Boomers

A Hosting Odyssey on the WeEarth Global Radio Network: Boomer Future, Aging, Business, Marketing, Advertising, and Public Policy Thought Leaders

2012-05-22T10:20:00-05:00

Amazing conversations awaken a stronger sense of where the Boomer generation is heading. Amazing conversations instill clarity, insight, motivation ... even hope. Amazing conversations showcase the brightest minds in Boomer business, marketing and aging today. Thought leaders. Trendsetters.

For nearly a year, I have been undertaking a radio host odyssey on the WeEarth Global Radio Network. Dovetailing my new book, the show is entitled Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Are Changing the Future.

Guests on my show have included a remarkable cast of thinkers and creators. What they have to say is worth your time, and you can listen to their commentary today and in the future at your convenience, at any moment you want to hear some amazing conversations.

Jed Diamond, Ph.D.

Generation Reinvention 1: The Future of Boomer Men

Jed Diamond, Ph.D. is Director of the MenAlive, a health program that helps men live long and well. Since its inception, Jed has been on the Board of Advisors of the Men's Health Network. He is also a member of the International Society for the Study of the Aging Male and serves as a member of the International Scientific Board of the World Congress on Men's Health. He is the author of many influential books including Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome.

Generation Reinvention 1: The Future of Boomer Men

Carol Orsborn, Ph.D.

Generation Reinvention 2: The Future of Boomer Women

As a leading voice of her generation of women, Carol Orsborn, Ph.D. is CEO of BoomerCommunication.com, and serves as Senior Strategist with Vibrant Nation.com, the largest online community of educated, passionate women 50+. Her blogs and op-eds on work/life run regularly on the site, as well as on the Huffington Post, Humana’s Real4Me and Divine Caroline.com. She has appeared on Oprah and on The Today Show multiple times, and in the pages of People Magazine and The New York Times, among many others. Carol is the author of Boom: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer--the Baby Boomer Woman and The Art of Resilience.

Generation Reinvention 2: The Future of Boomer Women

Chuck Nyren

Generation Reinvention 3: the Future of Advertising

Chuck Nyren is an award-winning advertising video producer, creative strategist, copywriter, consultant, and speaker focusing on The International Baby Boomer Market. He has been a consultant for advertising and marketing agencies and companies with products for the 40+ Market, including AARP, National Association of Home Builders, Harris Interactive, AstraZeneca, Bayard Presse (France), The Seattle Direct Marketing Association, WPP's Commonhealth, and Omnicom Group. He is consultant with The Faith Popcorn BrainReserve TalentBank and is on the Advisory Board of GRAND Magazine. Chuck is the author of Advertising to Baby Boomers.

Generation Reinvention 3: the Future of Advertising

Greg Dobbs

Generation Reinvention 4: The Stories of Our Lives

Greg Dobbs worked for ABC News for 23 years, starting in Chicago as an editor for ABC Radio’s Paul Harvey, then for TV as a producer, then in 1973 becoming a correspondent. In 1977 assigned to ABC’s bureau in London, then in 1982 to Paris, and in mid-1986 to ABC's new bureau in Denver. Memorable domestic news stories covered: the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the San Francisco earthquake, the execution of Gary Gilmore, the Watergate hearings, and the Indian occupation of Wounded Knee
Major foreign news stories: the Gulf War; the occupation of the US embassy in Iran; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the Iran-Iraq war; the ouster of Idi Amin from Uganda; the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt; and the ill-fated Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana in England.

Generation Reinvention 4: The Stories of Our Lives

John Erickson

Generation Reinvention 5: the Future of Retirement Housing and Age Inclusiveness in Television

For three decades, John Erickson envisioned and built innovative communities for seniors, understanding before most that an active, social lifestyle and access to good health care were essential for the mental and physical health of seniors.
As the founder of Erickson Retirement Communities, the company operates 20 retirement communities with more than 23,000 residents in 11 states. He could have stopped there. But instead, he took what he possessed — a deep understanding of senior America and its strengths — and launched cable network Retirement Living TV in 2006, to provide a new voice to a generation largely ignored by television media.

Generation Reinvention 5: the Future of Retirement Housing and Age Inclusiveness in Television

David Cravit

Generation Reinvention 6: Boomers to Zoomers, the Future of Aging in Canada

David Cravit is Executive Vice President of ZoomerMedia Ltd. David possesses over 30 years’ experience in advertising, marketing and consulting in Canada and the US. Previous to working with ZoomerMedia, David was a partner in Saffer Cravit & Freedman Advertising, which he helped take from start-up to over $150 million in annual billings. The agency had offices in Toronto and Chicago, and was recognized as a leading retail specialist agency in North America. After selling his interest in the business, David worked as an independent consultant to other advertising agencies in Canada and the USA, before joining ZoomerMedia in November 2005. David is author of The New Old.

Generation Reinvention Show 6: Boomers to Zoomers, the Future of Aging in Canada

Lori Bitter

Generation Reinvention 7: Marketing to Boomers, an International Perspective

Lori Bitter launched Continuum Crew following the closure of JWT BOOM, the nation’s leading mature market advertising and marketing company. As President, she was responsible for mature consumer strategy across a number of industries, most notably age targeted and age restricted real estate. In her role at JWT BOOM, Lori managed the production of LiveWire: The Summit (formerly the Beyond the Numbers conference) for five years. She was the editor of LiveWire, a quarterly publication, and she is author of numerous white papers on topics relevant to the senior and Boomer population.

Generation Reinvention Show 7: Marketing to Boomers, an International Perspective

Peter Whitehouse, M.D., PH.D.

Generation Reinvention 8: The Future of the Aging Brain

In his book The Myth of Alzheimer’s: What You Aren’t Being Told About Today’s Most Dreaded Diagnosis, Peter Whitehouse M.D., Ph.D. and his protégé, Daniel George, address the very foundation of our cultural and social relationships to the most dreaded disease of modern times.With more than 30 years of experience as a scientist and geriatric neurologist, Dr. Whitehouse, himself a Boomer, has been at the forefront of the evolution of the disease we call Alzheimer’s. He has earned over a million dollars consulting with pharmaceutical companies about development of cholinesterase inhibitors, the contemporary silver bullets in drug therapies for early treatment of disease symptoms.

Generation Reinvention 8 :The Future of the Aging Brain

David B. Wolfe

Generation Reinvention 9: The Future of Business, Ageless Marketing, and a Brave New Worldview

For over 25 years, the late David Wolfe was the most articulate and respected author and spokesman for Ageless Marketing and a paradigm shift toward understanding changing consumer needs as we age. David was an internationally recognized customer behavior expert in middle-age and older markets. Author and coauthor of three published books, including his breakaway Ageless Marketing, David was also a thought-leader in identifying shifting business values, a maturing, if you will, of the value companies and their products bring to our lives. His most recent work, an exciting and penetrating new book, investigates how society’s values are dramatically changing. Sadly, David passed away in December 2011, so this interview is one of his final reflections on his brilliant and enduring body of work.

Generation Reinvention 9: The Future of Business, Ageless Marketing, and a Brave New Worldview

Richard Adler

Generation Reinvention 10: The Next 20 Years

Richard Adler is the architect and leader of an important research study on Boomers for the Institute for the Future. Thirty years ago, he was appointed to a position at the Aspen Institute Program on Communications and Society, where he considered the potential of “pay television” to change the economics of TV programming, anticipating subscription networks like HBO that emerged a few years later. In the early 1980s, when new digital media were emerging, Richard joined the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit think tank in Silicon Valley, where he focused on the emergence of “online services.” In the mid-1980s, at a time when these services were being used by less than one percent of Americans, he was asked to provide a “vision” for the state of the technology in the year 2000. He predicted (correctly) that by 2000, half of all Americans would be online. This visionary has a lot to say about the next 20 years.

Generation Reinvention 10: The Next 20 Years

Tom Frey, Ph.D.

Generation Reinvention 11: The Next 20 Years, Part 2

Thomas Frey, Ph.D. is Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, a futurist think-tank based near Boulder, Colorado. His blog on emerging technologies has been recognized by Popular Science magazine as one of the top five science blogs. He is the top-rated futurist speaker by Google. Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Tom spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer. He is also a past member of the Triple Nine Society (High I.Q. society over 99.9 percentile).

Generation Reinvention 11:The Next 20 Years, Part 2

Dick Stroud

Generation Reinvention 12: The Future of Boomer Aging in the United Kingdom

Dick Stroud is a consultant, lecturer, writer, and one of Great Britain’s most influential thinkers about the 50+ market niche. His company 20plus30 specializes in advising companies how to capture the buying power of 50-plus consumers. He is author of The 50-Plus Market, an impressive 315-page exploration of business with the lucrative, influential 50+ marketplace. He has taught at the London Business School, American University in London, and Southampton Business School. Before running his own company he worked for IBM and PA Management Consultants.

Generation Reinvention 12: The Future of Boomer Aging in the United Kingdom

Dick Ambrosius

Generation Reinvention 13: Age Branding, Cognitive Fitness and the Future of Retirement Housing

In 1981, Dick Ambrosius formed one of the first consulting firms to specialize in marketing to middle age and older adults. This led to his selection as Entrepreneur of the Year in 1997 by Entrepreneur Magazine. In 1980, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as the youngest member of the National Advisory Committee to the 1981 White House Conference on Aging, which he attended as a delegate and keynote speaker. In 2004, he was appointed as a delegate-at-large for the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. Today he serves as Vice President of Outreach and Group Programs for NeoCORTA Inc., which offers scientifically-designed assessments for future brain fitness and provides users with a road map to maintain or improve their future cognitive health.

Generation Reinvention 13: Age Branding, Cognitive Fitness and the Future of Retirement Housing

Jeff Rosenfeld, Ph.D.

Generation Reinvention 14: Retirement Housing for the Boomer Future

Jeff Rosenfeld, Ph.D. is Director of the Gerontology Program and Gerontology Center at Hofstra University. He is a gerontologist with an interest in the interplay between aging and home-design. Along with Wid Chapman, he is the author of Home Design in an Aging World. His newest book, entitled Un-Assisted Living, also co-authored by Wid Chapman, will be published in the fall of 2011 by Random House. In addition to Hofstra University, Jeff teaches as an adjunct at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. He received his Ph.D. at Stony Brook.

Generation Reinvention 14: Retirement Housing for the Boomer Future

Kim Walker

Generation Reinvention 15: Boomers and the Future of Aging in Asia Pacific Countries

Kim Walker is founder and CEO of SILVER, based in Singapore, the first strategic business and marketing consultancy in Asia Pacific focused on Boomers and 50+ consumers. Before founding SILVER, Kim has held local and regional C-suite positions in Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, and Tokyo. He is Asia’s top expert on the 50+ market. Most recently he was President and CEO for M&C Saatchi in Asia. He has been a senior executive with Carat Asia Pacific and Bates Worldwide. He has launched new operations or led acquisitions in most Asian markets.

Generation Reinvention 15: Boomers and the Future of Aging in Asia Pacific Countries

Mark Miller

Generation Reinvention 16: Boomers and the Future of Retirement Readiness and Security

Mark Miller is a journalist, author and editor who writes about trends in retirement and aging. He has a special focus on how the Baby Boomer Generation is revising its approach to careers, money and lifestyles after age 50. Mark edits and publishes RetirementRevised.com, featured as one of the best retirement planning sites on the web in the May 2010 issue of Money Magazine. Author of The Hard Times Guide to Retirement Security, he also writes Retire Smart, a syndicated weekly newspaper column and also contributes weekly to Reuters.com.

Generation Reinvention 16: Boomers and the Future of Retirement Readiness and Security

Harry "Rick" Moody, Ph.D.

Generation Reinvention 17: Spiritual Journeys of Middle Age and the Future of Aging in America

Harry “Rick” Moody, Ph.D. understands implications of aging in ways that are both profound and practical. In his marvelous book entitled The Five Stages of the Soul: Charting the Spiritual Passages That Shape Our Lives, he reveals challenges and possibilities presented us as we age by focusing on the spiritual stages through which most of us pass. The outcome of careful spiritual exploration can be significant answers to deeper questions about the meaning of our lives. From a business perspective, Rick is Director of Academic Affairs for AARP in Washington, DC, where he has gained and contributed much practical wisdom about the social, economic and cultural aspects of aging today. He also serves as Senior Associate with the International Longevity Center-USA and Senior Fellow of Civic Ventures.

Generation Reinvention 17: Spiritual Journeys of Middle Age and the Future of Aging in America

Marc Sotkin

Generation Reinvention 18: Laughing Our Way to A Spectacular, Incredible … Old Age

Marc Sotkin was formerly head writer for The Golden Girls. He began his writing career in 1976 and has been a staff writer and producer on more than 350 episodes of various situation comedies for every television network. His credits also include Laverne & Shirley, as well as co-writing and producing two Garry Shandling specials for Showtime. He has been honored with multiple Emmy, Golden Globe and Cable Ace award nominations and has won a prestigious Writers Guild Award. But this is a Boomer comedy writer who has reinvented himself. Presently, he appears in his weekly Boomer Alley videos. In addition he hosts Boomer Alley Radio which airs weekly in Los Angeles on CBS affiliate KFWB, across Colorado on the Radio Colorado Network, and is podcast to the universe.

Generation Reinvention 18: Laughing Our Way to A Spectacular, Incredible … Old Age

Frank Lampe

Generation Reinvention 19: Boomers and the Future of Conscious Consumerism

Frank Lampe is one of the thought leaders in the healthy living / sustainability marketplace, so-called conscious consumerism or Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability (LOHAS). He brings more than 23 years of media and communications management experience to his role as director of communications with the American Herbal Products Association. As a co-founder of Natural Business Communications, he and his team introduced and quantified the LOHAS concept and produced the groundbreaking LOHAS Journal business magazine and the LOHAS Market Trends Conference. He was the editorial director at New Hope Natural Media, where he launched several trade titles, and is a former editor of Natural Foods Merchandiser.

