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Buy our book, Boomer Consumer today |
| Voted "Best of the Best" Business Books in 2007 by CORBIS.
Available and in stock online at Amazon.com, BN.com and at Barnes & Noble stores in major markets.
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| Can't Get Enough of that Baby Boomer Stuff? |
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There's more. Oh, yes, there's much more.
On the Web:
Check out the Boomer Project web site, where we archive our published content and tell you how to line up Matt Thornhill and John Martin as speakers.
Visit the Older Dominion Partnership, a Virginia-based consortium of businesses, not-for-profits, universities and government agencies planning 10 to 20 years ahead for the Age Wave of aging Boomers.
In the Boomer Consumer blog, we venture beyond the topic of marketing to Baby Boomers into Boomer finances, family structure, sociology and the science of aging. |
| About Us |
The Boomer Project offers the most thorough and up-to-date portrait of today's Boomer Consumer. How can we help?
We offer consulting to help companies and organizations develop their "50+ plan." If you don't have one, you better. It's the only demographic segment that will increase in size over the next decade, growing some 23% while the 18-49 segment stays stagnant (Census data, baby).
We also conduct on-site programs, where we educate your marketing and/or customer service personnel about how today's Boomer Consumers think, feel and respond to your messages. These day-long sessions include insights obtained from our on-going proprietary national research among Boomers.
Contact us to learn more about all of our services.
Email: info@boomerproject.com
Phone: 804.690.4837
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| January 19, 2009
News & Insights from the Boomer Project
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Just about everyone, it seems, now agrees with the thesis advanced by the Boomer Project back in November: that a new frugality -- the "new fru," as we called it -- is sweeping the country, and that Baby Boomer behavior is central to the massive shift in consumer behavior. As a recent article in Newsday, which covered the National Retail Convention in Manhattan last week, quotes our very own Matt Thornhill:
For the last 40 years, boomers were the economic engine of retail, and they have quite naturally reached the stage of life, their 50s and beyond, where they are less interested in buying stuff and more interested in having enriching life experiences. They are just now in that stage, and it happens to coincide with a pretty significant and long-lasting recession.
Delivering a message consistent with the Boomer Project's was Carl Steidtmann, chief economist for Deloitte Research's consumer business: "After every recession, you see a return to simplicity. It usually doesn't last longer than the recession, but this time it will."
And then there was Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart: In Wal-Mart's customer surveys shoppers said they had given up eating out, going to the movies and shopping, and "they talked about how good they felt about doing it." We couldn't help noting that Matt garnered more column inches of type in that article than any other speaker. (Admittedly, that may be because he wouldn't stop talking!) Make sure you catch the article. For a more thorough treatment of the topic, read Matt's column, "Age of Responsible Consumerism," at the bottom of this e-mail.
Jim Bacon
Senior Vice President-Publishing
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 Mama Mia! Boomers Still Hot
Give yourself a big pat on the back for being prescient enough to subscribe to a newsletter about marketing to Baby Boomers. According to the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) annual survey of Top Marketing Trends for 2009, Baby Boomers are the hottest demographic in the country right now - even hotter, in our estimation, than Meryl Streep (born 1949) in "Mama Mia!" (Admittedly, the movie was lame, but Streep looked fantastic.) Highlights of the study: Marketers are sick of all the talk about Web 2.0, social networking and blogs. They think the global warming hoopla is cooling off, but China remains the hot market geographically. Marketers also think insight and innovation is the key to business revival in a down economy. We couldn't agree more. Here's the finding we liked the best: "Marketing executives also still feel Boomers represent the best opportunity for customer targeting." |
 Feature Story
Boomers Love their TVs
Baby Boomers may be slow to take to digital technologies like texting and IM'ing, but they spare no expense when it comes to technologies that enhance television viewing.
Apparently, there's a stereotype out there that Baby Boomers are "tech-phobic." We're not sure what that's based upon. As we recall, Americans embraced Boomer-era technologies like email and the Internet more rapidly than any other communications media in history to that time, although perhaps we date ourselves by even acknowledging that there was a pre-Internet era. Whatever the source of such typecasting, TV Land, a cable television station dedicated to Boomers, has generated research data that counters the "common misperception" about Boomers as technophobes.
As one might expect from a generation raised around the television set, Boomers are quick to adopt new technologies centered on the television. Here's the trick: They don't adopt technology for the sake of technology. Technology must boost the television viewing experience.
In its "Joy of Tech" study, TV Land identifies four drivers: control, choice, clarity and community. Read more. |
Just the Facts, Ma'am
f u cn read dis, ur prolly undR 25
On the topic of Boomers and technology (see above), the December BIGresearch Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey suggests that the biggest gap in
technological affinity is between Gen X and the Millennials, not Baby Boomers and the younger generations - at least when it comes to media consumption and the influence of advertising.
As a rule, Gen Xers are more influenced by advertising embedded in digital media than Boomers are, but only marginally more so. The big break point occurs between Gen X and the Millennials. Take ads embedded in text messages, for instance. Among households with income of $50,000 a year or more, Millennials are waayyy more likely to be influenced by text messaging ads than either Boomers and Gen Xers. Presumably, that's because the Millennials use text messaging far more than the older age cohorts do. The same holds true with ads in blogging and online video gaming. The table below shows the percentage breakdowns by generation for key categories.
 Interestingly, the youngest generation often surpassed Boomers and Gen Xers in their receptivity to advertising in "old" media ads in magazines, Yellow Pages, outdoor billboards and cable TV. Apparently, Millennials are voracious consumers of all types of advertising.
(The technologically "illiterate" can interpret the text message-ese in the headilne with this translator.) |
 Retire in a Small Town
Can Boomer retirees bring new life to the small towns where they grew up?
Well, I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
- John Mellencamp As a senior official with U.S. Customs, Bob Mall lived in big cities such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Brussels, Belgium. At the pinnacle of his career, he helped fashion safety standards to prevent sea containers from being used by terrorists for the transport of dirty bombs, nuclear devices or biological weapons. When he retired, he presumably could have lived anywhere in the world. Instead of picking an exotic locale, Mall moved back to his home town of Clay Center, Kansas. Addressing the Clay Center Rotarians last week, Mall predicted that many other Baby Boomers will do as he did and abandon the big cities where they made their careers in order to enjoy the virtues of small time life. "Many will want to leave the pollution and crime and traffic jams. Some will try to recapture some of the optimism of their youth," he said of retiring Baby Boomers. Read more. | |
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Wanderings
Age of Responsible Consumerism
 by Matt Thornhill
The plunge in consumer spending is not merely a short-term reaction to the recession: It reflects a fundamental change in values.
Christmas, as Charlie Brown has long understood it - and the Grinch, too, ever since his heart grew about three sizes that fateful day - isn't about the presents: It's about so much more. We're seeing the evidence in family rooms across America. Consumers of all ages are deciding that happiness on Christmas morning can't be found in a big box store, and it can't be wrapped up in pretty paper. Buying and owning more stuff provides no lasting satisfaction - only bigger credit card bills and a shriveled savings account. Americans are craving what money cannot buy: the rewards of friendship, family, community and spirituality. Mass consumerism by the masses is dead. Welcome to the dawn of Responsible Consumerism - arguably the most profound shift in American values since the 1960s. Read more. | |
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