Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ Brent Green (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Brent Green knows a thing or three about marketing to baby boomers; he proves it with this masterful, readable book -- Jay Conrad Levinson, author Guerrilla Marketing book series, January 17, 2003

Brent Green shows you how to get Baby Boomers' attention and make them reach for their wallets. -- Mark S. A. Smith, author, Guerrilla Selling book series, January 11, 2003

I think the book shows great promise. It's written with a lively spirit, is highly readable, and very timely. -- Independent Publisher, Editor, Jim Barnes, Editor, February 5, 2003

Many new insights ... beautifully expressed. The superior writing really differentiates this book. -- John Zweig, Senior Executive and Advisor to the Board, WPP Group, June 30, 2003

Marketers who read this book will tap an underdeveloped market. Altogether, a fine, thoughtful, innovative, incisive book -- BoomerCafe.com, Greg Dobbs, Executive Editor, January 23, 2003

The author has done a superlative job of research to demonstrate the changing agendas and values of the Baby Boomers. -- Heartland Reviews, Bob Spear, Publisher and Chief Reviewer, February 27, 2003

This book is a lollipop with fizz for all who have had enough of taste-bud-boring business books. -- Mark Crooks, Ph.D., Author, Achieving Wellness through Positive Risk Taking, July 28, 2003

This fascinating and trenchant tome explains the how's and why's of marketing to us wobbly Peter Pans. -- Chuck Nyren, Editor, Suite101.com, April 30, 2003

Product Description

Americans born between 1946 and 1955 are ready to shatter traditional assumptions about early retirement. Their journey into the Golden Years will be groundbreaking.

Called Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, this forceful segment has over $500 billion in spending power and today controls a significant percentage of the nation's assets. Even more staggering is an unfolding demographic truth: more than 30 percent of Americans will be over 50 by 2010.

Brent Green, an experienced counseling therapist and award-winning creative director and copywriter, has published a book focused on this lucrative pre- and early-retirement segment. Entitled Marketing to Leading-edge Baby Boomers, Green's analysis reveals the psychological, sociological and interpersonal dimensions of a generation quickly reaching the life stage associated with quiescence.

As the author declares: "They will not be quiet, calm, or disengaged. They will collectively redefine the connotations of aging and the purpose of life's closing years. They will set the stage for a long-term reorientation of American business to the value of its previously most undervalued population segment. They will bring to aging culture what they bequest to youth culture when they were boisterously becoming young adults four decades ago."

Today, opportunity and reality are at odds. Somewhere between Woodstock Nation and Over-The-Hill, the most sought after market in America became passé. The fiftysomething-to-sixty crowd has not been attracting its fair share of commercial attention from advertisers and ad agencies. As Green challenges, this is a problem larger than benign neglect.

Baby Boomers have often been the source of contempt and ridicule, a byproduct of disdain for the group's alleged self-absorbed, unpatriotic character, historically rooted in the Vietnam War era. Green provides troubling evidence for an emerging ageism directed at those in their mid-forties to mid-fifties. A side effect of historical distaste and today's growing ageism is often dreadful marketing: hackneyed pitches, rife with stereotypes and generational invectives.

In thirty-six fast-paced chapters, Green analyzes such topical issues as Boomer spirituality, an emerging creativity, political agendas, age-defying strategies, corporate malfeasance, lifestyle downsizing, adventure travel, and communal instincts. The book also provides well-developed case studies of marketing programs that have worked powerfully with Boomers.

A long-term social observer and critic, Brent Green understands the positive marketing implications of his feisty generation: "They will not tolerate typecasting, stereotypes, pandering or ageism. They will expect stylish products to instill value beyond mere utility. They will invest in products and services that resonate, and they will reward those who crack the idiosyncratic marketing code."

An unusual aspect of this traditional business book is Green's inclusion of two convincing short stories about Leading-edge Baby Boomers. The first story explores the Internet's impact on a dormant relationship from the sixties, raising larger questions about unresolved generational agendas and the coming struggle for relevance and meaning.

The second story presents an Orwellian view of an ageist society in 2028. The protagonist, a successful trial attorney who has dedicated her life to women's issues, is awakening to the new reality of generational condemnation, discrimination, and violence. This story makes a solid case for heightened awareness of Green's descriptive term: Genism.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 201 pages
• Publisher: Writers Advantage; illustrated edition edition (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595264093
• ISBN-13: 978-0595264094
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,520,094 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A marketing book by someone with a marketing track record, March 20, 2004

By	"writergrad" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

Some new marketing books "catch the wave" and achieve overnight bestseller status, especially those that promise instant success: permission marketing, viral marketing, emotional marketing, and on and on. Green's book does not give pat formulas or suggest easy answers; it reveals insights and proposes strategies. The book is full of anecdotes and case studies from his successful career in marketing. That's a plus. It's refreshing to read a marketing book by someone who has actually been a practitioner and has a track record. Too many marketing books are also way too theoretical or academic. The author admits his own activism during the Vietnam War era and couples the lessons of that time with decades of experience as an advertising executive. He provokes new thinking about social issues often taken for granted (at least by me until I read the book). The book made me aware of what some marketers are doing well and what a larger group is doing wrong when it comes to baby boomer advertising. Green shares interesting insights about boomer history, debunks some myths that crop up in conservative media, and calls for a better conception of aging. If the author is so inclined, however, it would be helpful to see a second edition with more "how-to" information.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book has it all, May 14, 2004

By	Jed Diamond "The Men's Maven" (Willits, Ca. United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book achieves a dual purpose that I found extremely gratifying. It helped me understand the leading edge baby boomers in a way that I never have before. It also gave me insights about specific ways to market my services to this group.

I've read many books that give general marketing ideas, but none that goes right to the heart of this unique group of men and women and offers information that I can use to reach them.

As a bonus, the book is enjoyable to read and offers unexpected and interesting insights about the world around us.

From beginning to end we feel the care and humanity of the author and know that marketing means more to him than selling product. It means meeting people where they live and engaging them in such a way that they leave the encounter feeling they were deeply nourished. It means working together with people to make a better world.

This is an exceptional and unusual book which I highly recommend for your consideration. After reading it, I couldn't wait to put many of Brent's insights into practice.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boomers shared values predict profound consequences, March 26, 2004

By	Fonda Wharton (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

Green develops an interesting approach to cohort marketing by presenting the sociology of the boomer generation. His initial thesis rests on an important observation by a German social psychologist called a "zeitgeist." As Green posits in a stimulating essay near the end of the book: "When a middle-aged individual struggles with aging, it is called an identity crisis. When a generation struggles with the same fact of life, it is called a zeitgeist-a shared feeling for an era, a spirit of the times." Green argues that the leading-edge boomers shared an extraordinary zeitgeist when they became young adults due to the galvanizing influences of the Vietnam War era and the cultural revolution. As a result of this unique passage into adulthood, they share many unique generational life-values. Now that they have become middle-aged adults, boomers are sharing another zeitgeist that will not only change the way they behave in a consumer society, this shared experience of aging by such a large and influential generation will eventually change America's conception of aging ... hopefully for the better. In this context, Green's book also poses a warning about generational discrimination and ageism, a combined concept he calls "genism." The book is crisp but intellectually powerful and raises many interesting ideas that connect social psychology with buying behavior. This book truly stands apart for its insights and how the writer expresses these ideas in clear, easy-to-read prose.