Boomers

A New Digital Art Form Redefines Generational Marketing through Boomer Nostalgia

In a previous post, I argued in favor of Generational Marketing — an approach to brand development that connects products and services to generational nostalgia, merging past with present.

This approach to building brand identity and product awareness has critics. Some believe nostalgia borrows too much attention away from a product: we get caught up in an ad’s nostalgic moments and then ignore or forget the product being promoted. Some insist that nostalgia is focused on the past, and Boomers today are looking ahead: past experiences divert thinking to bygone life chapters that have been read, closed and preferentially forgotten.

My arguments about the efficacy of Generational Marketing in this blog and in my most recent book, Generation Reinvention, are based on social science research and sociological theory. This line of reasoning appeals to critical thinking but possibly does not drive my points home with emotional clarity. In this post I am sharing a few visceral experiences of the past. Consider an advertisement for Coca Cola:

 

For movie fans among you, does the setting appear vaguely familiar? This portrayal of a nighttime cityscape has not yet happened but rather it is a glimpse into the future: November 2019, to be exact. But wait! The image actually became part of cultural history in 1982 through a Stanley Kubrick movie entitled Blade Runner. And in May 2011 a striking manifestation of this memorable movie moment then emerged through a powerful new art form.

So, is this cinematic moment an image of the past, present or future? Could the power of generationally shared nostalgia give consumers another memorable brand impression, increasing awareness of and consideration for Coca Cola?

Artist Gustaf Mantel has created an extraordinary series of animated GIFs that brings new resonance and emotional endurance to cultural history. Called cinemagraphs, these subtle animations merge the powerful selectivity of still photography with video to portray “something more than a photo but less than a video.”

Now, let me ask you if this copy seems familiar: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” If this statement does not strike a responsive chord, perhaps Mantel's GIF will transport you back to an eerie moment 31 years ago:

 

What if a contemporary marketer for a brand of blue jeans integrated this memorable image of Jack Nicholson in The Shining with a product message aimed at Boomers — something about the iconic comfort of chic casual blue jeans? Or what might a tennis ball marketer do with such a moving and memorable vignette?

Generational nostalgia can be captured in many ways, especially when marketers merge the newest technologies with shared experiences and an art form that gives new meaning to hard-wired memories.

If a marketer wants to stir up anti-authoritarian feelings in a generation — the sense of being outcast for superficial reasons such as looking old in a youth-oriented society — the marketer might resurrect dialogue from another classic movie: “Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.”

And then the marketer shares this visual reminder of what it felt like to be dismissed during youth for arbitrary reasons:

 

In a direct mail campaign my team created for Orange Glo International and its OxiClean brand, we transformed a photographic image with nostalgic appeal into a brochure cover — tapping a memory buried in the psyche of almost any Boomer who in childhood took a lingering bubble bath while playing with a favorite toy:

 

With cinemagraphic technology, we could have expressed our idea in another, perhaps even more memorable way: 

 

“When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.” The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Some viewers looking at these moving images will see merely photographs enhanced by motion-capture technology, perhaps experiencing some charming interpretations of bygone times. I see something more. I see potential for product marketers —particularly those employing online media channels — to reach the hearts and minds of a generation with nostalgic moments reinterpreted for contemporary times and products.

This may not have been the primary intention of artist Gustaf Mantel, but his new art form has thought worthy implications for marketers trying to create brand impressions in a much cluttered online world:

 

An Online Revolution: Baby Boomers and Social Networking - Approaching Age 65 and Beyond, Changing the World

Note to Readers:

Martin Diano, founder of Boomer Authority Association, invited several practitioners of Boomer and senior marketing to contribute chapters to an e-book focused on social networking and online marketing. As proposed, this eGuidebook would be entitled: BoomerStrataGEMS™ ── Tools, Technologies & Techniques. It would become “an eGuidebook and resource listing for using social media and digital technology to engage with Baby Boomers and seniors.”

He shared an early draft with us, which I found to be rich with strategies and techniques to reach the 50+ consumer online. I applied some of the book's recommendations immediately in my own work, discovered some viable techniques, then volunteered my contributions, which include the book's introduction and another chapter dedicated to online competitive intelligence gathering.