Generation Reinvention 19: Boomers and the Future of Conscious Consumerism

Marti Barletta

Generation Reinvention 20: Marketing to PrimeTime Women and the Future of Business

Marti Barletta is the world’s foremost authority on marketing to women. She is the author of the groundbreaking book, Marketing to Women, which is now available in 15 languages, and co-author with Tom Peters of Trends (July 2005), who named her MVP/BizGuru of 2005. Her new book is PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders. In this book Marti breaks the story on the unprecedented buying power of women in their prime (ages 50-70) and details why this "silver bullet" segment is the prime source of business growth for the next two decades. As the recognized international authority on marketing to women, Marti is frequently quoted on CBS Evening News, ABC Money Matters, MSNBC's Squawk Box and NPR's Talk of the Nation, as well as in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fast Company, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur and many other publications worldwide.

Generation Reinvention 20: Marketing to PrimeTime Women and the Future of Business

Rob Kirkpatrick

Generation Reinvention 21: 1969 — a Tumultuous Year That Shaped the Boomer Future

Rob Kirkpatrick captured the concluding year of the sixties in a book entitled 1969: The Year Everything Changed. He has also written Magic in the Night: the Words and Music of Bruce Springsteen. Rob was a featured commentator in the History Channel documentary Sex in '69: The Sexual Revolution in America and has worked in the book publishing industry for more than a dozen years as an editor. He is also a blogger for Huffington Post.

Generation Reinvention 21: 1969 — a Tumultuous Year That Shaped the Boomer Future

Kathy Dragon

Generation Reinvention 22: Active Boomer Women and the Future of Travel

Kathy Dragon has more than two decades of experience in the Adventure and Experiential Travel industry including designing, marketing, selling, guiding and operating small group tours worldwide for active adults. She started leading bike tours in 1987, and she’s since trained hundreds of guides and tour operators on the nuances of understanding the North American PrimeTime Traveler (50-70 yr old) whose impact is substantial and whose needs and interests are unique within the global travel community. From Patagonia to Provence, Kilimanjaro to Komodo, Kathy has been there and personally escorted over 3000 guests (primarily Boomers) on life-changing adventures.

Generation Reinvention 22: Active Boomer Women and the Future of Travel

Bryan Welch

Generation Reinvention 23: Baby Boomers, Magazine Publishing and the Future of Sustainability

Bryan Welch and his family raise cattle, sheep, goats and chickens on a 50-acre farm, which they call Rancho Cappuccino. All their animals range freely, and the grazing animals are strictly grass-fed. When he’s not farming, he runs Ogden Publications, a diversified media, consulting and affinity marketing company. His company has grown rapidly over the past few years and now publishes 10 magazines for people interested in self-sufficiency, sustainability, rural lifestyles and farm collectibles. Familiar titles include Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, Natural Home and The Herb Companion. Combined, the publisher’s magazines have over 2-million readers, and their websites attract more than 3 million unique visitors each month.

Generation Reinvention 23: Baby Boomers, Magazine Publishing and the Future of Sustainability

J. Mara DelliPriscoli

Generation Reinvention 24: Boomers, Lifelong Learning and the Future of Educational Travel

J. Mara DelliPriscoli is President of Travel Learning Connections, Inc. She is the founder and architect of the Educational Travel Conference. With this conference platform she has facilitated the growth of strategic business partnerships and business-to-business networking of those in the field of alumni, museum, conservation and affinity group travel. With over 30 years experience in the tourism industry, Mara has directly worked in most sectors of the travel industry including marketing, sales, tour and hotel operations, and transportation, trade and government research firms. Mara is in a sense synonymous with educational travel, and with Boomers educational travel is the future.

Generation Reinvention 24: Boomers, Lifelong Learning and the Future of Educational Travel

Steve French

Generation Reinvention 25: Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability and Boomer Healthy Aging

As Managing Partner at NMI, Steve French has over 25 years of marketing, consulting, and management experience across numerous industries. With his focus on healthy aging, wellness, and social sustainability, he works with many global clients on developing new business opportunities, strategic planning, and market research projects. He has pioneered a range of NMI consumer databases that analyze attitudes and behavior, including NMI’s Healthy Aging/Boomer Database. As a recognized industry expert, Steve’s expertise is also welcomed on a regular basis by global media. He is an author of numerous reports and articles, and he is a regular speaker at many industry events worldwide.

Generation Reinvention 25: Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability and Boomer Healthy Aging

Dr. Bill Thomas

Generation Reinvention 26: Changing Aging and the Future of Boomer Elderhood

Dr. Bill Thomas is a visionary leader in the online Changing Aging movement and a renowned expert on geriatric medicine and eldercare. He is author of an award-winning examination of aging, entitled What Are Old People For?. His forthcoming, much-anticipated book on Boomer aging is entitled The Second Crucible. Recipient of numerous awards, including the Ashoka Fellowship, America’s Award, Heinz Award and Giraffe Award, Bill is also a professor at UMBC’s Erickson School of Aging, a musician, author of six books and an insatiable social media consumer and blogger.

Generation Reinvention 26: Changing Aging and the Future of Boomer Elderhood

Marc Middleton & Bill Shafer

Generation Reinvention 27: Creating Empowering Stories about Active Aging for TV, Radio and Online

A broadcast veteran, Marc Middleton spent 14 years as Sports Director and anchor at WESH-TV in Orlando before moving to the News Anchor Desk. Among his many assignments, Marc covered the Olympics in Barcelona, Sydney and Athens. Marc is an award-winning reporter whose work has been recognized with two Emmys, 5 Emmy Nominations, the Dupont Award for Excellence in Journalism, AP Sportscaster of the Year and two UPI Sportscaster of the Year awards. Marc also served as WESH’s technology reporter and helped produce the stations first-ever streaming Webcasts, blogs and podcasts.

Bill Shafer is co-host of Growing Bolder TV and the Growing Bolder Radio Show. A broadcast veteran considered one of America’s best storytellers, Bill has been one of Florida’s most honored journalists for nearly three decades. As news anchor, sports director and lifestyle reporter, he brought seemingly ordinary people to the forefront and proved everyone has a story. He has won countless national awards for his work. In his spare time, Bill is a youth ice hockey coach.

Generation Reinvention 27: Creating Empowering Stories about Active Aging for TV, Radio and Online

David Weigelt

Generation Reinvention 28: Marketing to Boomers through Online Engagement and Digital Media

David Weigelt co-founded Immersion Active, the only interactive agency in the United States solely focused on Boomers and seniors. In the spring of 2009, David, along with Immersion Active partner Jonathan Boehman, released his first book on how to engage mature consumers online through a developmental relationship marketing approach. Entitled Dot Boom: Marketing to Baby Boomers through Meaningful Online Engagement, the book has received praise from national and international marketing notables, including Microsoft, PBS, and AARP.

Generation Reinvention 28: Marketing to Boomers through Online Engagement and Digital Media

Arjan in't Veld

Generation Reinvention 29: Marketing and Advertising to Boomers and 50+ in Holland

Arjan in't Veld is founder and director of Bureauvijftig, a marketing and communications agency that specializes in 50+. (Bureauvijftig is Dutch for Agency Fifty.) Arjan graduated at Radboud University, Nijmegen, focusing on “Baby Boomer marketing.” In 2005, he was one of the first marketers addressing this niche in the Netherlands. Bureauvijftig is based in Utrecht and provides services for a variety of organizations: from Volkswagen and Thomas Cook, to the Academic Hospital and a local healthcare institute. His firm’s main focus is to translate 50+ consumer insights into successful marketing communication programs. Arjan is also cofounder and partner of a large healthcare portal for caretakers.

Generation Reinvention 29: Marketing and Advertising to Boomers and 50+ in Holland

Marc Freedman

Generation Reinvention 30: Boomers and The Big Shift to a New Life Stage

Marc Freedman is CEO and founder of Civic Ventures, a think tank on Boomers, work and social purpose. He spearheaded creation of Experience Corps, now one of America’s largest nonprofit national service programs engaging people over 55, and The Purpose Prize, which annually provides five $100,000 prizes to social innovators in the second half of life. Author of newly released The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage beyond Midlife, Marc eloquently argues that it is now time for society and culture to embrace a new life stage between middle age and old age.

Generation Reinvention 30: Boomers and The Big Shift to a New Life Stage

Todd Harff

Generation Reinvention 31: The Future of Integrated and Online Marketing to 50+ Consumers

Todd Harff brings a unique perspective to help clients achieve business results through his agency, Creating Results. In addition to his work with clients, Todd is a respected writer and featured speaker about marketing to the 50+ adult. He is a frequent contributor to industry publications. Todd has addressed regional and national conferences on a variety of topics related to marketing, advertising, website design and public relations.

Generation Reinvention 31: The Future of Integrated and Online Marketing to 50+ Consumers

Gary Moulton, Ph.D.

Generation Reinvention 32: Boomers and the Future of Computer Software, Hardware and Online Technologies

Gary Moulton, Ph.D. is a product manager in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group. He is responsible for the company’s strategic initiatives that focus on the use of technology by older adults (50+). In this role he is in charge of all efforts the company is making in the aging market segment. This includes product innovations for Baby Boomers. Prior to his current aging-related responsibilities he was the company’s assistive technology relations product manager. In this role he was responsible for coordinating Microsoft’s marketing efforts with assistive technology manufacturers, and he was the manager of Microsoft’s Assistive Technology Vendor Program.

Generation Reinvention 32: Boomers and the Future of Computer Software, Hardware and Online Technologies

B. Joseph Pine II

Generation Reinvention 33: Boomers, The Experience Economy and Authenticity

Joe Pine is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups. He is co-founder of Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. Joe and his partner Jim Gilmore wrote "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage." Realizing that in a world of increasingly paid-for experiences people no longer accept the fake from the phony, but want the real from the genuine, so Pine & Gilmore wrote “Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want” in October 2007.

Generation Reinvention 33: Boomers, The Experience Economy and Authenticity

Dee Wallace

Generation Reinvention 34: Turning on Your Bright Light: Spiritual and Life Lessons for a Generation

Thirty years ago a gifted young actress from Kansas risked security and comfort to become part of the movie-making industry in Hollywood. Two years later she landed the role of a lifetime and walked onto a soundstage for Stephen Spielberg’s movie, “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial.” Her character Mary, a smart, funny young mother, was about to change this actress’s life, as well as a generation’s views of modern motherhood. This heralded portrayal raised as many questions as it did answers for the rising star. In the three decades since her first day of work on the film, those questions have been answered. In her new book, Bright Light, Dee Wallace shares her touching story and wisdom that can help each of us rekindle and nurture the heartlight that guides us home to our true self.

Generation Reinvention 34: Turning on Your Bright Light: Spiritual and Life Lessons for a Generation

Duncan Campbell

Generation Reinvention 35: A Consciousness Revolution for Boomers

Duncan Campbell holds degrees from the Sorbonne, Yale College and Harvard Law School. In the last 40 years he has gained extensive experience in the fields of psychology, philosophy, spirituality, law, business, finance, politics, communications and teaching. Duncan’s radio program, entitled Living Dialogues®, features conversations with consciousness pioneers — some known to a larger public and others lesser known or as yet unknown — yet all embodying the best in new paradigm thinking in a broad variety of fields.

Generation Reinvention 35: A Consciousness Revolution for Boomers

Paul Kleyman

Generation Reinvention 36: A Journalist’s Look at Boomers and Aging

Paul Kleyman is the Director of the Ethnic Elders Newsbeat at New America Media (NAM), a division of Pacific News Service reaching 60 million ethnic audience members in the United States. From 1988 through 2008, he was the editor of Aging Today, a newspaper of the American Society on Aging. He co-founded and is National Coordinator of the Journalists Network on Generations and edits its e-newsletter, Generations Beat Online. He is also an invited blogger for The Huffington Post.

Generation Reinvention 36: A Journalist’s Look at Boomers and Aging

Helen Dennis

Generation Reinvention 37: Boomer Women, Successful Aging, and Reinventing Retirement

Helen Dennis calls upon Boomer and older women to shape a new kind of retirement, one that she refers to as “renewment” to emphasize the possibility of positive change, enlightenment, and adventure. Helen is a nationally recognized leader on issues of aging, employment and the new retirement. In the academic environment, she has received awards for her university teaching at the University of Southern California’s Davis School at the Andrus Gerontology Center.

Generation Reinvention 37: Boomer Women, Successful Aging, and Reinventing Retirement

Andy Cohen

Jack York

Generation Reinvention 38: Boomers and the Challenges and Opportunities of Caregiving

Andy Cohen is Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of Caring.com. He oversees the company’s operations and finances, with the goal of establishing Caring.com as the premiere website for people taking care of their parents and other aging loved ones. Andy has launched four successful web businesses, taking them from start-up to tens of millions of dollars in revenue. In a 20-year career before founding Caring.com, he held leadership positions in management, marketing, and sales with S.C. Johnson Wax, Intuit, Peapod, Instill, and SuccessFactors.

Jack York founded It’s Never 2 Late in the summer of 1999 after spending 14 years in the Silicon Valley. He retired from that industry as vice-president of strategic sales for Vishay Intertechnology. In 1998, he began donating computers to assisted living centers in California. This endeavor became a labor of love, and the enthusiasm that the seniors showed in jumping into the computer world motivated him to establish It’s Never 2 Late. Jack speaks internationally on how adaptive technology should be accessible to all older adults in senior living communities. It’s Never 2 Late specializes in constructing adaptive computer labs for older adults in all stages of life.

Generation Reinvention 38: Boomers and the Challenges and Opportunities of Caregiving

Ken Dychtwald

Generation Reinvention 39: Baby Boomers and the Transformational Power of the Age Wave

Dr. Ken Dychtwald is a leading expert on the ways that Baby Boomers are aging differently than any generation in history. He is widely regarded as North America’s foremost visionary and original thinker regarding the lifestyle, marketing, healthcare and workforce implications of the age wave. He is a psychologist, gerontologist, documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur and best-selling author of sixteen books on aging-related issues, including Bodymind, Age Wave, Age Power, The Power Years and Workforce Crisis.

