Boomer marketing challenge: Generation is easy to label but hard to define.

Anyone who has read a newspaper can tell you that there are about 80 million boomers (b. 1946-1964) in America. Not to mention a new one coming online every 8 seconds or so. Beyond their size, though (big enough to choke Social Security), they’re not a particularly interesting group.

As a demographic, they make no sense. Anyone who has seen Laura Bush (b. 1946) and Michelle Obama (b. 1964) in the same room can tell you that this demo is way too big. Ask any boomer born in 1964 about Woodstock and they’ll tell you, rightly, that they were 5 years old.

This group has different values, different reference points, different politics, different heroes, different everything. Just ask any demographer why the “Woodstock Generation” consistently votes Republican. (Ah, the myth of The Sixties.)

Marketers should also take note of what the Danish Aging Research Center at the University of Southern Denmark has proposed. They suggest that as people live longer, we should split old age into two distinct stages – creating four groups.

Child
Adult
Young old age
Old old age

As we’ve seen, if you’re marketing to the boomers and their total lack of homogeneity, this makes complete sense. And if you’re one of these boomers born in 1964 you also know that it’s about time.

Mike Baumayr, Chapter Two Communications

Mature marketing expertise from one of America’s “oldest” authorities on boomers, retirement, aging, longevity, and inter-generational marketing.

Why target the mature market? That’s where the people and the money are.

“I have discovered that one of the most important characteristics of most economic trends is that they are too slow in their motion to be visible to humans. Humans do not get out of the way of that which they cannot see moving.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller

American advertising was not designed for the mature market; rather, it was a model, and a brilliant one at that, based on the youth-dominated culture of the country.

Today, our economy has shifted: there are now more Americans over the age of 40 than under it. By a wide margin. And the values of these older Americans are directly opposed to the values of youth. So how do you target both groups effectively?

Chances are, you don’t. We continue to follow our marketing model, based on these youthful values, and hope that older customers will get the message (which they don’t).

Economically, this is an odd decision because this group has quite a lot to like. For instance, older customers:

…are the nation’s largest cohort.

…control almost 70% of U.S. wealth.

…hold up to 80% of U.S. savings.

…hold over 60% of all stock market dollars.

…outspend younger ones by almost a trillion dollars.

…are 24% of the population, but 55% of all discretionary spending.

Now compare those statistics with these marketing truths:

No major U.S. advertising agency currently has a mature market division.

No major agency currently writes media plans for anyone over 54 years old.

U.S. advertising agencies, combined, allocate approximately 5% of their spending against this demographic.

So who, exactly, are we targeting? And who, exactly, are we ignoring?

Mike Baumayr, Chapter Two Communications

Mature marketing expertise from one of America’s “oldest” authorities on boomers, retirement, aging, longevity, and inter-generational marketing.

Mature adults are asking marketers, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?”

There are two kinds of trends that every marketer needs to watch. There is the overnight sensation, like Twitter, that demand your attention and force you to play catch-up. Then there are the Really Big Ones, like global warming, which change everything but are so big, and move so slowly, that long-range vision is demanded.

In the next ten years, the biggest shift in marketing will be the movement to the mature market (which shouldn’t be confused with the sudden uprising in “boomer marketing”), for 40+ customers. This is more than theory, by the way, it is numerically factual. Since 1989, this cohort has grown to be over 50% larger than the youth market. And just as youth and its values rightfully dominated our marketing culture for the past 50 years, older people and older values are now the majority (and in America, majority wins).

So welcome to the 21^st century, everyone. It’s an exciting time to be alive. An exciting time to be getting older. And, if you’re a younger marketer, that rare opportunity for some old dogs to teach us all a few new tricks.

Mike Baumayr, Chapter Two Communications

Mature marketing expertise from one of America’s “oldest” authorities on boomers, retirement, aging, longevity, and inter-generational marketing.

Why I am so passionate about the mature market and ageless marketing.

I like getting older. In fact, I like almost everything about getting old. And, oddly enough, I actually looked forward to growing older when I first began studying the mature market.

Why?  Because old is the cure for young. And young is hard. Very, very hard.

When you’re young and in the first half of life, you have to live someone else’s idea of life (after all, you’re “too young to know anything”).  And you learn to please others, because the more others are pleased with you, the better you do in life. From our first-grade teachers to our newest supervisor to our future husbands and wives, we tend to do things that please other people. Things that make them happy, and give you what you need. It’s not a bad deal, but it’s still a borrowed idea of happiness.

In the second half of life, you spend a lot more time thinking about, and doing, what you want, and very little time at all worrying about what others think. That’s really something to look forward to.

And if you’ve seen the way we old folks dress, you know I’m not lying.

Mike Baumayr, Chapter Two Communications

Mature marketing expertise from one of America’s “oldest” authorities on boomers, retirement, aging, longevity, and inter-generational marketing.