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The misunderstood generation

Advertising Age (registration required), 2/5/08

Abstract:

They comprise nearly 24 percent of the population, have a buying power of $3 trillion, and include many of the country's current business and political leaders. But marketers misunderstand — and inefficiently target — this country's 78 million baby boomers.

That's according to a new 22-page survey of 1,320 baby boomers from Edelman shared exclusively with Ad Age...

...And indeed, the results found that marketers overgeneralize, misrepresent and sometimes ignore the generation, lumping them together and, in the process, alienating them. "We really set out to blow up some myths," said Jody Quinn, executive vice president and general manager of Edelman's Boomer Insights Generation Group. "The longer that marketers keep treating [boomers] as a huge mass as opposed to individuals, the longer it's going to take them to enter the market."

Only 71 percent of those surveyed defined themselves as boomers, which means 22 million Americans — generally those over 60 years old and under 46 — don't even consider themselves as part of the demographic, said Laurence Evans, president of StrategyOne. While advertisers may think they're appealing to a wide audience by using the term baby boomers, they're in fact distancing those who resent the generalization.

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