Generation Reinvention 39: Baby Boomers and the Transformational Power of the Age Wave

Steve Hoffman

Generation Reinvention 40: Boomer Consumers Living and Buying in the Natural World

Steve Hoffman is co-owner of Best Organics LLC, a leading organic gift company, and serves as chair of Naturally Boulder, an economic development initiative established by the City of Boulder to promote the growth of natural and organic businesses in the region. Steve is also cofounder of LOHAS Journal and the annual LOHAS Forum. He is the former national Marketing Director and Rocky Mountain regional Sales Manager for Arrowhead Mills. He served for more than eight years as the Editorial Director of Natural Foods Merchandiser, a leading trade magazine published by New Hope Natural Media and as Education Director for Natural Products Expo.

Generation Reinvention 40: Boomer Consumers Living and Buying in the Natural World

Michael Stusser and Chis MacInnes

Generation Reinvention 41: Boomers and the Future of the Spa Industry

Michael Stusser is founder of Osmosis, a popular spa in northern California. His discovery of the Cedar Enzyme Bath was a life-changing experience that led him to create Osmosis. This destination day spa has grown in twenty-five years into a nationally known hospitality location on five acres with extensive mediation gardens. Osmosis was recently acknowledged as “Americas Most Spiritual Spa” by Spirituality and Health magazine.

Christina MacInnes is Chief Operating Officer for Crystal Mountain Resort and Spa. Chris and her husband Jim have transformed this family-owned business into one of the Midwest’s premier four-season resort destinations. In addition, she is president of Crystal Properties Inc., the resort’s development company, and serves on its board of directors.

Generation Reinvention 41: Boomers and the Future of the Spa Industry

John L. Petersen

Generation Reinvention 42: Boomers, Wildcards, and High-Impact Transformations of the Future

John L. Petersen has been widely recognized as one of the most informed futurists in the world. He is best-known for writing and thinking about high impact surprises—called wild cards—and the process of surprise anticipation. His current professional involvements include the development of sophisticated tools for anticipatory analysis, surprise anticipation, and helping leadership design new approaches for dealing with the future. An award-winning writer, Petersen’s first book, “The Road to 2015: Profiles of the Future” was awarded Outstanding Academic Book of 1995 by CHOICE Academic Review, and remained on The World Future Society’s best-seller list for more than a year. His latest book, “Out of the Blue: How to Anticipate Wild Cards and Big Future Surprises,” was also a WFS best-seller.

Generation Reinvention 42: Boomers, Wildcards, and High-Impact Transformations of the Future

John Zweig

Generation Reinvention 43: Boomers and the Future of Healthcare, Aging and Marketing

John Zweig is Chairman of Healthcare and Specialist Communications for WPP. His role is to develop the Group’s capabilities and coordinate client services on behalf of WPP’s firms specialized by discipline, audience and industry. With a particular emphasis on healthcare clients, John provides access to these resources and capabilities around the world. Prior to becoming CEO of WPP’s Branding & Identity, Healthcare and Specialist Communications businesses, John was President of Thomas Ferguson Associates and founded CommonHealth in 1992; during the ten-year course of his leadership, he helped build CommonHealth into the largest and most respected integrated marketing firm of its type.

Generation Reinvention 43: Boomers and the Future of Healthcare, Aging and Marketing

Chris Kilham

Generation Reinvention 44: Boomers, Medicinal Plants and New Paths to Healthy Aging

Chris Kilham is a medicine hunter, author and educator. The founder of Medicine Hunter Inc., he has conducted medicinal research in over 20 countries. He is the FOX News Medicine Hunter and appears on FOX News Health online in the US and international television markets. e is Explorer in Residence at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he teaches the popular ethnobotany course The Shaman’s Pharmacy through the Department of Plant & Soil Sciences. He has appeared as a guest expert on several hundred radio and television programs including news programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, FOX TV, and NPR. He has appeared as a guest on The Dr. Oz Show, and is a regular guest on FOX News Ask Dr. Manny.

Generation Reinvention 44: Boomers, Medicinal Plants and New Paths to Healthy Aging

Wendy Boglioli

Generation Reinvention 45: Boomers, the High Costs of Growing Old and Long-Term Care

Wendy Boglioli, a former Olympic swimmer and Gold Medalist, is a motivational speaker and spokeswoman for Genworth Financial. She is best known for winning the gold medal in the 4x100m freestyle relay in world record time at the 1976 Montréal. The gold was particularly crucial to the U.S. women’s team as it was the only gold medal awarded to American women during the games. Wendy then served as assistant coach of the Yale University Swim Team, before embarking on a career as a motivational speaker and spokesperson. In 1997, she entered the long-term care insurance field and currently serves as national spokeswoman for Genworth Financial’s Long Term Care Division.

Generation Reinvention 45: Boomers, the High Costs of Growing Old and Long-Term Care

Gary Zukav and Linda Francis

Generation Reinvention 46: Aging and the Search for Authentic Power and Spiritual Partnerships

Gary Zukav is the author of “The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics,” winner of The American Book Award for Science; “The Seat of the Soul,” the celebrated #1 New York Times bestseller; “Soul Stories,” also a New York Times bestseller; and many others. His books have sold millions of copies and are published in twenty-four languages. Gary has appeared on the Oprah show 35 times, more than any other guest.

Linda Francis has been practicing the creation of authentic power since she read “The Seat of the Soul” in 1989. In 1993 she met Gary Zukav and they created a spiritual partnership which is in its eighteenth year. During this time, she co-authored with Gary two New York Times bestsellers, “The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness” and “The Mind of the Soul: Responsible Choice.” Linda has been in the healing profession for three decades, first as a registered nurse and then as a chiropractor.

Generation Reinvention 46: Aging and the Search for Authentic Power and Spiritual Partnerships

Ed Tate

Generation Reinvention 47: Journey of a World Champion Public Speaker and Lessons for Boomers Reinventing

Ed Tate won the coveted Toastmasters International World Championship of Public Speaking, finishing ahead of 175,000 members from 70 countries. To date, he has spoken professionally in 46 states, 12 countries and on five continents. Ed’s success in business has spanned more than two decades. Since 1998, Ed has been principal of Ed Tate & Associates, LLC, a professional development firm that provides keynote and endnote presentations and workshops, as well as in-person and do-it-yourself tools and expertise on Leadership, Executive Presentation Skills, The Challenges of Change, Management, and Sales Presentation Skills.

Generation Reinvention 47: Journey of a World Champion Public Speaker and Lessons for Boomers Reinventing

Matt Thornhill

Generation Reinvention 48: Boomer Consumers and Age Readiness for Business

Matt Thornhill started the Boomer Project, a marketing research and consulting firm to help marketers gain a better understanding of Boomer consumers. Insights based on the Boomer Project’s national surveys among Boomers have earned Matt an international reputation as an authority on marketing to Boomers. His first book, Boomer Consumer, co-written with his business partner, John Martin, was named one of the best business marketing books the year it was published. He writes several columns on Boomers for both online and traditional media. In addition, he edits and publishes a monthly newsletter on marketing to Boomers for over 6,000 subscribers.

Generation Reinvention 48: Boomer Consumers and Age Readiness for Business

Don Blauweiss and Chuck Schroeder

Generation Reinvention 49: Boomers, Advertising and the Real Mad Men

This time my guests are two creative talents who worked for the legendary Doyle Dain and Bernbach, the advertising agency credited for launching the Creative Revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s … the agency that influenced the creative direction of the Mad Men series.

Don Blauweiss began his career as a graphic designer, achieving international recognition for his package designs. Then he became an advertising Art Director at Doyle Dane Bernbach where he worked on historic and legendary campaigns for Volkswagen, Coffee of Colombia, Lufthansa, Uniroyal, and Avis.

Chuck Schroeder also started his career in the advertising business at Doyle Dane Bernbach as a copywriter working on Alka-Seltzer, Volkswagen, Polaroid, Mobil, American Airlines, Stroh’s Beer and other accounts.

Generation Reinvention 49: Boomers, Advertising and the Real Mad Men

Assaf Wand

Generation Reinvention 50: Designing Stylish Consumer Products for a Generation Getting Older

Sabi, a health and wellness brand, manufactures and markets products that transform mundane daily chores — such as taking pills, taking out the trash, getting dressed, opening jars — into moments full of delight. The company has an eye toward the Boomer generation, anticipating growing preferences for these products as the generation ages. Assaf Wand is founder and CEO. He has been a venture capitalist at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Prior to that, he was Foris Telecom’s Vice President for Business Affairs. He has held senior roles with Arcadian Networks and McKinsey Consulting’s New York office where he consulted Fortune 100 clients.

Generation Reinvention 50: Designing Stylish Consumer Products for a Generation Getting Older

Laurie Orlov

Generation Reinvention 51: Boomers and the Future of Aging and Adaptive Technologies

Laurie M. Orlov founded a popular website and blog several years ago entitled “Aging in Place Technology Watch.” She analyzes research and trends in the aging-in-place technology market, which includes technologies that help the elderly to remain in their home of choice. Laurie has 34 years of experience in the technology and market research industry, including nine years as an analyst, and she has been research director at Forrester Research. Laurie is also a certified Florida long-term care ombudsman and the author of “When Your Parents Need Elder Care: Lessons from the Front Lines.”

Generation Reinvention 51: Boomers and the Future of Aging and Adaptive Technologies

Ira Bahr

Generation Reinvention 52: The Future of Luxury Travel and the Boomer Generation

Ira Bahr is Chief Marketing Officer for Inspirato, a luxury destination club launched in January 2011, combining the advantages of independent luxury home rental with the personalized services and amenities of private luxury vacation clubs or resort hotels. He oversees customer acquisition, customer communications and channel marketing activities. Prior to joining Inspirato, Ira was the CMO at DISH Network, the third largest provider of pay television in the U.S. with more than 14 million subscribers. Previously, he served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing, Alliances and Communications at Sirius Satellite Radio.

Generation Reinvention 52: The Future of Luxury Travel and the Boomer Generation

Sara Qualls, Ph.D.

Generation Reinvention 53: Boomers, Aging, and Long-Term Psychological and Social Wellbeing

Dr. Sara Honn Qualls is a professor of psychology and aging studies and Director of the Gerontology Center at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She led the development of the doctoral program in clinical psychology that emphasizes Geropsychology. We’ll talk about geropsychology and its implications for you as a caregiver or for yourself as you age. She also helped found the CU Aging Center where students learn to provide mental health and family interventions for older adults. She founded a unique collaboration between UCCS and the Palisades at Broadmoor Park, a privately owned senior residential community, where faculty and students create cutting-edge wellness programs using innovative technologies.

Generation Reinvention 53: Boomers, Aging, and Long-Term Psychological and Social Wellbeing

Keith Famie

Generation Reinvention 54: Boomer Men and “The Embrace of Aging”

Executive Producer and Director Keith Famie is a nine-time Emmy Award winning filmmaker and founder of Visionalist Entertainment Productions, which he established in 1997. Keith is a renaissance man, with a rich history of entrepreneurial adventures. He began his career as a chef, lived in France, owned restaurants, and won food and wine awards. He became a celebrity chef on The Food Network and produced thirty-two segments of “Keith Famie’s Adventures.” He also ended up on “Survivor: The Australian Outback.” As testament to his tenacious personality, he was the last survivor voted off the show.

Generation Reinvention 54: Boomer Men and “The Embrace of Aging”

Doug Price

Generation Reinvention 55: Boomers, Public Television and Next Avenue

Next Avenue is a new national pubic media website that launched May 15, 2012 by PBS stations across America. It is focused on America’s growing 50+ population. My guest is Doug Price, who became president and chief executive officer of Rocky Mountain PBS in January 2009 and elected to the board of directors of the Public Television Major Markets Group. Prior to that, he had a successful career in banking with FirstBank Holding Company of Colorado. A 1978 graduate of the University of Colorado, he became president of the FirstBank of Boulder in 1982. He was promoted to president of FirstBank of Denver in 1988 and retired in 1999.

Generation Reinvention 55: Boomers, Public Television and Next Avenue

Louis Tenenbaum

Generation Reinvention 56: Boomers and Aging, Businesses Opportunities for the Future

As a carpenter and contractor, Louis Tenenbaum completed his first home access modifications in 1988. Excited by the significant impact he had on the family whose home he made accessible, Louis focused his design/build remodeling company on Aging in Place in the early 90s, which continues today. Today Louis speaks, writes and consults on Universal Design and Aging in Place for developers, builders, health professionals, communities and wide ranging business interests.

Joop Koopman

Joop Koopman is a multilingual writer, marketing and publishing professional with significant experience developing editorial content and marketing materials across multimedia channels and formats for institutional, corporate and non-profit clients. His expertise spans full range of media, including print, television and digital. Joop served as senior marketing, sales, research and editorial liaison for Plus Magazine, the leading magazine serving the 50 year-old+ audience in the Netherlands and other European countries.

Generation Reinvention 56: Boomers and Aging, Businesses Opportunities for the Future

Please check back periodically. This blog post is a dynamic representation of our amazing guests who are shaping the future for Generation Reinvention.

A Test of Will, Part 2: Dr. Mark Crooks, A 57-Year Cancer Survivor, A Life Dedicated to Showing Baby Boomers How to Age Well

2012-05-10T18:13:33-05:00

Mark Crooks, Ph.D. an exercise physiologist, sports psychologist, fitness pioneer and daredevil risked everything to survive four bouts of cancer spanning 57 years. This is the second of a two-part post, the first of which you can read immediately below this article.

The stony truck driver was exhausted following his overnight haul from Chicago to Kansas City. He had kept himself awake by drinking a thermos full of coffee and taking several No-Doz. His eyes burned from staring at dark, isolated highways. Even morning chatter on his radio did not perk him up for the final leg of his drive to Salina, Kansas.

