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T H I N K P I E C E

CROSSING THE CHASM TO THE WORLD’S 3RD LARGEST ECONOMY: THE U.S. 50+ SPACE

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©2019 Boomer / neXt Crossing The Chasm to The Word’s 3rd Largest Economy 1

Page

About Boomer / neXt 3

Generations in the 50+ Space 4

Generational Catnip and Clickbait 5

The World’s 3rd Largest Economy 6

What the Data Big Dogs Know About the 50+ Consumer 7

Boomers: Drivers of CPG Disruption and Growth 8

No Place Like Home: Boomers Dominate the Market 9

Life in the Slow Lane: The Invisible Boomer Car Buyer 10

The Chasm versus The Conventional Adoption Curve 11

The Mid-century Mad Men Chasm 12

The $124 Billion Penalty for Dumping 50-Year-Olds 13

The Silly “Stuck in Their Ways” Stereotype 14

The Awkward Ageist Chasm 15

The Costly “Over 50 and Toxic to Brand Image” Stereotype 16

Failure to Grok: Boomer-think and Boomer-speak 17

The Silent Language of Generational Imprinting 18

Hidden Generational Imprinting Drives Brand Destiny 19

Boomer / neXt: Brand Re-generation in the 50+ Space 20

Contents


Based in New York and Boulder, Boomer / neXt coaches innovative brands to re-generate in the highly profitable but under-targeted, over-stereotyped 50+ demographic.

At the core of our practice is training marketers to understand and leverage the hidden generational imprinting and socio-cultural dynamics that drive brand destiny in this massive, misunderstood economy – the 3rd largest on the planet after the U.S. itself and China.

Despite this enormous buying power, most mainstream brands over-invest in the 18-49 demographic instead. Except for the wealth and health/aging categories, less than 10% of the US advertising spend specifically targets prospects over fifty (Nielsen).

Boomer /neXt principals Barry Robertson and Marc Matthews have interpreted consumer culture, attitudes and behavior for brands in virtually every corporate sector – Fortune 500 firms to startups – and for overseas decision makers seeking independent, third party analysis of U.S. market forces.

In addition to custom consulting and syndicated reports, Boomer / neXt conducts generationally immersive seminars and workshops to enable brands and advertising agencies to grow market share in the 50+ space.

About Boomer / neXt


https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryb4busa/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-matthews-b7020a5/

The 50+ space is dominated by the Boomer / neXt Generation™

In the following decades gurus struggled to define the pre and post Boomer generations; new names came and

When the Census Bureau decided to track the long term impact of the post WW2 birth surge on the economy it looked at children born 1946-1964, figuring the oldest would be entering the adult life stage after age 18.

But already, in 1958, before the oldest had hit their teens, America’s little tykes and toddlers were described by LIFE Magazine as the nation’s “built-in recession cure.”

Initially just a demographic cohort, marketers quickly grasped the incredible impact of a self-confident, upwardly mobile, globally aware and progressive U.S. culture on the psyche of the new “generation” and, especially, on its buying triggers. Dubbed Baby Boomers in 1970, they became every brand’s cool new Big Idea.

Generations in the 50+ Space


went and age ranges skittered around, leaving confusion in their wake. Finally, in 2015, the Census Bureau allocated Millennials 1982-2000/a

leaving 1965-1981 for Gen X. By convention, pre-Boomer generations are named Silent (b. 1927-1945) and Greatest or G.I. (b. 1926/earlier).

In 2019, the US population age 50+ numbers 119 million; of these, 93 million are Boomers and Gen Xers – growing to 130 million by 2030.

These two generations are connected more closely by the enduring socio-cultural power of Boomer world than they are separated by how Xers experienced their own history – events that Baby Boomers also incorporated into their long evolutionary journey./a In 2018 Pew redefined Millennial birth years as 1982-1996. For stability, we use the Census range.

Selling eyeballs and clicks … creating chasms

Even before Baby Boomers were named as such, they made for great Swingin’ Sixties headlines. A supposed Generation Gap separated rebels and radicals from their parents’ mores. Although at the time of Woodstock (1969), two-thirds of Boomers had yet to graduate high school – the youngest were still in kindergarten – but, hey, catnip is catnip. Flower power, hippies, demonstrations and the pill were boss, man. Balance was out.

In time, Summer of Love memes – though still a go-to generational metaphor – were replaced by new headline grabbers: social iconoclasts in the ‘70s; greedy yuppies in the ‘80s; SUV soccer moms in the ‘90s.

