Boomers

Marketing to Baby Boomers Getting Older: Part One

In 2010, an interesting demographic symmetry arrived. Americans born between 1946 and 1964—the birth years traditionally used by pundits to delineate the Baby Boomer Generation—celebrated birthdays somewhere between 46 and 64.

For the first time in this generation’s history, millions of Boomers may have considered a rhetorical question posed by Beatle Paul McCartney in his 1967 hit, “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Will you still need me?

Family and friends will continue to need them, whether now between 48 or 66. And businesses will need Boomer customers. The generation is hardly finished propelling profits. The nonprofit world will need them also as this generation turns more from careers toward contributions. Even nations aging demographically will need the generation to remain engaged.

Although it’s worthwhile to explore the worth and value of this generation from social and cultural perspectives, my primary focus has been on economic questions circulating in business circles. 

What is a generation from a marketing and advertising perspective?

How can we effectively market to the Boomer generational segment?

What opportunities are developing to target Boomer men?

It can be complicated to condense a generation into a neat package; generations do not have obvious beginnings and endings, nor do individual cohort members possess universal characteristics. Nevertheless, diverse and distributed as they may be, Boomers are bound together by a compelling sense of their generational reference group. Many remain enamored of a rambunctious twentieth century history and “collective mentalities” springing from their sometimes-impetuous formative years.

Critics of this generation’s abundant sense of identity may perceive navel gazing. This in-your-face generation has stirred up impatience and derision. Even some outspoken Boomers express a bitter distaste of their peers, further fomenting stereotypes and critical caricatures.

Are Boomers a generation of self-absorbed egoists, or did a distinctive convergence of historical, demographic, sociological, and technological forces cause the Boomer generation to incorporate a robust sense of identity somewhat akin to a social class?

Steve Gillon, author of Boomer Nation and an acclaimed academic and historian, observed that not all generations possess a common identity that can be as widely understood and addressed: “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.”

With 30+ years of experience marketing to Boomers, I concur with Steve Gillon.

Arguably, Boomers belong to a cohort that has been more examined, evaluated, and explained than all other generations combined. Whether this is fair is not my place to conclude. I prefer to pursue a more pragmatic course: to shape understanding about this generation from a commercial perspective, and to articulate how this cohort can be addressed today by businesses and nonprofits for the development of mutually beneficial relationships.

This generation of Americans has long been the nation’s dominant consumer segment. Boomers today constitute about 40 to 50 percent of all consumer spending, and the generation also controls roughly 70 percent of the nation’s assets. Part of this economic capacity can be attributed to the generation’s commanding size: Boomers represent over 26 percent of the entire U.S. population, and roughly one in three American adults.

As Gillon also reminds us, Boomers became the first generation raised with broadcast television providing a ubiquitous media vehicle for shared experiences, collective value formation, self-awareness, and powerful marketing fads. Boomers first started learning about and creating demand for products advertised on small black and white television sets during Saturday morning cartoons and special programming developed to appeal to their evolving and collective sense of self, whether the Mickey Mouse Club, Leave It to Beaver or The Brady Bunch. More cohort-sensitive media programming and marketing campaigns followed through the decades.

Thus, two powerful forces—dominant demographics and the first generation raised with broadcast television—bestowed upon Boomers a layered and complex sense of identity, the values of which continue to propel them into the future. As the generation persists in reflecting upon its own aging, relevance, and future, I believe that this Boomer-sense-of-collective-self will grow new dimensions and business opportunities. Boomers will keep inspiring sophisticated new advertising and business solutions that address not only their shared history, but also their shared conceptions of the aging process and sense of who they are becoming as mature adults.

So, what’s the point of examining marketing from a generational perspective?

This is about commerce intersecting with meaning.

To be continued next time ...

The above essay is an edited excerpt from Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future. This 279-page book explores a growing body of research, arguments, insights, and speculation over how Boomers are impacting aging and commerce. Implications from my book are monetary and personal, local and international, intergenerational and multicultural. To learn why these conclusions are significant for your work and future, you can get a copy from online book retailers, including Amazon. Thank you for following my blog and, of course, your interest in Generation Reinvention.

Ferris Bueller, Honda CR-V, the Super Bowl and Trailing-Edge Baby Boomers (a.k.a. Jonesers)

For those of you now past age 47 who were born, reached maturity, and lived in the sociological wake of Leading-Edge Baby Boomers (b. 1946 to 1955), you may have felt slightly disenfranchised, culturally speaking. Maybe being shunned has even stirred deeper feelings of sibling rivalry.

If you were born between 1956 and 1964, coming of age in the 1980’s, you may be harboring unfathomable yearning feelings (a.k.a. jonesing), wondering when your birth cohort would ever receive its due—being noticed and catered to by major marketers and brands.

Well, jones no more.

Just in time for all the Super Bowl 46 brouhaha, Honda has launched a new TV ad squarely targeting devotees of culturally significant movies such as WarGames, The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire.

However, this time the brand-spanking new CR-V is the escape wagon for Matthew Broderick, reprising his legendary role as Ferris Bueller (as in Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

In this docudrama, Ferris has become Matthew, who calls his demanding boss to feign the flu so he can recapture a work day for himself, cruising around Southern California in a 2012 Honda CR-V (a bit pedestrian next to the 1961 Ferrari GT California featured in the movie—but still a practical set of yuppie wheels).

And so we follow Matthew reprising his bewildered character: being impulsive, zany and inane as he escapes the drudgery of his existence as an overworked and undervalued A-List Hollywood actor.

If you came of age in the 80’s and thought of Ferris and his reprobate costars as your kind of antiauthoritarian characters—not hippies but hip—then this ninety-second Super Bowl ad is just for you. Honda is aiming the newest rendition of its most successful SUV product ever built (with annual sales exceeding 200,000 units per year) directly at you: the Trailing-Edge Boomers, Cuspers, and/or Generation Jonesers.