His eighteen-wheeler raced across the Paseo Bridge spanning the Missouri River. The weary driver ignored a crudely hand-lettered sign held by one of Dr. Mark Crooks’ myriad assistants. The sign demanded: Slow Down, Jumper Ahead.

A warning sign of another jumper threatening to hurl himself into the angry Missouri should have been sufficient to cause any alert driver to pause. But the trucker could only think about the number of miles he must still drive to finish a long haul to Salina. At that moment he didn’t care if another idiot might be threatening a suicide jump.

Focused on the river below, Dr. Crooks stood outside the guardrail at the apex of the bridge, the roiling river eleven stories below — the distance to impact easily sufficient to break his back and end his life. Several nearby assistants grasped the situation, understanding that this eighteen-wheeler would have sufficient wind draft to push the fitness expert out of a carefully practiced vertical pose into an awkward angle that could snap his back. The truck’s diesel engine issued a throaty rumble, but Mark could not hear anyone’s warnings not to jump.

Instead, he gazed into the choppy, brown water below, envisioning his carefully selected landing spot, a deep gulch running through the river bed where his scuba diving surveillance mission had discovered this place of optimum depth, free from impaling junk. At six-foot-four inches tall and 215 pounds of sculpted muscle, he stood on the bridge ledge above the river as if a Greek god surveying the Aegean Sea from mighty cliffs of weathered limestone. He wore a midnight-black diver’s suit, which might offer some insulation upon impact, perhaps binding his anatomy together as the force of water, hard as concrete, made contact with his feet.

Mark’s intractable goal was to leap from the bridge and will himself into a perfect vertical posture soon after reaching the apex of trajectory. Then he would hold his arms tightly to his side so that they would not be dislocated or broken at impact. If his calculations were correct, buttressed by six months of dogged preparation, he would slide into the water without damaging himself, being the first human not to die by a jump from this precarious location. His focus had become so intense to have rendered awareness of impending danger irrelevant — other than this insane jump into oblivion.

With three full breaths to oxygenate his system and prepare for the plunge that would push him to the depths of the river, he pulled his arms back behind him as if an artistic high diver and leapt. The errant trucker rumbled by Mark’s jump location at 45 miles-per-hour — five-miles-per-hour above the speed limit. The rolling draft off the truck flung small rocks and paper liter behind it, and gusts caught Mark’s back as he reached jump apogee, pushing him head first into an uncontrolled, awkward freefall. His assistants gasped as they watched Mark cascade downward, his legs and arms flailing to return his body to the vertical posture that this death-defying leap demanded.

Will Tests Life.

At the beginning of my second year of graduate school at the University of Kansas, several students and I were visiting a professor at her home. Her boyfriend stopped by, a man of imposing stature, at that time weighing around 215 pounds of solid muscle. At six-foot-four-inches and with a chiseled jaw, Mark appeared to be a stereotypical jock, albeit one who could have also posed as a male fashion model. I learned that he was a Ph.D. candidate seeking double degrees in sports psychology and exercise physiology.

Mark’s extraordinary fitness and friendly nature caused me to confess that I was then having concerns about my health. By the early 1970s, the connections between smoking and cancer were gaining wider acceptance in spite of persistent denials by tobacco companies. I knew my long-term health was on the line. Mark invited me to go jogging with him and though hesitant I accepted.

The next Saturday we ran in a city park in Lawrence, and at first I kept pace, being young and lean. But as the miles stretched out, Mark’s graceful stride left me in the background. I recall seeing him running effortlessly ahead in the distance. Because health was what I wanted more than anything after a childhood of illness, I quit smoking four days later, on September 14, 1973, an auspicious occasion more important to me than my birthday. Mark never scolded or lectured me about smoking but caused me to seek health because of his example.

As our friendship grew, I discovered that he also had confronted severe illnesses in childhood but to a degree far greater than my own tribulations. When he was an infant and living with his mother in Mexico City, relentless intestinal bleeding threatened his life; but his mother persevered until she found a physician with knowledge of nutrition who prescribed a life-saving diet of soy instead of cow’s milk.

When Mark was two, he suffered from severe sinus infections, and a then-experimental therapy involved x-ray radiation. By today’s standards, Mark received an unfiltered overdose of radiation of fifty times that recommended for an adult, predisposing him to cancer.

When he was eight, a tumor appeared on the left side of his neck; the diagnosis: neurogenic sarcoma. Surgeons removed muscle, lymph and nerve tissue, including the sternoclydomastoid muscle, which is responsible for assisting with head and neck rotation. Instead of becoming handicapped relative to his peers, Mark tenaciously worked out, played football, and ran in track while in high school, earning letters in both sports.

Because he had lost muscle tissue on his left side, throwing his physical symmetry out of balance, Mark also became committed to resistance training until he built himself up to the physical stature I first witnessed at my professor’s house. He also joined the marines after high school, which was then becoming embroiled in Vietnam, surviving the mental and physical ordeals of three months of training at Parris Island, South Carolina: “the ultimate rite of passage into manhood.” He also wanted to stare down a lingering threat of cancer’s metastasis.

Mark may be the only marine in history who was also a former cancer patient, enduring rigorous training at Parris Island while receiving an Honorable Discharge after three years of service. In the Marine Corps, he also learned to love running since new recruits run everywhere as they fulfill daily duties.

Mark worked tenaciously to get his Ph.D., and discoveries during his education, as well as his life experiences, became the foundation of a book entitled Achieving Wellness through Positive Risk Taking. This book preceded many of the health and fitness trends of the 1980s and articulated now-commonplace ideas about nutrition and fitness. Its premise is set forth in the book title: human beings can achieve greater states of health by taking measured risks.

While working as a health consultant in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mark performed a number of experiments to test his own physical and psychological endurance, as well as to demonstrate principles set forth in his book. The feat of greatest impact to me was his jump from 11 stories off the Paseo Street Bridge in Kansas City into the swirling Missouri River below.

Mark prepared for months, enlisting support from scientific and medical advisors. The challenge for him physically was to enter the water vertically. Since the upper half of the human body weighs more than the lower half, the body has a tendency to tumble forward from great heights.

If he did not hit the water exactly upright, he risked breaking his back. Several tortured people had already committed suicide from the location of his jump, and the risks were bona fide. So Mark spent many weekends jumping from successively higher cliffs in the Missouri Ozarks until he perfected ways to achieve vertical orientation in midair.

But practice did make perfect, and, after making mid-jump corrections due to draft from the passing 18-wheeler, he landed perfectly, making a small splash and emerging from the depths of the muddy river unscathed.

On another harrowing adventure of five days duration, Mark swam and floated from Kansas City, Kansas, to St. Louis, Missouri, in the Missouri River. Not only did he encounter manmade dangers, such as fishing lines and barges threatening to pull him into their wake, he also struggled with severe hypothermia since the muddy river relentlessly sucked away body heat.

A typical reaction to these experiments is that Mark might have been eccentric. Knowing him personally, and sharing with him histories of childhood illnesses, I understood these experiments as true testimonials to the power of mind over body. Their enactment stood as a metaphor for Eros, the life force.

Mark didn’t choose to live in a safe, predictable groove; his early encounters with fatality caused him to stare death in the face — by his own account — 39 times. To Mark and many people lucid about the exigencies of mortal existence, this aggressive, gentle man chose to challenge life on his terms.

In 1992, Mark called me to let me know that the area around his Adam’s apple had swollen twelve times normal size. The diagnosis of thyroid cancer, undoubtedly a residual of his overdose of x-ray radiation, did not bend his knees for more than two days. Surgeons removed the cancerous gland, and 48 hours later Mark ran 2 ½ miles through wooded trails around his home. Again, this aggressive activity wasn’t rash; Mark had prepared with weeks of conditioning for the surgery and rapid reentry into extreme activity.

Mark called me nine years later to tell me that while running his usual path he felt tightness in his chest. He finished the four-mile run but continued wheezing and coughing over the next few weeks. One day while running he coughed and tasted blood. After a carousel of medical tests during the ensuing weeks, surgeons recommended evasive surgery to remove a cancerous egg-shaped tumor.

True to his nature as a determined scientist and athlete, Mark spent six weeks getting into peak condition for one of the most difficult and painful surgeries imaginable. The week following his operation was the most excruciating of his life, and no wonder, removal of his left lung also required breaking ribs.

As he told me, “Getting to the bathroom was like running a marathon (and I refused to use a bedpan). Tubes hung from everywhere: a venous line, an arterial line, a needle in my low back delivering titrated morphine, an oxygen tube in my nose, and drainage tubes under my left armpit.”

Mark reflected on the irony of his own medical history: “I have never smoked, and I avoid others who smoke. I was a running pioneer, doing it way before it became a social norm. I could not rationalize what this happening to me. I had crafted my body into 215 lbs of toughness, and this was not part of the plan.”

Nevertheless, Mark struggled out of his bed, where it was so much easier to lay anesthetized by pain medications, and began to fight for Eros. At first he walked hesitantly. Then he set physical goals. His one-year post-operative celebration included running three miles nonstop. His goal for the next year was to run four miles nonstop, which again he accomplished. Then he ran three miles in thirty minutes.

Mark believed his survival through so many adversities was due to a determined effort that never waned. “It comes from winning all those little confrontations with oneself. Once I’m standing on that treadmill, I know that I have won. This is how I survive.”

Getting old isn’t the part of the plan for many Baby Boomers, a generation noted for its youth-seeking persona. But the human condition demands that we age, and we have two fundamental choices for how we do it: to surrender to aging, allowing the body to unravel, and with it, the mind and spirit; or to confront and fight aging, as was the path of Dr. Mark Crooks, who faced the diseases and accidents of aging long before his contemporaries.

In November 2009, Mark learned that lesions had appeared in his liver. Resolute as always, he began exploring how he might receive a liver transplant. Current medical policies require patients to be declared cancer free for at least five years before a transplant can be scheduled. When it became clear to Mark that this would be his final confrontation with Thanatos, he accepted his fate and continued exercising in whatever form he could manage, even pushing an IV cart in front of him as he circumnavigated a hospital floor. He never stopped challenging himself until one week before his death — a week spent in the Kansas City Hospice. He died on July 8, 2010.

What have I learned about aging from Mark? Any excuse not to stay in the best shape possible is insufficient. Any excuse not to keep setting and fighting for goals is inadequate.

Life is a test of will, most assuredly, demanding that we make conscious daily choices to prevail and thrive. Mark’s approach to living is also an optimistic metaphor for a generation getting older and coming to represent societal conceptions of the aging process.

We can choose Thanatos and allow our bodies to perish due to sloth and gluttony, bad habits and dependencies, or we can choose Eros and get in shape physically and mentally, redefining the meaning of aging. We can confront media forces aimed at tearing apart aging spirits and demonstrate that this generation is not narcissistic, self-absorbed, fatuous, or any other condescending label.

To the media and to ourselves, we can resurrect an aphorism from our youth: “Hell no, we won’t go.” Against all odds, we won’t go passively to Thanatos. We will go on.

A Test of Will: On Baby Boomers, Obesity, Illness and Health

2012-05-01T19:28:43-05:00

Two titanic forces are shaping society’s views of aging and health, one uplifting, one destructive. Which will prevail? In the first article of this two-part series, Brent Green addresses “the state of Boomer health”and the grave, looming threats to a generation's collective well-being.

The boy lay pensively inside an oxygen tent, struggling to breathe the cold, aseptic air; nurses and doctors gathered curiously around their small patient. The child was frightened by this sea of white coats, not knowing if their appearance might precede some other invasive treatment for his inability to breathe.

The child had almost died two days earlier from asthmatic bronchoconstriction. Rushed to the hospital emergency room and then stablelized, his heart raced from fear of these doctors plus the speedy effects of epinephrine surging through his bloodstream.

Ten year later, the child had “outgrown” his acute asthma attacks and was becoming a rebellious teenager. Since this was the mid-1960s, around 50% of adult men in the United States smoked cigarettes, the 20th century symbol of iconoclastic culture, the rise of Marlboro Man.

Hollywood icons such as Sammy Davis Jr., Yul Brynner, George Peppard and Steve McQueen popularized the habit. A monolithic tobacco industry employed marketing trickery to make the dangerous habit appear benign if not downright healthful. Smoking was the cultural norm celebrated in marketing and movies.

The teenager became hooked on cigarettes before the United States Surgeon General announced in 1965 that cigarette smoking could be the cause of lung cancer and other serious diseases.

By the time this teenager became a college graduate student in psychology, he was smoking a pack of cigarettes per day, and lung abuse was beginning to take a toll on his health.

The person I’m describing is me. Afflicted by asthma in childhood and addicted to cigarettes in youth, I owe my health today to a man and a philosophy of living that he personified. And to me this man’s life also symbolizes one of two powerful forces that are fighting to control the nation’s collective consciousness about its aging population.

With Baby Boomers passing the thresholds of 50 and 60, the nation will soon experience a veritable explosion of so-called seniors. By 2030, all Boomers will be older than 65, filling out a demographic category representing 71 million Americans and 20% of the U.S. population. Let me begin by identifying the death force, a fate chosen by an alarming number of Boomers getting older.

Life Tests Will.

According to Sigmund Freud, the eminent early-twentieth century psychoanalyst, humans have two essential instincts: a fundamental force for self-preservation, called Eros, and a death drive, called Thanatos.

Freud’s postulated death drive compels humans to engage in risky and self-destructive acts that could lead to death. When Freud proposed these forces, he thought of Thanatos as outwardly risky activities and thrill seeking. He did not include in this conception of human nature’s duality some of the deadly sins known as gluttony and sloth.

Rather than entice death with irresponsible behaviors such as speeding in automobiles, many more Boomers risk slower deaths due to overeating, cigarette smoking, sedentary lifestyles, and abuse of drugs — from alcohol to prescription medications. Recent health statistics are sobering.

Carrying too many pounds is perhaps the most threatening health condition confronting all U.S. citizens, including Boomers. Sixty-five percent of U.S. adults age 20 and older are either overweight or obese, and roughly 30 percent of adults are obese.

