Boomers

Baby Boomers' Woodstock in 1969 Is A Public Dream Of National Unity So Needed In 2022

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair has been described as a watershed, seminal, formative, game changing, and with dozens of superlatives. Those who’ve attempted to contain the Baby Boomer generation in a tidy sociological package have pointed at Woodstock in summary, sometimes with derision for the Bacchanalian overtones this word can represent.

Scheduled over three days on a dairy farm in New York from August 15 to 17, 1969, Woodstock means little until you place it in larger context of a society unraveling around the newest generation of young adults, a dominant and dominating cohort of malcontents. From their parents’ generation they had absorbed rich idealism for time-honored principles of social and economic justice.

From the world they were inheriting, they had discovered unbearable discontinuities and hypocrisies. From romanticized western archetypes, the first generation to grow up with television had learned to stare down orthodoxy.

Woodstock was just one major event with national impact that blasted through 1969. The final year of the tumultuous sixties included discordant Richard Milhous Nixon succeeding Lyndon Baines Johnson as 37th president of the United States. US troops stationed in Vietnam crested at 543,000.

Three hundred students stormed and occupied Harvard University’s administration building in a spellbinding demonstration of street theater. Charles Manson’s LSD-crazed cult executed actress Sharon Tate and seven others, including Tate’s unborn child. And this was all before a turbulent autumn featuring the largest peaceful protest in US history on October 15, the first Vietnam War Moratorium. And that’s not even close to half of it.

Woodstock was not merely a rock concert showcasing some of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands of the sixties. It was an interlude arriving in the context of more social and political upheaval than most Americans had witnessed. It was a chaotic but peaceful prelude to forthcoming breakdown between government and governed when combined will would end an unpopular war.

Denver gave a nod to Woodstock six weeks beforehand, from June 27 to June 29 at Mile High Stadium. A three-day concert featured forthcoming Woodstock headliners including Joe Cocker, Credence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Winter, and Jimi Hendrix.

The Mile High City also served as a major waypoint where hitchhiking and ride-sharing hippies passed through in droves on their way to a chimerical instant city plopped in the middle of Max Yasgur’s dairy farm.

I did not attend the concert although, like many of my peers, I gave the odyssey passing consideration. When “Butch” Barger asked me if I wanted to drive across country with him to upstate New York, I barely had a clue what he was talking about. Prospects for this road trip sounded interesting but indefinite.

In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t go because mud and unsanitary conditions would not have enlivened me even at 19. I’m better suited to experiencing Woodstock cinematically from a home theater, shower and comfy bed nearby.

To become embroiled in the turmoil and idealism this festival represented did not require attendance. Political upheaval, disintegrating racial relations, burgeoning feminism, environmental degradation, and rock ‘n’ roll culture enveloped a generation, inundating us, forging strident collective mentalities.

From Alaska to Colorado to New York, young people crossed the country for peace and love in a time of rage and resentment. They wanted to do the right thing, and to them this meant standing firm against received authority. Woodstock at once represented the improbable and the possible: just three spins of the globe, three short days — an interruption of business-as-usual that persists even in this new century.

I saw remnants of Woodstock as young protesters clamored along downtown Denver's 16th Street Mall during the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, their faces lit up with passion and high purposes. I felt reassuring presence of shared citizenship in Civic Center Park in October of that same year when more than 100,000 gathered peacefully to hear words of hope from their next president, improbably an African-American man.

I saw the teenagers of Woodstock with wizened faces filling Red Rocks Amphitheater for the 40th anniversary of sixties’ super-group Jethro Tull.

I think of Woodstock-era uproar when watching media reports of roiling public protests against the overturn of Roe v Wade, the 2022 Supreme Court decision to outlaw women's right to choose keeping or terminating pregnancies. Or in the faces of impassioned young protesters confronting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The 53rd anniversary of Woodstock was virtually meaningless if nothing meaningful survives. But when we peer through those throngs of tie-dyed t-shirts and tribal costumes into the present, we see an extraordinarily different America over five decades later: arguably, a better America, but nevertheless still beset by division and divisiveness.

How to remember and honor those who have died from Covid-19

When we depart this life, must the stories of our existence fade within the passing of a few years? That has been the fate of billions of mortals who have preceded today’s living.