Congratulations for finally achieving full status as “the demo,” no longer standing in the long shadow of your older brothers and sisters.

Your day has come, and it’s a day off.

A Case for Generational Marketing and Baby Boomers

In the realm of marketing to adults older than 45, vigorous debates arise about how best to construct advertising messages and frame offers in memorable and compelling ways. Pundit opinions fall into three overlapping theoretical camps.

Some are proponents of “Ageless Marketing” as conceived and articulated by my colleague David Wolfe. Ageless Marketing is “marketing based not on age but on values and universal desires that appeal to people across generational divides. Age-based marketing reduces the reach of brands because of its exclusionary nature. In contrast ageless marketing extends the reach of brands because of its inclusionary focus.”

Some are impassioned about “Life-Stage Marketing,” which understands the consumer from the life-stage they’re experiencing in the present. So, for example, adults between 45 and 55 today have a lot in common such as children in high school or college, the beginning of caregiving for aging parents, accumulation of significant consumer debt, and so forth. Further, stage of life implies psychological priorities. Thus, some argue that middle-age or the “Fall Stage” includes a reduction of material pursuits in favor of accumulating experiences.

And some are committed to “Generational Marketing,” an approach for which I’m a proponent. As I write in my newest book, Generation Reinvention:

“… a generation implies membership in a unique group, bound by common history, which eventually develops similar values, a sense of shared history, and collective ways of interpreting experiences as the group progresses through the life course.

“One way to describe this phenomenon of generational identification is the concept of cohort effect, which sociologist Karl Mannheim wrote about as ‘the taste, outlook, and spirit characteristic of a period or generation.’ He also referred to the notion of zeitgeist, the idea that a generation has a collectively shared sense of its formative historical period.

“Marketers tap into the cohort effect when they remind consumers of cherished events and experiences from the past and connect these acquired memories with brand identity.”

Critics deride Generational Marketing as superficial: feckless attempts to connect nostalgic memories with products. Boomers aren’t invested in their formative years, critics argue, they’re looking ahead. Formative experiences are of little contemporary consequence. What’s done is done.

Aside from my assertion that humans always recall nostalgic moments with enduring and emotionally powerful reflections—and therefore these memories can become potent motivational triggers in contemporary marketing communications—sophisticated new consumer research substantiates the affirming power of nostalgia.

Authors of a multi-continent research study, published by the Association for Psychological Science, determined that feelings of loneliness—emotions such as unhappiness, pessimism, self-blame and depression—reduce perceptions of social support. Loneliness can be alleviated by seeking support from social networks. And here’s the surprising psychological insight: nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, increases perceptions of social support. A sense of social connectedness nourishes the soul. Nostalgia functions similar to optimism in maintaining health. Nostalgia, appropriately harnessed, inspires positive feelings, including positive brand associations and affinity. (APS, Vol. 19, #10)

This does not mean that creating an advertising strategy around shared generational experiences is always on target or well-executed. Creative problems begin when brand associations are hackneyed or arbitrary.

Misjudgments sometimes occur when those outside a generational cohort superficially interpret generational experiences. We’ve seen recent ads targeting Boomers that connect brands with peace symbols, classic rock music, and the rebellious spirit of Boomer youth. Once potentially powerful as a creative approach, connecting brands to the spirit of the sixties has been done.

Other marketers create messages where psychic connection between nostalgic memories and a brand have little in common; that is, brand utilities have nothing to do with the creative message.

St. Joseph Aspirin recently launched a TV ad featuring Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie Haskell, cheeky friend of Beaver Cleaver in the hit 1950s sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. Significantly, this is the first situation comedy ever written from a child’s viewpoint, thus elevating potential for nostalgic resonance with the children of that time: Leading-Edge Boomers.

Although this ad deserves acknowledgement for resurrecting an actor who is part of Boomer nostalgia in a fairly big way, we are left wondering what Eddie Haskell has to do with headache pain relief. (Maybe the product is a palliative for the headaches Eddie often caused Beaver’s parents, June and Ward.) But brand connections between Eddie and an OTC analgesic are vague. Even minor copy changes could have strengthened ties between Eddie, the obnoxious neighborhood headache, and a popular aspirin brand of the same time. To the credit of this advertisement’s creators, contemporary Eddie helps reposition the brand for what Boomers need today: cardiovascular health. (A note of caution: Ad critiques rarely consider sales or measured changes in brand awareness/preference generated by a campaign, and these performance measures are, indeed, the bottom line in judging marketing effectiveness.)

Successful Generational Marketing requires mastery of nuance and meaning. Linkages between a brand and nostalgic meaning must make sense. Further, all formative life experiences of a generation, from early childhood through young adulthood, have potential for development. Boomers possess a rich repertoire of shared experiences beyond those that occurred between 1967 and 1973. Potential nostalgic motivational triggers go way beyond Woodstock.

Based on thirty years of experience marketing to Boomers, I can affirm with my career and portfolio that Generational Marketing succeeds when executed properly. I have created numerous ad campaigns and promotions, dating back to 1981, that performed by generating sales, memberships, donations, inquiries and leads.

Some argue that Generational Marketing is exclusionary:  marketing messages that appeal to a specific generation exclude members of other generations who might not identify with the message or conclude that the product is not for them.

I say, “Welcome to market segmentation.” Target marketing forces choices about who is most likely to buy a product, their common characteristics, and the most potent ways to evoke an emotional connection, to inspire a brand-consumer relationship. These choices force exclusion. As one of my mentors once instructed, “Brent, always make your easiest sales first.” Some of my successes in advertising and marketing correlate with the degree to which my team was effectively exclusionary.

