Marketing to Baby Boomers
Being the self-proclaimed 'expert in the ether' on Baby Boomers, I'm inundated with emails from 'visit and link to my web page and/or review my new book' people.
Many are well meaning folks who are very excited about some miracle product that will make us look and feel younger. I'm a bit of a 'Dorian Gray' personality when it comes to that. I've been told more than once that I look younger than I am - but I then say that if you see me naked I look about one-hundred and two - so it evens out. As far as feeling younger, it's about the same. Sometimes I feel eighteen, other times eighty-six. Rarely do I feel my age. I'm not sure I want to. I like the variety.
So how do you 'market' to someone like me? (And there are a LOT of us out there.)
The answer in a minute. First, another story:
I was hired a few years ago for a copywriting/marketing stint at a well respected audio manufacturing company. The guy who hired me was a copywriter himself. He needed help. He knew I was good - and believe me - I knew how good he was. But at our age, there was little competition. We were just too old for that. We admired each other. After awhile we both admitted that if we were twenty-five years younger and at an ad agency, we'd likely be at each other's throats.
And so it is with Brent Green and his new book, Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers. If we were in our twenties and I was still full of testosterone, I'd vomit all over this book. (Is that some sort of skewed mixed metaphor? Can you vomit up testosterone?) But hey, I ain't got the energy any more for such vitriolic rivalry. So…call it growing up and becoming more mature, call it being a wussy, call it 'peace, love, and let's all get together' -- but Mr. Green has penned a fascinating and trenchant tome explaining the how's and why's and more importantly the how not to's of marketing and advertising to us wobbly Peter Pans.
Brent is having a very successful career in the marketing and advertising world. He's worked on campaigns for McDonalds, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and many other well-known clients. However, what impresses me the most - and what assures me that he knows what he's talking about when it comes to marketing to baby boomers - is his flowing, very personal, almost stream-of-unconsciousness piece included in The Sixties Project, a sister site of the University of Virginia's Psychedelic Sixties Exhibit, reviewed in an earlier article, Boomers: We're History. Timothy Leary said, "If you remember the sixties, you weren't there." After reading this essay, it's evident that Mr. Green recalls just enough to qualify as not remembering.
So when I say that sometimes I feel eighteen, other times eighty-six, rarely do I feel my age, I'm not sure I want to, I like the variety, how do you 'market' to someone like me - these are pretty much the central themes in Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers.
Brent grasps the young/old boomer dichotomy. If you market to boomers and just play the 'forever young' card, you're in big trouble. Likewise, if you treat us only as people getting old, you've lost us again. Brent's practical approach, by using examples of actual marketing and advertising campaigns, explains to marketers what works and what doesn't. He coaches advertisers how to fuse concepts that on the surface appear to be mutually exclusive. Boomers want to hear something most of us already know: What makes us fun, meaningful, and productive is accepting and relishing the variety in our lives.
The book is a series of short, snappy chapters - most only a page or two. It's easy to read, and easy to mark up - because all you have to do is mark the chapter.
Many standard baby boomer advertising concepts are turned upside down in the book. One of my favorites is a warning about using some of the great recordings from the Sixties and early Seventies for commercial campaigns. It's only a warning, and in certain instances this technique works just fine. But be cautious. My take on it is that it's not always a good idea. Those classic recordings already have a visceral stamp. To merge them with new images can create cognitive dissonance. Sure, they grab your attention at first, but then you're off in some warped, cozy daydream - and the last thing on your mind is what you're watching. (However, I do like thinking that Richie Havens, Etta James, or whoever the members of the Strawberry Alarm Clock were are probably or at least hopefully getting chunky checks in the mail.) Brent talks wisely about using earlier pop music from the late fifties and early sixties. Why? Read the book.
Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers also considers what we might be like when we really do get old. Brent and yours truly share the same prediction. With time on our hands, we may very well become ornery activists - or at the very least a vibrant bunch of crotchety troublemakers.
Chuck Nyren is a leading creative strategist and copywriter focused on Baby Boomer demography, sociology and culture.
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By
Chuck Nyren Date
21-07-2004
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