Repeat After Me -- Baby Boomers Are Not an Affinity Group

Boomertowne.com, a Wisconsin-based web site predicated on the idea that Baby Boomers would flock to a site that allowed them to interact with one another, apparently has died and gone to that big digital cloud in the sky.

The web site is no longer accessible, reports Paul Briand, the Baby Boomer correspondent for Examiner.com, and the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau is getting complaints about unpaid gift cards earned by participating in the Web site.

The BoomerTowne development follows the repositioning of Eons.com, a Baby Boomer-centric web site that had chopped its workforce and opened up registration to non-Boomers in order to expand participation.

Here at the Boomer Project, we believe that generational differences are significant, and marketers need to understand them, but we see little evidence that the 78-million cohort functions as a meaningful affinity group. The shared values and attitudes common to Boomers -- the generational optimism, for instance, or finding self identity through work -- typically function at an unconscious level. Those traits, while very real, are not the kind of thing that people would want to gather online and dish about.

We wish the Boomer web sites well. But we think businesses will do better to focus on specific age-related challenges -- retirement finances, health, vitality, spirituality, grandparenting, empty nester lifestyles, etc. -- than try appealing to some vague sense of Boomerdom.

Generational Definitions

Once more, the New York Times has a solid piece on the definitions of generations, or the lack thereof.

The context is the presidential race -- is Barack Obama a Boomer or not? But the most important point of the piece for marketers is this:

"Generationality is not just what sociologists or advertisers decide. It is more crucially how one imagines oneself"

True self-identity is indeed in the eyes of the beholder.

We use the Baby Boomer label only as a tool to identify a consumer group that deserves attention, and requires some new understanding from marketers in order to reach them successfully. Even if some argue the dates are hard and fast, what's more important is which generational cohort feels like the best fit for someone personally.

Generational Targeting: The Future

Brandweek reports this week that Wyndham Hotels is going to launch a new campaign targeting Generation X.

We will give them the benefit of the doubt that that is a smart business decision. More importantly, it provides proof that the next big trend in marketing will be generational marketing.

We think age-based marketing is going to fall by the wayside as more and more companies focus instead on different messages for the three major generations in the marketplace today: Boomers, Gen X and Millennials.

If only a trade publication like AdAge could figure that out.