Baby Boomers: Generation Ageless

Don�t make the mistake of ignoring baby boomers, still the biggest business opportunity for years to come.

By J. Walker Smith, Special to R&I -- Restaurants & Institutions, 12/1/2007

Don’t close your doors on baby boomers. The caravan of hungry boomers is not about to thin out. Boomers may be aging, but it’s the boomer approach to aging that matters, not the number of candles on their birthday cakes.

Youthfulness, impact and possibility are the cornerstones of the aging-boomer mindset that is best summarized by the title of our new book about this cohort (first given its now-iconic name decades ago by one of the founders of our firm)—"Generation Ageless: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Live Today…And They’re Just Getting Started" (Collins, 2007). Boomers are remaking what it means to get older and thus are revolutionizing marketing to aging consumers. Fresh research reported in our book shows nearly universal agreement among aging boomers about remaining actively engaged with life and the marketplace:

96.6% agree it is important to "maintain a youthful spirit about life"
92.2% see "no reason why young people and older people can’t enjoy the same kinds of things"
89% do not believe "you have to feel less vital and energetic as you get older"
88.7% believe that "in the future, older people will be much more active and engaged than older people in the past."

This is not wishful thinking. Medical advances and higher standards of living will offer boomers the benefits of a healthier, more vigorous old age than the one lived by previous generations.

Combine this energetic way of thinking about aging with the size of the boomer demographic and the result is a group ignored at one’s peril. Boomers have the numbers. Younger generations are simply not big enough for boomers not to matter most. Boomers are the 78-million-strong product of a 19-year exception to the 100-year-plus decline in U.S. fertility rates that began in the late 19th Century. Boomers didn’t invent the sexual revolution; they are its offspring, the aptly described pig in the python.

Still Crazy After All These Years

Besides hefty numbers, boomers have far more money and influence than trailing generations do—advantages they will continue to enjoy for the foreseeable future. Boomers are an enduring, overwhelming presence in the marketplace; they will be the biggest business opportunity for years to come. It is myopic to overlook boomer priorities, preferences and potential. Unfortunately, though, ignoring aging boomers is standard marketing practice.

Doing more to appeal to baby boomers does not mean doing more of the same old things, however. Not only will boomers be different from old people in the past, but also they will be different from what they themselves were in years past. Baby boomers have moved beyond novelty for its own sake, but as seen in the chart, in many ways they remain just as interested in innovation and originality as today’s twentysomething echo boomers. In the boomer survey completed for "Generation Ageless," the median response to a question asking the age at which someone is too old to start anything "new and innovative" was 86.6!

Boomers will engage with the marketplace to the fullest extent that they are able. The limiting factor is not interest, energy or openness; it is a dearth of opportunities. When reviewing traffic and ticket figures, remember that boomers can’t order what’s not on the menu. Diminishing interest in what’s available today masks an undiminished interest in what could—and should—be available tomorrow.