Well known practitioners in Boomer and senior marketing also joined the team. They are Jim Gilmartin, Coming of Age; Lori Bitter, Continuum Crew; Kim Walker, Silver Group (Singapore); Adriane Berg, Generation Bold; Stephen Reily, Vibrant Nation; Carol Orsborn, Vibrant Nation; Todd Harff, Creating Results; Erin Read Ruddick, Creating Results; and Tom Mann, TR Mann Consulting.

This link will give you immediate access to the eGuidebook.

My introduction to the new ebook follows:

 

Before How Comes Why

 

The Internet provides Boomers with the most potent medium in history to effect change, nearby and far away. Social networks are no longer merely local and temporal but rather global and eternal. We have daily opportunities to influence hundreds, thousands or even millions with a single Tweet, Facebook post, or Linked-In update. One brilliant blog article can transform nations.

The power of these 21st century technologies became clearer to me when watching an extraordinary YouTube video entitled “Where the hell is Matt?” Matt Harding’s contemporary story reminds me of a younger version of me — full of adventure and idealism during college. Like many of us back then, he is a young iconoclast stubbornly intent on making the world better while having a blast doing it.

Matt traveled to 42 countries in 14 months to create a 4-minute, 30-second video showcasing his silly dance. Through the social network he enlisted thousands of strangers to silly-dance with him. Through YouTube he has attracted over 33 million viewers. That’s over 33 million impressions of an uplifting metaphor: a message underscoring we’re fundamentally all the same regardless of nation, race or culture. That’s a Boomer generation coming-of-age theme, flung into hyperspace with a social networking tool that didn’t exist before February 2005.

Boomers are no longer swarming college campuses where many staked their idealistic claims on the future. We’ve grown up and apart, geographically and mentally. Author David B. Wolfe has written about the inexorable influence of aging on adult psychological development. As we age we become more “individuated, introspective and autonomous.” Intrinsic connections to generational peers become misty and diffuse.

This has all begun to transform since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working for the European Particle Physics Laboratory. (Tim is a Boomer born on June 8, 1955 in London, England.) Burgeoning online social networks that have since emerged create new pathways into generational consciousness. The Internet allows legions to reach across geographic boundaries, to find like-minded contemporaries, and to discover universal life themes and passions.

Online social networks offer rich potential for connecting, learning, engaging, and changing the status quo, much as our colleges offered us in youth. The Internet creates the campus experience for us today, a mélange teaming with ideas, insights and camaraderie.

I submit that one critical “why” of building worldwide social networks is to come together, right now. Online and interconnected we can tackle challenges of shared concern: ageism; age discrimination in the workplace; third-age careers; availability of affordable healthcare; viability of social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare; and, ultimately, legacies of a generation, whether environmental, technological, or social. We can focus attention on public education for our grandchildren, or saner immigration policies, or more funding for research into “orphan diseases.” We can nurture vanishing art forms such as quilt making or angler’s fly tying. We can raise money to do all this.

It’s through our expanding online networks that we can debate the issues we once deliberated late-at-night in dorm rooms throughout the nation’s college campuses. We can find closeness with contemporaries we’ll never meet face-to-face. We can remain intimate and current with far-flung children and grandchildren and use the network to assure intergenerational transfer of our values. We can organize our thoughts and plan actions through distributed teams. We can link, tweet, and write articulate blog arguments to improve “collective mentalities” around the worth of elders.

We can even bring fame to new artists and thought revolutionaries of the generation, who often herald possibilities before change takes hold in mainstream beliefs and values. Susan Boyle showed us one way in 2009.

Susan, 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 tens of millions of views. According to Visible Measures, a company that computes viewings of Internet videos, her catalog of online clips has been watched over 310 million times.

But trouncing Simon Cowell, the cynical talent judge, is not the end of this Boomer woman’s remarkable accomplishments. Her debut CD, “I Dreamed a Dream,” sold over 700,000 copies in the United States in one week, becoming the fastest-selling album in British history, soaring to the number one sales position in Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, and Australia. Susan has shattered any arguments that emerging musical talent belongs only to youth.  In terms of sales, she smashed the best debut album of The Beatles.

We can still change the world with our creative gifts, making it better, fairer, more inclusive. We can use these networks to connect with many more peers than possible during our college years. We can live beyond our time, influencing social and political evolution long into the future. We can ensure that our forebears move closer to realizing our ideals of peaceful coexistence, a healthy planet … a world less dominated by human suffering.

