Believing in the Boom(ers)

What do you believe in? That’s a good question, she said. (Thank you.)

I believe in...Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies (frozen, of course) and their power to heal all emotional wounds.
I believe in supermodel length jeans.
And, I believe in Bob Ross, string theory, hybrid vehicles, and personal ghosts.

I also believe in catering to the audience. The Internet audience, as we've all been quick to realize, is short, sweet, and has a serious case of A.D.D. This means that despite the fact that I have many, many things to say about baby boomer marketing, I am going to cater not to their more long-term inclinations (seeing as only 10% of them read blogs anyway) but to ours. Short, sweet.

First up are a few surveys. According to the Pew Research Center, 35.5 million Web users are between 50 and 64 years old. (And they ain’t getting any younger.) But au contraire, here comes another study conducted by media agency GroupM and research firm Millward Brown. About 15% of U.S. seniors, or roughly 13.1 million people, don't currently go online. At all.

So which is it? Are the baby boomers a fountain of revenue just waiting to be tapped, or are they too far gone and should we just, pardon my brooklynese, "fahgeddaboutem"?

Larry Dobrow, in last month’s Mediapost, believes that online seniors are “the lost generation,” and that marketers are not being proactive enough about going after this demographic. He observes that not only do they have disposable cash but also the time to spend it, as well as the energy to engage with marketing content. And there are surely sites popping up like Eons.com – a MySpace for the “mature set” and Cranky.com, the “first age-relevant search engine.” (Check out the #1 search term. Eww.)

But the way you really know that the industry is gearing up to go after the boomalicious is the plethora of conferences geared at helping marketers plan their approach. The "What's Next Boomer Business Summit" was held in Chicago a week or two ago, and I am curious as to what they had to say about digital marketing. And next week Vegas is the venue for  “Boomers 2.0 – Reaching 40+ Consumers Today.” Register early for the, ahm, early bird buffet.