Boomers

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.

For U.S. Baby Boomers Today, Iceland Has An Authentic Allure Reminiscent of Europe in the 1970s.

Back in 1969 over half-a-million Baby Boomers traveled to Europe, sometimes for extended expeditions through exotic cultures and other times in search of new identities. That was the beginning of a tidal wave of Boomers traveling to Europe that grew throughout the 1970s.

I predict that Boomers, especially Americans, will now travel in accelerating numbers to and through a mystifying land of fire and ice. The next chapter of the generation’s zeitgeist includes Iceland as a leading travel attraction.

Here’s why:  

We are standing on a viewing platform four stories above Oskjuhlid hill, beholding a 360-degree panoramic view of Reykjavik, Iceland. Called The Pearl, this popular attraction consists of a glass dome resting on five mammoth tanks where the city stores natural hot water for heating the tightly woven community of 118,000 residents.

To the southeast I see the sun just reaching apogee perhaps 20 degrees above the horizon even though it is noon on a mid-October day.

Across the bay of Faxaflói to the northwest, I see Snæfellsjökull, a 700,000 year old stratovolcano with a glacier covering its summit. Commanding the tip of Snæfellsnes Peninsula 75 miles directly across this bay, the ancient volcano towers above the landscape, stoic and mildly threatening though it last erupted in 200 AD. This view connects me with Jules Verne who in 1864 employed Iceland’s most famous landmark as the entry passageway to begin his “A Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

Within The Pearl’s massive glass dome and casual café, we have eaten our fill of Iceland’s traditional meat soup, a lamb stew brimming with rutabagas and carrots to add bright flavor and color. Having been fueled by this robust lunch, a small harbor city with a big persona awaits our further exploration throughout the afternoon.

Ahead of us will come adventurous days traveling to geysers, waterfalls, lava flows, glaciers and quaint agricultural communities.

We will tour the Hellisheiði Geothermal Plant situated above an active volcanic ridge in southwest Iceland, which produces 303 megawatts of electricity and 133 megawatts of thermal energy. Eighty percent of Iceland’s energy comes from geothermal sources—a striking example of how non-polluting geothermal energy is being harnessed in a sustainable manner.

On the aforementioned Snæfellsnes Peninsula, we will trek along a hiking trail above black lava beaches connecting Hellnar and Arnarstapi, stopping to linger over a steaming bowl of fish stew at a small cottage tucked in a cove above jagged lava cliffs. The young Iceland woman who prepares our lunch from the day’s catch is typically friendly, fluent in English and most welcoming.

Iceland is a land of powerful contrasts:  between modern and primitive, high-tech and high-touch, natural landscapes and inspired human engineering—between a distinctly idiosyncratic Nordic tongue and the universal language of the hippest rock music today. Iceland is wild spaces softened by gentle, rugged people fiercely proud of their island’s heritage. It is technically a European country geographically isolated from all the hubbub of the mainland to the east.

Now Iceland calls to a generation.

Boomers will go to Iceland because McDonald’s failed there, unable to muster profitable retail support from a country proud of its slow food traditions. Boomers will set out to sample rich espresso coffees where Starbuck’s has yet to gain a foothold.

 

Many will take an odyssey more than a vacation because Iceland asks for introspection and engagement: to consider the toughness of a Scandinavian people who have quietly built a modern nation, unbowed by economic hardships from the Great Recession; and then to touch lava flows of antiquity and smell sulfurous air misting up from bubbling cauldrons of super-heated water.

They will set out because one of their generation’s musical heroes lived and died for peace, and his most cherished value has been enshrined by Yoko Ono on the island of Videy, a short ferry ride from Reykjavik. John Lennon’s wife and spiritual partner annually ignites her artistic tribute—Imagine Peace Tower—piercing the night sky from October 9th (John Lennon’s birth date) to December 8th (the date of his assassination in 1980).

They will visit other chapters of their shared 20th century history when, for example, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev held a summit that eventually resulted in the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. They will discover the mental battleground where two strategic titans clashed for international domination: the 1972 victory by world chess champion Bobby Fischer over Boris Spassky at the height of the Cold War.

Boomers will go there because Iceland lures the adventurous and peripatetic with the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll road trip: a circumnavigation of the island on Highway 1, a lava asphalt byway also known as Ring Road, all 830 miles of it. This adventure through time and geology will tap into their quixotic and youthful feelings about the American west that many first discovered on western television shows and movies from the 1950’s.

Along this circuitous highway they will pass through landscapes similar to Nevada’s dry and barren red-rock expanses; California’s magical central coast, punctuated by Edward Weston’s towering cliffs hanging over Big Sur’s splashing waves; Alaska’s white capped mountains and blue-ice glaciers; and, Yellowstone’s bubbling mud pots and furious spewing geysers.

