Baby Boomer Insights

Boomers hit the road in RVs and take the grandchildren with them

Despite gas prices already reaching $4 a gallon in some parts of the country, more than 8,000 people showed up in at the Georgia National Fairgrounds last week in Perry GA for Rally 2008, the world's largest gathering of RV enthusiasts. From reports I've seen, Boomers made up the largest number of attendees.

That's not surprising when you consider that Boomers love to travel and often want to take the grandkids with them. A recreational vehicle often satisfies the need to have the comforts of home with the flexibility of driving to your vacation destination.

There are seven types of "campers" and all were featured at the show, ranging from pop-up tents on wheels, essentially, to very luxurious tricked out 42-foot mobile homes that can set you back $750,000. Last year, Ralph and I toured an RV at the annual boat show (go figure) that listed at ONE MILLION bucks and got six miles to the gallon. Whew!

When I was a kid, my family camped all over the southeast. Mom and Dad piled the five kids into a Chevy station wagon towing a pop up camper my father had made and we visited every state park in Georgia and most in Florida during our summer vacations. We met hundreds of interesting people in the campgrounds and it was during this time we learned to love lake swimming. We cooked outdoors and used public restrooms. And not once did we watch TV while we were camping. (Most of today's TVs have multiple high def televisions!)

My Mom, a school teacher (and by that, I mean 100% of the time... she couldn't even tell you the time; she had to explain the time) insisted we tour the state the summer before we each entered the 8th grade because that's when we'd be studying Georgia history and she wanted to give us a head start. God bless her. Every road trip was the opportunity for learning. Meanwhile, Daddy saw it as a chance to teach outdoor skills that included using the river to chill milk and nailing a fish to a tree to scale it.

I think that's the difference in my parents' generation and Boomers. They were the original do-it-yourself types and Boomers are more the do-it-for-me types. That's why we think camping today takes place in a vehicle that can cost more than the homes we grew up in.

But they have something in common too. When all the kids were grown and gone, my parents bought a nice fifth-wheel RV and starting taking the grandchildren on trips. So our kids got the advantage of learning in the comfort of air conditioning.

Here's the lesson for marketers in all this: you can't assume that even in a soft economy that Boomers will be tighter with our money and forgo non-essential items. We put great value on enjoying our money and sharing it with family.

Frankly, I really like the trend of camping as a way to bond with family and create new memories. That's worth waaaaaayyyy more than $4 a gallon!

Tornadoes hit Atlanta: Boomers turn to local news for coverage

By now you have seen the countless videos, pictures and stories about the tornado that touched down in downtown Atlanta Friday night. How did you find out? Chances are, the generation you're in made some difference in how you learned about the news and how you've kept up with the aftermath.

Tornadoes rarely hit metropolitan areas, especially on densely populated streets full of high-rise buildings, but this one was a doozy and left downtown Atlanta a mess. Thankfully, Edelman's offices on the 29th floor of Centennial Tower overlooking the trashed Centennial Olympic Park made out OK under the circumstances.

My husband and I learned the news from WSB TV. We kept the TV on  - tuned to local stations, rather than CNN or the Weather Channel -  almost around the clock through this morning, watching for updates and learning all kinds of new things from meteorologists armed with the latest in 3D technology.

Meanwhile, my youngest daughter (18) learned the news about the tornado when someone texted her on her cell phone, then sent some video. My oldest daughter (22) heard about it from a friend she was visiting, who got an email on her Blackberry from a friend whose mother had called her. To my knowledge, none of these young people have turned to television for their ongoing news. Instead, they've relied on radio, the Internet, text messages and voice messages from their universities.

While I want to know every last detail (and have been very frustrated by the lack of TV footage of my office building), my Gen Y daughters are satisfied to know just enough to be in the know at a surface level. If they want an update, they'll seek it out, usually by going to CNN.com. Tuning into the 11:00  p.m. news for updates ranks right up there with sliding down the dinosaur's tail when the bird whistle blows.