Further, big brand marketers create and target messages to multiple segments for the same brand. When I handled advertising and sales promotions for McDonald’s in Colorado, we executed campaigns targeting young parents, children, Latinos, African Americans, and older customers. Each of these segmented campaigns involved sophisticated messaging that considered cultural and social nuances of the segment. McDonald’s brand meant slightly different things to different segments.

As I have written and instructed in my speeches, Boomers, particularly Leading-Edge Boomers (born between 1946 and 1955) have a sturdy sense of generational identification. This is due to two factors.

First, the Leading-Edge grew up during significant cultural and social upheaval. Karl Mannheim and several social science researchers have confirmed that turmoil in youth strengthens generational identification and durability of formative experiences.

Second, Boomers comprise the only generation to have grown up with just three monolithic television networks. No generation older or younger experienced this convergence of technology with youth. Boomers growing up in Alaska and Florida shared many of the same televised moments and thus learned the same cultural and social messages. We watched Eddie Haskell weekly in dominant generational percentages. We either liked or disliked Eddie, but we all recall his shifty character. This isn’t about the past or future; it’s about who we are: the sum-total of our life experiences.

Nevertheless, as a marketer, I’ve always maintained a full toolbox. The three Boomer marketing approaches discussed here can succeed when well executed. All three approaches can fail when creators have inadequate understanding of the market, message, methodology or meaning conveyed through their ads.

Ageless Marketing can inspire advertising messages that appeal across generational divides because of commonly shared values, such as the nearly universal desire for a cleaner environment. Boomers and their Generation Y children share passion almost equally for greener living and sustainability.

Life-stage Marketing can offer another path to success for those who connect a product or service with a stage need. Many Boomers today need help in understanding their caregiving challenges and responsibilities. This hallmark of their current life-stage predisposes them to offers of caregiving support and education.

And Generational Marketing can create powerful associations between a brand and a segment’s formative experiences. These nostalgic associations can become instant shorthand for positioning a contemporary brand constrained by cluttered media and product/service parity. Nostalgia is rich with opportunities for deeply personal brand interactions.

Those who insist that Generational Marketing is the least effective way to create advertising targeting Boomers may simply not understand this approach at a level of expertise necessary to be successful.

Boomers as Consumers, The New York Times, and the Value of Aging

“After 40 years of catering to younger consumers, advertisers and media executives are coming to a different realization: older people aren’t so bad, after all.”

So goes the lead to a recent New York Times article about a marketing transformation underway. Suddenly the venerable newspaper has produced an article that unambiguously acknowledges what the marketing industry has been way-too-slow to accept: “older people,” namely Baby Boomers, are too lucrative to ignore even though over 80% of the generation has aged beyond the traditional marketing and media sweet spot of adults 18 to 49.

Halleluiah!

The Times article makes a point that this shift in mainstream thinking among media and advertising agencies is due to two factors: demographics and economics. Not only does the Boomer generation still evoke the metaphor of a “pig in a python” — its dominant population slice — members of this generation have far more to spend on a discretionary basis — 20% more on average in weekly earnings than the coveted 25 – 34 demo.

And older consumers spend on categories once thought the domain of youthful consumers. As TheTimes article insists, “Mature consumers also seem to be spending on categories not traditionally associated with older people. NBC’s study of those people 55 to 64 showed that they spent more than the average consumer on categories like home improvement, large appliances, casual dining and cosmetics.”

Revolutionary!

These are insights and conclusions many of us in the “marketing to Boomers” arena have been writing and speaking about for years — a decade in some instances. For many of us, The Times article comes across with about as much newsworthiness as if the newspaper was trumpeting the importance of segmentation in marketing. We have known with zero uncertainty that Boomers would bring to their aging a new style of lucrative consumerism. Some did not know that The Great Recession would give Boomers a distinctive economic advantage over younger cohorts, but this has happened too.

So, what is important about this article and what is missing?

Robert Dilenschneider, formerly CEO of public relations agency Hill & Knowlton, has written many worthwhile books about business communications. One of his notable books is Power and Influence. He makes a very strong argument that a handful of media in the nation shape and dominate the national conversation. The New York Times serves a unique role in setting the national agenda, as does The Wall Street Journal. When The Times covers a story, the story gains validity, further influencing lesser magazines and newspapers, shaping their choices of topics. Broader media coverage inevitably shapes mainstream thinking.

Indeed, though it has been a long time coming, an article in the Times with a mind-shifting headline — “In Shift, Ads Try to Entice Over-55 Set” — can be construed as definitive breakthrough. Those of us who have been writing, ranting, proselytizing, and prodding media to recognize reality can finally rest: message delivered and received.

And what is missing?

We can expect a business article to make a business argument: dominant demographic size plus disproportionately higher income equals a market mandating attention. Yet, behind this argument is a larger issue, making money notwithstanding.

The generations over age 45 are inexorably changing aging, so much so, and in such a pervasive and positive manner, that the structure of our culture and social order is becoming something it has never been before. As Dr. Ken Dychtwald, author of Age Wave, has been insisting for over two decades, Boomers don’t just populate life stages, they transform them.

My friend Susan at age 45 had her first healthy twin babies. My friend David started a thriving home healthcare agency several months before turning 60. My friend Lou leads two of the hottest, most progressive rock ‘n’ roll radio stations in Colorado at age 70. And so it goes for the breakdown of what’s normal and expected.

Dr. Bill Thomas, geriatrician and profound thought leader on the future of aging, suggests that aging is its own opportunity for business to consider. “The development of a new perspective on age and aging is both necessary and possible,” writes Dr. Thomas. “Given the importance of aging in our lives, and the impact of aging on our families and society, a new openness and even curiosity about human aging would seem more than warranted. The time has come for our wondrous longevity to emerge from the long shadow cast by the vigor and virtues of youth.”

