrage of critical commentary by Boomers about Boomers:

Let’s put today’s state-of-the-union situation in perspective. When I graduated from college, Boomers faced an arduous job market due to large numbers and a tired industrial economy running out of jobs. Interest rates had started escalating to unprecedented heights. Housing prices began inflating beyond reach of many first-time homebuyers. Severe segregation controlled the nation’s social and cultural institutions. President Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis had become the obsession of news media. Industry routinely assaulted the environment, with Love Canal being paradigmatic. The Vietnam War was by then inspiring outrage from most corners of society while draining the U.S. Treasury. An OPEC oil embargo hovered on the horizon.

This was the status of the nation handed Leading-edge Boomers by the much-lauded and idealized GI Generation. Did commencement speakers back then condemn the generation that fought in World War II for our freedom? On the contrary, we graduates knew that the nation we were inheriting was imperfect, but we also had a sense of what our parents had given us: a robust economy through childhood, much material satisfaction, relative safety in a dangerous world, and a media culture that honored intergenerational cooperation, exemplified by family television shows such as Ozzie & Harriet. Many of our parents’ generation were also our heroes: from John Wayne to John Kennedy.

Yes, Boomers have nurtured a much more egalitarian society where minorities and women have a better shot at the American dream. But that isn’t the end of it. Boomers have infiltrated every sector of business, culture, science and the arts with idealism and collective will to change America for the better.

Boomers’ children have learned important life lessons from brilliant storytellers such as Steven Spielberg and his Oscar-winning movies Shindler’s List and Munich. Millennials have become the economic beneficiaries of Boomer-led industries, from Bill Gates’ Microsoft to Steven Jobs’ Apple Computer. Millennials have witnessed inspired leadership on television with Oprah; in science with Craig Venter and Francis Collins (genome sequencing); and in literature with Pulitzer-prize winners Michael Cunningham (The Hours) and Richard Russo (Empire Falls).

Today, we experience the Boomer legacy through inclusive institutions, through innovation and entrepreneurship, and through worldwide media clout. The nation is not perfect, but America percolates with opportunities awaiting optimists open to new possibilities rather than pessimists bearing grudges and casting blame.

Even though the nation is embroiled in two wars, Generation Y males do not face conscription upon graduation. Even though times are rough economically, hordes graduating from colleges today demonstrate the extent to which their parents have advocated and enabled post-secondary education. Even though traditional American industries are under enormous pressure to change, the nation charges forward with innovation in biotechnology, healthcare, alternative energies and the internet.

The nation is experiencing difficult times, but our problems run much deeper and wider than the actions or non-actions of a single generation. Every generation has fallen short of perfection. Every generation has helped make the nation a more perfect union. Every generation has confronted and surmounted its own challenges at the beginning of adulthood.

I’m glad I got that off my chest. Now the brighter story:

According to a headline in Forbes magazine, “Boomers Move to Self-Employment: Rising Unemployment Reinforces Their Entrepreneurial Bent.”

This article leads with grim facts about the current recession and joblessness among older workers. “Unemployment rates in June (2009) continued to climb for those aged 55 and older — to 7.7% for men and 6.4% for women, up from 3.1% and 3%, respectively, in December 2007.”

Although unemployment among older workers falls lower than the June 2009 national average of 9.5%, it’s much more difficult for older workers to find new jobs once unemployed. So how are members of this generation dealing with twin disasters of unemployment and a bleak employment future due to advancing age?

Many are becoming entrepreneurs and starting new businesses. According to Dane Stangler, senior analyst at the Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Missouri, charity devoted to entrepreneurship, during the last ten years the 55 to 64 age group has led the pack in new-business creation. As Mr. Stangler suggested to Forbes, “The image of the 20-something entrepreneur obscures the trends that have persisted for a decade.”

According to Emily Brandon, reporting about the Kauffman study for U.S. News & World Report, a Duke University professor further found that “twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their fifties as do those under age 25.”

Kauffman Foundation’s Stangler predicts a “new entrepreneurial era,” where the nation’s path out of deep recessionary morass may be paved by a rich new period of business creation, with Boomers leading the way.

Should Boomer political leaders continue to apologize for Boomers about the current mess? Or should these leaders congratulate their peers for demonstrating entrepreneurial verve in a time of national malaise? Which kind of generational leader do you prefer to inspire young entrepreneurs of the future?

As part of my wordsmith tool kit, juxtapose has traveled with me as a well-considered friend for more than twenty years, and it seems apropos even now.

Juxtapose Boomer apologists with Boomer entrepreneurs. Ironic isn’t it?

Baby Boomer Men Are Ready to Spend in Current Recession

 

NEWS RELEASE

 

Recession? What recession? Boomer men are ready to spend – today.

Analysis of Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) survey data plus new insights about Boomer male sociology demonstrate that marketers should not ignore this cohort.

(July 8, 2009) – Brent Green, author of Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers and Boomer marketing authority, and Steve French, Managing Partner of NMI, today revealed analysis of findings from NMI’s annual Healthy Aging/Boomer Database® consumer research. The survey was fielded in January 2009 among 3,100+ U.S. general population adults.

These findings corroborate emerging cultural changes and marketplace behaviors that, when combined, point to a consumer revolution around aging and masculinity. “An abundance of 50+ Boomer men promises to inculcate new vitality to masculine aging,” said Brent Green. “Boomer men are making deliberate and proactive lifestyle choices, and this is being revealed through NMI research, consumer behavior, and brilliant marketing nuanced for generation and gender.”