According to a report issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, the number of obese Americans 55 to 64 jumped from 31% in 1988-1994 to 39% in 1999-2002. Over-abundant body fat has been correlated with elevated incidence of high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, breathing problems such as asthma, osteoarthritis, cancer, and gall bladder disease.

The frequency of tobacco use among Boomers is just as disquieting. According to an abstract posted on MarketResearch.com, Boomers are still abusing cigarettes and other forms of tobacco in disturbing numbers. “In 2002, 38% of younger Boomers and 31% of older Boomers were current users of some form of tobacco.”

In a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in 2005, nearly half of Americans aged 55 to 64 had high blood pressure, a major risk factor for stroke and heart disease. The report further reveals that 40 percent of people in the same age bracket are obese.

Finally, according to a study by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the use of illicit drugs among Boomers 50 to 59 rose 63% from 2002 to 2005. The agency projects that the number of adults aged 50 and older needing treatment for a substance abuse problem will grow to 4.4 million in 2020, compared to 1.7 million in 2000 and 2001.

The collective spirit of this generation is also under continuous assault from news media, which in recent years have connected the dots between the generation and aging stereotypes. In his satirical novel Boomsday, author Christopher Buckley proposes a future where elderly Boomers are offered tax incentives to commit suicide after turning 65. Martin Kuz, a journalist with SF Weekly, wrote a 4,500 word cover story that echoed Buckley with a reflective headline, Boomtastrophe. As Kuz lamented, “Alas, at the moment, the proposal (for federally subsidized suicides) remains rooted in fiction.” Demeaning op-ed columns and stories have appeared during the last few years in a wide cross-section of newspapers, magazines and certainly in cyberspace at anti-generational websites such as Boomer Deathwatch.

Constant cultural assaults on a generation can have dispiriting implications, with individual members feeling marginalized and less relevant over time. As was demonstrated during the Great Depression when so much of the nation’s fortitude deteriorated with economic malaise, collective angst can overwhelm an individual as the political becomes personal, leading to psychological depression, lower self-esteem and self-destructive behaviors.

Aging in a youth-focused society can overwhelm mere mortals as they confront ageism, obesity, heart disease, arteriosclerosis, diabetes and osteoporosis. Some eat too much, don’t get enough exercise, continue using tobacco, abuse prescription medications, and persist with illicit drug use. Some buy into negative cultural stereotypes and retreat to dark humor in their losses and diseases of aging.

Boomers falling prey to decades of poor healthcare habits begin to lose their lease on life. This can be augmented by the cumulative impact of negative stereotypes, both of a generation and the aging process. The mental framework that follows includes resignation, further abuse and a gradual push away from Eros and determination to live fully.

Some begin the process of dying decades before death.

Next time Brent Green will introduce a man who dramatically changed Brent’s life and pointed to the possibilities of how the Boomer generation can thrive in its aging.

Conclusion: The Boomer Generation Is Changing Aging

2012-04-17T15:25:11-05:00

Ten years after beginning a serious inquiry into understanding the sociological and cultural collision between the Boomer generation and marketing, business, and aging, I have come away with some overarching observations and conclusions.

Aging is a nonnegotiable part of the human condition, a biological imperative that binds, beckons, and bothers. Aging begets elderhood.

These are facts, immutable, independent of generational context.

What remains malleable is flexibility of meaning: social, cultural, and institutional narratives about human aging continue to evolve.

A provocative generation is marshalling its population dominance, economic force, and propensities for transformation, and then spearheading dramatic changes.

Boomers are addressing, modifying, edifying, and even attacking many stultifying conceptions of aging, especially the sociological and psychological context that impinges on media, marketing, and advertising.

Implications are far-reaching, but here are some of the salient:

Boomers embody immense market potential for products and services typically associated with aging, but they expect features, benefits, and branding to address their styles and evolving sensibilities.
This generation also constitutes a compelling market for consumables, durable goods, and services traditionally thought of as the domain of youth markets.
Their online and traditional media habits are often counterintuitive. Their online behavior is becoming more pervasive with every passing year; they watch, listen to, read, and respond to traditional mass media in persuasive numbers.
Boomers sometimes over-represent emerging market segments reflecting a broad contemporary zeitgeist, such as Lifestyles of Health & Sustainability (LOHAS).
They are actively inventing myriad new businesses and companies, large and small, which satisfy innermost impulses for reinvention and control of destiny.
The generation is vigorously changing conventional thinking around commerce and aging, inspiring marketing and advertising campaigns that elevate rather than diminish, cultivate rather than marginalize.
Boomer hegemony over popular culture continues as generational icons and thought leaders create modern chronicles about aging and wisdom, portrayed with panache through television, movies, books, theater, and music.
Baby Boomer men and women are searching for greater meaning and opportunities in later life, and their quest creates stirring prospects for businesses, nonprofits, and institutions, as well as strong potential for new products and services.

Generation Reinvention is changing aging, so much so that some changes may only become obvious through the lens of historical reflection. But fifty years from now, as pundits and scholars reexamine this time and assess the final few decades of the post-World War II generation, I believe they will be generous in their critiques.

There will be tribulations along a winding path to greater age inclusiveness and lifelong engagement among those over 50. There will be serious decisions for companies, communities, and individuals to consider, given the demands and opportunities of aging nations. Fundamental social, cultural, and political changes do not come easily and never have.

Yet, any possible disadvantages of so many growing old simultaneously can be addressed, negotiated, and rendered manageable. In their wisdom, Boomers and older generations will search for optimum balance between life extension, long-lasting social and economic engagement, and inevitable closure. This generation will continue to reinvent itself.

Generation Reinvention promises personal, community, institutional, business, economic, social, and political reinvention—a menu of extraordinary opportunities for those who understand the implications and embrace a reasoned and realistic vision of the future.

Gender and Generational Hallmarks Influencing Boomer Men

2012-04-02T10:38:00-05:00

Middle age, edging toward old age, presents many unique challenges for men, and these momentous changes—biological, social and cultural—become greatly magnified when around 5,500 men cross the threshold of 50 every day.

For nineteen years, beginning in 1996 and until 2015, roughly two million men can be expected to traverse annually the journey across the age 50 horizon. Being 50-something and beyond can be viewed, in a sense, as an enormous population of men experiencing the same life stage at once. They are simultaneously dealing with the idiosyncratic vagaries of physiological changes (such as andropause, obesity, and diseases of aging), while confronting a social milieu that is often ageist and unaccommodating. The U.S. is evolving into a nation addressing an old age imbalance for the first time in its history.

Marketing implications include the rise of grandfathers as a market force, as well as other markets demanding new strategies from companies to take advantage of patriarchy.

Being Boomer Male and Feminism

Boomer men were and are widely supportive of feminism, especially those aspects of the social movement focused on economic equality and full participation in institutional society. Many recall early encounters with feminism during their teen years.

The experiences of feminism often served to confuse Boomer men; they wanted to please their female counterparts but did not necessarily wish to relinquish some of the privileges and territory of maleness as their fathers and grandfathers had defined it. Boomer men sometimes feel caught between opposing values about sexual roles: those celebrating full equality between the sexes, and those that honor the special privileges of manhood such as classic corporate and institutional power. Many privileges under onslaught today spring from ancient religious traditions and time-honored customs when men practiced rituals of initiation, preferred separation from females during specific periods and seasons, and developed their own language nuances and culture.

Patriarchic traditions are under siege today in the cultural narratives expressed through books and movies. For example, an article in The Atlantic described how role reversals are impacting Boomer men, once-upon-a-time large and in-charge of romantic relationships: “Up in the Air, a movie set against the backdrop of recession-era layoffs, hammers home its point about the shattered ego of the American man. A character played by George Clooney is called too old to be attractive by his younger female colleague and is later rejected by an older woman whom he falls in love with after she sleeps with him—and who turns out to be married. George Clooney! If the sexiest man alive can get twice rejected (and sexually played) in a movie, what hope is there for anyone else? The message to American men is summarized by the title of a recent offering from the romantic-comedy mill: She’s Out of My League.”

It seems that Boomer men, out of choice in youth and out of necessity in middle age, have embraced the precepts and implications of feminism. Will women in the future embrace the possibilities of maleness as it finds new expressions in elderhood?

Boomer Men versus Health and Wellness

Baby Boomer men are dichotomous with respect to health & fitness. They grew up in a time when the adult population was largely ignorant of today’s diet and health maxims. For example, I recall consuming a steady diet of high-fat foods, prepared and presented by my well-meaning mother. My mother’s refrigerator was always stocked with cheeses, bacon, whole milk, bologna, and cheese casserole leftovers.

On the contrary, this generation also discovered outdoor sports and jogging in their twenties, influenced an explosion in the fitness facilities industry throughout their thirties and forties, and escorted many diet and weight-loss fads to popular and economic prominence. Thus, when it comes to health and wellness, this is a bifurcated generation. About 40 percent are overweight or obese; a smaller but nevertheless significant percentage is dedicated to maintaining fitness, with accelerating commitment to workout regimens. A new category of master athletes has become prominent in the last few years.

Marketing to Boomer Men as Healing

Boomer men are moving into a period of their lives representing unprecedented opportunities for growth, service, community, and fraternity. Along this path, dangers lurk: irrelevance, anger, depression, lack of appropriate role models, obesity, and a general dearth of purpose. The impact can lead some men to make abrupt and unwise changes, from quitting a job to leaving a marriage.

What might be the source for these challenges of male aging? According to Jed Diamond, Ph.D., author of Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome, acting out by older males involves much more than external stresses. “Often a man’s restlessness and irritability come from the pull of his inner world, not a pull from outside. He may think he needs to leave his family, have an affair, change jobs, run away from home, leave the country. The real longing may be to fulfill his soul’s calling.”

These potential illnesses of the body and soul need healing, and this is the service that many companies in the future can provide. Marketing can be restorative when insights gleaned positively change the way men think about themselves as husbands, partners, fathers, grandfathers, and mentors. Just as marketers have been instrumental in teaching women about breast cancer, so can marketers take a leadership role in helping men understand their own needs and positive ways to address what they want through the choices they make as consumers.

Marketers can teach environmental awareness, the special role of fathers in the nation’s future, and how men and women can co-evolve, wherein both sexes share equally in the American dream.

Toward Relevance and Reinvention

Although late middle age has been traditionally associated with predictability, quiescence, and gradual withdrawal from mainstream society, Boomer men are poised to shatter these stereotypical expectations, challenging, for example, barriers to employment for those over age 50 or 60. The softer side of maturity is a quest for reinvention and self-actualization.

Boomer men have spent decades focused on their responsibilities as employers, employees, fathers, husbands, partners, and business and civic leaders. The stage of life after 50 presents renewed opportunities to reach for greater idealism and relevance in life. It’s a time to discover life anew, and this perpetually seeking cohort will pursue later life with questions, a search for meaning, and by finding ways to bring life into perspective while leaving behind meaningful contributions to society.

The above essay is an edited excerpt from Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future. This 279-page book explores a growing body of research, arguments, insights, and speculation over how Boomers are impacting aging and commerce. Implications from my book are monetary and personal, local and international, intergenerational and multicultural. To learn why these conclusions are significant for your work and future, you can get a copy from online book retailers, including Amazon. Thank you for following my blog and, of course, your interest in Generation Reinvention.

Marketing to Baby Boomers Getting Older: Part Three

2012-03-02T09:27:13-06:00

An article posted by CNBC.com—Bust of the Baby Boomer Economy: ‘Generation Spend’ Tightens Belt—proposes a gloomy economic future due to Boomer aging.

Jessica Rao, the article’s author, argues “because of severe recession and stock market losses, Boomers have less to spend, and further they’re entering a post-career life stage when they will reduce spending anyway.”

While this story may be accurate in aggregate—overall national economic growth may decline from loftier times 15 years ago, due to many factors including global competition—it misses myriad nuances of the Boomer future.

In lockstep with Boomer aging, established industries are about to grow exponentially, and enterprises yet to be conceived will create new wealth. Some interviewed for the article acknowledge that “experience industries” such as travel will see a boost, but this cannot be diminished as an aside. When Boomers focus their wealth on shared goals, such as the need to see the world before they die, billions of dollars will follow. Generation Reinvention will answer unrequited dreams notated on countless bucket lists. Travel and tourism-related expenditures will grow dramatically. Thousands of entrepreneurial businesses will emerge.

For example, the National Geographic Society has developed a series of catered tours called Expeditions. These precisely engineered adventures emphasize learning, and many of the Society’s preeminent experts escort guests on their journeys.

Recreational Equipment Incorporated also showcases appealing travel experiences across the nation and throughout the world. So does Road Scholar, an innovative brand reformulation introduced last year by the former Elder Hostel, primarily to accommodate peripatetic Boomers.

Beyond travel we can expect expansion in other industries aligned with an aging population. The CNBC.com article identifies healthcare for obvious reasons: an aging generation needs more medical care for diseases and disabilities related to aging. But the article doesn’t address explosive developments in “age management” industries.

Age management, more commonly referred to as anti-aging, involves novel technologies such as hormone replacement to fortify aging bodies and slow the effects of aging. This rapidly evolving industry includes modern fitness facilities, personal trainers, nutritional supplements, nutricosmetics, preventative genomics, cable TV programming about wellness, medical spas, alternative medicine practitioners, natural foods merchandisers, and functional foods.

Most in this generation share a wish technically known as “compression of morbidity.” They want more than just life expansion; they hope to stay healthy and active until the end and then quickly pass away. A keystone Boomer value, left over from the seventies’ human potential movement, is self-empowerment, and a burgeoning age-management industry squarely addresses this value.

Just as the Salk vaccine diminished and then all-but eradicated polio when Boomers were children, emerging genetic and nanorobotics technologies promise extraordinary new methods to compress morbidity in aging. Most pharmaceutical companies already embrace this opportunity. That’s why they have more than 400 drugs under development to tackle aging, with Viagra being a noteworthy and welcome early innovation.