But as Y2K loomed, the Boomers looked tired, and their younger Gen Xer siblings – resentful of their own Grunge, Slacker, MTV generation stereotyping – mocked their fading glamor. Finally, the unkindest cut, the Boomers’ Snowflake Millennial kids on Madison Avenue and in Silicon Valley now diss them as has-beens headed for assisted living facilities equipped with rotary dial phones.

While all those catchy memes, from hippies to snowflakes, created cool copy, they also created a costly chasm separating the generations from one another and brands from the 50+ consumer space.

The Onion, January 20, 1999

Long-Awaited Baby Boomer Die-Off To Begin Soon, Experts Say

“ … the curtain will at long last fall on what is regarded by many as the most odious generation America has ever produced …”

Generational Catnip and Clickbait


Americans aged 50-plus: the 3rd largest economy on the face of the planet

In 2017, 80% of U.S. household net worth was owned by households headed by someone aged 50 and above (Census Bureau, Federal Reserve).

As a separate country, they would be the world’s 3rd largest economy: only the U.S. itself and China are bigger.

•The Deloitte Financial Center for Financial Services, using a slightly different metric, is even more bullish, reporting that in 2015 some 83% of U.S. wealth was owned by Boomers – then aged 51-73 – and their Silent generation parents. Gen Xers accounted for 14%, with Millenials settling for the crumbs.

•By 2030, Deloitte projects Millennials will still only own 16% of the nation’s wealth, while the Boomer and Gen X share grows to 76%, up from 64% in 2015, and remaining the sweet spot for consumer expenditures.

By any measure, the 50+ consumer space in general, and its dominant Boomer / neXt population in particular, puts a mountain of money on the marketing table – about as much money as the world’s #4 and #5 economies, Japan and Germany, combined. It is well worth closer inspection.

The World’s 3rd Largest Economy


The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditure Survey

If AARP doesn’t know the 50+ space, who does?

Consumers aged 50-plus are far from clutching oxygen tanks as they shuffle around God’s waiting room to the beat of Led Zeppelin on their Sony Walkmans. On the contrary, according to AARP they are “the lifeblood of the American economy.” The website provides ample proof: they …

• Control 70% of U.S. disposable income

• Have 75% more average net worth than people age 18-49 ($304,000 vs, $174,000) and own 60% of all financial investments – i.e, mutual funds, stocks, money market funds and annuities

• Represent over half the dollar volume in the automotive, personal care, services, home furnishings and entertainment sectors

• Are avid online shoppers: making Internet purchases is their #2 online activity behind email

• Will grow by 15+ million in the next 10 years – about triple the rate of the 18-49 population

The BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey shows why households headed by people aged 50+ are crucial to brands in almost every category: in 2017, they accounted for 52% of all consumer spending.

The 35-49 cohort, currently mostly Gen Xers, accounts for about one-third (30%) while Millennials aged 18-34 generate only 18% of the total.

Furthermore, the median weekly earnings of full-time workers aged 18-34 was only $760 versus $1,037 for those aged 55-64 and $914 for those aged 65 and over.

What the Data Big Dogs Know About The 50+ Consumer


https://advertise.aarp.org/50-advantage/key-facts-about-boomers

Pushing thousands of new CPG products across the consumer chasm

According to Nielsen, consumers in the 50+ demo account for half of all CPG sales. And they have been drivers of disruption ever since they entered the market as young adults.

In 1975 the average supermarket stocked 9,000 items; by 2017 the score was 30,000 (Food Marketing Institute), thanks to Boomers and Gen Xers for their insatiable demand for both new products and new versions of existing ones. Crest toothpaste, for example, offers 70 varieties in 2019.

As in so many categories, the Boomers played two key roles: first, they pushed new concepts past the tipping point; second, they influenced their Gen X siblings and then their Millennial children to further accelerate adoption rates and market growth.

The greatest Boomer CPG disruption was the natural and organic product revolution. Dismissed by experts as hippie fads – think Boulder’s Celestial Seasonings herbal tea – natural/organic became food and beverage buzz words that soon spread to personal care and household items.

After their Boomer-based launch, natural and organic food sales soared from $1.9B in the ‘70s to $12.1B in 2000 (hi, Gen X) and $61.1B in 2017 (welcome Millennials).

Consumers aged 50+ are far from done disrupting CPGs – as they age, health consciousness increases. And those 15 million new Gen Xers are just around the corner!