While much has been written recently that identifies women aged 40+ as today’s power consumer, NMI’s Managing Partner Steve French cautions that Boomer men should not be ignored by marketers. “Boomer men are less affected by the recession than women. In fact, forty percent of men do not feel the amount of stress in their lives has increased due to the current economy while less than thirty percent of women feel that their stress level has not increased. Men are also more likely to spend versus save and make impulse purchases. They represent tremendous targeting opportunities across a range of industries.”

With more than $1 trillion in spending power, Boomer men are also more likely than women to buy brand name products, particularly at the grocery store. NMI found that about half of men are willing to purchase national brands over store brands as opposed to one-quarter of women. While shopping was once considered a woman’s domain, men are increasingly playing a role or even becoming the primary shoppers for their families. Less than a decade ago, men accounted for only twenty percent of primary grocery shoppers, but today one-third are doing the majority of their household grocery shopping.

More information can be found in this new white paper entitled Back in the High Life Again: Soaring Opportunities to Market to Baby Boomer Men, which was co-authored by NMI’s Steve French and Brent Green of Brent Green & Associates, Inc.

To receive a copy of the white paper, email Brent Green. To learn more about marketing to Boomer men, visit this website.

Feed Shark

The LOHAS Forum and the Future of Conscience Consumerism

  

“Stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.”

Buffalo Springfield’s chart-topping protest song entitled “For What It’s Worth,” written by Stephen Stills and released in 1967, anticipated social turbulence and confrontations of the late 1960s. This anthem has been often associated with fervor of that time; yet today it resonates as a memorable melodic signature of momentous societal and cultural change.

This classic folk-rock song kept running through my mind as I listened to dozens of speakers articulating context for another revolution. The 13^th annual LOHAS Forum at the St. Julian Hotel in Boulder, Colorado, June 17 – 19, 2009, showcased impassioned visionaries who are humming notes of historic change in the way this nation consumes and discards — how we choose to live our lives in a time of global warning, economic turmoil, diminishing natural resources, and population explosion. Dramatic and determined thought-leaders possess many unique points of view, but they share a familiar message: an influential, irrevocable transformation is underway.

LOHAS, an acronym that stands for Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability, is a lifestyle and consumer cohort identified in the late 1990’s, which has grown to become a $209 billion global market segment. Consumers described as LOHAS are passionate about sustainability, health & wellness, personal development, resource conservation, corporate social responsibility, social justice, and natural/organic living.

According to Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), the Pennsylvania-based company that has for years conducted groundbreaking original research describing this segment, LOHAS consumers comprise 17% of the U.S. population. The Boomer generation over-represents the segment: 21% of Boomers are LOHAS consumers (24% higher than average).

An intrinsic connection between Boomers and LOHAS becomes more obvious when considering historical context. Launched on April 22, 1970, birth of Earth Day, the modern environmental movement barnstormed a nation through myriad protest marches and civic activism of this generation. Boomers created overwhelming political pressure, leading to the Environmental Protection Agency and passage by Congress of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. In conjunction with awakening to environmentalism, Boomers found sustenance in organic and natural foods popularized by nutritionist and author Adelle Davis; discovered the viabilities of aerobic fitness from running advocate Dr. Kenneth Cooper; and immersed deeper into spirituality with wise counsel from new gurus such as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. From among their ranks came LOHAS-style businesses such as Wild Oats, Whole Foods, Starbucks, Stonyfield Farms, Silk Milk, and Celestial Seasonings.

As NMI proposes, the substantial influence of LOHAS consumers turns the 80/20 rule upside down. Also known as the Pareto Principle, this economic imperative maintains that 80% of a company’s income typically comes from 20% of its customers. Opinionated, outspoken, omnipresent and representing nearly 20% of the U.S. population, LOHAS consumers today are shaping core eco-values of 80% of the population. 80/20 has become 20/80.

This also leads to a new business imperative: pay attention to LOHAS consumers and their evolving preferences and behaviors; anticipate trends that will soon emerge broadly in the national population. LOHAS consumers are a fountainhead of what’s to come in the marketplace. They are precursors… progenitors.

An intense, mind-spinning emersion into the future of western lifestyles and consumerism, The LOHAS Forum cannot be condensed into a single post. Here I've posted some representative insights and comments from those who are leading the charge toward “responsible capitalism”: the men and women driven by deep-seated commitment to global sustainability and human health.

Ray Anderson

In the early 1990s, industrialist Ray Anderson experienced an epiphany when reading Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce. His carpet manufacturing company, Interface Global, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial floor coverings, is nearly half way to achieving his vision of “Mission Zero” – zero scraps into landfills and zero emissions into the ecosystem.

Embodied Energy: the energy actually expended to create a tangible product

Biophilia: the nearly universal human desire to be outside in nature and to experience serene moments

“The cheapest energy is the energy not used.”

“You can’t create green products in a brown company.”

“Sustainability can be the most significant competitive advantage in a recessionary economy.”

“LOHAS means more happiness with less stuff.”

Steve French

Steve French is Executive Vice President and Managing Partner of Natural Marketing Institute, the research firm that has played a leading role in defining, tracking and articulating the LOHAS segment.

 

Current hurdles to LOHAS adoption:

1) Price sensitivity due to economic recession

2) Trust in companies because of proliferating “green” marketing messages

3) Product selection: finding environmentally friendly packaging and products across all categories

4) Sacrifice avoidance: increasing unwillingness to buy higher-priced, environmentally friendly products

5) Conflicting desire to reduce all consumption, even sustainably manufactured products

6) Time scarcity: consumers do not have time to investigate company claims of social responsibility and sustainability

Hunter Lovins

President and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions, Hunter Lovins educates senior decision-makers in the areas of sustainable development, globalization, energy and resource policy, economic development, climate change, and land management.

