Generation Ageless: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Live Today . . . And They're Just Getting Started
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About the Authors: J Walker Smith & Ann Clurman
J. Walker Smith, Ph.D., is the president of Yankelovich, Inc., and a leading professional in marketing and social trends . Yankelovich , Inc. actually coined the term "Baby Boomer" back in the late 1960s, when they first started collecting data on this generation. Fortune magazine once described him as "one of America's leading analysts of consumer trends," he is a well-known author and fabulous speaker with an eye on trends in American society. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ann Clurman , is a senior partner at Yankelovich with more than twenty-five years of familarity with "The Yankelovich Monitor ' . She is a renowned expert on consumer trends and generational marketing. She lives in New York City.
I'll share a little secret with you. I am old enough to remember before TV, then it came, followed by color TV, space travel, and calculators, etc. This was a wonderful time. I am proud to be a Boomer!
To know where we're going, we must understand how we got here. And this book sure explains our generation to a tee.
How does one even begin to review a book of this scope and sophistication?
But I did get that somewhere between the 'Woodstock Nation' and 'Over-The-Hill Gang', we are the most sought after market in America; yet we have became passé to the marketeers. We the Boomer generation are poised to shatter the traditional assumptions about the sixth and seventh decades of our lives. We will not tolerate stereotypes or ageism. We expect stylish products to instill value beyond mere utility, and we will invest in products and services that speak to our deeper values, and we will reward those who crack our marketing code.
( This book further breaks down the Boomer Generation not by age; but by segments.)
SEGMENTS OF BOOMERS
- Straight Arrows: "Driven by traditional values and religion"
- Due Diligents: "Think ahead and plan for the worst"
- Maximizers: "Want to do as much as possible and get the most from life"
- Sideliners: "Private, self-contained and undemanding"
- Diss-Contenteds: "See social problems they would like to fix, and their sympathies are with the protesters"
- Re-Activists: "Ready to join campaigns in support of social causes"
This book should be in the hands of every Boomer! In addition to being one of the most informative texts you can spend your money on, this book is a "kick" to simply read and visit. Smith & Clurman are forever looking for opportunities to bring humor and outright guffaws into this book, and that alone separates them from the many masters who sometimes come across as so called experts.
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http://www.yankelovich.com/GenAgelessWebsite/home.html
Generation Ageless: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Live Today . . . And They're Just Getting Started
- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Collins (October 2, 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0061128988
- ISBN-13: 978-0061128981
- List Price : $24.95
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Comments: 35
You are right, this was a book filled with ideas and facts, comparisons and contrasts. I enjoyed every bit of it. I didn't realize just how much a part of the youthful attitude I had adopted myself until I read this. We are definitely going to keep this one around for reference material.
Book Review: Generation Ageless 1 - Overview
The book sounds good. There is one thing I have been wondering about.
Apparently the last 4-5 years of "boomers" (those born between 1959-1964) are demographically distinct from the rest of the boomers (for marketing purposes, at least). They seem to have characteristics of both the Boomers and Gen X. I have heard them referred to as "Generation Jones" (I don't know why they are called that).
Did the book make any mention of this?
Matures - born before 1946
Boomers 1946 -1964
Xers 1965 - 1978
Echo Boomers - 1979 - 1990's
And they use these subsets not years to define marketing purposes within boomers
Straight Arrows
Due Diligents
Maximizers
Sideliners
Diss-Contenteds
Re-Activists
PS , and there really putting a dent in the SSI benefits
No Dents Yet
THREE YEARS TO GO. . .
The boomers are scheduled to begin retiring in 2011, when the first contingent, born in 1946, turns 65.
I read a book about 30 years ago that predicted much of what seems to be in this book. It was by Peter F. Drucker and I don't remember exactlyk the name, but it talked about how because of sheer size of this demographic (I am included), that the Boomers will change everything from social security to everything else.
We need to continue to elect people who represent our values. Correction: We need to begin to elect again the people who represent our values, otherwise this huge bump in the population will go downstream.
There is a term probably a Yankelovich term about the New Collar workers - those in the 80s for example that were not blue collar but were not of the highly paid white collar professional class. Retail and many others were included in this.
I've always been interested in the demographics and psychology of the different generations. 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.
However, I prefer the term, actually, and think of myself as a....
(...are you ready?)
...a SONIC boomer!
(and, if you don't...like...you know...GET this reference...don't worry about it.)
Blessings upon all our 'old' silver heads!
Wilka
Blessings ~
Rene A.
First, yes, it is true that Boomers at the tail end of the cohort are different from those at the very beginning. But on all the crucial Boomer dimensions, there is commonality. We get this question a lot, so we tackle it right up front on pp. xx-xxvii.
Second, nothing reflects the creativity and genius of our generation more than fiinding our own individual way of belonging to the group! We're all Boomers but we're Boomers in our own special ways, and each of you show that in your individual comments and remarks.
We are the biggest generational cohort in American history. By numbers alone, we make a difference like never before...and it's a difference that will keep on mattering for decades to come! Boomers Rule! (We almost chose that two-word phrase as the title of the book.) Thanks.
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