 

Boomers will be lured to Iceland in some ways similar to how so many once were compelled to visit Europe during the countercultural psychodramas of the 1960s and 70s. They will come in search of adventure, ephemera and meaning and maybe a couple of all-nighters in Reykjavik’s harbor bars that finish late-late happy hours near midnight to launch the main drinking events, sometimes coinciding with the northern lights, the mother of all natural hallucinations.

They will soak their hangovers in The Blue Lagoon, a man-made public bath carved from lava and filled with iridescent, milky-blue waters. Here Icelanders have demonstrated great creativity and technical know-how by generating power geothermally then recapturing that steam as soothing bathwater. In this otherworldly place, Boomers can soak away the stresses of their hectic lives while exploring steam caves, saunas and hot pots, and smearing their age-creased faces with gray silica, a natural product reputed for its skin restorative promises.

Speaking with Líney Inga Arnórsdóttir, the North American marketing manager for Promote Island and Inspired by Iceland, I learned that Iceland’s tourism leaders comprehend the vast visitor potential that will soon arrive from North America. 

She nodded when I shared my observations about the volume of post-50 travelers that I had just encountered during our own guided and unguided adventures. Tourism is the third most valuable industry, exceeded only by fishing and industrial manufacturing. Attracting more travelers won’t be their greatest challenge; accommodating them will be, especially along the Ring Road’s most secluded outposts. High tourist season, from June through August, stretches the limits of a country that has not been included on many “bucket lists”—until now.

Thus, for those Boomers who are also looking into investments that can integrate core values with personal fulfillment, this mysterious land where the aurora borealis dances across the night sky is in need of sustainable and creative accommodations and everything that comes with the growth of a nation’s visitor industry. Opportunities to profit from adventure travel, eco-tourism, heritage tourism and cultural tourism await the entrepreneurs of this generation.

Thanks to the creative work of Líney Arnórsdóttir and her team, here’s another way of perceiving the possibilities of Iceland, post-50:

Inspired by Iceland from MaddMultimedia.com on Vimeo.

All photography in this blog post copyright 2016, Brent Green & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

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.

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.

 

Marketing to Baby Boomers - The Power of Generational Experiences Applied to Television Advertising

Generational Sociology and Boomers

Karl Mannheim (1893 — 1947), a founding father of the field of sociology, conceived the essence of generational theory through a seminal 1923 essay entitled "The Problem of Generations." Mannheim insisted that when a youth cohort faces substantial turmoil during its formative years between ages 12 and 25, a sense of generational identification strengthens. 

ERA march in 1976 is a precursor to the Women's Marches of 2017 and 2018

The leading-edge of the Boomer generation came of age between 1964 and 1975, an intense era of social, political, and technological changes. Protest marches, lifestyle experimentation, and social role reinvention became hallmarks of Boomer youth, a movement full of fervor, fun, and fantastical ideas about reorganizing society and culture.

Quantitative Research Supports Generational Theory

Even before I became fully aware of Mannheim's theories, and as I was finishing the first draft of Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers in 2002, I was convinced that Baby Boomers had substantial generational affinity influenced by extraordinary turmoil during our youth, buttressed by a mass-market advertising industry that had targeted us since we were in diapers. 

But I had no quantitative evidence, other than the insights I have gained since 1978 from creating myriad successful advertising and promotional campaigns targeting Boomers.  

The Pew Research Center conducted a national survey from March 10 through April 15, 2015. Researchers studied 3,147 adults who are part of their American Trends Panel, "a nationally representative sample of randomly selected U.S. adults surveyed online and by mail."

Pew's study concluded that Baby Boomers have the most pervasive sense of generational identification when compared with four other living generations: The Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, Generation X, and Millennials or Generation Y. Pew concluded: "Fully 79% of those born between 1946 and 1964, the widely used age range of this generation, identify as Boomers. That is by far the strongest identification with a generational name of any cohort."

Not only do the majority of Boomers identify with their generational label, 70 percent also feel that their assigned generational label applies to them "very well (31 percent) or fairly well (39 percent)."

Research evidence suggests that shared generational values formed during external conflicts and cultural turmoil do not perish with time passing; rather, the sociological phenomena typical of Boomer youth are finding newer ways of manifestation as the generation ages. Shared generational values can also be thought of as "collective mentalities" or "dominant ways of thinking."

How can marketers tap into the powerful influence of generational values? 

One method is to employ nostalgic memories creatively, and this has been done successfully by a number of international companies, including Subaru, GE healthymagination, and Fidelity Investments. 

Here's how Volkswagen recently delivered a nostalgic advertising message targeting Boomers for its People First Warranty: 

This ad scored an 85 percent positive "sentiment rating" on iSpot.tv. 

