A Slight Detour

The original purpose of the Boomer Report Blog was—and still is—to address the implications of the Boomer segment to marketers and advertisers. Interestingly, however, some of the comments we have received have stated to take on a more philosophical bent—generally incorporating the aspects of geographic and demographic origins.

So, let’s digress somewhat.

Boomers have been primarily defined as the “Baby Boom” Generation, the demographic segment whose fathers are the “Greatest Generation—the men who fought WWII—and who were born between 1946 and 1964. The term originated here in the US and for that reason the Boomer phenomenon has been generally accepted as an American phenomenon. But, are these accepted definitions valid? And, do they accurately describe this age group?

Consider this...

Aside from the baby boom, WWII’s end triggered another boom—a massive economic boom. This boom was the result of a huge pent-up demand for consumer goods brought about by a seven year-long production of war goods in place of consumer goods.

The new demand for consumer goods created more and better jobs—and the salaries of those hired to build the new consumer goods industries merely served to further fuel the demand, thus, prolonging the boom.

And, who benefited from this boom? Merely the children of the period, those born not only just after the war, but those born during the war as well. They grew up in a time of economic prosperity, with an outlook on life that carries over to today—and is totally different from the directly preceding generation—the Depression babies.

Accordingly, if we consider the generation that grew up in those economically blessed times as the Economic Boomers, then we can expand the Boomer definition to include those who:

·           Today may be age 62 down to age 40

·           May have been born anywhere and whose family migrated to the US

·           May have grown up anywhere and then migrated to the US

·           May have grown up anywhere there was a post-WWII economic boom, and is still there

In other words, if we accept this argument—the Boomer Generation is a world-wide phenomenon of people who grew up in economic boom times and who continue to expect all the good stuff they experienced while growing up—no matter where they grew up.

The word wide economic / marketing implications are mind-boggling

Comments

[Linda]

I'm very thankful that you brought this out now it will help us look at Boomers out side of the box, like my parents and most of their generation who immigrated to North America.

In a side note I want to say that we ourselves have to strive to make every peripheral business that is involved with us know what exactly it is we are looking for to make our selves known to the boomer market.

For example just late last year a stock photo company that we use contacted me. They asked me to do a small survey over the phone with them. The company asked me the basic questions on rating service and quality then it came to the question "what things do you feel that we need to change or add to the collection that we provide".

Normally I'd say nothing needs to be changed. But this time I said that they needed to work on their images of the older adult series. The images that they kept on sending me to review were of older white couples, strolling, sitting, eating, shopping, playing chess, looking at medication bills, etc. I told the stock photo company that they needed to widen their spectrum to include intergenerational groupings that were also interracial. And that the people needed to be doing things that boomers do. Lets face it we're pitching to an entire group not just an itty-bitty slice of the population.

I have now seen an increase in minorities in their collection as well as intergenerational groupings for their older adult collection, but not nearly enough. And definintely not enough of them doing more boomer like activities.

So remember we need to make our selves heard to make sure that we have the proper tools to make our selves heard.