Since the beginning of human history around 50,000 B.C., 108 billion humans have been born. Just over seven billion are living now, or 6.5 percent of all those ever born are still breathing—a tiny fraction when we consider the meteoric growth of world population today.

How much do we know of the 101 billion humans who have preceded us? The majority are nameless, forgotten as if they never lived, merely dust in the wind.

Except for a relative handful of kings, queens, heroes, political leaders, scientists, artists, writers, intellectuals, athletes, and celebrities who have been held in perpetuity through their works or historical documentation by others, the clear majority of human stories have just perished. We know nothing of those masses who have lived and passed on. Most of us do not know anything about the lives and times of our great-great-great grandparents, if even their names.

The First Immortal

Five thousand years ago, in Mesopotamia, the ancient lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers now called Iraq, something miraculous happened in the evolution of our species and its ceaseless battle against temporality. Humans discovered how to write.

Death could no longer silence people after departing their mortal bodies. The written word gave our species the power to reach through millennia and speak inside the heads of those living in the distant future.

Then something else happened, another miracle of self-preservation. Enheduanna, daughter of the first emperor in history, was also the first person known to sign her name to a literary creation.

She lived 4300 years ago, and her gift to humanity was the possibility of immortality that can be bestowed by the written word when assigned to a single visionary author. The writing was no longer nameless, codified thought but personal ownership in the future.

Enheduanna’s name means “Lady Ornament of the Sky.” For centuries after her death, the first author continued to set standards for culture, literature, liturgy hymns, poetry, and religion. Her legacy includes an extensive body of creative output, including forty-two poems, psalms, and prayers that have served as a template for poets, priests, and scribes throughout history.

We know that she existed at a certain point in time. We know what she dreamed. We are aware of her fearlessness and prescience. We know she was a great author, composer, poet, and High Priestess of the ancient Moon God Nanna at temples in the Mesopotamian city-states of Ur and Uruk (Iraq).

Enheduanna lives today, four-and-a-third millennia after she exhaled her final breath. She speaks to us through her creations—and when combined into a complete archive, we have her time capsule filled with revelations that we can contemplate at will.

Permanent Acclaim

A generation ago most unexceptional people, removed from the public eye, could not hope to persist beyond death, except perhaps as represented by a deteriorating marker bearing an irrelevant name, lost somewhere in a cemetery or mausoleum. Without notable personal achievements that would become written documents or audio or video recordings, it was not possible for the majority to survive beyond the grave.

With the advent of the digital age and the extraordinary power and memory of the internet, it is now possible for anyone to write and record their thoughts, dreams, and values for others to read, see, and hear—and with archival preservation, for thousands of years from now. Today, for the first time in human history, anybody can paddle beyond the grave, aiming for the distant shores of time.

Questions to contemplate about your “Immortality Narrative”

• Which of your life lessons are most important to share with your children or other young people in your life?
• Have you been inspired by classic children’s book characters, and, if so, which characters had the most impact on your views and values?
• Who would you most like to attend your last lecture and why are these people most important?
• If you were to be diagnosed with a terminal disease, such as pancreatic cancer, how would you prefer to spend your final months of “functional health,” if granted this time for closure? What would be your priorities?
• What tangible memories about you would you like to leave for future generations, and in what form would these memories be encapsulated? A book or other writing? A video? Artwork? A legacy website?

Excerpted from Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss by Brent Green, Copyright 2017. All Rights Reserved.

A beautiful hit song by Kansas, a progressive rock super-group, helps drive home the point of this blog post. Kerry Livgren, the song's writer and guitarist, was my high school classmate. Kerry has recently published his memoir entitled Miracles Out of Somewhere.

 

To order your copy of Questions of the Spirit, visit the book's Amazon page.

Why those who oppose the word "generation" and reject "generational framing" do not understand or practice modern marketing

Louis Menand, a staff writer at The New Yorker and professor with Harvard University, wrote a combative article entitled: It’s Time to Stop Talking About “Generations.” His subtitle then draws a line in the sand: From Boomers to Zoomers, the concept gets social history all wrong.

His op-ed piece denouncing the construct of “generation” mirrors articles by other pundits and social critics, including anti-ageism author and activist Ashton Applewhite and sociology professor Philip Cohen for The Washington Post.

Menand may be a brilliant writer and Harvard professor — even the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize — but he is not a marketer who has conceived and executed generational marketing programs with measured results for 40 years.