350 ppm: the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere; scientists measured 385 ppm in the 2007 atmosphere

Green buildings improve labor relations, health, worker productivity and business efficiencies. This has been demonstrated empirically by none-other-than Wal-Mart and the giant retailer’s new holistic green initiatives.

Business needs a new business case for survival, which Lovins calls Climate Capitalism.

Wade Davis, Ph.D.

 

Wade Davis is an Explorer-in-Residence for the National Geographic Society. He has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” Author of nine books, including the international bestseller, “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” Davis is indeed a poet’s scientist and a scientist’s poet who shares impactful stories about the world’s vanishing cultures.

“Together the myriad of cultures of the world make up an intellectual, social and spiritual web of life that envelopes the planet and is as important to wellbeing of the planet as is the biologic web of life that you know as a biosphere.”

“You can think of this cultural web of life as being an ethnosphere, and you can define the ethnosphere as being the sum total of all thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.”

“The ethnosphere is humanity’s legacy and a symbol of all that we’ve achieved and the promise of all that we can achieve as a wildly creative species.”

“When each of you in this room was born, there were 7,000 languages spoken on earth. Now a language isn’t just a body of vocabulary or set of grammatical rules; a language is a flash of the human spirit. It’s a vehicle to which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of social and spiritual possibilities. And of those 7,000 languages spoken the day you were born, today fully half are on their way to extinction.”

Listen to CBS Radio’s “Massey Lectures,” entitled The Wayfinders, to discover more about Wade Davis’ astounding insights connecting the value of ancient wisdom with our modern lives.  

Hunter Lovins articulated one essential ethos of the LOHAS movement: “Real leadership is extraordinary courage by ordinary people.” Like Lovins, many of the movement’s leaders are also Boomers who for several decades have been drawing the battle lines between those who waste and exploit and those who preserve and protect natural and cultural resources for the future.

The people who belong to the LOHAS movement are certainly extraordinary — and often courageous. They are visionaries inspiring ordinary people to do amazing things: to bring sustainability into mainstream value consensus; to change our national focus from wasteful consumerism to “conscious” or “conscience consumerism”; and to motivate the next generation of leaders to be creative, bold and committed to restoring the nation’s fundamental values of preservation, idealism and individual initiative.

A generation ago, folk-rocker Stephen Stills sang, “There’s something happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear.” The journey toward a healthier, less materialistic, more altruistic and sustainable society isn’t always clear.

But it’s happening.

Additional General Session Speakers:

Ted Ning

Ted Ning: Director, LOHAS

Gwynne Rogers

 

Gwynne Rogers: Lohas Business Director, Natural Marketing Institute

John Marshall Roberts

 

John Marshall Roberts: Author, Igniting Inspiration

Robyn Griggs Lawrence

 

Robyn Griggs Lawrence: Editor-in-Chief, Natural Home magazine

Adam Lowry

 

Adam Lowry: Co-Founder, Method

Wolf Ludge

 

Wolf Ludge: CEO, hessnatur

Mallika Chopra

 

Mallika Chopra: Founder, Intent.com

Adam Werbach

Adam Werbach: Global CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi S

Carly Wertheim

 

Carly Wertheim, Co-President, Teens Turning Green

All photos in this post: Copyright 2009, Brent Green & Associates, Inc.

Bacardi Rum Mojitos, Marketing Missteps, Boomers and Social Justice

I could have begun this article with any number of examples, but since it is summertime, I’ll make my case using Bacardi Rum’s recent ad campaign featuring mojitos, a cool libation now being advertised heavily on cable television.

Take a look at this commercial:

For the uninitiated, a mojito is a highball made from white rum, cane sugar, lime juice, carbonated water and fresh mint. Cuba claims the mojito, but reports vary about where and who first mixed up the most popular adult beverage made with rum.

On hot summer evenings, the drink is a fashionable thirst quencher and mood modifier. My neighbors often mix up this minty concoction for their backyard barbecues, and the refreshing cocktails always receive plaudits from guests who imbibe.

The Bacardi mojito ad is lavish and complicated: a continuous tapestry of celebration.

Having drained his glass of mojito, our protagonist saunters through dancing crowds toward the bar. Suddenly he’s walking through a disco as if it’s the 1980s. Women’s clothes then evoke the sixties (notice knee-high go-go boots in one shot). Other dancers suggest the fifties (notice full skirts and petticoats or a geeky guy with Buddy Holly glasses).

A careful observer (who hasn’t consumed too much mojito) begins to notice that our hero isn’t just walking through a funky, convoluted nightclub; he’s also walking through time, into the past.

He pushes through two ornate doors and suddenly the parched protagonist passes through the flapper era of the 1920s. Finally he strolls up to a bar where he is greeted by an urbane bartender in dressy western garb, evocative of the late 1800s.

A catchy and retro-1980s background song entitled Daylight by Matt and Kim binds together this montage of forward momentum and backward time travel.

Bacardi then claims the mantle of mojito superiority with crisp copy to support its ambitious cinematic production: “Since 1862, the best mojitos have always been made the same way. Bacardi. The original mojito.”

This television commercial has received much praise by YouTube viewers, with a lot of credit being given to the hip song. Consumer reactions reinforce the long-understood intrinsic relationship between mood-altering libations and intense rock ‘n’ roll music. Alcoholic beverages have been connected with contemporary music since the birth of broadcast advertising.

So, what’s the problem?

Take another look at the commercial and now scrutinize for diversity. You’ll see Caucasians, Latinos and African Americans. You’ll certainly see a balance of gender, as you would expect for a nightclub evolving backward through the fourth dimension (of time). What you won’t see is anyone over the age of 40 (more likely 30) — neither in the present nor in the distant past where the thirsty customer finally gets his freshly mashed mojito.