None of this surprises me, especially after seeing the results of the 2007 Boomer Insights Study by Edelman and Strategy One. In it, we learned that Boomer men prefer local evening news while Boomer women want to catch the morning shows. Boomer women seek the feature-type stories that tell about a rescued baby or how a handicapped person was cared for during the tornado, while Boomer men want to know what's being done, how long will it take and what's the likelihood of this happening again.

In other words, the classic "give me the information and I'll draw my own conclusions" is the male perspective. Females want to feel good and reassured that all is well. We both want to get the news from sources we trust, such as local papers, news anchors and "people like me." We like knowing we can find out more if we want by going online, but for the most part, we're more interested in hearing news from the same people who have been delivering it for years.

Think about the implications of this. It's risky to think you can get your messages to Boomers by putting all your efforts into courting the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek. Sure, we read them, but not as consistently nor as thoroughly as we consume local news. So don't blow off that local paper with a circulation of only 50,000 or a news station whose signal doesn't extend past four counties. You just may be missing your best opportunity to reach your target audience!

Tracking what you own: why home inventory software appeals to Boomers

I've been thinking about buying a new digital camera, especially after looking through some photo albums I treasure. I have always loved to take pictures, especially of my children, who by coincidence, happen to be the most beautiful girls in the world.

Anyway, I came across one album this weekend that really made me stop and think. It was a huge binder of photos I made years ago of all the big-ticket items in my house. I had done an inventory and had created a list of furniture, china, silver and treasured household itmes, including where they were purchased and their approximate worth. Suddenly, I realized the pictures were 7 years old and didn't include several major purchases we had made since then. They also didn't include many of the beautiful things, including antiques, that Ralph's mother gave us when she moved out of her estate home to a one bedroom apartment at St. George Village two years ago.

I confess I was also a bit red-faced at realizing I had never put the album into a safety vault, so if I had lost everything in a disaster, the album would have been included. Duh.

Then my mind jumped to the awful fire that caused my parents to have to move out of their home of 55 years in 2006 (it took six months to rebuild and they didn't salvage any furniture). Suddenly, I felt a sense of urgency to do something.

Like most Boomers, I turned to the Internet to search for better solutions than taking a video or snapping  pictures and putting them in an album. I was delighted by the number of inventory solutions I found.

KnowYourStuff.org is free downloadable inventory software and is a service of the Insurance Information Institute. There's also MakeLifeEasy.com, a service that guides you through all the steps of what to inventory, how to categorize it and it even lets you scan in receipts and appraisals. I also came across Vault24.com, a Swiss company that enables you - for a small monthly fee - to store all your inventory data online so you can access if on the web from anywhere, just in case you need to file a claim in the case of a natural disaster that requires you to move away quickly (as was the case with so many Katrina victims).  (By the way, for any cynics reading this, let me assure you none of these companies is an Edelman client - I found them randomly.)

This is a great example of the kind of service Boomers love. We like technology that helps us accomplish a specific task as much as we love any service that reduces stress and makes us more efficient.

Inventory software not only helps us keep up with our own things (which is also important when we start to downsize or decide to move) but it's a great way to keep up with our parents' things. Seems to me a web-based inventory with photos could be especially helpful to families scattered about when it comes time to divide up mom and dad's treasures.

My girls are still beautiful and when I buy a new camera I'll still take a lot of pictures of them, but you can bet I'll be all over this web-based inventory system as well. I'd love to hear from people who have used any of these - or other systems. Tell what your experience has been like!

Boomers, rejoice! Custom calling cards are making a comeback!

Today's Wall Street Journal carries an interesting story called, "A Business Card for Your Wild Side."  It's about a new trend in people carrying multiple business/calling cards that reflect different aspects of their life.

The argument is that a more personalized card that contains non-traditional information is more appropriate for social settings and many networking events. Often the multiple-card carrier has a side business, but keeps a day job, or wants to be known for a particular thing, such as a blog s/he writes.