Case studies back up my claim that he is shortsighted.

First, a little background about direct mail testing. What does it takes to "beat a control" subscription pitch for a major magazine or newspaper? Once a publisher discovers a winner, their control direct mailers get tested against all the time, and challengers often fail. A direct mail pitch for the Wall Street Journal remained unbeaten for over 25 years. Martin Conroy, who created the famous control mailer and mentored me, brought in a staggering $2 billion in subscription sales for the newspaper, mainly because his captivating publisher letter was pitch-perfect and motivating.

Here are two control-breaking direct mail packages that I conceived and wrote by applying knowledge of generational sociology:

1. A direct mail campaign for Natural Home magazine specifically targeted Baby Boomer women, beating the client’s control mailer and gaining a profitable volume of new subscribers while giving content editors and article writers fresh strategic insights: https://bgassociates.com/marketing-baby-boomers/boomer-marketing-case-studies/natural-home/
2. A Men’s Fitness magazine campaign for Weider Publications targeted Millennial men, when they were in their late teens and twenties, and beat the long-term circulation direct mail package: https://bgassociates.com/b-2-c-3/fitness-magazine/

My firm's case studies are as close to hard science as social science gets because we measure human behavioral responses to emotional triggers presented through advertising, including timing, subscriptions, source lists, demographics, renewals, and cross-promotional activities.

When critics, such as Menand and Cohen, declare that generational constructs are irrelevant and ineffective in the marketplace where the rubber meets the road, I say: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

One does not even need to use a generational label to create effective cohort-sensitive advertising and direct mail programs. One merely needs to understand and communicate deeper “collective mentalities” inculcated by membership in a distinct generational cohort. Generational research from significant companies such as Pew Research Center can inspire profound insights into dominant and dynamic shared values. These insights can be transformed into subscriptions and sales.

What about Menand's denunciation of accepted Baby Boomer social history? The professor declares: “Most young people in the sixties did not practice free love, take drugs, or protest the war in Vietnam.” He asserts: “In a poll taken in 1967, when people were asked whether couples should wait to have sex until they were married, sixty-three percent of those in their twenties said yes, virtually the same as in the general population. In 1969, when people aged twenty-one to twenty-nine were asked whether they had ever used marijuana, eighty-eight percent said no. When the same group was asked whether the United States should withdraw immediately from Vietnam, three-quarters said no, about the same as in the general population.”

Aside from the fact that I was in college during those years with observations that contradict his poll summary, I would ask the professor: “So when did you come to believe that people respond truthfully to poll questions that are potentially incriminating and uncomfortable to answer?” Or “Why would you expect Boomer respondents to be candid about personal beliefs and behaviors during a time they had deep suspicions of authority figures, including researchers?”

Menand does not get a pass from me as merely a “sociology pundit.” He asks: “Are they (generations) a helpful way to understand anything?” I have answered his question.

Marketing is what makes everything in society prosper, including Harvard University, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. If we eliminate the construct of generation from our lexicon in the name of social equity, why don't we also eliminate imprecise descriptors such as women, African Americans, adolescents, and college professors?

My counterarguments aren't mere opinions borne from a well of righteous indignation. My conclusions are straightforward: consumer cohorts (a.k.a. generations) have collective mentalities instilled during adolescence and early adult years, and, when presented with creative and impactful interpretations of those shared worldviews, they respond by subscribing, buying, joining, giving, and investing, etc. Generational collective mentalities are salient and can trigger desired economic behaviors.

In conclusion, Menand thrums his rhetorical question as if a dare: “Are they (generations) a helpful way to understand anything?” My answer is yes. Generational sociology helps marketers understand how to communicate with and trigger desirable responses from targeted cohorts.

I'm willing to look at other perspectives about the validity and usefulness of “generation,” but contrarian views need to be tied to equally rigorous experimentation rather than stand unchallenged as asserted opinions, no matter how fervent and articulate the messengers.

A Gift for the Boomers in Your Life

Much of today's successful citizen engagement has been influenced by the late-1960s and early-1970s. Fifty years ago, motivated college and university students from the Boomer generation molded the strategies and tactics of modern democratic mobilization.

