Brent Green, Boomers

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…

Smoker-ism: The Stigma That’s Killing Post-50 Adults and Boomers

If you are a cigarette smoker, or if you smoked sometime in the past, do you deserve to die faster? According to prevailing norms, you warrant an earlier death—a bitter truth rooted in the shadowy realms of human experience. Racism holds that distinctions exist between biological groups, that members of a race share traits making them less or more desirable participants in society. Pervasive assumptions about racial groups have justified destructive treatment of perceived group members for centuries. But ostracism…

Dr. Mark Crooks, A 57-Year Cancer Survivor, A Life Dedicated to Showing Baby Boomers How to Age Well

I have completed writing a biographical novel inspired by Dr. Mark Crooks, my long-time friend and fitness mentor, entitled: WARRIOR: The Life and Lessons of a Man Who Beat Cancer for 57 Years. Here’s a pre-publication book trailer: Mark Crooks, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist, sports psychologist, fitness pioneer and daredevil risked everything to survive five bouts of cancer spanning 57 years. This is the second of a two-part post, the first of which you can read by clicking here. The…

Two Major Boomer Wellness Goals: 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…

Boomer Women, Photoshop, Fashion Advertising, and the Future of Beauty

Beauty is only skin deep. A time-honored idiom recognizes an inexorable truth of human aging: that exterior beauty is fleeting and superficial. Now this olden expression has found more contemporary implications in an era when digital photo editing challenges another long-established idiom: Seeing is believing. For background, take a look at this disquieting short video from the Dove Self-Esteem Fund: The British government may force advertisers to divulge Photoshop perfecting of fashion and cosmetics models. As reported by the Associated…

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…

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Is "American Idol" an example of institutionalized ageism?

Popular culture favors youth. Celebrity favors youth. Many of today’s icons of the Boomer generation achieved fame before turning 25, certainly by 35. But unlike older generations, where many youth icons faded from superstardom after age 45, Boomer icons persist today, filling stadiums (Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Gene Simmons, and Bonnie Rait) and winning starring roles in movies (Richard Gere, Jessica Lange, Meryl Streep, and Sigourney Weaver, to name a few). The Boomer generation’s cultural hegemony is maintaining and even…

Baby Boomers and the Future of the Financial Services Industry

On Wall Street is an online resource that provides “financial advisors at the largest and most prestigious brokerage firms with the best information and analysis in the industry.” Reporter Elizabeth Wine asked Dr. Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, four questions about Baby Boomers and how investment firms can better serve this generation. In addition to directing AgeLab, Dr. Coughlin speaks at conferences, consults with businesses worldwide, and writes a perceptive and informative blog entitled Disruptive Demographics, an apt…

Baby Boomers: The Entitled Generation, by Bill Keller, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist

Bill Keller, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, painstakingly summed up his baby boom birth cohort as “The Entitled Generation.” This snippy criticism is typical of jeremiads written by and for Boomers to portray unseemly conclusions about the nation’s largest generation. So writes the columnist from on high, “We are an entitled bunch.” Keller’s views fall way short of balance. For example, while warning of and alleging future entitlement fund shortfalls to be imposed by the generation, he…

A Baby Boomer Victim of Aurora, Colorado, Century 16 Theater Massacre

Gordon W. Cowden, age 51, was the oldest of twelve fatalities in the Aurora Century 16 movie theater massacre. A quick-witted global explorer and small business owner, he will be remembered for his devotion to his family. He had taken his two teenagers to the July 20, 2012, midnight debut to fulfill and share their excitement for the Batman movie franchise and premiere of the summer: The Dark Knight Rises. His children escaped unharmed but not unscathed. A makeshift memorial…

Obama vs Romney: strategies to capture critical Boomers+ in battleground states

Middle-aged and older adults living in battleground or "swing states" represent 41.90 percent of the population in those states. So the 2012 presidential contest may swing on choices made by undecided Baby Boomers and older voters in just ten states. Battleground states include Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Florida. (This is a dynamic list and changes with voter polls, political gaffes and sometimes the wind.) Swing states are critical to the outcome…

2012 LOHAS Forum: Where Boomer Mentors Shared Wisdom with Younger Generations

LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability, a values-driven consumer cohort identified in the late 1990s. Consumers described as LOHAS are passionate about sustainability, health and wellness, personal development, resource conservation, corporate responsibility, social justice, and natural and organic products. They annually purchase $350 billion in goods and services worldwide. Early adopters by nature, LOHAS consumers shop for energy-efficient electronics, green household products, natural personal products, organic foods, hybrid automobiles, green building products, socially responsible investments, and…

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…

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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…

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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…