Another method is to examine topical issues confronting members of the generation today, such as possible exposure to the hepatitis C virus infection. Gilead Sciences directly addressed Boomers in the following commercial: 

Also ranking high for viewer reception, this ad scored an 82 percent positive "sentiment rating" on iSpot.tv. 

Whichever method advertisers use to attract attention and instill positive brand impressions with Boomers, it is critical that creative directors and copywriters understand subtleties and nuances of what it means to have reached adulthood during the Vietnam War era.

Like all generations, we retain positive memories of our youthful years and struggles. Like all generations, we have contemporary needs, wants, and concerns unique to our generational journey.

Appropriated vs. Acquired Memories

Generational theory recognizes that memories we appropriate from other generations — meaning those memories we experience vicariously through stories shared by members of older generations and historical media — are not as powerful as memories we acquire through personal experiences during adolescence and young adulthood.

Picket fence behind "grassy knoll" where alleged second Kennedy assassin hid and fired.

To members of younger generations, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy represents an abstract lesson from history; to leading-edge Boomers, the killing of this president remains vivid and enduring. Every one of us born before 1957 remembers that fateful day — exactly where we were when we heard the shocking news. America changed, and the Boomer generation lost much of its innocence and trust. Kennedy's assassination persists today in our collective psyche.

To members of other generations, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair may sometimes be seen as a hackneyed cliche. To Boomers, the festival represents a time and place when everything changed in dramatic ways, whether or not as individuals we attended.

To members of other generations, being at risk for infection with Hep C may represent a moral failing of too much "free love." To Boomers, the possibility of being infected hearkens back to memories of long-lost lovers when "making love" was not seen as something awful but rather natural. 

The inexorable journey of contemporary aging includes novel opportunities to reach and motivate Boomers+ through TV advertising that rings insightful, authentic, and compelling.

A Digital Art Form Redefines Generational Marketing through Nostalgia

For over seventeen years, I have 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: consumers 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 throughout this blog and in my book, Generation Reinvention, are based on rigorous 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 a futuristic advertisement for Coca Cola:

 

For movie fans among you, does the setting appear vaguely familiar? The image became part of cultural history in 1982 through a Stanley Kubrick movie entitled Blade Runner. And in 2011 a striking manifestation of this memorable movie moment emerged through a powerful digital 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 bring 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 40 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 appearing older 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 can share a visual reminder of what it felt like to be dismissed during youth for arbitrary fashion reasons:

 

This anti-authoritarian declaration is taking on new meaning during the era of COVID-19, when many Boomer men are allowing their hair to grow for months because of virus infection risks associated with getting a haircut.

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 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 captivating art form has thought-worthy implications for marketers trying to create brand impressions in a cluttered online world:

 

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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.

Boomers and Generational Identification: the Psychosocial Triumvirate

 

GIF credit: Gustaf Mantel

Three factors interact to create our sense of generational awareness and identification.

The Cohort Effect recognizes that each of us is born in a unique historical time. As we mature we share many profound experiences in a social context with our peers, principally when we are between ages 15 and 25. Broadly shared experiences—such as war, catastrophes, major technological innovations, popular culture—tend to modify each individual’s worldview and psychological adjustment because of the social milieu in which we live, especially as adolescents. This is how generations acquire unique personalities.

 

 

The Period Effect refers to the changing and evolving environmental events occurring around a generation through the lifespan, particularly after coming of age as adults. These period effects can be national and world events, emergence of new technologies, and/or high-impact popular media culture. This is how generations change over time as major external events cause adaptation to present circumstances.

 

 

The Age Effect is based on the idea that “seasons of life” influence how we interpret and act on the major events in our lives, and these developmental hallmarks tend to be consistent across generations. Every age or stage of life involves typical challenges and priorities, and these age-related challenges tend to be congruent across generations. This is how generations can be quite similar concerning adaptation to major life-stage themes, from parenthood to grandparenthood, and from marriage to retirement.

 

These three psychosocial factors or Effects interact to create “fundamental integrative attitudes” in youth and eventually “collective mentalities” during maturation, constituting the unique nature of each generation.

Which factor has the most impact on a generation at any given time? Nobody has a firm answer to this question. Each factor has potentially powerful influence, but each factor can be more or less significant depending on contemporary context.

Generation Reinvention, my in-depth discussion about generations, includes an original self-directed workshop that provides a vehicle for you to gain a better understanding of these Effects as they pertain to your colleagues and you.

When you undertake this workshop, you can gain perspective on your own generational influences and how much or how little your values and outlook differ from those typical of many Boomers. Greater generational awareness will help you become more effective at communicating across generations, especially through marketing.