Yael Davidowitz-neu

(Interestingly, in a side note, Yael Davidowitz-neu of Google’s Retail Team suggests focusing on the glorious past is a way of easing this group’s anxiety about the economic present.)

Almost 80 million Boomers will be turning 50 soon while spending half of America’s discretionary income, according to the Google Retail Blog. That’s two trillion dollars up for grabs. They’ll be spending a lot of that money online, and while the Boomer demographic makes up 30 percent of the online population, the vast majority of them (as many as 83%) believe online advertising isn’t meant for them but for younger people.

Here’s an interesting twist, though it should be common sense: If this your target market, lay off the old jokes. Don’t call them seniors or aging hippies or even cougars. They hate that. And who wouldn’t? It’s alienating and makes them feel obsolete.

But this crew has money, unlike their kids and grandkids who are still trying to make some, and that makes Boomers a very attractive lot. With that in mind, here are some things you need to know them:

1. Half of them have grandkids and they spend a lot of money (> $50B) on their grandkids. If they’re like my parents, they don’t need much of anything and would rather spoil their offspring’s offspring. So don’t leave them out of the loop on what the youngest generation might want.
2. Grandma (don’t call her that) wants to still feel sexy. Don’t judge it, just help her find the creams, lotions, makeup, tighteners, girdles, exercise products, and nutrition she needs.
3. 68 percent of boomers go online after seeing a health-related TV commercial. 80 percent click health-related ads.
4. They’re not brand loyal like their kids, so this is good news for startups, but they’re more likely to trust a friend than you. Win grandma’s friend over, you’ll win grandma over too. So ignoring Facebook at this point might be a bad idea.
    

"There’s an ongoing misperception that certain Web activities are the exclusive domain of young people," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for The NPD Group. "That misperception could cost the entertainment industry, in terms of lost opportunities to target valuable consumers."

NPD’s "Entertainment Trends in America" tracking study found that more than half of all Internet users (57%) visited a social network in the past three months. While younger Internet users (13 to 34) are more likely to visit social networking sites and visit them frequently, baby boomers visited social networking sites an average of 8 times over the last three months.

The study found that baby boomers who participate in activities like social networking or video streaming, are more likely to buy DVDs,CDs and go to the movies. On average baby boomers who stream video are 15 percent more likely to buy a CD, DVD, or movie tickets.

"As more consumers of all ages spend more time online, there’s potentially going to be less time for them to consume entertainment content in traditional ways," Crupnick said.

"These findings underscore the growing need for entertainment companies to promote and distribute digital entertainment content online, in order to keep pace with the changing needs and desires of consumers of all ages."

The Other Boomers Get A Social Network

The label is the brain fruit of social commentator (the title given him at Wikipedia) Jonathan Pontell, who theorized there is a generation between the Baby Boom generation that proliferated at the end of World War II, and Generation X, which has been traditionally marked by a sudden slowing of the birth rate (and a general sarcastic malaise that generational theorists said meant we lacked a real identity, hence the X label, as they didn’t know what to call us…there’s a pattern emerging, I think).

For quite some time, these generations have been marked by the birth rate, with Boomers born between 1944 and 1965, Xers between 1965 and 1979, Generation Y(a.k.a. The Millennials) beginning about 1980, when birth rates spiked again.

(There are numerous names, though, as no one seems to be able to define any of these generations with absolution. Instead, they are divided into ever-increasing, often self-defined, subsets, some calling themselves the MTV, Echo Boom, or Internet Generation, unless of course, they’re one of the Indigo Children, which are a different group altogether.)

But Pontell and his Generation Jones (which automatically conjures up a generation of addicts – they’re jonesin’ for…) say that birthrates are not a good enough differentiation for identifying generations because of the cultural identities that exist within each of them. By cultural identity, he seems to mean pop-cultural identity.

Boomj.com draws the line this way:· 

Baby Boomers were born 1942 to 1953; we associate their youth with Howdy Doody, Davy Crocket hats, and later, Woodstock and Vietnam War demonstrations.

Generation Jones, born 1954 to 1965, is a newer concept and name that represents the actual children of the sixties (more wide-eyed than tie-dyed); Jonesers were weaned on The Brady Bunch and Easy Bake Ovens and later were the teens of 70’s heavy metal, disco, punk and soul.

The Boomj social network aims to provide a place for "Jonesers," who’ve been "mistakenly lumped in with Boomers," to connect based on "shared formative experiences," rather than head counts.

It makes sense on certain levels – my father and his younger brother grew up in completely different times – and on others, it seems both unnecessary and a concept invented to market to this group. But if there is identity to be found for an entire lost generation that hasn’t been found thus far (it’s only been 50 years), then far be it from me to keep them from it.

However, in practice, there is no end to the divisions we could make among the generations of the post-WWII era. There is a disconnect between my sister and me as she was one of the earliest Gen-Xers and I one of the latter. She’s all hair-bands and jax and I’m all grunge and Nerf.

But doesn’t it seem silly (and somewhat arbitrary) to define ourselves by what was being marketed to us at the time? Maybe I don’t want to be a Gen-Xer. Maybe I’d rather be part of the Thunder Cats and Transformers Group, and my sister can be a member of the Lawn-Darts-They-Tried-To-Kill-All-Of-Us Generation.

Is my future stepson, then, a member of Generation Xbox? The Celebrity Cult, or Generation Emo?   

I don’t suppose it matters, and if this group feels, half-a-century later, that it has gone undefined for all this time, then I wish them luck on settling that via the Internet.