Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers

Americans born between 1946 and 1955 are ready to shatter traditional assumptions about early retirement. Their journey into the Golden Years will be groundbreaking.

Called Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, this forceful segment has over $500 billion in spending power and today controls a significant percentage of the nation's assets. Even more staggering is an unfolding demographic truth: more than 30 percent of Americans will be over 50 by 2010.

Brent Green, an experienced counseling therapist and award-winning creative director and copywriter, has published a book focused on this lucrative pre- and early-retirement segment. Entitled Marketing to Leading-edge Baby Boomers, Green's analysis reveals the psychological, sociological and interpersonal dimensions of a generation quickly reaching the life stage associated with quiescence.

As the author declares: "They will not be quiet, calm, or disengaged. They will collectively redefine the connotations of aging and the purpose of life's closing years. They will set the stage for a long-term reorientation of American business to the value of its previously most undervalued population segment. They will bring to aging culture what they bequest to youth culture when they were boisterously becoming young adults four decades ago."

Today, opportunity and reality are at odds. Somewhere between Woodstock Nation and Over-The-Hill, the most sought after market in America became passé. The fiftysomething-to-sixty crowd has not been attracting its fair share of commercial attention from advertisers and ad agencies. As Green challenges, this is a problem larger than benign neglect.

Baby Boomers have often been the source of contempt and ridicule, a byproduct of disdain for the group's alleged self-absorbed, unpatriotic character, historically rooted in the Vietnam War era. Green provides troubling evidence for an emerging ageism directed at those in their mid-forties to mid-fifties. A side effect of historical distaste and today's growing ageism is often dreadful marketing: hackneyed pitches, rife with stereotypes and generational invectives.

In thirty-six fast-paced chapters, Green analyzes such topical issues as Boomer spirituality, an emerging creativity, political agendas, age-defying strategies, corporate malfeasance, lifestyle downsizing, adventure travel, and communal instincts. The book also provides well-developed case studies of marketing programs that have worked powerfully with Boomers.

A long-term social observer and critic, Brent Green understands the positive marketing implications of his feisty generation: "They will not tolerate typecasting, stereotypes, pandering or ageism. They will expect stylish products to instill value beyond mere utility. They will invest in products and services that resonate, and they will reward those who crack the idiosyncratic marketing code."

An unusual aspect of this traditional business book is Green's inclusion of two convincing short stories about Leading-edge Baby Boomers. The first story explores the Internet's impact on a dormant relationship from the sixties, raising larger questions about unresolved generational agendas and the coming struggle for relevance and meaning.

The second story presents an Orwellian view of an ageist society in 2028. The protagonist, a successful trial attorney who has dedicated her life to women's issues, is awakening to the new reality of generational condemnation, discrimination, and violence. This story makes a solid case for heightened awareness of Green's descriptive term: Genism.