Boomer demographic dominance and economic might have now become self-evident and mainstream thought, thanks in part to the power of influence embedded in The New York Times. What’s lacking in this discussion is a third pillar of value: that older consumers are more than consumers; that age is more than decline; that an emerging elderhood will change nations.

Older consumers represent an unprecedented human asset worthwhile for business to cultivate, market size and economics notwithstanding. Our collective thoughts and actions as an “age cohort” will create new markets for goods and services while revitalizing others. We will empower brands like never before as brands become associated with maturity, wisdom, judgment, holistic thinking, generativity, longevity and actualization of human potential across the lifespan.

But I suspect it could take another ten years before the marketing and media communities fully grasp transformative implications of an aging society, one that will continue to manifest new dimensions as Generation X and then Generation Y cross that timeworn media delineation between age 49 and 50.

Rather, marketers and media will remain stuck in old arguments and beliefs: that the ultimate value of human existence is exoneration of youth to the exclusion of age. They will grudgingly revise their marketing plans to follow the money, just as The New York Times instructs, but they won’t buy into aging as a value unto itself. Many people inhabiting these fields won’t embrace their own aging because denial runs deep and vigorous, especially in these professions.

Right now the best way to manifest an emerging new sociology of aging and age inclusiveness is to buy stuff they didn’t expect us to buy and engage with media programming they didn’t expect us to consume.

Maybe a bit impatient, we’re not so bad, after all.

John Erickson and the Future of Boomer Housing, Television and Public Policies

Note to readers:

In tandem with publishing my newest book, Generation Reinvention, I have recently launched a radio program called Generation Reinvention: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Future.

This weekly “audio magazine” includes prominent guest experts from a diverse range of interests and industries. WeEarth Global Radio Network produces, streams, podcasts and archives these programs.

This time I interviewed John Erickson, a serial entrepreneur whose work has significant implications for the future of Boomer aging. After reading the background article below, you can listen to my conversation with John by clicking here.

At first thought, retirement housing, television programming, and political advocacy seem distinct and mostly unrelated. Connections between these disparate industries are elusive.

That is, until you connect the dots. And those dots have become united through the convictions of one man: John Erickson.

He has changed the status quo for community-based retirement housing, introduced the first cable channel with tailored programming for adults 50+, and provided thought leadership for older Americans demanding to be heard in Washington.

His entrepreneurial odyssey began over a quarter-of-a century ago. Before the 1980’s, those who aspired to live in retirement communities often needed to have significant assets. Hopeful residents invested their savings in a hefty, nonrefundable deposit and then paid monthly dues to perpetuate a lifestyle catering mostly to the wealthy and upper-middle class.

John Erickson saw another alternative: well-appointed and managed communities for the middle class, offering equivalent amenities associated with robust retirement community living: an affordable, aspirational retirement lifestyle. That was a game changer.

Beginning with his flagship project of Charlestown, located on a 110-acre campus near Baltimore, Maryland, his team transformed a former college campus into a vibrant community for those “62 and better.”

 

Since successful launch of Erickson Living, his company has developed 19 other communities in eleven states, currently providing housing for over 23,000 retirees. His closely knit organization received recognition in 2009 by Fortune magazine to be among the “Best 100 companies to work for.”

All his communities focus on his “six pillars of successful aging.” The ingredients for vibrant retirement living include exercise, diet, spiritual well-being, a comprehensive wellness and health care plan, and financial security. The final ingredient is social structure.

An expanding retirement housing enterprise would be enough to keep most entrepreneurs busy, but success of his community model disclosed another need and opportunity.

“I put miniature community television stations in each of my retirement housing campuses,” reflected John Erickson during his conversation with me. “Residents produced their own hometown networks. It occurred to me that an opportunity existed to develop an entire TV network that would focus on better quality of living as you get older.

“I decided to take my hometown project and grow it into a national network. This would not be a typical ‘reruns network.’ It would become a network that would deal with all kinds of contemporary and inspirational issues.”

He took his concept and persuasive presentation to Comcast and won their agreement to launch a 24-hour cable channel called Retirement Living TV in 2006. Since then, RLTV has become a sophisticated television resource with Emmy award-winning programming and legendary on-camera personalities such as Sam Donaldson, Joan Lunden, Jim Palmer and Florence Henderson. Programming includes a variety of shows tailored for interests and passions of older adults: health & wellness, avocations, financial planning, housing, relevant world news, travel, politics, and contemporary culture.

One would think that a growing network of retirement communities and a 24-hour cable network would be sufficient to keep this entrepreneur fully occupied. But he’s simply not finished.

John concluded that voters 55 and older are too easily dismissed by a bevy of candidates seeking elective office. He observed that Boomers and older generations are passionate about the issues, take time to become educated about their policy options, and show up at the polls to vote.

So, earlier this fall, his organization launched another initiative called Prime Votes to help inform Boomers and seniors about important issues in the mid-term elections. With those over 50 facing myriad challenges, from sinking retirement assets due to the recession to uncertain solvency of Social Security and Medicare, he concluded that this important constituency needs a louder, better informed voice in Washington.

 

RLTV created a series of programs devoted to issues; the network produced and launched a public service announcement campaign on other cable channels; and John made the rounds of major media to communicate an undeniable fact: the social/political agendas of older adults need to be understood, heeded and addressed by policymakers. Any politician assuming that he or she need not focus on this cohort is making a grave judgment error.

What drives this man into so many different areas of concern to Boomers and older generations? Obviously, many dynamic factors coexist to compel him forward. But perhaps his comment to me about the future of aging provides one insight into this game changer:

“(Life after 55) is the ‘freedom years.’ This is the time you get to become or be whoever you wanted to be, to express who you really are.”

And, clearly, this is what John Erickson is doing, personally and professionally.