Marketers who adore demographic targeting would argue that this spot is only for young men and women. The under-thirty crowd probably constitutes the heaviest consumers of Bacardi brand rum, and this commercial tends to run during television programming that’s most attractive to young adults.

My reaction to this ad is the same as if the creators had not been racially inclusive. A large segment of rum consumers — including those similar to my sixty-something neighbors — do not exist in this time-folding world — not now, not in 1862.

We practitioners of generational marketing embrace a sociological construct called the “cohort effect,” where early and shared generational experiences tend to shape cultural images and perceptions held by a cohort. One of those experiences shared by many young Boomers was a haunting book and movie entitled Logan’s Run.

In this dystopian science fiction plot set in 2016, on the day a citizen turns 21, called Lastday, he must report to Sleepshop for a peaceful execution. Only young adults, teens and children inhabit this future world. The sobering movie awakened many young Boomers to the downside of a society where people over a certain age do not exist. This is one Boomer cohort filter that also shaped my critical reactions to the Bacardi ad.

Further, Boomers and older consumers constitute a favorable and financially prepared market for “white spirits.” According to Research and Markets, an Ireland-based marketing research company, “While spirits consumption declines with age, as it does with most alcoholic beverages, older consumers are turning to premium products as affordable luxuries. The low-carb interest has had a positive effect as well, with white spirits being carb-free and many manufacturers quick to market their products on that basis.”

Advertising to today’s Boomer market has sometimes been addressed with perturbing creative nuances evoking the sixties and hippies, probably conceived by those who never knew firsthand the sixties or hippies. I’ve written about some of those ads elsewhere in this blog.

Another marketing misstep is well-represented by the Bacardi mojito ad: age exclusion or age denial. Older people simply don’t exist in Bacardi’s world. Maybe in Bacardi’s idealized view of its mojito market, older Boomers all went to Sleepshop.

Marketers can’t be age inclusive in every ad they conceive, any more than they can be racially and sexually inclusive, but when an ad portrays such a sweeping canvas of consumers, marketers need to consider the real world, one where people of all ages mix quite well — like lime and mint. Marketers need to consider age inclusion for sensible marketing reasons.

They also need to consider age inclusion as they have racial inclusion: a form of social justice. Notice the African American man and Caucasian woman dancing together in the 1940s segue, which, of course, would never have happened in 1940s reality. Why this creative direction? Because it’s how opinion shapers — directors, copywriters, brand marketers, advertisers — want us collectively to view a post-racial society today. Because, in this case, historical revisionism is the right thing to do when it serves a larger cause of equality.

To those stuck in exclusionary youth marketing, omitting older customers from depictions of their products, I can hardly tip my mojito glass and say, “Cheers!”

Boomers and the Future of Hospice

“Life is a journey from beginning to end, measured not in time but in quality.”

This is the first sentence in a pamphlet produced by The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, the largest hospice in the United States, based in Clearwater, Florida. With an average of 2,400 patients and a staff of 1,500, this exemplar organization has played a major role in the evolution of hospice since the movement became popular in the U.S. shortly after introduction of a trendsetting book in 1969: On Death and Dying, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., an eminent psychiatrist. Her book demystified death and the dying process, making the final stage of life more comprehensible and manageable — for those who are dying and their caretakers.

Many prefer not to think about the inevitable conclusion to life, but for Baby Boomers, the end of life is becoming more concrete and palpable. Boomers are losing their parents, and a surprising number of their peers have begun to succumb to fatal illnesses, including high-profile personalities such as newsman Tim Russert, folk-rock-star Dan Fogelberg, and Carnegie-Mellon professor Randy Pausch.

I recently addressed marketing professionals for hospices from around the nation under the auspices of the National Hospice Work Group (NHWG) and then later that same day, the leadership team of the Suncoast Hospice.

NHWG is “a professional coalition of executives from some of the largest and most innovative hospices … committed to increasing access to hospice and palliative care.” These compassionate leaders want to eliminate “bad deaths”: dying in pain and in places other than in accordance with the wishes of the dying person. NHWG hospices strive each day to fulfill one overriding promise: that each patient may die with dignity — as each person defines it.

According to Carolyn Cassin, NHWG president & CEO, this association’s members take care of about 12 percent of the nation’s hospice patients every year. Ms. Cassin, like a majority of her NHWG colleagues, is a Boomer. It’s not merely coincidence that many of the CEOs of the nation’s hospices are Boomers who have pursued this profession with passion since the 1970's and 1980’s — another tangible testament to the beneficent values of the “sixties generation.”

Hospice provides care for those who have terminal medical conditions. Either in free-standing, often home-like facilities, in patient homes, or in hospitals and nursing homes, hospice practitioners deliver palliative care. Services include pain control, nursing care, spiritual counsel, and many other nurturing services. One major goal of hospice is to help patients experience maximum possible peace and comfort during the final months, weeks or days of life. Hospice also provides bereavement counseling and support groups for family members of those who are dying or have passed away.

My presentations addressed some boilerplate topics, including an overview of all living generations, the sociological and cultural factors constituting each generation, strategies for marketing to generations, emerging business trends, and current life-stage issues confronting Boomers. I also shared my assessments of how Boomers might challenge the traditions of dying, including hospice.

For example, healthcare policymakers can expect this generation to test inflexible traditions that reduce the fullest possible expression of life experiences during final months and weeks. A trend emerging now is “slow medicine,” in which those confronting difficult medical choices slow down the process to assess fully the restorative potential of yet another medical procedure.