Boomers: Drivers of CPG Disruption and Growth


Almost two-thirds of US homeowners are over 50 – a massive economic driver

Consumers 50+ are the engine that drives the $425 billion US market for home improvement, remodeling, repair, replacement and equipment from yard care to kitchen appliances.

✓ They own 63% of US homes; those under 35 own 11% (National Multifamily Housing Council)

✓ Their rate of home ownership (77%) is over twice that of those under 35 (35%)

The Joint Center Housing Studies of Harvard University focuses even more tightly on older owners, tracking those aged 55+, projecting they will account for 56% of home improvement spending in 2025, up from 31% in 2005. In fact, the figure already hit 54% in 2017, as owners in this group surged to 42 million, up from 26 million in 1997.

In addition to their dominant role in home ownership, Boomers helped revive mid-century modern architectural and interior design themes with which they grew up; even mass merchandisers such as Target stock a wide range of furnishings inspired by 1950s/60s motifs. For sure, if players in the home owners and furnishings arenas could learn to ignore that “too old to adapt” nonsense, others can too.

No Place Like Home: Boomers Dominate the Market


Americans in the 50+ space buy as many new cars as Germany, the UK and France combined

Quick, think, when was the last time anyone saw a Boomer depicted as a typical prospect in a new vehicle ad? Rarer than hens’ teeth, right? Well, it’s not because they’re a niche market.

Americans 50+ accounted for 55% of US consumer spending on new vehicle purchases/leased in 2017 (BLS). And in 2018, they bought/leased 7.9 million new vehicles – roughly the same volume as the top three European markets combined … Germany plus the UK plus France (8 million).

But the Mad Men Chasm still rules.

Of course, automakers invite “old people” to product research clinics to weigh their wallets and assess their plump rear ends, failing eyesight and bad knees – but put them in ads? No way, because they “scare off young prospects” and “hurt brand image.”

Surely a market the size of Germany plus the UK plus France deserves a more competitive approach.

Life in the Slow Lane: The Invisible Boomer Car Buyer


The Chasm versus The Conventional Adoption Curve


Chasm Theory: the basics

The traditional new product/new idea adoption curve (Rogers Everett, 1962) suggests a smooth transition: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early and Late Majority and, finally, Laggards.

But in 1991, Baby Boomer Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers was a disruptive breakthrough. Of course, Kodak’s 1.3 megapixel digital camera was a breakthrough that year too – almost a steal at $20,000.

But Moore’s concept remains relevant: he revealed a break, a chasm, separating Innovators and Early Adopters from the cautious Early Majority who, fearing the concept is not yet proven, hang back.

Without experienced chasm-navigating guides, many excellent ideas simply tumble into the abyss and die.

As it turns out, chasm theory reaches far beyond high tech: fearful marketers hang back from new ideas as well.

According to Nielsen, only 10% of the U.S. ad spend goes to actively and specifically targeting consumers in the 50-plus demographic – aka the world’s 3rd largest economy. Not one, but three chasms block the way:

• The Mid-century Mad Men Chasm … groupthink• The Awkward Ageist Chasm … anti-Boomer bias• Hidden Generational Imprinting … failure to grok

The Mid-century Mad Men Chasm


Mad Men groupthink and the 50+ consumer space

In the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, it made sense for brands to focus on free-spending consumers in the 18-49 demographic – older Americans who had endured the Great Depression and WW2 were busy saving for retirement, fearful that bad times might return.

Adland giants roamed the earth in those days. Agencies had the names of real people who actually worked on campaigns on the door; bland mega-merger handles were still outliers. The young Boomers trained by those iconic Mad Men carried on the tradition, setting 18-49 targeting in stone and passing it down to posterity.

Today, a huge chasm separates ad industry claims to be curious, creative and competitivefrom willingness to openly target “old people.” Tickets to the Cannes Lions Festival of creativity are not won by flouting the club rules.

Although this aversion is destructive to 21st century brand health, its defenders fall back on the safety of conventional wisdom: mid-century Mad Men orthodoxy alleges people over 50 are:

• Stuck in their ways, unwilling to switch brands or behaviors

• Toxic to brand image because they scare off younger buyers

• Easy to engage via media strategy and “age-agnostic” (huh?) messaging

So, each and every year, high income 50 year-old consumers are dropped from targeting and replaced by 18-year-olds, most of whom have yet to earn a dime in full time employment. It’s a demonstrably costly exchange.