Unwilling to settle for the status quo in housing, television or politics, he is one of those rare leaders and entrepreneurs who has seen other possibilities for the future – alternative states – and then acted on his vision, ultimately to the benefit of all aging generations, present and future.

AHRQ Ad Campaign And Preventative Healthcare Marketing to Baby Boomer Men

During Men’s Health Week (June 13-19, 2010) and prior to Father’s Day (June 20), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, launched a public service advertising campaign aimed at men, principally Boomer men.

AHRQ has identified some thought-worthy statistics about men over 40 and preventative medical care. For example:

• Men are 24 percent less likely than women to have visited a doctor within the past year and are 22 percent more likely to have neglected their cholesterol tests.
• Men are 28 percent more likely than women to be hospitalized for congestive heart failure.
• Men are 32 percent more likely than women to be hospitalized for long-term complications of diabetes and are more than twice as likely than women to have a leg or foot amputated due to complications related to diabetes.
• Men are 24 percent more likely than women to be hospitalized for pneumonia that could have been prevented by getting an immunization.

Produced by AHRQ and the Ad Council, with creative support from Grey New York, the humorous television commercials have been designed to encourage men to see their doctors for preventative healthcare screening and recommended diagnostic tests. Here is an example:

Mehmet Oz, M.D., a heart surgeon who hosts The Dr. Oz Show and campaign spokesman, observed that he sees many of his patients for the first time after they’ve had a heart attack. “Men have delusions of adequacy when it comes to monitoring their bodies and need to be more conscious of healthy living and knowing their numbers,” said Dr. Oz in a press release issued by AHRQ. “Part of our responsibility as fathers and husbands is keeping ourselves healthy, and it should be a family effort to gently nudge all men to map out steps to do the right thing.”

Nearly two years ago I posted an article in this blog about colon cancer screening, which was my humorous approach to cajoling fellow Boomer men into scheduling the most notorious of all screening tests required of those over 50: a colonoscopy.

If you know a Boomer male over 50 who has not had a colonoscopy, then encourage him to read the following article. The article will also appear in my forthcoming book Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future. About one-third of the book focuses on marketing to Baby Boomer men, including healthcare marketing.

If Boomer men persist in not scheduling preventative screening tests, as recommended by AHRQ and the medical community, many might not have much of a future.

During the same week that AHRQ launched its PSA campaign, two of my friends passed away. Lang died of prostate cancer at 60. Steve died of kidney failure at 59. And I found out that Mark, age 65, is in the final stages of liver cancer.

So, in honor of Men’s Health Week and my friends, here is the article again.

 

This post is for Boomer men. Women may proceed, but this is going to be a large dose of guy talk.

For seven years, Mitch, my primary care physician, told me just to do it. For seven years I procrastinated, coming up with every possible excuse to avoid following my doctor’s advice.

This past year during my annual physical, Mitch frowned at me and said, “This is Dr. Gershten talking, not Mitch, do it before your next physical. No excuses.”

“It” is the infamous test haunting those over 50 called a colonoscopy: an uncomfortable truth about cancer screening for those who have crossed the half-century mark. This is not a test any John Wayne-swaggering, red meat-eating, football-addled man wants to endure.

But I really appreciate Mitch…er, Dr. Gershten, and prefer not to displease him. Good family doctors are hard to find.

So I made the momentous appointment with a gastroenterologist. I accepted that I would be sweating bullets for the next three weeks. I managed occasional hyperventilation attacks by imagining other unexpected people getting colonoscopies: Twiggy, The Rolling Stones (with Mick singing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”), the Rockettes (simultaneously), and Alan Greenspan. This helped me with perspective.

Then came the fateful day before the fateful day. After a light breakfast, I stopped off at the pharmacy where I picked up a prescription for HalfLytely with Flavor Packs. (Don’t you agree that this may be the Guinness World-Record winning euphemism for a laxative?)

A perky female pharmacist, about 25, tried to offer me advice about how to use the product, but recognizing her nubile, nymph-like lack of personal experience with what would be happening to me, I smiled gratuitously and backed away.

The bowel prep kit includes a tablet laxative, a two-liter jug filled with a clear medication and several packs of powdered flavoring weakly reminiscent of Kool-Aid. Instructions directed me to take the tablet first and later to consume the entire jug of liquid, a glassful at a time in 10-minute intervals until everything moved swiftly through me. And shift it did. The very good news is that I had my choice of flavor packs.

C-Day started with a cup of coffee and then no more liquids until the procedure. Around noon, I sat in the reception area still wearing sunglasses. I tried to convince myself that I wore them to shelter my eyes from bright light, but my true motivation was to avoid the possibility that anyone would recognize me at this compromising moment, especially Twiggy.

After fifteen minutes of mindless scanning of magazine ads, a nurse appeared and invited me to join her. A red-headed Irish woman with a thick brogue accent, she seemed antithetical to the solemn activities ahead. I’ll call her Nurse Bonny. She was an interesting combination of Mary Poppins and Maureen O’Hara, so I felt marginally safer.

Bonny led me into a preparation area, subdivided into cubicles by drapes, where she checked my blood pressure and asked basic questions about drug allergies and potential health risks. I mentioned my theoretical aversion to colonoscopies but received no deferment. I signed obligatory forms that would make a lawsuit fruitless.

She then exclaimed, “Now, are we ready for our happy drugs?” I could envision some uplifting possibilities in the forthcoming diagnostic procedure.

Nurse Bonny asked me to remove my clothes below the waist, slip into a hospital gown, and then sidle under a sheet covering the portable hospital bed. Then she left.

She appeared again momentarily, bright and enthusiastic, and covered me with another flannel sheet that had been warmed. My anxiety lifted with these day-spa touches. She inserted a small catheter into my right hand where happy drugs would be injected.

