Think Baby Boomers are all alike? Think again. This dynamic generation is nearing the traditional age of retirement, but is in no mood to slow down. Boomers are the dominant generation in America. Their values and aspirations set the tone for everyone. Advances in medicine and health mean that this youth-obsessed generation is now focused on an everlasting 
prime of life. They are literally middle age–less: holding onto their position at the top of the pyramid for as long as possible, and not fading away to their golden years. Today's fifty- and sixty-year-old Boomers are not eagerly anticipating lives of disengaged retirement. Instead, middle age–less Boomers expect another twenty or thirty years of impact and influence—albeit in a variety of ways reflective of a surfeit of 
agendas and ambitions they have yet to fulfill.
The organization Yankelovich, Inc., knows them better than anyone else. Yankelovich actually coined the term "Baby Boomer" back in the late 1960s, when they first started collecting data on this influential generation. Now, more than thirty years later, they have the most complete information on Boomers ever assembled. And they have put it all together in Generation Ageless, a groundbreaking look at America's largest and most powerful generation.
Do you have a question about the Baby Boomer generation? Post a question for Ann Clurman and J. Walker Smith, authors of Generation Ageless. Gather will ask them your questions in an exclusive interview.
Check back in Bright Ideas from Bestselling Authors for the answers to your questions.
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Comments: 25
I have noticed the same thing as Barbara C. though. I am 60 and I am getting disqualified a lot for surveys. Wouldn't you think that since we are supposed to be the largest segment of the population they would WANT to know what we are thinking, unless their target market is obviously not baby boomers?
Unfortunately, marketing is controlled by people under 50, mostly under 40. Media buyers -- the people who actually come up with the plans to buy ads in various media -- are largely under 30. Marketers tend to stereotype everyone. Not just older people like us. They have to, of course, otherwise they couldn't get their 'targeting' done. But there are downsides to these kinds of mental shortcuts and that's a major reason we wrote the book -- to wake up our younger marketing colleagues to the mistake they're making with Boomers. The message is beginning to get through, but there's a long way to go.
(The reasons that marketers dismiss older consumers is something we discuss in more detail on pp. 37-39.)
In politics, though, it's different. Young people don't vote, at least not in the same proportions as older people. So politicians always court the older vote more than the younger vote. This will make Boomers increasingly important to politics in the years ahead -- numbers plus age makes Boomers matter to politics more than ever.
As for getting disqualified because of age in phone surveys, there are two broad reasons why that might be true. Marketers often overlook the potential of Boomers for their brands, so they mistakenly exclude them from their strategies and thus don't want to interview them. But equally often the products themselves are just not appropriate for older consumers, hence there is no real reason at all to interview us. Can't sell diapers to us anymore, for example, so survey interviewers will ask our age first to find out if we are way out of range and if so, thank us and say goodbye. Alas, it's not good being legitimately irrelevant! :-D It's the mistaken reasons for ignoring us that our book was written to address. Thanks!
My husband and I were discussing why the last 4 years of Baby Boomers might be different from the rest. The only answer we could come up with was that people born during 1959-1964 had a reasonable chance of becoming acquainted with the computer technology explosion while we were still fairly young. Word processing programs were coming into being early in my work career, and my husband started programming computers as a teenager in in 1974. I think we are more tech-savy than the rest of the boomers, and so we resemble Generation X in that way.
I am a Baby Boomer ~ one referred to as Ann said in her comment as a . . . "Generation Jones" Boomer. The term, "Keeping up with the Jones'" fits our unique Boomer group well.
The computer age has a lot to do with our drive for many of the reasons that Ann stated. Prior to computers being introduced to the market (word processors and PCs), I was right there working for one of the top computer manufacturing corporations. This is turn created the Entrepreneurial spirit that I still maintain today. Innovation has a way of making way for new paths to be made by the visionaries that catch the surge.