Intel, the legendary computer chip manufacturer, is among a growing list of companies developing products to help people stay in their homes and avoid assisted care facilities or nursing homes. Intel has recently formed a strategic alliance with GE; these two technology and innovation giants are now also focusing on age adapative technologies through an initiative called Care Innovations.

Not only do aging-in-place technologies have important implications for quality-of-life, they can reduce national healthcare costs. Forrester Research has projected that in-home medical monitoring, just one facet of this burgeoning industry, could reach $34 billion by 2015 as the leading edge of the generation approaches age 70.

I argue that Boomers will spend their wealth in every industry the CNBC article gives a cloudy forecast.

Boomers might not buy as many second homes as once thought, but they’ll downsize and right size. Many will buy cutting-edge retirement homes in active-aging neighborhoods yet to be conceived. They’ll embrace new urban lifestyles in big cities. They’ll be early adopters of communities wired for the future and nostalgically reminiscent of the past. They’ll refurnish their lives while reducing clutter—another emerging industry.

They might reduce spending on luxury products, but Boomers have always found ways to justify luxuries that match their stage-of-life passions. A luxury necklace is more than a fashion statement when a grandmother buys it as a future heirloom for her granddaughter.

They might stop buying Mercedes automobiles, as speculated in the article, but an enterprising car manufacturer will develop the ideal vehicle to fulfill Boomer driving aspirations in later life. The Volkswagen Beetle became a metaphor for their road-tripping youth, and the Chrysler minivan became the soccer-mom brand when they were raising families. An imaginative “third-age” vehicle, designed to compensate for sensory deficits with cool technologies and universal design, will punctuate their automotive driving future.

Those who warn of Boomer economic catastrophes often look at the future through the rearview mirror. I propose that the Boomer future is robust with opportunities.
Not only is Generation Reinvention changing aging, reshaping their post-career years to be expansive, engaged, and vital, this generation is setting the stage for younger generations to one day receive greater economic and social opportunities in their aging.

Will some businesses lose money because Boomers are aging? Yes. Will some businesses make fortunes because Boomers are aging? Count on it.

Strategic Implications

The future is always fraught with uncertainties, but it’s not reaching too far to conclude that trillions of dollars will be made and spent in the next few decades by a generation that has shaped the consumer economy for the last 40 years. Boomers are going to transform traditional industries focused on mature consumers. They will influence innovation of entirely new industries, whether bricks and mortar or online.

Their imprint on commercial enterprises and nonprofit organizations will endure beyond them. Younger generations will come to accept as normative many new, robust, and egalitarian conceptions of aging as Boomers transform everything in their paths, from housing, health care, and home-based services, to tourism, transportation, and traditions associated with aging. The significant uncertainties in this economic forecast reside in three questions:

• What are you going to do about it?
• How will you be part of this transformation?
• Will you profit from the forthcoming revolutions in consumerism and the sociology of aging?

Marketing to Baby Boomers Getting Older: Part Two

2012-02-21T11:51:00-06:00

A Renaissance of Boomer Marketing – The Journey So Far

Following a recent resurgence of business interest in Boomers as a market niche, aging or not, companies targeting them have become more sophisticated at developing communications that tap into amorphous and dynamic values that accompany generational affiliation and stage-of-life. A renaissance of generational focus is not an accident. Substantial profits have been made in recent years by marketers who have cracked the Boomer marketing code with effective segmentation and creative branding strategies.

Marketing communications create greater demand for products and services. Marketers look for motivating messages that evoke deep emotional responses, whether humor or sadness or passion. They sometimes devise selling messages that cause consumers to recall treasured aspects of their lives with nostalgic ardor and heroic triumph. When marketing messages carry psychologically motivating ideas that tap into a generation’s shared mindset, marketers potentially achieve greater credibility, emotional resonance, and consumer consideration.

For example, prominent advertisers established in the “aging industry” have redesigned their dusty marketing campaigns that once-upon-a-time focused generically on older adults without a sense of generational nuance. From Viagra to Touch of Grey for Men, advertisers have dressed up marketing communications with the goal of communicating, “We’re not about old people. We’re interested in you, the vital, experience-seeking Boomer generation.”

Consider how pharmaceutical advertising has changed during the last few years in an era of consumer-driven healthcare. Recall growth of financial services marketing that targets Boomers with products ranging from 401(k) accounts to lifetime annuities in an era of self-directed investing. Reflect upon all the classic rock music in music beds of newer ad campaigns.

I’ve observed erectile dysfunction medications transform from primarily a way to manage diseases that affect sexuality to becoming a performance enhancer almost any man can find pleasure in using. Viagra advertisements morphed from featuring GI Generation spokesman and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole to showcasing a garage band of Boomer musicians covering Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas” as “Viva Viagra.”

I’ve seen former Beatle Paul McCartney remind those who admired him in youth that it’s not over yet and to “Never Stop Doing What You Love,” a powerful, optimistic message sponsored by Fidelity Investments. Not to be outdone, Ameriprise Financial ran an aggressive television ad campaign for over a year showcasing historical film montages of young Boomers accompanied by a music bed from classic rocker Steve Winwood: “Gimme Some Lovin,” a chart-topping hit from his Spencer Davis Trio days.

I’ve watched a marketing campaign for Dove soap transform women over a certain age into aspirational models, morphing anti-age into Pro Age. I’ve studied how Del Webb advertisements have evolved to showcase Boomers in pursuit of the good life through active lifestyle communities, instilling additional home value through community engagement and lifelong learning. And I have observed how newer contemporary national and international tourism advertisements appeal to Boomers’ emerging thirst for deeper learning while traveling.

Thousands of marketers now agree that generational marketing works amazingly well as long as communications have been constructed with sophisticated insights and authentic production nuances.

The Critics, They Are a’Chargin’

In business and marketing there are always segment naysayers. Some in this marketplace of selling ideas believe Boomers have become fatigued as a consumer segment and it is all downhill from here. Others believe that targeting a generational segment is not a meaningful or effective segmentation strategy.

“Baby Boomers have peaked,” commented investment manager Harry Dent, author of one book lacking accurate prescience, The Roaring 2000s. “They’re going to slow the economy down for the next 12 to 14 years.”

Dent and others who share his views may be missing some essential points about the Boomer generation. From a historical perspective, this generation has always represented a fountain of opportunity for those who are good at predicting what is important to Boomers.

As Steve Gillon observed: “In 1958 Life magazine called children the ‘Built-in Recession Cure,’ concluding that all babies were potential consumers who spearheaded ‘a brand-new market for food, clothing, and shelter.’”

Boomers are today’s built-in recession cure. They constitute a market force largely unabated by economic recession or the aging process. Boomers are the future of many product categories, including healthcare, pharmaceuticals, anti-aging therapies, retirement housing, continuing education, luxury and educational travel, online social networking, consumer and aging-in-place technologies, financial services, consumer packaged goods, many categories of durable goods, purchases for grandchildren, home renovations, and so forth.

Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., author of Age Wave and Age Power, succinctly describes the value of Boomers to the future of business: “When they reach any stage of life, the issues that concern them—whether financial, interpersonal, or even hormonal—become the dominant social, political, and marketplace themes of the time. Boomers don’t just populate existing life stages or consumer trends, they transform them.”

Reacting to an article in Brandweek, also claiming that the Boomer market is on a swift decline while calling for new focus on younger generations, advertising executive Brent Bouchez commented, “This article couldn’t be more off-base. While Boomer spending may have slowed during the last two years, it’s all relative. The fact remains that in the United States people over age 50 represent only 30 percent of the population, but more than half of all consumer spending. Before you put all your eggs in the youth basket, take a look at the numbers and do a bit of math. You’ll find that people over age 50 drive today’s economy, whether up or down. Ninety million people with full wallets and low-balance credit cards are a lot of consumers to ignore. The 50+ cohort controls 75% of the wealth in this country, earns $2.3 trillion annually compared to $1 trillion for the 18-34 group, and they stand to inherit between $14 and $20 trillion over the next 20 years.”

Perhaps Boomers have peaked in their combined spending power across all business categories relative to the late 1990’s when most were in their peak earning years, but aging creates new opportunities for many of the nation’s most critical industries. Plus, substantial market research consistently demonstrates that Boomers are not brand loyal, as myths about aging would have it. They are as brand experimental as their children. They will continue to try new products and sample new lifestyles long into the future.

Nielsen, the goliath global research company, added an exclamation point to this argument. In a July 2010 Marketing Daily article, reporter Sarah Mahoney interviewed Doug Anderson, Nielsen’s SVP of research and development. Anderson’s research conclusions are thought-worthy:

Nielsen’s research says Boomers dominate 1,023 out of 1,083 consumer packaged goods categories, and watch 9.34 hours of video per day—more than any other segment. They also comprise a third of all TV viewers, online users, social media users and Twitter users, and are significantly more likely to have broadband Internet.

“Marketers have this tendency to think the Baby Boom—getting closer to retirement—will just be calm and peaceful as they move ahead, and that’s not true. Everything we see with our behavioral data says these people are going to be active consumers for much longer. They are going to be in better health, and despite the ugliness around the retirement stuff now, they are still going to be more affluent,” Anderson says. “They are going to be an important segment for a long time.”

The critics of Boomer business value are simply wrong.

Marketing to Baby Boomers Getting Older: Part One

2012-02-03T15:28:00-06:00

In 2010, an interesting demographic symmetry arrived. Americans born between 1946 and 1964—the birth years traditionally used by pundits to delineate the Baby Boomer Generation—celebrated birthdays somewhere between 46 and 64.

For the first time in this generation’s history, millions of Boomers may have considered a rhetorical question posed by Beatle Paul McCartney in his 1967 hit, “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Will you still need me?

Family and friends will continue to need them, whether now between 48 or 66. And businesses will need Boomer customers. The generation is hardly finished propelling profits. The nonprofit world will need them also as this generation turns more from careers toward contributions. Even nations aging demographically will need the generation to remain engaged.

Although it’s worthwhile to explore the worth and value of this generation from social and cultural perspectives, my primary focus has been on economic questions circulating in business circles.

What is a generation from a marketing and advertising perspective?

How can we effectively market to the Boomer generational segment?

What opportunities are developing to target Boomer men?

It can be complicated to condense a generation into a neat package; generations do not have obvious beginnings and endings, nor do individual cohort members possess universal characteristics. Nevertheless, diverse and distributed as they may be, Boomers are bound together by a compelling sense of their generational reference group. Many remain enamored of a rambunctious twentieth century history and “collective mentalities” springing from their sometimes-impetuous formative years.

Critics of this generation’s abundant sense of identity may perceive navel gazing. This in-your-face generation has stirred up impatience and derision. Even some outspoken Boomers express a bitter distaste of their peers, further fomenting stereotypes and critical caricatures.

Are Boomers a generation of self-absorbed egoists, or did a distinctive convergence of historical, demographic, sociological, and technological forces cause the Boomer generation to incorporate a robust sense of identity somewhat akin to a social class?

Steve Gillon, author of Boomer Nation and an acclaimed academic and historian, observed that not all generations possess a common identity that can be as widely understood and addressed: “While past generations have shared common experiences, they developed only a loose sense of generational identity. Largely because of their size and the emergence of mass media, especially television, Boomers are the first generation to have a defined sense of themselves as a single entity.”

With 30+ years of experience marketing to Boomers, I concur with Steve Gillon.

Arguably, Boomers belong to a cohort that has been more examined, evaluated, and explained than all other generations combined. Whether this is fair is not my place to conclude. I prefer to pursue a more pragmatic course: to shape understanding about this generation from a commercial perspective, and to articulate how this cohort can be addressed today by businesses and nonprofits for the development of mutually beneficial relationships.

This generation of Americans has long been the nation’s dominant consumer segment. Boomers today constitute about 40 to 50 percent of all consumer spending, and the generation also controls roughly 70 percent of the nation’s assets. Part of this economic capacity can be attributed to the generation’s commanding size: Boomers represent over 26 percent of the entire U.S. population, and roughly one in three American adults.

As Gillon also reminds us, Boomers became the first generation raised with broadcast television providing a ubiquitous media vehicle for shared experiences, collective value formation, self-awareness, and powerful marketing fads. Boomers first started learning about and creating demand for products advertised on small black and white television sets during Saturday morning cartoons and special programming developed to appeal to their evolving and collective sense of self, whether the Mickey Mouse Club, Leave It to Beaver or The Brady Bunch. More cohort-sensitive media programming and marketing campaigns followed through the decades.

Thus, two powerful forces—dominant demographics and the first generation raised with broadcast television—bestowed upon Boomers a layered and complex sense of identity, the values of which continue to propel them into the future. As the generation persists in reflecting upon its own aging, relevance, and future, I believe that this Boomer-sense-of-collective-self will grow new dimensions and business opportunities. Boomers will keep inspiring sophisticated new advertising and business solutions that address not only their shared history, but also their shared conceptions of the aging process and sense of who they are becoming as mature adults.

So, what’s the point of examining marketing from a generational perspective?

This is about commerce intersecting with meaning.

To be continued next time ...

Ferris Bueller, Honda CR-V, the Super Bowl and Trailing-Edge Baby Boomers (a.k.a. Jonesers)

2012-02-01T11:41:00-06:00

For those of you now past age 47 who were born, reached maturity, and lived in the sociological wake of Leading-Edge Baby Boomers (b. 1946 to 1955), you may have felt slightly disenfranchised, culturally speaking. Maybe being shunned has even stirred deeper feelings of sibling rivalry.

If you were born between 1956 and 1964, coming of age in the 1980’s, you may be harboring unfathomable yearning feelings (a.k.a. jonesing), wondering when your birth cohort would ever receive its due—being noticed and catered to by major marketers and brands.

Well, jones no more.

Just in time for all the Super Bowl 46 brouhaha, Honda has launched a new TV ad squarely targeting devotees of culturally significant movies such as WarGames, The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire.