Graham Nash, the British member of classic rock supergroup, Crosby, Stills & Nash, wrote a politically charged song about the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Regardless of the song’s original context, his lyrics ring true through decades:

Though your brother's bound and gagged
And they’ve chained him to a chair
Won’t you please come to Chicago
Just to sing
In a land that’s known as freedom
How can such a thing be fair
Won't you please come to Chicago
For the help we can bring
We can change the world –
Re-arrange the world…

Today we share a world less dominated by traditional media, a world connected through fiber-optics and satellites, a world shrinking into desktop computer monitors and handheld smart phones displaying media channels born of this century: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Typepad, YouTube, Blogger — websites conceived to draw us together, to engage our passions, to affect how we see ourselves and believe in our possibilities.

And now, more than ever, we have a unique generational challenge to be the change, to re-engage with more mature purpose, to rearrange the world. We have the tools and freedom like we’ve never had them before. The rest is up to us.

Postscript:

Martin Diano is an accomplished practitioner of online social engagement and digital marketing. He founded and built Boomer Authority using most of the techniques and tricks described in the e-book. If you're a student of online marketing, then this teacher has come, commanding one of the most recognizable names in the industry due, in part, to intelligent implimentation of online social networking.

As Martin declares: Launched in April 2009, membership in Boomer Authority™ reached the 1,500 member plateau in November 2010, making it the largest and only global association of its kind, bringing together men and women from 23 countries and from every professional discipline serving and fulfilling the needs of the 50+ Baby Boomer and Senior demographic with a wide array of products and services. Membership is free to qualified professionals. To view other association activities, see a list of members and to join, click Join Boomer Authority™ Association. 

Boomers and the Future of Technology: Marketing and Advertising

READER NOTE: The following discussion is a shortened excerpt from my forthcoming book, Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future. The new book will be published this fall and available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online book merchants.

Michael Pollan, an energetic writer about food, once condensed his manifesto about eating: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Allow me to condense some insights about Boomers and the future of technology to the simplest declaration:

• Boomers like and adopt new technologies
• Not unnecessary complexity or useless frills
• Mostly for learning, entertainment and communication

Now for some details:

Boomers Like and Adopt New Technologies

One of the ludicrous myths that I have been dispelling for almost a decade is the slapdash notion that Boomers are technophobes. Popular culture and media have sometimes conspired to create the impression that anyone who didn’t grow up with Nintendo is somehow bereft of skills to adopt and adapt to new technologies. In Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, I addressed this myth.

Boomers have been adopting and adapting to new technologies throughout their lives. From among their midst have emerged technology icons such as Bill Gates and Steven Jobs who not only adopted and adapted but created.

In October 2009, AARP and Microsoft published a white paper entitled Boomers and Technology: An Extended Conversation. Author and futurist Michael Rogers makes a succinct and compelling case for technology companies to focus more on those over 50:

In 2010, one-third of the U.S. population will be over 50 and “that’s close to 106 million Americans controlling 50 percent of the country’s discretionary spending and outspending younger adults by $1 trillion in 2010. Consumers in their fifties show the highest intent to purchase consumer electronics among any age group.”

Not only do Boomers like and adopt new technologies, which they’ve been doing their entire lives, they have the discretionary income and assets to invest in new technologies, often priced out of reach of younger adults.

Not Unnecessary Complexity or Frills

I recall my earliest confrontations with a desktop computer, including panic attacks when my computer would freeze up, thinking that I had permanently destroyed documents. I remember reading mind-numbing manuals trying to figure out how to attach peripherals.

This, in a nutshell, is what Boomers hate about some new technologies. When a product requires us to turn our lives over to the product so that we can master its nuances, then we’ll look for alternatives that insulate us from maddening minutia.

Michael Rogers’ white paper echoes my frustrations: “The (focus groups) made it clear that there are two aspects to ease of use. The first is learning how a device operates. The second is fixing it when something goes wrong.”

Technology innovation winners will create products that are intuitive to learn, easy to interact with, and effortless to repair when things go wrong. When you design simplicity into technology products, you appeal to all generations, not just Boomers. Nobody wants to be bogged down by technological convolution.

Mostly for Learning, Entertainment and Communication

Few Boomers are interested in technology for its own sake. Geeks within the generation are in a minority. Most Boomers purchase technologies to achieve other goals—or values—and those motivations generally center on learning, entertainment and communication.

Today, learning involves accessing the Internet’s limitless repository of information and knowledge. According to a study published by the Nielsen organization in November 2009, the primary online destination for seniors (including members of generations older than Boomers) was Google Search, tallying 10.3 million unique visitors.