Happy 50th birthday, Gen Xers – now leave

In 2019, mainstream advertiser targeting practices will replace 2.54 million high wage earners age 50 (median $1,006 weekly) with 350,000 low wage earners age 18 (median $472 weekly)./a Let’s do the math:

•Around 60% of the roughly 4 million Americans aged 50 are working full time

•Around 9% of the roughly 4 million Americans aged 18 are working full time

The annual price tag for this peculiar ritual nets out to $124 billion in uncontested spending power, as brands switch attention from high-earning 50-year-olds to their 18-year-old kids, barely able to afford a cup of coffee without mom’s help.

The justification? Oldsters are captive customers for life; penniless youngsters are the future of the brand.

Oh well, that explains it.

/a Bureau of Labor Statistics Q4, 2018 data

The $124 Billion Annual Penalty for Dumping 50-Year-Olds


The Silly “Stuck in Their Ways” Stereotype


Consumers in the 50+ consumer space are lifelong adapters – and savvy as a result

Americans over 50 have adapted all their lives – readily and steadily, reinventing category after category, year after year from autos to personal technology to travel to media/entertainment to consumer packaged goods.

There is hardly a category they did not invent, popularize or adopt – from toppling domestic car brands to standardizing athletic shoes as daily footwear to crunching granola to swaggering in SUVs to a travel bucket list stretching from Angkor Wat to the Harrods’ Food Department.

And they research and buy all those brand experiences online.

understandable that they didn’t jump into smartphones overnight. But after all that silliness about Boomers as techno-slowpokes, by 2018 Pew found 73% of Americans 50-64 owned one. Another meme bites the dust.

Consumers 50+ may seem slow to adopt, but far from being stuck in their ways, they are highly adaptable – but also savvy enough to do so on their own terms and on their own timetable.

After decades of embracing incredible change, it is naive to expect Boomers and older Gen Xers to stop adapting after turning fifty.

Boomer / neXt research confirms the demo is eager to learn about new brands and products: in a 2017 survey, 86% of consumers aged 50-72 told us exactly that.

But, after seeing so much latest and greatest innovation fade away, they are savvy about when to wait, when to buy in.

Take tech. Having transitioned from vinyl to music cassettes to CDs to MP3 and from Super 8 to Betamax to VHS to hard drives, it is

The Awkward Ageist Chasm


The Mid-century Mad Men trope … do people over 50 really scare young people?

One of the Mad Men Chasm tenets is that depicting people over 50 in advertising is toxic to brand image and scares off young buyers. The truth is that “old people” are more likely to scare off young marketers.

Even mavericks willing to compete in America’s 50+ space face a more formidable barrier than outdated groupthink: an Ageist Chasm looms. Old stereotypes of Boomer hippies-turned-yuppies who grabbed all the good stuff and demand even more in their golden years linger on; Millennials who grew up with those soundbites playing in the background can hardly be blamed for believing them.

The average ad agency creative person is 28, only 5% of all agency staffers are over 50 (Brent Bouchez, partner, BouchezPage) and CBS Research found the median age at which Millennials say adulthood starts is 30, two years older than the typical creative. It’s hard to empathize with adults before one joins them.

Whatever the mechanism, the upshot of anti-Boomer bias is devastating: its time to hear what people over fifty feel about the way they are depicted in advertising. Spoiler alert: it’s not pretty.

A 2018 poll found 51% of Millennials say Boomers made things worse for their generation. Only 13% said better.

Just a poll? The rebelliousness of youth? Does it matter, anyway?

Heck yes!

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/108411/maybe-peter-pan-should-move-to-madison-avenue.html

The Costly “Over 50 and Toxic to Brand Image” Stereotype


Brand image and the 50+ demographic: is toxicity a two-way street?

Chasms are divisive. In marketing, on one side are the majority of U.S. household heads and hugely valuable audiences – new car buyers to Apple Mac users – whose median ages are over 50; on other is Madison Avenue.

Despite their undisputed talents, technical agility and energy, it is extremely difficult for younger agency and brand decision makers to put themselves in the shoes of consumers who have already transitioned through several lifestages that they themselves have yet to encounter.

Those difficulties become crushing when consumers are viewed through the prism of made things worse for younger generations … stuck in their ways … toxic to brand image.

Seen from the 50+ side of the chasm, the results are devastating: 83% of Boomers say marketers’ appeals are off target for their age group (influent50/AARP) and our own Boomer / neXt surveys find those most bothered by how people their age appear in advertising complain about sickly, feeble and just plain “old” depictions.

What we’ve got here is not just failure to communicate, it’s failure to grok.

Failure to Grok: Boomer-think and Boomer-speak


The problem with age agnostic advertising: there is no such thing as age-agnostic perception

Brands need look no further to refute the idea that older consumers can be engaged through the appropriate media exposure and age-agnostic advertising. The problem: there is no such thing as age-agnostic perception.