Life-prolonging medical intervention has its value when the outcome allows greater life quality if not extension of time remaining, but when medical procedures only promote more pain and weakness without recovery, then many Boomers will reject last-ditch procedures. Many will put the brakes on “heroic medicine.”

A Boomer neighbor of mine had brain cancer last year, and surgeons recommended a biopsy, which she reluctantly approved without further investigation. She later lamented not traveling to Europe with her husband for a couple of weeks instead of suffering the brutal and lingering side effects of the biopsy. She never regained enough strength and stamina after the biopsy to enjoy any of her remaining time.

Many Boomers will endeavor to make their final days as meaningful as possible by recording and preserving their legacies. This will lead to dramatic growth of personal historians and online resources for those with terminal diseases to “upload” life experiences, values, philosophies, photographs, videos, insights and hopes for humanity.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have recently isolated the psychoactive compound in the hallucinogenic mushroom psilocybin, one of the drugs some Boomers experimented with during the sixties. Researchers have tested the synthesized drug on adults who have never experimented with recreational drugs to determine the potential impact of psilocybin on spiritual exploration. In various studies, those who have taken the synthesized drug have reported experiencing some of the most profound spiritual events of their lives. Someday, hospice may offer psilocybin or other consciousness-altering medications for their patients who are seeking profound experiences of the divine but who are unable to get to this state of awareness through prayer or meditation.

Experts predict that nearly half of those who die in another 20 years will choose cremation. This will have significant impact on the funeral industry. Some Boomers will have their carbon ashes compressed into manmade diamonds. Others will choose “green cemeteries,” where remains are buried legally in public parks and inside cardboard boxes with no grave markers. Others will choose to have their remains buried offshore in artificial reefs. Hospice personnel will likely become involved in helping patients plan more creative funerals and burials.

We can expect Boomers to transform the final stage of life with as much creativity as they changed the nature of being a teenager, a middle-aged adult and now a grandparent. They will embellish the dying process with new customs that allow people to reach the conclusion of life with the greatest possible dignity and grace — a genuine sense of completion.

The last slide of my presentation revealed a graying Boomer man holding a protest sign, hearkening back to the sixties and a time of strident protest marches; he bore one possible concluding aphorism for this generation:

  

The Pain of Being Boomers and Bayer's Aleve

Shortly after a recent stair-stepper workout, my normal assertive gait took on a noticeable limp, transporting me back to 1976. I had taken a chaotic fall while skiing on Aspen Mountain that season, hyper-extending my left knee. Residual pain from a tumble over a misplaced mogul creeps up on me after workouts involving a lot of knee activity. I limped to my bathroom and took an Aleve Liquid Gel, knowing that my historic pain would blessedly soon dull once medication kicked in.

This phenomenon of aging — sometimes called Boomeritis in honor of the generation’s inexorable march to the aches and pains of old age — has become an intense focus of pain medication marketers, including Aleve… especially Aleve.

A recent series of TV ads features testimonials from athletic Boomers who refuse to give up their sports. A Boomer woman plays badminton and credits her stamina to the pain numbing qualities of the medication. A Boomer man lauds the medication’s value for perpetuating his ability to continue playing baseball. Their pronouncements are inspirational: “Never stop playing.” These customer testimonials showcase real people with joint and muscle challenges who intend to stay active no matter what — with a little help from their pharmaceutical friends.

Bayer, the manufacturer and marketer of Aleve, has impressed me with its sense of the Boomer target market. The first ad to get my attention was a commercial released about three years ago featuring Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek fame.

Nimoy played Mr. Spock, the emotionless Vulcan who presented a hand sign by splitting his four fingers into a victory V. The hand sign would accompany his popular idiom: “Live long and prosper.”

In this TV spot, the aged Nimoy laments his inability to make his Spock hand signal in front of a rapt audience of adoring Trekkies, who wait in suspense to see if the actor can still fully portray his unruffled and logical TV character. Because of the miracle of Aleve, Nimoy/Spock successfully presents the gesture painlessly with his arthritic hand.

This clever commercial reveals the power of Boomer nostalgia in support of brand marketing. My colleague Chuck Nyren, who first made me aware of this Aleve/Spock commercial when we were traveling together on a speaking tour of Europe, points to this ad as a great example of nostalgic advertising. The spot demonstrates an evocative execution of historic Boomer media culture without the typical pandering and sixties hoopla around hippies, tie-dyed t-shirts and Woodstock classic rock music ad nauseam.

Chuck and I concur that this Aleve/Spock television commercial demonstrates a nuanced sensitivity to how generational nostalgia can support a brand without relying on pandering or a clueless grasp of the finer points of Boomer historic culture.

The newest Aleve ad campaign exhibits another achievement by Bayer: insight into Boomers' feelings about aging in their current life-stage. Many Boomers are confronting the consequences of many years of active sports. Joints are barking from wear and tear. Muscles and tendons strain more easily. Yet, most Boomers do not prefer to give up recreational sports that they’ve pursued for decades. Fitness-oriented Boomers are pugnacious. Most have little hesitation to enable their active lifestyles with pharmaceutical palliative when necessary.

This campaign reveals life-stage marketing from a Boomer perspective. Yes, Boomers are at the period of life when their bodies are showing ravages of joint/tendon wear and tear. But they’re also in a generation that typically refuses to let go of youthful pursuits, often with an attitude of defiance over conventional thinking about slowing down as one ages.

The category of over-the-counter pain killers has a robust and competitive future with the aging of the Boomer generation. Bayer has established a burly beachhead in this market as demonstrated by both its nostalgic advertising and its nuanced comprehension of athletically active Boomers today.

