As a college professor, who teaches classes on Marketing and a Boomer myself, the impact of the Baby Boomers has loomed large in my thinking. A few years ago, shortly after I began a discussion of generational marketing with my Consumer Behavior class, a “well-inked and pierced” young woman piped up and demanded that I not discuss the group any further.
Seems she was sick and tired of Boomers and wanted to hear nothing more about them. I noted her objection, thanked her for her opinion, and then proceeded to remind my Gen-X class that while Boomers might pose a pain in the “tush” to them personally, it’s the short-sighted marketer who ignores them.
As a Boomer, perhaps I should have been offended at my student’s outburst. No doubt it was over the top for her to request that a marketing professor lop off the largest single consuming group in the history of humankind. Yet, I must agree with her that my generation can be a hard pill to swallow.
Wasn’t it we Boomers who stormed university campuses in the 60’s and 70’s with all the finesse of advancing army ants? The least I could do was give an ear to her complaint.
Fortunately, the angst-ridden “Gen X-ers” in my classes finally gave way to the mellower “Gen-Y,” (also called the Boomerang Generation or Millennials) born between 1981 and 1995, and the openly hostile anti-boomer sentiment waned.
Yet, underlying tension still remains. It isn’t just those who came after us who get hot under the collar about Boomers and our narcissistic ways. My husband, who was born just before the Boomer juggernaut, holds a distinct dislike of my generation. It makes for an interesting marriage.
I cheerfully remind him on occasion that he willingly chose to pair-up with a quintessential Boomer, but I have made little headway in changing his way of thinking. We Boomers simply baffle his perception of the universal order.
There’s even discord within the ranks. A couple of years ago I read a letter to the editor of “More,” a magazine on lifestyle and beauty for mid-life women, from a younger Boomer in her forties who took umbrage at being lumped into the same demographic lot as the older Boomers.
Evidently, coming-of-age in the post-Kennedy/Viet Nam era warrants special understanding, not to mention a targeted marketing approach. I’d been hearing serious rumblings of this elsewhere in marketing circles.
In 2000, I experienced the discomfort of being caught in a marketing net that was cast too widely when a top-tier company hired me as a spokesperson to help launch a hair product for women who wanted to keep and enhance their gray hair rather than color it.
I was recruited because of my book on mid-life beauty and aging that was published in 1997. I worked the TV morning talk show circuit as an author, discussing my book for a while, and then ever-so-subtly slipped in a plug for the product. On cue, the director would cut to headshots of women models on whom the product had been used. Afterward, the hostess and I would casually chat for a minute or two about this new understanding of graying with both dignity and fashion in mind.
What got my marketing goat each time the video rolled was that none of the models seemed age appropriate to me. They were either too young (i.e. pre-mature gray in their early 40’s) or too old (i.e. very gray) for the promo. Sure enough, although the product was well-researched, well-developed and well-packaged, it failed. A company is doomed if it delivers an advertising message that blurs generational lines.
Recently, when PBS aired a documentary aptly titled “The Boomer Century: 1946-2046” critics of my generation had a field day.
Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “On the whole, ‘Century’ is hobbled by the self-fascination, and self-congratulation, of which its subject has been so long accused.”
This may or may not be a fair assessment of the documentary. But I suspect it was instead Ms. McNamara’s personal assessment of the Boomer Generation.
If so my response to her is this: “You might well find justifiable fault with the Boomers, but as someone whose livelihood depends on marketing and advertising, you’d be foolish to ignore or offend the 78 million or so folks who populate it.
Copyright 2007 Karen Kaigler-Walker All Rights Reserved
About the author:
Karen Kaigler-Walker, Ph.D. is Chair of the Department of Marketing at Woodbury University and professor of marketing and psychology. She is an adjunct professor of women’s spirituality at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA and serves on the executive board of the Educational and Cultural Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization that builds and supports orphanages, schools, after school nutrition/educational centers, senior citizen facilities and seminaries throughout Asia. Currently she is filming a documentary on the role of women in the Chinese Christian community. Contact: karen.kaigler-walker@woodbury.edu.