All preparations finished, Bonny rolled my bed into an operating room where the gastroenterologist appeared from nowhere. Dressed in business casual attire, Dr. Troillut is uncomplicated and laid back. He explained what was about to happen and asked if I had questions.

“Yes, two,” I replied. “Have you ever had done to you what you’re about to do to me?”

He nodded affirmatively, “Two times. Piece of cake.”

Observing flat screen monitors suspended over my head, I then asked,“Do I have to watch?” The doctor smiled and nodded at Bonny.

Bonny put a syringe into the catheter and began injecting the first drug.

Fentanyl is an opioid analygesic used for anesthesia. The product originates from poppies, those eye-catching orange flowers grown widely in Afghanistan, which our federal government has been unsuccessfully curtailing, years after a war on indigenous poppy growing. Derivatives of poppy plants also become either heroin or morphine, depending on who's cooking the brew, respectively drug dealers or pharmaceutical companies. More complex compounds originating from poppy opioids include Rush Limbaugh’s favorite pain-killing medication, OxyContin.

As the drug rushed into my bloodstream, I had a few introspective moments. Then I looked around this strange room full of strangers attending to various duties and I heard myself proclaiming, “I LOVE you people!”

Bonny inserted the second syringe into the catheter and began injecting another liquid. Versed reduces anxiety and creates sleepiness. The medical profession refers to the effect as twilight anesthesia, meaning that you will be semi-conscious but in a dreamlike state. You can respond to commands such as “Roll your butt over.”

This combination of drugs has another positive side effect: short-term amnesia…

Roughly twenty minutes after injection of the second drug, I found myself sitting up in the hospital bed in a recovery area chugging a glass of orange juice and babbling, “What a wonderful world it is!” I had zero recall of the colonoscopy.

While Nurse Bonny and I enjoyed this triumphant moment together, the doctor appeared with good news: a cancer free GI tract. My mental state had been perfectly attuned to hear such heavenly news.

Further, the doctor even gave me a thank-you gift: color photographs of my colon, including one handsome image of the intersection of my large and small intestines, near my appendix. It didn’t occur to me until later that the photograph serves as legal evidence that he did indeed guide the scope to the geographic location at which a successful procedure concludes.

So, here’s a debriefing on typical anxieties associated with colonoscopies:

1) The purge. Although the tablet laxative and liquid HalfLytely are not a cause for jubilation, the medications are not horrific. You spend a little more time in the john, but before you know it, your GI track is as clear as the day you were born, which, if you think about it, is a historic occasion.

2) Getting half naked around strangers. The people who do this for a living have found graceful compromise between total public humiliation and discreteness to the point of making the procedure impossible.

3) The drugs. Really groovy. The only requisite is that someone will need to drive you home since you’ll still be enjoying residual meanderings of psycho-pharmaceutical consumption for a few hours after your colonoscopy.

4) The colonoscope, a.k.a. “the tube.” It is the diameter of a pencil, not a fire hose, and you won’t remember it anyway. Those blessed drugs again.

5) Bad news. True, this is a possibility, but odds are extremely high for a negative test. Besides, successful treatment of precancerous conditions when found early rarely lead to worst-case scenarios. If your doctor discovers a polyp, he’ll remove it while you’re still commiserating with Timothy Leary. Early screening usually means never getting colorectal cancer. It’s much worse news to learn of colon cancer because you procrastinated, and I don’t even want to write about the procedures you’re then going to face.

Now for some sobering statistics for Boomer men, more than half of whom have passed the half-century milestone:

In 2000, only 42.5 percent of U.S. adults over 50 had undergone colon screening within the previous 10 years. That means 57.5 percent did not do what all doctors and wise peers advise: get colon screening, preferably a colonoscopy, when you turn 50.

Further, as many as 60 percent of deaths from colon cancer could have been prevented if everyone 50 and older would just submit to regular screening. For most healthy adults, beginning at age 50, this means once every ten years.

Colorectal cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in the U.S, and the third most common form of cancer in men. The average age for those who develop the disease is 62, with two-thirds of the cases occurring after age 50. In 2004, the last year for which the Center for Disease Control provides statistics, 73,007 men were diagnosed with colorectal cancer; 26,881 men died of the disease or its complications.

Running the math, since 2004 I figure that about 64,500 red-blooded American males have died prematurely. They are dust in the wind when they could have been reading this blog instead, smugly self-satisfied over having submitted to the procedure. They have joined an unenviable list of luminaries succumbing to colon cancer such as Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Jack Lemmon, Vince Lombardi, Tip O’Neill, Charles Schulz, Joel Siegel, Walter Matthau, and Tony Snow, the Bush Administration press secretary and fellow Boomer.

Get the test, Boomer men. The truth is: It’s not that uncomfortable.

GE’s healthymagination, Baby Boomers and the Future of Healthcare Marketing

I see a clear mental image of my two friends, young, healthy and in love. David has dark, curly, shoulder-length hair and almost always a big smile on his intelligent face. Shawn is lovely in that moment with her flowing gauze blouse and locks of golden hair encircling rosy cheeks.

This moment has them standing before a gently flowing creek, sunshine of early spring beaming down on their heads and shoulders, warming them with the promises of a season of rebirth. Around them, lime green of newly leafing trees and pink  redwood blossoms add electric color to a Kodachrome moment. There they stand, embracing, warmth radiating from their young love: a moment of youthful passion, reverence for natural beauty, the bounty of a caring relationship.

This memory formed during the early seventies yet remains deep-seated, available for recall with the right provocation.

I spoke recently with David after nearly forty years have passed and reminisced about that good spring day we had spent together with Shawn, hiking around a Kansas ranch. He told me sadly that Shawn had died of breast cancer just a year earlier, a disease that had taken hold and spread beyond a cure before diagnosis—perhaps a preventable fatality.