My question ~ The pharmaceutical market does well to target Baby Boomers. What are the statistics on actual sales in this age group? As well as the stats relative to the insurance market in relation to retirement policies targeted for Baby Boomers? In addition, I'd like to know the stats relative to Financial Planners (clientele stats for Baby Boomers) -- REVENUE, and Investor stats relative to Baby Boomers -- again, REVENUE.
Baby Boomers make up a huge slice of the Investment Market. I am curious to know the stats in relation to the dollars spent by Media Buyers in this area as far as targeted Marketing Campaigns specifically for Baby Boomers.
This was an excellent Article, and I look forward to the responses to what has been brought forth here.
Blessings ~
René
Alternative building, yoga, alternative currencies, City Repair, Ron-Paul for POTUS, Permaculture, Slow Food--these things seem to cross ages pretty well. I am pleased with how inclusive earnest idealistic young people are. It has helped me heal from some of the major challenges of reaching my august 50's. I joke about being invisible because I'm over 50 and female (Gloria Steinem), but in fact I'm just trying to make a joke.
With more and more boomers retiring, are you waiting until full retirement age to collect benefits? And, why is so many of relunctant of accepting an alternative to SSA benefits?
What types of travel will be marketed our way?
What social groups will we be looking for?
How will we impact volunteer projects and will that in turn take away jobs from those in the work force?
What impact will our larger size have on public transportation? Or will we continue to be car owners?
Will nursing home costs go down due to more competition or will we find ourselves scrambling for a few spots?
How willing to change our locations and lifestyles are the boomers now that they are over 50?
What will be our impact on healthcare and health research?
But the truth is the truth. And the truth is that generational personalities stem from shared formative experiences, not head counts. The original observation that there was a demographic boom in births following WWII was never intended to describe a cultural generation, it was merely noting a demographic phenomenom of high fertility. Lazy members of the media mistakenly referred to this birth chart bubble as a generation, and it stuck, creating a whole industry around this blatantly mistaken concept.
The truth is that there was a boom in births from 1946-1964. But this wasn't, isn't, and never will be, a generation. Fortunately, many objective experts are now realizing this, and a concensus of sorts is emerging that there was a Baby Boom Generation from around 1942-1953, and then another wholly distinct generation from around 1954-1965, which is usually referred to as Generation Jones. If you look at most recent books about generations, they now more times than not use this Boom/Jones construct these days.
Barack Obama's candidacy will likely finally put the last nail in the almost sealed coffin of this old, discredited 1946-1964 definition of a Boomer Generation. I've seen, just in the last few weeks, several major media outlets, including The New York Times, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek magazine all make the case that Obama--born in 1961-- is not a Boomer nor a GenXer, but is instead specifically a member of Generation Jones. This is on top of a ton of major media attention and acceptance that Generation Jones has already received, from a GenJones cover story in American Demographics Magazine, to many pieces about GenJones on national TV/radio.
Anyone can combine any groups together and then spit out stats about this combined grouping, but that doesn't mean that these groups should be combined! When you break out Boomers and Jonesers seperately, you quickly see how utterly different these two groups are. On the vast majority of categories re. attitudes, values, etc., you find that Jonesers are much closer to Xers than they are to Boomers. And look at these two generations politically: Boomers tend to be the most Dem-leaning generation in the US, while Jonesers are the most GOP-leaning generation. So the two opposite generations politicaly in the entire electorate are lumped together as if they're one generation! All because Boomers' parents and Jonesers' parents both happened to have a lot of kids.
Boomers and Jonesers had dramatically different formative experiences, which created two dramatically differnt genrations. Shame on you, Smith and Clurman, for putting your own financial priorities ahead of truth. Fortunately, the momentum is on the side of those admitting that these are two distinct generations, and even though you've fought hard to maintain the myth of a Baby Boom Generation, that old 1946-1964 definition is heading faster and faster toward its inevitable and deserved obsolete place in cultural history.