Further, when perusing Bayer’s website for Aleve, you discover in-depth medical information covering almost every conceivable medical condition for which this medication has applications: back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, sports injuries, sprains, strains and osteoarthritis.

 

Bayer’s marketing team is not above criticism. You can watch the Nimoy ad above, which has been posted on YouTube numerous times. However, I am unable to link you to sample ads featuring the athletic Boomers pursuing their sports in spite of chronic pain. The ads aren’t posted online. I couldn’t even find online references to this campaign, such as you might read in press releases or through discussions by other bloggers, with one exception.

This lack of full deployment of online media misses enormous opportunities.

Bayer’s marketing team understands and deploys online marketing with respect to targeting Generation Y. Bayer conducted a viral online campaign targeting young people in July 2007 for Aleve Liquid Gels with a click-through game beginning at the website http://www.aleviator.com, now a broken link.

According to a January 2009 Pew Internet study, 74 percent of the Boomer generation uses the Internet, representing 36 percent of the Internet population. Seventy-eight percent research health information online!

With Boomers substantially online and comprising the most significant demographic group searching for information about medically related problems, Bayer would have been prudent to post the ads, not only on their Aleve product website but also on YouTube. They could have even followed the approach taken by Mutual of Omaha and its "Aha Moments " campaign and included online video testimonials by athletic Boomers.

Missing proven online opportunities is almost as painful as not taking Aleve.

UPDATE:

Within a few days after this article, a "Never Stop Playing" Aleve commercial appeared on YouTube, so finally the TV campaign is going viral online. Embedding is being blocked by someone, so you'll need to link here to see it.  BG

Levi's, Harley-Davidson and Iconic Baby Boomer Brands

Just before I wrote this post, I attended a fascinating marketing seminar presented by my associate and client, Arjun Sen, former vice president of marketing and operations for Papa John’s, who is renowned nationwide for his extraordinary marketing expertise, as encapsulated in this seminar title: Winning Big in a Down Economy.

When I sauntered into the seminar room that Friday morning, another colleague teased that I looked as if I had just gotten off a Harley motorcycle. Here’s what I was wearing to match a chilly Denver Friday: black Tony Lama cowboy boots, a black Tommy Bahama pullover sweater, a black Andrew Marc leather jacket , and a black Mezlan wide leather belt. My pants were not black but blue — faded-blue Levi’s jeans.

Although every other item in my ensemble is relatively new, these jeans are not: they have a perfected wash-worn appearance with a few wear spots almost ready to reveal skin. When my company honors casual Fridays, I don’t mess around with sissy business casual. I become the rebel Boomer I am at heart.

Levi’s brand jeans are particularly important to the rest of this post, which isn’t about casual Fridays but about durability and power of Boomer brands, an amorphous concept some wise marketers either don’t fully understand or naively underestimate.

My relationship with Levi’s travels way back to 1964, the same year The Beatles stormed American consciousness. I remember my first pair: purchased oversized for my thin frame due to the shrinking nature of cotton denim, deep indigo blue and so stiff from the store they could almost stand without me in them. When my first coveted pair of Levi’s came home with me from J.C. Penny’s, I didn’t see them as they were but as they would become with much nurturing and patience, hundreds of washings and wearings later. Eventually they would become resplendently washed out and unique. My affection for them would grow as they faded into oblivion.

I have never purchased any other brand of blue jeans but Levi’s. Do the math: that’s 45 years of loyalty, averaging six pairs per year. My lifetime value to Levi Strauss & Company begins with their signature product and has a worth of around $8,100.00. But their flagship blue jeans are only the beginning since I have also purchased Dockers pants, Levi’s branded shirts, and many other products sold by this company.

Further, I’ve been a walking, breathing advertisement for the company for all these years. If you should check out my backside, you might notice distinctive orange Levi’s stitching on the rear pockets or, on closer inspection, patented copper rivets. I prefer you not to notice the patented button fly. (Boomer tidbit: Jacob Davis, the original tailor, made his product from hemp cloth supplied by Levi Strauss.)

I’ve also been a snob about this brand. When I observe what others are wearing for blue jeans, and when they’re not wearing Levi’s, I think of them as slightly un-cool. I don’t care if someone has spent a hundred times more for a frou-frou designer denim brand, as far as I’m concerned, they’re pretenders. They don’t belong in the same room with James Dean, Marlon Brando, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, and me.

This is the power and durability of a Boomer brand. Not all Boomers feel loyal to Levi’s, but enough do to have enriched the company for decades. And although we associate Levi’s with youth and rebellion, would it be smart for Levi Strauss to ignore the Boomer market today as we are marching past 50 and 60 years of age? Of course not, and that’s why the company has kept pace with Boomers throughout our consuming lives.

When bellbottom jeans became fashionable, Levi’s sprouted bells. When fashion became a bit more conservative and bells turned into flairs, Levi’s flaired. When Boomers started growing girth, Levi’s developed a relaxed-fit line. I expect the company to someday develop an easy-on, easy-off version for aged Boomers when dressing convenience, undertaken with nursing assistance, becomes the driver.

Bury me in Levi’s.

Along this trajectory of Boomers aging, Levi’s has rebranded and updated its marketing to appeal to Boomers’ children, Generation Y. Although GenY has adopted other esoteric preferences, such as Lucky’s brand, you still see the distinctive Levi’s brand swaggering around, filled with Boomers’ kids. This leads to another golden truth about Boomer brands: iconic products live on in today’s generation of youthful consumers.