So now my happy memory has a sad ending. I never had a chance to say good-bye to Shawn or reminisce with her about that special day when spring beauty and simple pleasures had brought us closer together.

Sad endings like this can be more preventable with early access to healthcare and the newest diagnostic tools. Creating happy endings has become the focus of General Electric, summarized by a new neologism: healthymagination.

The company is asking three critical questions about the future of healthcare:

• How do we improve access to healthcare for consumers?
• How can we usher in technologies that reduce the cost of healthcare?
• How can we improve clinical outcomes through better quality diagnostics?

Finding answers to these questions requires commitment, clear goal setting and capital. So GE is investing $6 billion over six years to develop 100 innovations that will improve healthcare quality while driving down costs.

GE’s website succinctly summarizes its lofty goals for the new healthcare initiative:

Healthymagination is about becoming healthier, through the sharing of imaginative ideas and proven solutions. It goes beyond innovations in the fields of technology and medicine, celebrating the people behind these advancements. Seeking to build stronger relationships between patients and doctors, GE created Healthymagination to gather, share and discuss healthy ideas.

Jeff Immelt, General Electric CEO, and Mike Barber, Vice President for healthymagination, have taken this vision into the realm of measurable action steps:

• Provide more affordable healthcare
• Make healthcare information technology more effective
• Commit to technology innovations
• Improve healthcare access worldwide
• Address prevention, earlier diagnosis and treatment
• Help GE employees become healthier while adopting innovative healthcare plans

The healthymagination initiative came to my attention as it did for millions of other television viewers during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The company unveiled five new television ads created and produced by BBDO.

BBDO is the legendary global advertising agency network that received the distinction of “Agency of the Year” in 2005 from Advertising Age, Adweek and Campaign magazines. With these credentials—and a client stable including Gillette, Motorola, Pfizer, Pepsi and Chrysler—the agency stands above peers for its powerful and motivating advertising programs.

One healthymagination television commercial in particular caught my imagination, a spot simply called “Beautiful.”

My mind had been distracted by Lindsey Vonn’s spectacular Gold Medal win in the women’s downhill event. I was looking forward to returning to NBC’s coverage and hardly enthusiastic about commercial interruptions in that moment of athletic triumph. But suddenly I saw a couple who could have been my friends David and Shawn as they were in the early 1970s. And then soft music and slow pacing drew me into the commercial...

Regina Ebel, Executive Vice President and Director of Films for BBDO, conveyed her heartfelt story when explaining this spot in a BBDO video about the campaign:

“Beautiful is a very emotional spot about a couple that have been together their whole lives. It’s really special to me because I lost a sister to breast cancer,” said Ms. Ebel. “When I saw the images of this young girl going through life, it was my sister. It was that beautiful young girl. My sister didn’t have the good fortune to get the good news.”

“And (the story) ends with them sharing an experience when the wife finds out she is going to be okay. That’s the most beautiful moment.”

The commercial takes viewers through a series of vignettes conveying a romantic journey that will seem familiar and nostalgic to millions of Baby Boomers. Production techniques rely on soft, richly saturated images as would have been filmed by a handheld Super-8 mm camera 40 years ago. And then the montage of their young lives unfolds...

The story begins with a young woman on a beach at sunset. Then the setting cuts to a young couple together on the beach, huddled under a beach towel. The young man has curly long hair, like my friend, David, setting the period in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

He speaks as a voiceover in a soft, rich voice, full of authenticity:

“I’ve seen beautiful things. I’ve seen the sunrise paint the desert. Witnessed snowfall on the first day of spring. Watched fireflies dance about the evening sky.”

As he speaks softly, accompanied by the Second Movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, images continue to appear in this dreamy montage: sleeping on a train, perhaps a trip together though Europe, and camping in the desert in a VW bus.

 
 
Then the spot reveals their middle years becoming a family: playing in the snow with a toddler and hiking as a middle-aged couple with two young teenage children and a dog. Then another vignette suggests a party for her, perhaps a 40th or 50th birthday celebration, with many friends and family members surrounding her.   

Finally, we see an older couple in present time, sitting in a doctor’s office and looking at images of her cancer on a GE Early Detection medical device. His eyes are red and damp from the emotional intensity of his wife’s prognosis, and he continues to narrate:

“But the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen is the image on the screen that helped our doctors see my wife’s cancer was treatable.”

 
   

The spot cuts to a medical doctor, now explaining to the aging couple what he sees diagnostically. Voiceover narration provides the final insight about the sponsor of this advertisement and its purpose:

“GE technologies help doctors detect cancer early so they can save more lives… bringing better health to more people.”

The URL for this initiative fills the final screens: healthmagination.com. GE. Imagination at work. Then an Olympic logo reveals the advertiser’s corporate sponsorship of the Winter Games.

 
An artful and sensitive television commercial reveals some “teaching moments” for those who market healthcare to the Boomer generation, especially products and services addressing Boomer aging.

It’s quite remarkable how Don Schneider, Executive Creative Director for BBDO, and his creative team so fully captured nuances of Boomer life experiences reaching back as far as the late sixties or early seventies. (Then again, maybe it’s not as remarkable when you learn that Don Schneider is a Boomer who began his career at BBDO in 1980, further sharpening the point that if you want to capture this generation with great advertising, use talent from the generation to create the ads.)

Through BBDO’s rich tableau, Boomers, especially members of the leading edge born between 1946 and 1955, discover imagery that’s reminiscent of their own life experiences.

Not all Boomers frolicked on a beach at sunset; but many did. Not all Boomers camped in the desert or drove a VW van; but many did. Not all explored a new-fallen snow with a toddler; but many did. Not all Boomers took nature walks with their teenage children; but many did.