The Nielsen study further validated something that anyone who understands the Boomer generation already has realized: members of this generation are online daily conducting myriad searches. They are seeking answers to healthcare questions. They are studying travel destinations for historical and cultural background while planning their vacations. And the most ambitious are taking online college courses to facilitate career transitions.

But the Internet is not just a learning tool. In the future, more and more traditional entertainment such as movies and television will expand online user experiences with unique content and depth.

This became very apparent to me when I studied the complementary websites to James Cameron’s blockbuster movie Avatar. Online content for this movie includes in-depth morphological information about the animals and plants that inhabit the fictional world Pandora. A blog and forum allows movie fans to interact, ask questions and speculate about Cameron’s plans for a sequel. Of course, the Avatar website includes provocative movie trailers designed to nudge web surfers into movie theaters. 

Communication is perhaps the most compelling virtue of the Internet and fundamental to Boomers’ use of technology in the future.

Internet analysts propose many theories as to why Boomers and older generations have been swarming to social networking sites as these platforms have gained greater sophistication, coupled with ease of use. But it all comes down to two obvious motivations: staying in touch and getting in touch.

Communications through technology are also serving a primal need. Around 40% of adults 45+ are single today, so those lacking love are turning more frequently to online platforms to discover new romantic interests. According to Pew Internet, one in ten Internet users has jumped online to dating websites, and “37% of Internet users who say they are both single and looking to meet a romantic partner have gone to a dating website, which represents about 4 million people.”

Although much of the technology future remains a mystery even for technology experts, product developers and marketers can expect with certainty that Boomers will rapidly incorporate new technologies into their lives, especially technologies and applications that simply and fortify their abilities to learn, be entertained and communicate.

Coming in October and available from on-line book retailers. Send us an email message to receive notification when Brent's newest book becomes available.

Arjan in't Veld, a young Dutch man, and the Future of Boomer Magazines

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.

When you read those words, if Paul Simon’s eponymous song “Kodachrome” doesn’t come to mind, you must not be a Boomer (and/or a classic rock fan). The song is playing in the background while I’m grooving to... ah, writing this post.

The odd thing is that I’m listening to Paul Simon transport me back to my youth — Kodachrome... give us the nice bright colors, give us the greens of summer, makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah — while another browser window is open to a new Dutch online magazine ... created for Dutch citizens over 50 ... by a 27-year-old child of Boomers ... and I’m impressed.

In 2007 while on a speaking tour of Europe, I met and had lunch with Arjan in’t Veld (last name translates to “in the field”), a striking young man towering two meters tall (that’s over 6 ft. 5 in.), with fire in his belly and a goal to turn his marketing education into a business focused on people old enough to be his grandparents and parents.

He quickly transformed from a college graduate with a master's degree in marketing to becoming one of The Netherlands’ leading authorities on 50+ marketing.

Bureauvijftig, his marketing agency founded with partner Dick Vos, has attracted a banner list of international clients who see vibrant opportunities when they think of all the Kodachrome colors swirling around Boomers (those alluring hues of Euros and U.S. dollars).

Now for the magazine, ENNU, you’re going to click here: www.ennumagazine.nl. Then you will see this:

  
The magazine has been written and recorded in Dutch, so if you don’t read Dutch or understand the spoken language, you’re not going to appreciate fully how well all the content has been developed. But I’ll bet you’ll be impressed with clever integration of multimedia to create an engaging and enjoyable user experience.

If you want to hear Paul, click on page 4:

 
You should then feel the same sense of kinship I have always felt for the Dutch since they have so fully embraced American music and culture (with their own twists, of course). As you travel through Amsterdam, you’ll often hear the music that defined Boomer youth, and Arjan’s team has embraced this intercultural experience with the inaugural edition of their online publication.

If you want another taste of something more familiar than foreign, click on page 15, a layout clearly dedicated to single Boomers seeking new love. Notice also how photo frames above the Boomer couple are actually windows to external 50+ dating websites.

 
Sometimes it takes getting out of our own country to encounter new ways of experiencing being Boomer through media, as has this new online journal taken some very creative steps toward envisioning a 50+ magazine for the future.

Consider the possibilities that will soon unfold with the introduction of Apple iPad. Suddenly, a merely printed magazine seems inadequate.

I can read the writing on the wall.

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.