A recent article in The New York Times brandishes a patently ageist headline: “Harley, You’re Not Getting Any Younger.” Journalist Susanna Hamner captures this market reality: a recessionary fall-off in sales of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. She attributes this market situation to “graying baby boomers, whose savings, in many cases, have gone up in smoke in the market downturn." Later in the article, she continues: “(Harley’s) core customers have grayed, and they are buying new bikes less often. The average age of a Harley rider is 49, up from 42 five years ago.”

This grave article even quotes sagacious wisdom from Gregory Carpenter, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern: “Harley understands the baby-boomer consumer incredibly well, in a holistic sense… but to grow and thrive, they must create a deep emotional connection with younger consumers.”

A subtext of this article reverberates: the future of Harley-Davidson is cloudy, and the company has a do-or-die imperative: rebrand to appeal to today’s young consumers or risk extinction. Otherwise, as Boomers die, so will the brand.

Quoted experts who looked at this marketing quagmire frankly underestimate the power of Boomer branding and how extensively Boomer cool is being embraced by young people today. These experts must be ignoring how clothing styles from the sixties have become the hottest fashion look among women under 30. Or how Lucky has become one of the fastest growing retail operations in the country. Or that rock music lovers can expect to compete with GenY fans for Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and Paul McCartney concert tickets.

Boomer cool is cool, not was.

Further, Hamner’s death-watch article does not appreciate that the Harley brand is more than a Hog. I embrace Harley-Davidson and values this brand represents. I don’t own a motorcycle. But the brand speaks to me, reminding me of a hair-in-the-wind persona that rushes below my crisp business exterior: the same wildness that puts me in Levi’s on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, and any time I’m not getting paid to suit up.

Today’s diminishing sales of Harley-Davidson motorcycles isn’t a reflection of a mortally wounded brand. Declining sales reflect a flagging economy. As my esteemed colleague Arjun Sen wisely observes: “More brands are competing for consumer expenditures; consumers are spending less; and companies are fighting for fewer dollars.” An unbelievably retrogressive economy guarantees weak sales, but a sales decline for a revered Boomer brand is not a reflection of inadequate or outdated brand relevance. In fact, Harley-Davidson inspires “brand insistence,” as Arjun Sen argues. In other words, those who love a brand are willing to kick your ass when you criticize the brand; in a sense, you’re criticizing who they are.

In response to The New York Times article, Harley-Davidson ran a full-page ad with an unsubtle headline: “You Can File Our Obituary Where the Sun Don’t Shine.” This isn’t just a company telling The New York Times to stick it: an iconoclastic segment of the Boomer generation is telling The Times the same thing: “Screw it (you). Let’s ride.”

Here's a YouTube video which carries this same in-your-face theme, in effect a Boomer anthem from youth until now:

My colleagues at The Boomer Project, whose insights about the Boomer Consumer are often poignant and penetrating, concluded in their recent newsletter that Harley just doesn’t quite get it: “Far from seizing the throttle and seeking new vistas, the company is focusing on its existing customer base, trying to entice existing Harley owners into trading up to newer, more expensive models.”

This view misses several points. First, the core customer base is hardly ready to park their rides. Mark-Hans Richer, Harley’s chief marketing officer, has the Boomer consumer squarely in his crosshairs: “(Boomers) are not about to stop riding because they’re getting older. It would be dumb to walk away from our core customer, the most lucrative customer.”

When the economy rebounds the flow of Boomer money will rebound also. Pent-up demand will fill showrooms, even if a pall of austerity follows this generation to the grave. Boomers always find money for what they need, and a Harley is necessary for someone who lives to ride.

Arjun Sen fully agrees with this observation. During a down economy, the most important priority for companies is to defend and grow the business with existing customers. The most advantageous marketing opportunity right now is to move light customers to medium customers and medium users to heavy users. It costs much less in marketing investments to up-sell current customers than to bring in new.

Second, the existing customer base is more than a motorcycle rider. Boomers will not stop being Harley customers as long as the company figures out new and evocative ways for them to be customers. This includes branded spare parts, accessories, clothing and specialty items; Harley theme parks and museums; and, as I pointed out years ago in the first edition of my book, Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, even a Harley-themed active-adult community is conceivable. (Imagine roaring thunder every Sunday morning for the rest of your life.)

A Boomer brand is much larger than a product: it’s a relationship. Extend the brand; extend share of wallet.

Third, iconoclastic, Easy Rider, anti-establishment virtues manifested by Harley core products will be adopted by Generation Y as this young generation earns more disposable income to spend on pricier Hogs. They’ll ride, and they’ll listen to Springsteen on their iPods while cruising to Sturgis, South Dakota, for the annual Harley-Davidson version of Woodstock.

This is not to conclude that Harley brand managers can ignore brand tweaks to retrofit the brand to younger demographics and their unique tastes. This is necessary progression of an enduring, iconic brand: evolution not revolution. Core Harley attributes are timeless in pop culture.

When I pulled on my first pair of Levi’s, Harley was the ride for bad boys. Boomer Harley riders are still bad boys at heart, corporate trappings, gray beards and all. Their sons (and daughters) can be equally bad by owning the baddest brand in America. If you’re bad, a foreign-made bike is not an acceptable substitute.

Harley badness will live as long as custodians of the brand never forget what freedom means in American culture: the road, the ride, the faded blue denim Levi’s vibrating on the saddle, and an extended middle finger at all of society’s tiresome forces to conform.

Excerpted from Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future. Coming Fall 2010! Send us an email message to receive notification when Brent's newest book becomes available.

Boomers in APAC: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, India, Singapore and Hong Kong

One rewarding aspect of being involved in marketing to a changing and burgeoning segment is developing business relationships worldwide with like-minded colleagues. My travels have afforded me opportunities to meet and collaborate with Boomer marketing notables such as Dick Stroud in the United Kingdom, Arjan in't Veld in Holland, Jean-Paul Tréguer in France, and Hiroyuki Murata in Japan.

