Brent Green, Boomers
A Test of Will: On Baby Boomers, Obesity, Illness and Health
Two titanic forces are shaping society’s views of aging and health, one uplifting, one destructive. Which will prevail? In the first article of this two-part series, Brent Green addresses “the state of Boomer health”and the grave, looming threats to a generation’s collective well-being. The boy lay pensively inside an oxygen tent, struggling to breathe the cold, aseptic air; nurses and doctors gathered curiously around their small patient. The child was frightened by this sea of white coats, not knowing if…
A Hosting Odyssey on the WeEarth Global Radio Network: Boomer Future, Aging, Business, Marketing, Advertising, and Public Policy Thought Leaders
Amazing conversations awaken a stronger sense of where the Boomer generation is heading. Amazing conversations instill clarity, insight, motivation … even hope. Amazing conversations showcase the brightest minds in Boomer business, marketing and aging today. Thought leaders. Trendsetters. For nearly a year, I have been undertaking a radio host odyssey on the WeEarth Global Radio Network. Dovetailing my new book, the show is entitled Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Are Changing the Future. Guests on my show have included a remarkable…
Conclusion: The Boomer Generation Is Changing Aging
Ten years after beginning a serious inquiry into understanding the sociological and cultural collision between the Boomer generation and marketing, business, and aging, I have come away with some overarching observations and conclusions. Aging is a nonnegotiable part of the human condition, a biological imperative that binds, beckons, and bothers. Aging begets elderhood. These are facts, immutable, independent of generational context. What remains malleable is flexibility of meaning: social, cultural, and institutional narratives about human aging continue to evolve. A…
Gender and Generational Hallmarks Influencing Boomer Men
Middle age, edging toward old age, presents many unique challenges for men, and these momentous changes—biological, social and cultural—become greatly magnified when around 5,500 men cross the threshold of 50 every day. For nineteen years, beginning in 1996 and until 2015, roughly two million men can be expected to traverse annually the journey across the age 50 horizon. Being 50-something and beyond can be viewed, in a sense, as an enormous population of men experiencing the same life stage at…
Marketing to Baby Boomers Getting Older: Part Three
An article posted by CNBC.com—Bust of the Baby Boomer Economy: ‘Generation Spend’ Tightens Belt—proposes a gloomy economic future due to Boomer aging. Jessica Rao, the article’s author, argues “because of severe recession and stock market losses, Boomers have less to spend, and further they’re entering a post-career life stage when they will reduce spending anyway.” While this story may be accurate in aggregate—overall national economic growth may decline from loftier times 15 years ago, due to many factors including global…
Marketing to Baby Boomers Getting Older: Part Two
A Renaissance of Boomer Marketing – The Journey So Far Following a recent resurgence of business interest in Boomers as a market niche, aging or not, companies targeting them have become more sophisticated at developing communications that tap into amorphous and dynamic values that accompany generational affiliation and stage-of-life. A renaissance of generational focus is not an accident. Substantial profits have been made in recent years by marketers who have cracked the Boomer marketing code with effective segmentation and creative…
Marketing to Baby Boomers Getting Older: Part One
In 2010, an interesting demographic symmetry arrived. Americans born between 1946 and 1964—the birth years traditionally used by pundits to delineate the Baby Boomer Generation—celebrated birthdays somewhere between 46 and 64. For the first time in this generation’s history, millions of Boomers may have considered a rhetorical question posed by Beatle Paul McCartney in his 1967 hit, “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Will you still need me? Family and friends will continue to need them, whether now between 48 or 66. And…
Ferris Bueller, Honda CR-V, the Super Bowl and Trailing-Edge Baby Boomers (a.k.a. Jonesers)
For those of you now past age 47 who were born, reached maturity, and lived in the sociological wake of Leading-Edge Baby Boomers (b. 1946 to 1955), you may have felt slightly disenfranchised, culturally speaking. Maybe being shunned has even stirred deeper feelings of sibling rivalry. If you were born between 1956 and 1964, coming of age in the 1980’s, you may be harboring unfathomable yearning feelings (a.k.a. jonesing), wondering when your birth cohort would ever receive its due—being noticed…
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…
Boomer Revolution: The End of Sarcopenia, Compression of Morbidity
The aged man struggled to get out of his recliner. His leg muscles could not lift his weight into a vertical position, so he fell back into the chair, exhausted. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to command his weak muscles to help him stand. He barely had strength to push upwards with his hands against armrests. Finally in a single determined push with arms and forward momentum from rocking, he stood, though unsteadily. It took a few…
In Memoriam: David B. Wolfe, author, thought leader and a friend for the ages
Most of us consider ourselves lucky if we find a single mentor early in life — someone who has the wisdom and compassion to lead us closer to our dreams, talents and values. It is even rarer to discover a mentor later in life who nudges us to reconsider where we’ve come from and where we’re heading next. One man I first met just eight years ago had an influence on me that changed the way I pursued a marketing…
The Boomer Legacy According to Tom Friedman and Steve Jobs
According to the celebrated editorial columnist Thomas Friedman, The Greatest Generation saved prodigiously, consumed prudently, and elevated the nation into an international economic powerhouse following World War II. On the other hand, Boomers have been profligate spenders while failing to leave the nation in better condition than the nation they inherited from their parents.
A New Digital Art Form Redefines Generational Marketing through Boomer Nostalgia
In a previous post, I 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: we 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…
In Honor of 9/11 Victims: Normal is September Ten
NORMAL IS SEPTEMBER TEN by Brent Green Normal is September Ten, A clear and present day, Safe and sound America, Business without delay. A day when cathedral towers Diminish everything in sight, And three thousand citizens, Still plan on lasting light. Normal is homeland security, This continent at busy peace, A rich and winding tapestry, Freedom soaring puffs of fleece. Chaos is September Eleven, Twin towers tumbling down, The American family mourning, Mostly rubble to be found. A day damned…
A Case for Generational Marketing and Baby Boomers
In the realm of marketing to adults older than 45, 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 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…
2011 LOHAS Forum: Boomers Driving Market Growth, The Urgency of Now
The 2011 LOHAS Forum continued a 16-year tradition by gathering thought leaders and speakers from across the green, sustainability, natural, and organic sectors. LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability, a market segment representing one in five U.S. consumers—those who are passionately focused on health and fitness, the environment, natural and organic products, personal development, sustainable living, and social justice. This powerhouse conference illuminates the LOHAS market and reveals insights not otherwise accessible. The Forum delivers an…
Lessons on Marketing to Baby Boomer Men: Wade Davis, a Lucky Man Who Made the Grade
An Anthropologist, Ethnobotonist and Daring Adventurer Discovers the Ethnosphere, Realizing High Hopes of a Generation Wade Davis has been compared to Indiana Jones, the intrepid fictional archeologist brought to life in cinema by co-creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Several linkages ring true. Jones and Davis are both explorers of antiquity; both are audacious globetrotters; both endure monumental physical pain and emotional discomfort in gritty pursuit of extraordinary treasures. But this is where comparisons fall apart. In Spielberg’s four movies…
Boomers as Consumers, The New York Times, and the Value of Aging
“After 40 years of catering to younger consumers, advertisers and media executives are coming to a different realization: older people aren’t so bad, after all.” So goes the lead to a recent New York Times article about a marketing transformation underway. Suddenly the venerable newspaper has produced an article that unambiguously acknowledges what the marketing industry has been way-too-slow to accept: “older people,” namely Baby Boomers, are too lucrative to ignore even though over 80% of the generation has aged…