However, this time the brand-spanking new CR-V is the escape wagon for Matthew Broderick, reprising his legendary role as Ferris Bueller (as in Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

In this docudrama, Ferris has become Matthew, who calls his demanding boss to feign the flu so he can recapture a work day for himself, cruising around Southern California in a 2012 Honda CR-V (a bit pedestrian next to the 1961 Ferrari GT California featured in the movie—but still a practical set of yuppie wheels).

And so we follow Matthew reprising his bewildered character: being impulsive, zany and inane as he escapes the drudgery of his existence as an overworked and undervalued A-List Hollywood actor.

If you came of age in the 80’s and thought of Ferris and his reprobate costars as your kind of antiauthoritarian characters—not hippies but hip—then this ninety-second Super Bowl ad is just for you. Honda is aiming the newest rendition of its most successful SUV product ever built (with annual sales exceeding 200,000 units per year) directly at you: the Trailing-Edge Boomers, Cuspers, and/or Generation Jonesers.

Congratulations for finally achieving full status as “the demo,” no longer standing in the long shadow of your older brothers and sisters.

Your day has come, and it’s a day off.

Boomers and Generational Identification: the Psychosocial Triumvirate

2012-01-02T12:18:02-06:00

GIF credit: Gustaf Mantel

Three factors interact to create our sense of generational awareness and identification.

The Cohort Effect recognizes that each of us is born in a unique historical time. As we mature we share many profound experiences in a social context with our peers, principally when we are between ages 15 and 25. Broadly shared experiences—such as war, catastrophes, major technological innovations, popular culture—tend to modify each individual’s worldview and psychological adjustment because of the social milieu in which we live, especially as adolescents. This is how generations acquire unique personalities.

The Period Effect refers to the changing and evolving environmental events occurring around a generation through the lifespan, particularly after coming of age as adults. These period effects can be national and world events, emergence of new technologies, and/or high-impact popular media culture. This is how generations change over time as major external events cause adaptation to present circumstances.

The Age Effect is based on the idea that “seasons of life” influence how we interpret and act on the major events in our lives, and these developmental hallmarks tend to be consistent across generations. Every age or stage of life involves typical challenges and priorities, and these age-related challenges tend to be congruent across generations. This is how generations can be quite similar concerning adaptation to major life-stage themes, from parenthood to grandparenthood, and from marriage to retirement.

These three psychosocial factors or Effects interact to create “fundamental integrative attitudes” in youth and eventually “collective mentalities” during maturation, constituting the unique nature of each generation.

Which factor has the most impact on a generation at any given time? Nobody has a firm answer to this question. Each factor has potentially powerful influence, but each factor can be more or less significant depending on contemporary context.

Generation Reinvention, my most recent book, includes an original self-directed workshop that provides a vehicle for you to gain a better understanding of these Effects as they pertain to your colleagues and you.

When you undertake this workshop, you can gain perspective on your own generational influences and how much or how little your values and outlook differ from those typical of many Boomers. Greater generational awareness will help you become more effective at communicating across generations, especially through marketing.

Boomer Revolution: The End of Sarcopenia, Compression of Morbidity

2011-12-12T10:07:00-06:00

The aged man struggled to get out of his recliner. His leg muscles could not lift his weight into a vertical position, so he fell back into the chair, exhausted. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to command his weak muscles to help him stand. He barely had strength to push upwards with his hands against armrests.

Finally in a single determined push with arms and forward momentum from rocking, he stood, though unsteadily. It took a few seconds for him to find his balance so he could then shuffle from his recliner to reach the bathroom. There he would need to sit again, and he knew that leaving the stool would be equally arduous — maybe impossible. How he dreaded the idea of becoming immobilized and unable to escape the prison of sitting.

One morbid challenge confronting Boomers as they age many not ring familiar to you. But when you think about it, you might consider aging from a different perspective. Called sarcopenia, this challenge involves muscle wasting due to aging.

Sarcopenia derives from the Latin roots, "sarco" for muscle, and "penia" for wasting, making it a “muscle wasting disease.” Sarcopenia is a byproduct of the aging process, the progressive loss of muscle fiber that begins in middle age. The process starts in our 30s but, unchecked, leads to rapid deterioration in strength and endurance in the mid-60s. Without intervention, adults can lose as much as 8% of muscle mass every ten years.

Sarcopenia propels a cascade of other medical problems. Less muscle mass and strength leads to faster fatigue. Chronic fatigue leads to less physical activity and a more sedentary lifestyle. Less activity results in fat gain and obesity. Excess weight contributes to glucose intolerance, type II diabetes and a condition called metabolic syndrome. This syndrome can then cause hypertension and increasing risk for cardiovascular disease. The end-state of sarcopenia is death.

Muscle wasting contributes dramatically to eldercare costs. Once older patients become incapable of the activities of daily living, such as rising unassisted from a recliner, they are usually institutionalized in nursing homes and assisted living facilities where most remain until death.

I recently participated in an Innovators Summit: “a unique forum where leaders representing a variety of sectors join together to design new business models, network about possibilities, and spawn new insights around the aging marketplace of the future.” Staged at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, where I was formerly advertising and public relations director, the Summit brought together professionals involved in aging services, home healthcare, architecture, homebuilding, academics, medicine, technology, wellness, retailing, and of course, marketing. Participating organizations included Ecumen, Eskaton, IDEO, GE, Pfizer, Intel and AARP.

A significant part of this exercise in “deep conversation” involved forming interdisciplinary innovation groups addressing seven topical areas, including “home based care,” “new financial models,” “dementia and cognitive health,” and “livable communities.” I joined a group discussing the future of “prevention and wellness,” an area that his interested me for decades and has involved clients of Brent Green & Associates, such as EAS, Men’s Fitness magazine, the Institute for Health Realities, Men’s Health magazine, and Nestle.

Although wellness encompasses a vast array of subspecialties, from nutrition to socialization, I suggested we focus our discussion on sarcopenia. Knowing that this clinical-sounding word needed a more innovative title, a preventative medicine physician on our team suggested “Strong Muscle, Strong Living” as a friendlier, more benefit-oriented statement of purpose.

From this starting point, the innovation team began envisioning business possibilities. We summarized our innovation as follows: “An integrated package of products and services with substantial media messaging dedicated to empowering the 50+ market to maintain muscle strength and mobility across the life span. This package includes assessment, nutrition science, exercise technology, positive messaging, mobility health and education.”

Imagine a public service media campaign developed to help adults 50+ become more aware of the hazards and risks associated with unchecked muscle wasting. What if the alien word “sarcopenia” or a friendlier euphemism became as familiar to the public as ED — erectile dysfunction? Could this campaign reduce healthcare costs by focusing 50+ adults on muscle maintenance long before the pernicious downward spiral toward frailty begins?

Our innovation team then imagined some business implications of sarcopenia mitigation as a public health priority. The first obvious area of opportunity lies in nutrition science.

Abbott, for example, recently introduced a brand extension of Ensure, its nutritional beverage supplement often associated with eldercare institutions. The company has named its new product Ensure Muscle Health. Flavored shakes include 13 grams of protein, 24 vitamins and minerals, and a quixotic new ingredient Abbott calls “Revigor,” an amino acid metabolite.

Beta-hydroxy beta-methylbutyrate, popularly referred to as HMB, is a supplement that may act as a “protein breakdown suppressor” and thus can serve as a performance facilitator for resistance training such as weight lifting. According to some proponents, HMB boosts strength levels, enhances gains in muscle size and strength, and prevents post-workout muscle tissue breakdown. Clearly, nutrition science can become the wellspring of future supplemental food products that lessen sarcopenia progression while improving strength and endurance in older adults.

Proponents of HMB and other supplements insist that nutrition by itself will not prevent muscle wasting. Thus, opportunities abound for fitness equipment designers to develop machines and training regimens that can help Boomers work out more effectively and frequently. A fitness machine has yet to be invented that takes a lot of the work out of working out, thus helping users push through psychological resistance to resistance training.

The next successful video workout program may be waiting for a superstar proponent. For example, Jane Fonda’s Workout has been credited for launching the fitness craze among Boomers who in the 1980s were arriving in middle age.

The 73-year-old, Oscar-winning actress introduced in 2010 a new DVD set targeting older adults called Jane Fonda Prime Time. Two new videos are entitled “Walk Out” and “Fit and Strong,” with the first focused on aerobics and the second on strength training. This regimen is heading in the right direction, but the exercise level required to participate is more suited to those already experiencing handicapping physical limitations. The most on-target innovation may be a hybrid series of workouts: less aggressive than youth-oriented P90X and more challenging than Fonda’s tamed-down workout for folks already significantly limited by disabilities.

Sarcopenia, a mystical word not to be confused with a Greek isle in the Aegean Sea, stimulates grand possibilities for innovation… in nutrition science, fitness equipment, video training programs, retirement community social engineering, public education, consumer products, and marketing budgets to sell all the aforementioned opportunities. Our innovation team agreed that not only can a national focus on sarcopenia potentially mitigate premature aging and death, but this agenda could further reduce spurious healthcare financial burdens confronting the nation.

Strong muscles mean stronger, sometimes longer lives. Through sarcopenia mitigation, Boomers can compress their morbidity — thereby lessening the burdens of old age illnesses by compressing an unwanted time of life into the shortest period possible before the final exit.

To visualize this cultural and business revolution personified, think of Jack LaLanne, a pioneer in fitness and strength training, who had a robust and productive life until age 96, dying from pneumonia after just a few weeks of illness. Strong muscles, strong life, quick death from natural causes. The circle of life doesn’t come full circle any better.

In Memoriam: David B. Wolfe, author, thought leader and a friend for the ages

2011-12-03T16:37:06-06:00

Most of us consider ourselves lucky if we find a single mentor early in life — someone who has the wisdom and compassion to lead us closer to our dreams, talents and values. It is even rarer to discover a mentor later in life who nudges us to reconsider where we’ve come from and where we’re heading next.

One man I first met just eight years ago had an influence on me that changed the way I pursued a marketing career fettered by twentieth-century baggage. His name is David B. Wolfe, and he finished his work and gave us his final gifts during this lifetime on Saturday, December 3, 2011.

The best way I can honor David’s memory is to tell you how he influenced my thinking, as he has countless other colleagues worldwide.

As a young advertising executive I had three demographic priorities as I planned campaigns and made media buys: adults 18 to 34, adults 18 to 49, and adults 25 to 54.

These arbitrary, age-based segmentations meant more investments in younger markets because most believed that the value of older consumers falls with rising age. Traditionally, post-50 consumers faded from marketers’ radar screens altogether, except of course for age-specific products addressing health deficiencies due to aging such as Geritol and Depends.

Today, youth-dominated marketing has become increasingly counterproductive. The 25-to-44-age cohort, which spends most per capita on automobiles, housing and housing related products, shrank by 4.3 million people in the first decade of the new century. People 40 and older now outnumber 18-to-39-year olds by 138 million to 87 million.

Then along came David.

For over 25 years, he has been an articulate and respected author and spokesman for Ageless Marketing and a paradigm shift toward understanding changing consumer needs as we age. David stood among a handful of thought leaders who recognized the idiosyncrasies of customer behavior in middle-age and beyond — those who understood the economic potential of older consumer segments. He then provoked innovative thinking about marketing to older adults through two seminal books: Serving the Ageless Market and Ageless Marketing.

David was also a visionary in identifying shifting business values paralleling population aging, a maturing, if you will, of the value that companies and their products bring to our lives. He brilliantly expressed these insights as coauthor of the influential business book, Firms of Endearment.

His most recent book, Brave New Worldview, investigates how society’s values are dramatically changing as a result of underlying trends of aging demographics and psychosocial maturation of the human species. For one, we’re finally learning to think with both hemispheres of our brains, an evolutionary change that may be fundamental to survival of humankind.

Because of loving assistance from friends and colleagues in The Society, a mature marketing think group David cofounded with Dick Ambrosius in 1993, this book will be published soon. It is noteworthy and characteristic that David devoted all his diminishing energy to finishing this book, editing and polishing up to and including the final day of his life.

David will be missed by many colleagues and friends worldwide. Yet his legacy will live on for generations. And every person reading this homage can pay tribute to the memory of a cheerful and thoughtful man by recognizing and elevating the economic and societal importance of aging consumer markets.

Among all the accomplishments of his lifetime, David will be remembered as an articulate and forceful friend for the ages.

Note: It was my privilege to interview David earlier this year for my radio program, Generation Reinvention. You can listen to David’s final reflections about his work, his books and his values by visiting the WGRN network show page.

The Boomer Legacy According to Tom Friedman and Steve Jobs

2011-10-14T15:05:24-05:00

“Indeed, if there is one sentiment that unites the crises in Europe and America it is a powerful sense of 'baby boomers behaving badly' -- a powerful sense that the generation that came of age in the last 50 years, my generation, will be remembered most for the incredible bounty and freedom it received from its parents and the incredible debt burden and constraints it left on its kids.”

Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, wrote these observations last July while visiting Athens, Greece, where he apparently achieved a commanding view of the debt and unemployment crises confounding his homeland.

Several weeks later while I was watching Fareed Zakaria’s GPS news-magazine on CNN, special guest Tom Friedman reiterated his generational vitriol. He criticized Boomers and their “situational values” in contrast with their parents' generation which maintained “sustainable values.”

According to the celebrated editorial columnist, The Greatest Generation saved prodigiously, consumed prudently, and elevated the nation into an international economic powerhouse following World War II. On the other hand, Boomers have been profligate spenders while failing to leave the nation in better condition than the nation they inherited from their parents.

My parents were members of the Greatest or G.I. Generation, and I respectfully honor them and their generation’s significant accomplishments. They delivered our nation from the evil of World War II and created an enviable post-war economy. They sacrificed much. However, I cannot rebut Tom Friedman’s critique of Baby Boomers without also addressing his hagiography of our parents’ generation.