Following Dick Stroud’s referral last year, I met Kim Walker, an Australian at birth but a globetrotter who has spent much of his career living elsewhere. Kim and I have had numerous email exchanges and long video teleconferences via Skype.

He asked me to be part of his board of advisors (joining Dick Stroud from the UK), and I have appreciated playing a small role in the development of Kim’s marketing consultancy, appropriately called SILVER.

First, let me explain why this firm exists and share with you some background about its founder.

Like many of us who come from the advertising agency industry, Kim spent his advertising career targeting young consumers, from teens to young adults in their late 30’s — but rarely those over 45. 

Then, in May 2005, something dramatic happened that shook him to the core: He turned 50. And around the same time, so too did many of his peers, clients and friends. Yet he noticed that advertising continued to focus on younger groups.

He studied demographic research and realized the marketing industry had become blinkered by habit. Marketers were obsessed with younger markets, but executives were missing a phenomenon unique in the history of the world. Kim decided to help companies capture this overlooked opportunity, and he is well-equipped to be such a trailblazer.

Working mainly in the marketing communications field, Kim has held local and regional C-suite positions in Singapore, Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo. Most recently he was President and CEO for M&C Saatchi in Asia. He has also been a senior executive with Carat Asia Pacific and Bates Worldwide. He has launched new operations or led acquisitions in most Asian markets. He’s also an entrepreneur, having founded three successful start-up businesses of his own. His Japan business was awarded Ad Age Global Media Innovator of the Year 2000 for creating transparency in the Japan media marketplace.

So, I'd like to introduce you to an Australian, songwriter, adventurer, photographer, philanthropist, speaker and dad (two teen girls). He’s a marketer’s marketer who has some innovative ideas for business development in the Asia Pacific region. 

SILVER is the realization of Kim’s dream following his jolting wake-up call. The firm is the first strategic business and marketing consultancy in Asia Pacific focused on Boomers. The firm has accumulated unique insights and knowledge into this market segment using a brain trust of global advisors and partners. SILVER has three primary areas of service: 

1) INFORM with unique research, data and downloadable SilverMatters™ insight reports.

2) ADVISE to help companies grow and to increase understanding through a proprietary SilverBullet™ strategic process, training, executive briefings and speeches.

3) CONNECT businesses to the senior market through refined brand positioning plus relevant and targeted communications strategy.

I interviewed Kim Walker to gain a better understanding of the opportunities awaiting US and European companies that develop strategies to target Boomers in the Asia Pacific region. 

What defines and describes the Asia Pacific (APAC) Boomer market?

Contrast. We have the oldest, largest and fastest growing 50-plus populations in the world. Yet these regions reflect remarkable diversity: Anglo-Saxon cultures of Australia and New Zealand; the Confucian cultures of Japan and China; the Indian (filial piety) cultures; and the advanced city-state cultures of Singapore and Hong Kong.

What are some significant similarities between Western born Boomers and Boomers born in APAC?

We know very strong similarities exist with Australian/New Zealand Boomers but as for the truly ‘Asian’ countries, the primary similarities would be world-event related. APAC Boomers have heard much of the popular classic rock music: The Beatles and Rolling Stones, for example. And they were certainly aware of the Boomers’ major defining war: Vietnam (although few Asian countries were involved in the conflict).

What are some significant differences?

APAC Boomers usually have an extraordinarily strong sense of family and responsibilities to their families even in retirement. These countries typically venerate the old. (But this perpetuates a negative stereotype!)

Why should marketers become more knowledgeable about Boomers in Asia Pacific?

As in the USA and elsewhere, Boomers across Asia represent a lucrative and virtually ignored market opportunity. But that’s where the similarity ends. Even within and among the Asian countries, attitudes and opinions vary — as our survey data demonstrates.

APAC 50+ spending power will hit US $2 trillion by 2015. The 50+ group is growing five times faster than overall population growth. They have the money and the time to spend it. They have been largely ignored and are therefore fertile ground for businesses to make inroads — particularly attractive in these tough economic times.

What is an example of a major “ah-ha” that your research analysis has revealed so far?

Attitudes and behaviors of Boomers in a particular country will be strongly influenced by the average age of the country and its economic and social maturity. In some ways, there are more similarities between Boomers in ‘older’ countries like Japan and Australia than between Boomers in many ‘Asian’ countries.

Is ageism a problem in APAC countries?

Very much so. Society and the seniors themselves must jointly shoulder the blame. Some views of aging are born from Confucian values that place older people on a pedestal: as decrepit but wise. Boomers in many Asian countries see themselves as being the ‘same age or older’ than their real age. This is a total contrast to Western society where, on average, Boomers see themselves as being 13 years younger than their real age.

What can US consumer brand marketers gain from understanding Boomers in Asia Pacific?

Asian boomers are not the same as their Western counterparts, and even among Asians they differ greatly. The one thing they have in common is their relative wealth and the time to spend it.

Culture will affect the way they spend discretionary assets, so it’s critical for marketers to understand these nuances. Consider travel and tourism as an example. Rather than taking an extravagant dream vacation, Asian Boomers are more likely to pay for the entire family to travel somewhere together. Their consumption will be less conspicuous as they feel the need to justify any self-indulgence to their family and peers.

Kim Walker is a man who has traveled far, both as a marketing executive and as the father of two nearly grown daughters. He has developed a unique perspective of the opportunities waiting for businesses that learn how to tap the wealth of Boomers in APAC countries.