September 4, 2004

baby boomers

2 Comments

Ear­lier I wrote:

For the record, I don’t believe that some new happy happy joy joy mar­ke­ting sch­piel is going to somehow usher in a new dawn in human conciousness.

There is a new dawn in human con­cious­ness hap­pe­ning whether we want it to or not. All mar­ke­ting folk like myself are doing is just reac­ting to it, same as ever­yone else.

So why is this hap­pe­ning? No, I don’t think we’re all sud­denly taking magic mush­rooms, or Jesus has come back for a second round etc. There are many rea­sons, a lot of them simply to do with tech­no­logy brin­ging peo­ple clo­ser together etc.
But there may be another good rea­son; one I thought of last night while I was re-reading Tom Peter’s won­der­ful new book, “Re-Imagine!”:
The Baby Boo­mers, the most power­ful demo­graphic in the his­tory of the world, are star­ting to age. The older ones are hit­ting their six­ties. The youn­ger ones are hit­ting their for­ties.
You get older, and sud­denly life isn’t so much about sex and ambi­tion any­more. Sud­denly you find there are fewer days ahead of you than there are behind you.
Sud­denly you get reflec­tive. Sud­denly you start loo­king “inside”.
And, because you’re part of the most power­ful demo­graphic in the world, every­body and everything else starts doing the same.
I’ll say it again. We live in won­der­fully inte­res­ting times.

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2 Responses to “baby boomers”

  1. Evelyn Rodriguez says:
    September 4, 2004 at 6:01 AM

    I recom­mend “Age­less Mar­ke­ting” — the book and blog.
    From an older post.….
    Lately I’m rea­ding Age­less Mar­ke­ting: Stra­te­gies for Reaching the Hearts and Minds of the New Cus­to­mer Majo­rity (highly recom­men­ded) which sta­tes that the current “Psycho­lo­gi­cal Cen­ter of Gra­vity” (+/- 5 years of the adult median age) “exerts a dis­pro­por­tio­nate influence on the ethos of society.” The PCG in the U.S. heads 4 out of 10 hou­seholds today and com­pri­ses 40 million peo­ple, bet­ween the ages of 39 and 49.
    ”…As mid­life approaches or soon after its arri­val, innate for­ces inc­line peo­ple to begin chan­ging from a social and voca­tio­nal deve­lop­ment track to a self-actualizing deve­lop­ment track.” — Age­less Marketing

  2. hugh macleod says:
    September 4, 2004 at 11:22 AM

    Ah-ha! Yes, I’ve seen you met­nion that before. Thanks Ev…