Somewhere in this cascade of artfully composed vignettes, most Boomers will recall something from the past—personally relevant slices-of-life that make the message and messenger all the more authentic. After seeing about twelve historical vignettes, a few images will be true and relevant to most viewers who are of the appropriate age.

An emotional catharsis—the scary possibility of losing a life partner and then learning with relief that doctors have found her cancer early enough—burrows into a universal fear of losing a spouse too early. Then GE provides salvation through its Early Detection imaging technologies. All those memories of young love and youth can be shared long into the future; now more memories will be created together.

It’s not over yet.

BBDO media planners made exactly the right call when placing the ads within NBC’s Winter Olympic Games programming. Boomers disproportionately populated the program audiences. As reported in The Washington Post, Nielsen identified the primary audience to be viewers 55 and older: “Ratings among viewers age 55 and older are 82% higher than the national average. Conversely, ratings among teens are 57% lower than the average.” 

As Boomers continue to age, advertisers are going to discover more opportunities to reach this generation through nostalgic memories of a youthful period often idealized as the best of times.

GE’s healthymagination campaign demonstrates a sophisticated and nuanced case study in which a product can be associated with the most powerful of all motivations: yearning to hold onto and experience precious moments in our lives again … and again. When you join these memories with the promise of a future filled with equally entrancing stories, yet to be told, you’ve conceived a winning strategy for brand identity, emotional resonance and corporate image development.

David, my friend from the seventies, has become older as I have; Shawn has sadly passed away. Yet their vitality, love and warmth have been encoded in my long-term memory and this moment endures—a sunny day, a rambling creek and the evanescent promise of a joyful future together.

As sensitive advertisers reach into that wellspring of my life, they speak to me in a language beyond words or selling. They ask me to consider their brand as a valid part of my future because it so successfully understands my past.

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. 

The Super Bowl, Baby Boomer Men and Classic Rock Bands

The educational travel industry focuses mostly on older adults who have time, money and propensity to participate in higher-end travel adventures emphasizing learning experiences. The industry consists of tour operators, such as World Leaders Travel; planners, such as executives with Yale University alumni association; and suppliers, such as Menlo Consulting Group, Inc., a respected travel industry research company.

I was a keynote speaker for the Educational Travel Conference in Providence, RI, during the week before Super Bowl Sunday, where I spoke about marketing to Baby Boomer men. About 450 attended the conference.

Until recently, the industry has primarily marketed to members of the Silent Generation, or those born in the U.S. between 1925 and 1945. But the industry is gearing up for Boomers who represent the next big marketing opportunity.

One entrenched myth in the industry is that women make most travel decisions, so I had my work cut out for me. But I was able to put forward several persuasive arguments (backed by recent consumer research) that support targeting Boomer men as a significant and burgeoning niche segment.

About halfway through my speech, I presented a cartoon from The New Yorker magazine. It’s a simple idea that you can easily imagine.

From stage left you’re looking down on four old rock musicians with balding heads and stooped bodies. A sell-out audience before them appears jubilant and celebratory. The lead singer speaks: “This next tune is a hard-rocking, kick-ass, take-no-prisoners tune we wrote about turning sixty.”

As expected, the audience laughed at this irony. And I asked them what Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney have in common recently. The answer: They have all been entertainers during halftime for the annual Super Bowl extravaganza.

Then I asked who would be providing halftime entertainment during Super Bowl XLIV. Several from the audience shouted out, “The Who!” Sure enough, vocalist Roger Daltry and guitarist Pete Townsend — the only surviving artists from the original band — rocked out to laser lights as if they are among today’s hottest artists — which, of course, they’re not.

Mission accomplished: cartoon irony mirrors human reality. Lead acts for the last six Super Bowl games have been classic rock artists, with most over the age of 60. (Petty will be the final artist among this elite group to become 60 — in October 2010.)

I pointed out that these 60-plus men retain broad appeal across generations, but certainly among Baby Boomers, and most certainly among Boomer men. Men of this generation who grew up on a steady auditory diet of Petty-Springsteen-Jagger-McCartney-Daltry also have the money and moxie that most major advertisers savor.

In tune with the The Who and for one of the showcase commercials, contemporary rap artist will.i.am covered the English rock band’s “My Generation.” This song is one of the group’s defining statements, where Daltry famously asserts: “I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation).”

This Super Bowl commercial, produced for upstart marketer Flo TV, stood apart from the others — a quick-cutting nostalgic montage of television news and cultural ephemera from the sixties through the present. Further, will.i.am took some serious license with The Who's legendary lyrics: “I don't wanna die young; I wanna get old (Talkin’ ‘bout my generation).”

Last year, will.i.am covered Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” for a Pepsi commercial, which I discussed in a blog post last February. If you compare carefully, the new ad contains some of the same archival television footage included in the Pepsi “Forever Young” Super Bowl commercial.

Stuart Elliott, a prolific advertising critic and columnist for The New York Times dedicated his column on the Monday following Super Bowl Sunday to a theme of nostalgia, the common creative characteristic he spotted in most of the ads that ran during the 2010 Super Bowl. I found it curious that he discovered nostalgic twists in every other TV commercial BUT the one spot that was unabashedly nostalgic — at least from a Baby Boomer perspective. He didn’t even mention the will.i.am cover for Flo TV. However, he did perceptively identify a plethora of brands relying on classic rock as fundamental to their Super Bowl pitches:

Among the old-school rock acts heard were Cheap Trick, for Audi; the Electric Light Orchestra, for Select 55 beer; Kiss, for Dr Pepper Cherry; Kool and the Gang, for the Honda Accord Crosstour; and Bill Withers, for the Dante’s Inferno video game sold by Electronic Arts.

History, it seems, does repeat itself: with classic-rock men bands dominating the nation’s largest stage today and with nostalgic ads tapping into our halcyon memories from the past.

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’.

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.