Of the many Boomer icons who set the generation on its do your own thing path, Bob Dylan ranks near the top. His classic, Positively 4th Street, tells brands all they need to know about how different things can look from the other side of the Ageist Chasm – and how painful truly “standing in the customer’s shoes” can be.

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoesAnd just for that one moment I could be youYes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoesYou'd know what a drag it is to see you

Failure to grok

Before Star Wars, many a young Boomer indulged sci-fi cravings through the works of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein. Actual books. Words on paper.

In Heinlein’s best-seller, Stranger In A Strange Land (1961), a young man raised by Martians returns to Earth where, though fluent in English, he struggles to “grok” the true meaning of the culture and the language.

Most brands are also strangers in the strange land of the 50+ demo, where words and concepts appear familiar but just don’t seem to mean the same thing to the locals. Here, the silent language of Boomer-speak and the rules of Boomer-think culture are embedded so deeply that the inhabitants can barely explain them. It is a world that must be grokked.

Crossing the most daunting chasm of all – authenticity

Even sincere brands cannot Google or Big Data their way to authenticity in the 50+ space, and quick studies of old magazines and reruns of Gilligan’s Island, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Family Ties only skim the surface.

Safe crossing of the socio-cultural chasm to Boomer / neXt world requires navigators who live in that space themselves, fluent in its nuanced secret dialect, familiar with its hidden pathways and expert in accessing the inner minds of its inhabitants. The work of two forgotten mid-century thinkers, social scientists. Dr. Konrad Lorenz and Edward T. Hall helps to orient the traveler for the journey.

Imprinting: behaviorist Konrad Lorenz discovered lifelong perceptions are subliminally imprinted at critical moments in the lives of young geese. Boomer / neXt extends the principle to people and markets to uncover how unconscious socio-cultural imprinting drives brand destiny.

In The Silent Language (1959) anthropologist Edward T. Hall explored the ways that people within a culture “talk” to one another without using words and without even realizing the mechanisms that make this possible. Hall “shows how cultural factors influence the individual behind his back, without his knowledge” (Social psychologist Erich Fromm).

The implications of socio-cultural imprinting, and the silent language it creates, are especially complex for consumers in the 50+ space. They have experienced enormous change, not only in the outside world but in their own attitudes in response to change.

Brands that fail to learn how the Boomer / neXt audience processes, synthesizes and implements decades of change risk long-lasting damage by inadvertently breaching its unspoken taboos, symbolism and etiquette.

The Silent Language of Generational Imprinting


Generations are imprinted differently by the seminal events

A 2016 Pew survey asked Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials to name events that most profoundly affected America; of the 5 top Boomer touchstones, their successors named just two: 9/11 and President Obama’s election.

While all three generations were deeply impacted by the latter, Boomers process them in a larger context than do Gen Xers and Millennials – not “better” but with longer, more complex perspectives and timelines.

Extending the conversation to imprinting events in society, culture, media, entertainment, products and technology it is easy to see how the resulting mosaics differ widely among and within generations.

Upshot: the brand experiences of consumers in the economically dominant 50+ arena are driven by silent, unseen – yet interconnected – factors they themselves do not fully understand. But, understood or not, their generational imprinting drives brand destiny: winning their business depends on how well decision makers access their inner minds and listen to their inner voices .

Hidden Generational Imprinting Drives Brand Destiny


Boomer / neXt: Brand Re-generation in the 50+ Space


Brand re-generation seminars and workshops

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect” (Mark Twain).

Boomer / neXt conducts brand re-generation seminars and workshops that help disruptive marketers reboot and grow brand share in the U.S. 50+ demographic, the world’s 3rd

largest economy.

Participants immerse in the Boomer and Gen X socio-cultural experience to learn how hidden generational imprinting drives brand perception and purchase behavior not only within categories but across seemingly unrelated businesses.

We offer half day, full day and two day seminars and workshops tailored for advertising agencies, corporate managers and overseas decision makers. Benefits:

More persuasive advertising – messaging, context and brand positioning

More relevant products – beyond form and function to symbolism and metaphor

More proactive planning – independent analysis of current strategies and emerging trends

More revealing segmentation – proprietary techniques that open the portal to innovation

More fruitful feedback – we offer custom qualitative and quantitative consumer research engagements

[email protected] / +1 720 472 4993

Website: www.boomer-next.com

mailto:[email protected]

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