Cause-related activism and protest demonstrations are fundamental to the success of The American Story. Citizens have been assembling and speaking truth to power for over 244 years. Promoting constructive change is central to the nation’s DNA. Boomers added their passionate voices to the refrain for “a more perfect union,” a chorus that rings especially true in the context of a complicated and deadly 2020.

Noble Chaos: A Novel by Brent Green reveals deeper insights into the struggles and successes of impassioned young people. Set at the University of Kansas in 1969 and 1970, a riveting story begins when a firebomb demolishes the student center, inciting campus unrest and a deadly confrontation between protesters and authorities over the Vietnam War.

Interesting characters amplify the struggles and victories of a youth cohort encountering extraordinary pressures to conform and yet to resist conformity.

This book taps into the generation’s nostalgic reflections as well as their unprecedented experiences of reaching young adulthood during the most unpopular foreign war in the nation’s history.

Noble Chaos showcases how members of the Boomer generation constructively improved the nation, bringing their lived realities more in synch with the nation’s most coveted values for freedom, peaceful coexistence, and inclusion.

This coming-of-age novel is available in print, for Kindle, and as an audiobook on Audible. Last-minute shoppers may order digital versions with instantaneous delivery.

Your favorite Boomer could be taking a trip back to 1969 tonight.

 

The Limits and Opportunities of Generational Understanding

Do younger generations understand the events leading up to the unusual happenings of the 60s and 70s?

A good question, inviting a rhetorical question.

How much do you understand about the Civil War?

Do you recall the significant battles, major turning points, and the commanding personalities who influenced the outcome? Probably you know a lot if you’re a history buff, but you’ll never understand that war the same way that those who lived through it did.

This is an underlying thesis of generational sociology. Concerning major historical events occurring before our youth and maturation, we “appropriate memories,” meaning we learn memories secondhand through books, movies, television, teachers, parents, and online. For those historical periods we personally experience during youth, we “acquire memories.” Mediated and elaborated by our generational peers, acquired memories are much more powerful and enduring in formation of “collective values” and a sense of shared “defining moments” with generational peers.

Younger generations can, through scholarship, become well versed in the events and personalities of the 60′s and 70′s, but they can never understand the full panoply of emotional meaning and content that influence those who lived through the era as teenagers and young adults.

It’s one thing to read the transcript of a speech from Martin Luther King Jr., or watch a YouTube video, it’s quite another to have stood in a crowd in Washington D.C. with hundreds of thousands of impassioned people and absorbed the message of “I Have a Dream” for the first time it was ever uttered by a legendary Civil Rights leader.

Generations share common values through “intergenerational continuity,” but each generation forms unique values based on common and shared experiences during the formative years between the ages of about 12 through 25.

For those interested in gaining a deeper, more nuanced understanding of 1969 and 1970, I invite you to check out Noble Chaos: A Novel, my literary novel. The book is available in softcover, Kindle and Audible formats. 

Check out this link to listen to a five-minute sample of the audiobook.

 

Historical Revisionism Vs. Truth ... Understanding How the Past Influences the Present

Two very different chapters of history have recently occupied my mind.

In an interesting TIME magazine article about The Civil War, 150 Years After Fort Sumter: Why We're Still Fighting the Civil War, author David Von Drehle develops cogent arguments for the idea that this horrific war began five years before Fort Sumter with a massacre of abolitionists in Lawrence, Kansas, in May 1856. People died because they preferred to live in a “free state.” I attended the University of Kansas and did not know this sobering fact about the home of my Alma mater.

It’s not entirely due to my ignorance.

After the war and until the beginning of the modern civil rights movement, historians and public intellectuals typically packaged the purpose of this war for reasons other than the divide over slavery. According to the opinion of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, for example, this war was a battle for “liberty, property, honor and life.” Slavery became but a footnote if mentioned at all in the years following the war. It is only just now, 159 years after the war officially began at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, that the rationale and true context for the war has become fully manifest.

During one of my Generation Reinvention podcasts, I interviewed Rob Kirkpatrick, author of 1969: The Year Everything Changed. Rob has undertaken a scrupulous initiative to document many facets of a year that did, indeed, shape the nation—history he does not personally recall since he was merely two-years-old then.

For example, we discussed the Vietnam War and a deadly battle for control of Ap Bia, a 3,000 foot mountain near the Laotian border. As Rob wrote, this battle would become “a microcosm of the strategic hardships experienced by American forces in Vietnam.”