When I graduated from college in 1972, Boomers faced an arduous employment market due to their large numbers and a tired industrial economy running out of jobs. Interest rates had started escalating to extraordinary heights. Housing prices began inflating beyond reach of many first-time home buyers.

Severe segregation still controlled the nation’s social and cultural institutions. President Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis had become the obsession of news media. Industry routinely assaulted the environment, with The Love Canal Disaster being paradigmatic. A polarizing Vietnam War inspired outrage from most corners of society while draining the U.S. Treasury. An OPEC oil embargo hovered on the horizon.

I remember well the first credit card offering I received and its alluring promise of “buy now, pay later.” The consumer credit card companies emerging then fell under the direction of financial wizards from the G.I. Generation. For example, Joseph P. Williams, born in 1915, created the first nationwide bank credit card in 1958, which later evolved into the VISA brand. This industry thrived through the last half of the 20th century by encouraging Boomers to spend and consume. Our culture celebrated consumption, fostering debt and imprudent overspending: greed is good.

Nevertheless, Boomers have nurtured a more egalitarian society than previous generations presided over. Minorities and women have a better shot at the American dream today in a society where Fareed Zakaria, who was born in Mumbai, India, could someday gain international status as a CNN commentator. But that isn’t the end of it. Boomers have infiltrated every sector of business, culture, science, and the arts with idealism and a will to improve the nation.

We have witnessed inspired thought leadership on television with Oprah Winfrey; in science with Craig Venter and Francis Collins (genome sequencing); and in literature with Pulitzer Prize winners Michael Cunningham (The Hours) and Richard Russo (Empire Falls). The cinematic arts have been elevated by notable directors such as Steven Spielberg and his Oscar-winning movie Schindler’s List and James Cameron and his epic environmental tale entitled Avatar. For over 30 years, the economy has been a beneficiary of Boomer-led companies, from Bill Gates’ Microsoft to Steve Jobs’ Apple.

The Boomer legacy includes more inclusive institutions, myriad technological innovations, an enduring spirit of entrepreneurship, and worldwide media clout. The nation is still imperfect, but still America percolates with opportunities awaiting optimists.

Even though the nation is embroiled in two wars, young males today do not face military conscription upon high school graduation. Even though times are rough economically, hordes graduating from colleges today demonstrate the extent to which their parents have advocated and enabled post-secondary education. Even though traditional American industries are under enormous pressure to change, the nation charges forward with enviable innovation in biotechnology, healthcare, alternative energy, and the Internet.

We may be experiencing difficult times, but our problems run deeper and wider than the actions or non-actions of a single generation. Every generation has fallen short of perfection. Every generation has confronted its own unique challenges. Every generation has helped forge a more perfect union.

Immediately following his interview with Tom Friedman, CNN host Zakaria turned to the final report of his show: death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who Zakaria lauded for Jobs’ vast business and cultural accomplishments even after overcoming two significant failures: dropping out of college and being fired at Apple.

Zakaria did not mention Jobs’ generational affiliation or how substantially this inventive genius represented signature values of his generation: a determined work ethic, zest for creative self-expression, personal empowerment, transformation, romanticism, anti-authoritarianism, entrepreneurship, and individuality.

These seem like sustainable American values to me.

A New Digital Art Form Redefines Generational Marketing through Boomer Nostalgia

2011-09-21T13:14:00-05:00

In a previous post, I argued in favor of Generational Marketing — an approach to brand development that connects products and services to generational nostalgia, merging past with present.

This approach to building brand identity and product awareness has critics. Some believe nostalgia borrows too much attention away from a product: we get caught up in an ad’s nostalgic moments and then ignore or forget the product being promoted. Some insist that nostalgia is focused on the past, and Boomers today are looking ahead: past experiences divert thinking to bygone life chapters that have been read, closed and preferentially forgotten.

My arguments about the efficacy of Generational Marketing in this blog and in my most recent book, Generation Reinvention, are based on social science research and sociological theory. This line of reasoning appeals to critical thinking but possibly does not drive my points home with emotional clarity. In this post I am sharing a few visceral experiences of the past. Consider an advertisement for Coca Cola:

For movie fans among you, does the setting appear vaguely familiar? This portrayal of a nighttime cityscape has not yet happened but rather it is a glimpse into the future: November 2019, to be exact. But wait! The image actually became part of cultural history in 1982 through a Stanley Kubrick movie entitled Blade Runner. And in May 2011 a striking manifestation of this memorable movie moment then emerged through a powerful new art form.

So, is this cinematic moment an image of the past, present or future? Could the power of generationally shared nostalgia give consumers another memorable brand impression, increasing awareness of and consideration for Coca Cola?

Artist Gustaf Mantel has created an extraordinary series of animated GIFs that brings new resonance and emotional endurance to cultural history. Called cinemagraphs, these subtle animations merge the powerful selectivity of still photography with video to portray “something more than a photo but less than a video.”

Now, let me ask you if this copy seems familiar: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” If this statement does not strike a responsive chord, perhaps Mantel's GIF will transport you back to an eerie moment 31 years ago:

What if a contemporary marketer for a brand of blue jeans integrated this memorable image of Jack Nicholson in The Shining with a product message aimed at Boomers — something about the iconic comfort of chic casual blue jeans? Or what might a tennis ball marketer do with such a moving and memorable vignette?

Generational nostalgia can be captured in many ways, especially when marketers merge the newest technologies with shared experiences and an art form that gives new meaning to hard-wired memories.

If a marketer wants to stir up anti-authoritarian feelings in a generation — the sense of being outcast for superficial reasons such as looking old in a youth-oriented society — the marketer might resurrect dialogue from another classic movie: “Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.”

And then the marketer shares this visual reminder of what it felt like to be dismissed during youth for arbitrary reasons:

In a direct mail campaign my team created for Orange Glo International and its OxiClean brand, we transformed a photographic image with nostalgic appeal into a brochure cover — tapping a memory buried in the psyche of almost any Boomer who in childhood took a lingering bubble bath while playing with a favorite toy:

With cinemagraphic technology, we could have expressed our idea in another, perhaps even more memorable way:

“When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.” The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Some viewers looking at these moving images will see merely photographs enhanced by motion-capture technology, perhaps experiencing some charming interpretations of bygone times. I see something more. I see potential for product marketers —particularly those employing online media channels — to reach the hearts and minds of a generation with nostalgic moments reinterpreted for contemporary times and products.

This may not have been the primary intention of artist Gustaf Mantel, but his new art form has thought worthy implications for marketers trying to create brand impressions in a much cluttered online world:

A Case for Generational Marketing and Baby Boomers

2011-08-05T12:02:05-05:00

In the realm of marketing to adults older than 45, vigorous debates arise about how best to construct advertising messages and frame offers in memorable and compelling ways. Pundit opinions fall into three overlapping theoretical camps.

Some are proponents of “Ageless Marketing” as conceived and articulated by my colleague David Wolfe. Ageless Marketing is “marketing based not on age but on values and universal desires that appeal to people across generational divides. Age-based marketing reduces the reach of brands because of its exclusionary nature. In contrast ageless marketing extends the reach of brands because of its inclusionary focus.”

Some are impassioned about “Life-Stage Marketing,” which understands the consumer from the life-stage they’re experiencing in the present. So, for example, adults between 45 and 55 today have a lot in common such as children in high school or college, the beginning of caregiving for aging parents, accumulation of significant consumer debt, and so forth. Further, stage of life implies psychological priorities. Thus, some argue that middle-age or the “Fall Stage” includes a reduction of material pursuits in favor of accumulating experiences.

And some are committed to “Generational Marketing,” an approach for which I’m a proponent. As I write in my newest book, Generation Reinvention:

“… a generation implies membership in a unique group, bound by common history, which eventually develops similar values, a sense of shared history, and collective ways of interpreting experiences as the group progresses through the life course.

“One way to describe this phenomenon of generational identification is the concept of cohort effect, which sociologist Karl Mannheim wrote about as ‘the taste, outlook, and spirit characteristic of a period or generation.’ He also referred to the notion of zeitgeist, the idea that a generation has a collectively shared sense of its formative historical period.

“Marketers tap into the cohort effect when they remind consumers of cherished events and experiences from the past and connect these acquired memories with brand identity.”

Critics deride Generational Marketing as superficial: feckless attempts to connect nostalgic memories with products. Boomers aren’t invested in their formative years, critics argue, they’re looking ahead. Formative experiences are of little contemporary consequence. What’s done is done.

Aside from my assertion that humans always recall nostalgic moments with enduring and emotionally powerful reflections—and therefore these memories can become potent motivational triggers in contemporary marketing communications—sophisticated new consumer research substantiates the affirming power of nostalgia.

Authors of a multi-continent research study, published by the Association for Psychological Science, determined that feelings of loneliness—emotions such as unhappiness, pessimism, self-blame and depression—reduce perceptions of social support. Loneliness can be alleviated by seeking support from social networks. And here’s the surprising psychological insight: nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, increases perceptions of social support. A sense of social connectedness nourishes the soul. Nostalgia functions similar to optimism in maintaining health. Nostalgia, appropriately harnessed, inspires positive feelings, including positive brand associations and affinity. (APS, Vol. 19, #10)

This does not mean that creating an advertising strategy around shared generational experiences is always on target or well-executed. Creative problems begin when brand associations are hackneyed or arbitrary.

Misjudgments sometimes occur when those outside a generational cohort superficially interpret generational experiences. We’ve seen recent ads targeting Boomers that connect brands with peace symbols, classic rock music, and the rebellious spirit of Boomer youth. Once potentially powerful as a creative approach, connecting brands to the spirit of the sixties has been done.

Other marketers create messages where psychic connection between nostalgic memories and a brand have little in common; that is, brand utilities have nothing to do with the creative message.

St. Joseph Aspirin recently launched a TV ad featuring Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie Haskell, cheeky friend of Beaver Cleaver in the hit 1950s sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. Significantly, this is the first situation comedy ever written from a child’s viewpoint, thus elevating potential for nostalgic resonance with the children of that time: Leading-Edge Boomers.

Although this ad deserves acknowledgement for resurrecting an actor who is part of Boomer nostalgia in a fairly big way, we are left wondering what Eddie Haskell has to do with headache pain relief. (Maybe the product is a palliative for the headaches Eddie often caused Beaver’s parents, June and Ward.) But brand connections between Eddie and an OTC analgesic are vague. Even minor copy changes could have strengthened ties between Eddie, the obnoxious neighborhood headache, and a popular aspirin brand of the same time. To the credit of this advertisement’s creators, contemporary Eddie helps reposition the brand for what Boomers need today: cardiovascular health. (A note of caution: Ad critiques rarely consider sales or measured changes in brand awareness/preference generated by a campaign, and these performance measures are, indeed, the bottom line in judging marketing effectiveness.)

Successful Generational Marketing requires mastery of nuance and meaning. Linkages between a brand and nostalgic meaning must make sense. Further, all formative life experiences of a generation, from early childhood through young adulthood, have potential for development. Boomers possess a rich repertoire of shared experiences beyond those that occurred between 1967 and 1973. Potential nostalgic motivational triggers go way beyond Woodstock.

Based on thirty years of experience marketing to Boomers, I can affirm with my career and portfolio that Generational Marketing succeeds when executed properly. I have created numerous ad campaigns and promotions, dating back to 1981, that performed by generating sales, memberships, donations, inquiries and leads.

Some argue that Generational Marketing is exclusionary: marketing messages that appeal to a specific generation exclude members of other generations who might not identify with the message or conclude that the product is not for them.

I say, “Welcome to market segmentation.” Target marketing forces choices about who is most likely to buy a product, their common characteristics, and the most potent ways to evoke an emotional connection, to inspire a brand-consumer relationship. These choices force exclusion. As one of my mentors once instructed, “Brent, always make your easiest sales first.” Some of my successes in advertising and marketing correlate with the degree to which my team was effectively exclusionary.

Further, big brand marketers create and target messages to multiple segments for the same brand. When I handled advertising and sales promotions for McDonald’s in Colorado, we executed campaigns targeting young parents, children, Latinos, African Americans, and older customers. Each of these segmented campaigns involved sophisticated messaging that considered cultural and social nuances of the segment. McDonald’s brand meant slightly different things to different segments.

As I have written and instructed in my speeches, Boomers, particularly Leading-Edge Boomers (born between 1946 and 1955) have a sturdy sense of generational identification. This is due to two factors.

First, the Leading-Edge grew up during significant cultural and social upheaval. Karl Mannheim and several social science researchers have confirmed that turmoil in youth strengthens generational identification and durability of formative experiences.

Second, Boomers comprise the only generation to have grown up with just three monolithic television networks. No generation older or younger experienced this convergence of technology with youth. Boomers growing up in Alaska and Florida shared many of the same televised moments and thus learned the same cultural and social messages. We watched Eddie Haskell weekly in dominant generational percentages. We either liked or disliked Eddie, but we all recall his shifty character. This isn’t about the past or future; it’s about who we are: the sum-total of our life experiences.

Nevertheless, as a marketer, I’ve always maintained a full toolbox. The three Boomer marketing approaches discussed here can succeed when well executed. All three approaches can fail when creators have inadequate understanding of the market, message, methodology or meaning conveyed through their ads.

Ageless Marketing can inspire advertising messages that appeal across generational divides because of commonly shared values, such as the nearly universal desire for a cleaner environment. Boomers and their Generation Y children share passion almost equally for greener living and sustainability.

Life-stage Marketing can offer another path to success for those who connect a product or service with a stage need. Many Boomers today need help in understanding their caregiving challenges and responsibilities. This hallmark of their current life-stage predisposes them to offers of caregiving support and education.

And Generational Marketing can create powerful associations between a brand and a segment’s formative experiences. These nostalgic associations can become instant shorthand for positioning a contemporary brand constrained by cluttered media and product/service parity. Nostalgia is rich with opportunities for deeply personal brand interactions.

Those who insist that Generational Marketing is the least effective way to create advertising targeting Boomers may simply not understand this approach at a level of expertise necessary to be successful.