As I’ve posted on this blog about two years ago, social networking sites are not just for young people. According to a new report on this subject by eMarketer, baby boomers check out social media sites as they’ve always been good communicators, as proven by their presence at sit-ins, protests and demonstrations in the 1960s.
About 47 percent of online boomers maintain a profile on at least one social network, according to several sources. Their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages. Burst Media reported that 47.5 percent of online boomer respondents had a social network profile in June 2009. Last September, Deloitte found 46 percent of boomer respondents said they maintained a social network profile. Both comScore and Anderson Analytics data show that Facebook is the favourite social network for boomers.
And the numbers keep growing. While millennials’ use of social profile remained fairly steady, boomers’ social network presence has actually grown since a 2007 survey, when only 30 percent said they maintained a profile on a social network. Boomers are expanding their networking efforts to include both online and offline connections. They will be interested in online marketing messages that help them build on their connections and make new friends.
January 11, 2010 – 1:15 pm
I was interviewed by the Montreal Gazette last month which reported on the many shades of grey in Canada. As I said in the interview, any retailer hoping to tap into the wallets of aging baby boomers must realize that there is no one size that fits all. We are probably entering an age of the custom fit. There are boomers shopping in plus-size stores. But there are also lots to be found in Lululemon shopping for yoga pants.
As we enter the new year, retailers should consider catering to boomers who are going to want more service and more advice. But they don’t want to be singled out as a group and they don’t want to be described as old.
Older women do not want to dress like an older woman. So they do not really want to shop at separate stores. Everyone thinks they are younger than they are, and to be seen shopping at a store for ‘older’ women is not good for their self-esteem. But, at the same time, they don’t want to walk out the door looking like mutton dressed as a lamb.
Retailers will have to understand the mindset of aging boomers and have floor staff trained to be helpful, to offer advice, and to make sure the customer does look good when he or she walks out of the store. The use of personal shoppers will not only be reserved for luxury shopping. Any retailer who offers personal shoppers to boomer customers will more likely succeed than others in winning a share of boomers’ wallets.
So far, everybody says yes, yes, we must do something about it. But very few retailers have addressed boomers’ needs in a comprehensive, thoughtful kind of way. Let’s hope the new year will bring a new approach to the retail world.
November 12, 2009 – 1:00 pm
The Maria Shriver Report, compiled with the Center for American Progress, was released a few weeks ago. It culls decades of research to assess the changing role of the sexes in work and home life. Marketers should pay attention because marketing to women now should take on a new direction.
The report indicated that for the first time in America’s history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. This is a dramatic shift from just a generation ago (in 1967 women made up only one-third of all workers). The report went on to say that “quite simply, women as half of all workers changes everything.” We also learn that the battle of the sexes is now replaced by negotiations at the kitchen table to share the load such as household chores. There is evidence that the most stable, high-quality marriages are those where men and women share both paid work and domestic work. This is a shift from generations ago when the most stable marriages were those where husbands specialized in paid work and wives did all the domestic work.
A recent Rockefeller/Time poll of over 3,000 people nationwide in the U.S. takes a broad and deep look at what men and women think of their changing roles in society and their attitudes toward each other as spouses, parents, bosses, and co-workers. The poll results reveal a truce in the battle of the sexes, demonstrating that men and women are in agreement on many of the daily work and family issues.
In Canada, the same trend is occurring. According to Statistics Canada, more Canadian women than men were in paid employment during the first half of 2009. The employment data, published in the August issue of StatsCan’s Perspectives magazine, show women made up an average of 50.6 percent of Canada’s 14 million waged or salaried workers during the first half of this year. That’s an average of 160,000 more women than men.
Most marketers have always been targeting women as influencers. But now, as more and more women take on the primary breadwinners’ role, we should perhaps change our marketing strategy to reflect this evolution?
October 2, 2009 – 1:30 pm
I read with interest from a recent Vancouver Province article reporting that young workers fear they will lose promotion opportunities to aging baby boomers whose retirement plans have been upset by the financial crisis. The economic crisis has made things more complicated because age seems to be an increasing ‘perceived’ barrier to leadership opportunities.
According to a recent Angus Reid poll, the youth of today want leaders who are under 50, or better yet, under 40. Young employees want young leaders and value vision over experience and charisma, the poll suggests. Across Canada, 40 percent of young adults said they believe vision is the most important quality of business leadership; 33 percent value experience most; and 21 percent want charisma from their leaders.
Smart managers must pay attention and work extra hard to ensure that age is never a barrier to leadership opportunities. And more boomer leaders should really prove the young people wrong by better marketing and publicising their continued vision!
August 14, 2009 – 1:30 pm
As a fervent arts and culture fan, I’ve been frequenting the Stratford and Shaw Festivals in the summer and the ballet and opera in the winter. Every time when I exit from the shows, I have the same conclusion – the audience are mostly baby boomers or senior citizens and should these entertainment brands want to thrive in the long run, they really need to change their marketing strategies.
Canada’s population is increasingly more diverse, and unfortunately most of my fellow audiences in these events are still ‘white’ in two ways – in ethnicity and hair colour. We all acknowledge the affluence and sophistication of boomers – that’s why they constitute a large part of the arts and culture supporters. However, to ensure that our country’s cultural excellence gets preserved and enhanced in generations to come, we should really try to entice more Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers to attend these events. Cultural organizations should also be more flexible with their ticket pricing structures so that the shows and performances become more accessible. We need more of Cineplex’s simulcasts of operas from The Met so that younger people start appreciating the opera without breaking their banks.
At the same time, arts and cultural organizations should look into attracting a more diverse new blood into their Board membership. We know Board members use their influence to raise funds for these organizations and also recruit their friends and communities to share their own passion for the arts. With Canada’s ethnically diverse population, we need to see a bigger representation of our multi-cultural new Canadians in the performing arts.
One of Canada’s main attractions is the abundance of world-class entertainment put forward by the above-mentioned performing arts organizations. It is imperative that we sustain the momentum of these cultural gems by drawing younger audiences to their seasonal performances.