This became the first significant battle in which American soldiers openly questioned with national news media the strategic wisdom of their commanders in a battle eventually called Hamburger Hill, a raw metaphor for the human carnage, a watershed turning point in popular support of the war. Although the battle was a victory for the US, with 84 fatalities compared to over 600 North Vietnamese deaths, American media and the nation’s antiwar majority started demanding, “What are we fighting for?” This is a question that has resurfaced with every subsequent war in which the US has engaged since Vietnam.

Two very different historical chapters and their contemporary implications emphasize how critical it is that we accurately understand bygone times to avoid repeating mistakes of the past or revising the record, rendering the past mythical rather than factual. The Civil War and 1969 are too often misunderstood or misrepresented today.

Rob Kirkpatrick also shares my observations about how marketers sometimes borrow emotionally charged symbols and slogans from popular culture as a way to brand and sell consumer products, a process called co-optation. I wrote about historical revisionism and marketing co-optation in Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers:

When some media today choose to report about “the sixties,” they often derive background coverage and image positioning from distorted archival reports, thus perpetuating simplistic stereotypes and generalizations as valid truths.

The media, sometimes sympathetic to students and their political demonstrations, chose then, and often still choose, to reflect inaccurately the true context of the era. Media bias has led to distorted reification of Baby Boomers as a construct through persistent presentation of outlandish personalities and the antics of notorious celebrities connected to student demonstrations. Some journalists and news accounts actually encouraged an escalation of militancy, theatrical expression, and a turn toward revolutionary behavior.

Thomas Frank, author of The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, provides substantial evidence of mobilization of bias in his critique of business and the sixties. He observes that mentioning the sixties and associated images arouses in some “an astonishing amount of rage against what many still imagine to have been an era of cultural treason.”

Although the sixties’ era has been commonly positioned as a time of narcissism and social destructiveness (the popular movie character Austin Powers notwithstanding), on the contrary, most young people in my experience consciously embraced a philosophy of non-violence while opposing the horrific violence of racism, poverty, environmental assaults, and American bombardment of Vietnam.

I write from personal experience to this point: Most Boomers were going about the business of earning college degrees and/or starting careers—albeit sometimes in slow motion because of the social and cultural struggles—while playing active roles in grassroots mobilization, and they were motivated by a sense of obligation to others far more than self-gratification.

Another interesting but complex concept has played a role in manufacturing what society now thinks of as “the bad sixties.” This is the theory of co-optation or the tendency of the marketing industry to have quickly embraced the powerful iconographic images and metaphors of young Boomers, transforming them into commercial messages. Thus, the symbols of the social revolution became distilled into come-hither selling images in magazine ads and television commercials; the creative revolutionaries in the advertising industry chose to mimic and mass-produce counterculture so that their corporate clients could cash in on the youth psychographic. The more ardent proponents of this theory even claim that the co-optation process helped to nullify the revolutionary aspects of the counterculture, thereby mollifying its threat to mainstream value consensus.

I believe, at the very least, that co-optation by the marketing industry, my industry, helped to synthesize in society’s collective memory the most superficial, unsavory, cynical, pugnacious images of the antiwar and democratic mobilization movements of the sixties and seventies. Businesses also made money through co-optation, which, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. When this commercially manufactured history becomes history, however, many start having a problem with the prevailing official record, as do I.

The Civil War and 1969 have little in common, other than being periods of extreme internal strife within the borders of the nation. Contemporary beliefs about what happened during both historical chapters are amorphous. History has sometimes been revised. Products and brands have been sold following symbol and slogan homogenization.

Consumer marketing sometimes takes hold of the symbols and slogans, decontextualizes and simplifies them, rendering them meaningless beyond positioning goods and services in consumers’ minds. Responsible marketing begins with respect for the true historical record. Neither consumers nor society wins when we collectively forget or fail to heed the truths and lessons of history.

I believe an optimum intersection exists between historical accuracy and marketing, and, in fact, marketing can be conceived that helps clarify the historical record so more Americans better understand their legacies and moral responsibilities going forward.

When it comes to 1969, and the sixties more broadly, an education about what happened and insights about what these events mean today can commence with Rob Kirkpatrick’s thorough exploration, 1969: The Year Everything Changed. 

I would be remiss if I failed to mention my collaborative book on the same subject: 1969: Are You Still Listening? Written with seven co-authors, all of whom experienced 1969 first hand, our book shares deeper insights into what we experienced as a generation, how the events of that year became significant formative experiences impacting us today, and what we learned from our youth revolution. 

1969: The Year That Changed A Nation, Resonates Today, 50 Years Later

"The most transformative year in U.S. history" — Rolling Stone

 

1969 stood as the final year of a tumultuous decade, shattering domestic tranquility with epic events and cultural trends. Consider Woodstock, the most famous music festival of modern times, attracting over 400,000 rock ‘n’ roll fans. Or NASA’s Apollo 11 space mission and astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. Or the October 15th Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, the largest peaceful protest of a war in American history. Or the Beatles’ final public performance on the roof of Apple Records in London.

Then ponder impact of the gay community’s Stonewall Riots, Senator Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick scandal, murderous rampages of Charles Manson’s cult family, a reviled military draft lottery, and the beginning of President Richard M. Nixon’s fragmented and disgraced presidency.

It was a year of technological achievements such as ARPANET, predecessor of the Internet; the Boeing 747 jumbo jet; and the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. Popular culture fans crowded theaters to experience a breakaway hippie movie called Easy Rider. Elton John, David Bowie, and John Denver emerged to become music icons.

Seven professional writers collaborate with author Brent Green to share their experiences and memories of a raucous, transformative year. One question resonates throughout this book: Are You Still Listening? Joining Brent in this endeavor are Carol Orsborn, Ph.D., David Cogswell, Richard Adler, Jed Diamond Ph.D., Robert William Case, Bob Moses, and Greg Dobbs.

For those who experienced 1969 firsthand, these essays and stories may stir buried memories and invite reflection about that defining year. For those who were born later, this book invites contemplation about our social and political progress fifty years later. Do we see greater national unity? Do we hear lingering discord? Do we sense progress?

1969: Are You Still Listening? is available from Amazon.com, both in paperback and Kindle. After you read our book, we’d love to learn your reactions in the comments below.

1969: Are You Still Listening? received a 2019 National Indie Excellence Award for the category of Social/Political Change. You can discover more about the book and authors at our website.

3 Ways to Market to Baby Boomers: Ageless Marketing, Life-Stage Marketing and Generational Marketing

In the realm of marketing to adults older than 50, 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 late 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 50 and 60 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 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.”

Some 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 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 re-position 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.)

A more recent television advertisement aptly demonstrates nuances that successfully connect a car brand with Boomer nostalgia. 

I appreciate this ad because it has several multi-generational, cohort-sensitive qualities, including clever use of nostalgia. This Boomer grandmother teaches her Generation Z grandchild about zip-lining naked in Belize, albeit to the consternation of the child’s Generation X parents, especially her perturbed daughter-in-law. Yet, one instance at a farmer’s market—an insightful moment of awareness by the daughter-in-law as the grandmother acknowledges her ability to talk with cats—conveys the value of generativity: critical teaching and mentoring moments between old and young. After several ironic twists in the ad, careful observers learn that the family had been visiting the area where the 1969 Woodstock Festival took place.

Which generation is this Subaru ad targeting? I suggest two. Boomers have had a longstanding and positive relationship with Subaru, an import that became popular during the oil shortage crises of the 1970s and continues in popularity today as a safe and durable SUV brand. The ad reinforces this relationship by evoking collective nostalgia for magical moments from the Woodstock era, such as meeting a future spouse under a stately tree near the rock music festival. Further, the ad also suggests Subaru’s contemporary relevance and value to members of Generation X as portrayed by the son and daughter-in-law. Themes of vehicle safety and off-road capacity also have been cleverly woven into the ad’s story-line. 

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 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.

Research conducted by Pew Research Center last year underscores how pervasively Boomers identify with their generational cohort, which also means this generation continues to connect with nostalgic images and metaphors from a tumultuous and transformative youth.

Almost 80 percent of Boomers identify with their generational label (and the experiences and values associated with the label), compared with just 18 percent of the Silent Generation and 40 percent of Millennials. As I've insisted for more than a decade of writing and speaking, Boomers are uniquely bound by their formative years and social history and in greater proportions than any other living generation.

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 Millennial 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.