How ironic that as our society gets more and more connected electronically, the good old standby paper card is making a comeback (albeit with perfume and lipstick, so to speak). Some folks are even springing for designer cards that can cost a few dollars per card. All I have to say is, "Thank goodness!" (No matter how much I use technology like LinkedIn, there simply is no substitute for a great card.)

I love business cards. I rarely throw one away. In fact, I have hundreds of them safely stored in ziplock bags. Of course, many are also in my electronic Contacts file, but when you open up an online address book, everyone looks the same. A business card is an opportunity to really express yourself. I notice everything from the weight of the card to the design to the type font. Each design element tells me something about the person who gave me the card. Since I'm a very visual person, I can often remember a person's card even better than their name months after meeting them.

My daughters and I (they're 22 and 18) differ tremendously on this point. When they meet someone they may want to contact later, they instantly put their contact information into their cell phones. "Why write something down or keep up with a card?" they argue. "You can always just delete them if it turns out you don't want to stay in touch. " My approach is the opposite. I decide if they're "keepers," THEN add them to my address book or cell phone.

That's a key difference in Gen Y and baby boomers. We use technology as a tool to accomplish a specific task. Gen Y uses technology as a lifestyle. Here's another example: How many different ring tones do you think the average Boomer has on his/her cell phone? We just want it to ring to let us know someone's calling. Gen Y wants the ring itself to announce who's calling.

Marketers who want to reach Boomers, take heed: even though we love technology and use it, we still like to flip through hard copies of publications, swap real cards and enjoy tactile experiences. So don't go crazy thinking that all you have to do is put your " stuff " online and we'll go find it. Make us feel your brand too!

Boomers and technology: we love our gadgets and gizmos!

My husband, Ralph, turned 52 last week and we celebrated in the usual way - a family dinner out, followed by a coconut cake dessert at home and the presentation of gifts. He's easy to buy for. For almost every gift-giving occasion he wants either some new techno-gadget or a power tool. Like many Boomer men, he loves to stay up on the latest technology and like most little boys, he loves to tear down and build up things. (For the record, he excels at both.)

This year he got a Garmin portable GPS. Mind you, he's an excellent map reader and has a great sense of direction. No matter. Having something electronic tell him what he already knows still appeals to him. The day he got it, he rode around in his Mustang convertible trying to get lost and confuse the little dashboard nagger. He was downright pleased with himself when he discovered a small glitch. The system didn't recognize that a road nearby doesn't have as many turns as the voice indicated.

The way Ralph got from wanting a GPS to actually having one is typical of how a typical Core Boomer (those between 46 and 51 - that's 51% of all Boomers) makes the journey. He talked with others (offline) who own a GPS, including a work colleague and our friends Bart and Pat. Then he went online and researched various types of GPS units, noting also where they could be purchased and whether there were any sales going on.

I suspect he purposely did this research the weekend before President's Day knowing there would be a better chance of a sale, plus counting on the fact I had that day off as a company holiday. All of his assumptions were right. I bought the unit at Circuit City on President's Day.

I love gadgets as much as Ralph does, so shopping in an electronics store to me is more fun than, say, shoe shopping. It takes me forever. I want to see the newest digital cameras, the shiny laptops and check out anything I think I can justify as a way to make me more productive or efficient.

See, that's the thing about Boomers that marketers need to understand. We easily justify our spending and most of aren't afraid of technology. In fact, Boomers embrace technology and are usually the first to buy the big ticket items like HDTV, laptops with bells and whistles, etc.

My birthday is in March and I'm also starting to research my next gadget gift - a new digital camera. It has been a few years since I bought one. You can bet I'll have a whole different set of requirements and expectations for this one (starting with a screen I can actually read!).

There is one difference between Boomer Ralph and Boomer Marilynn, though. I'll be among the 98% of Bull's-Eye Boomers (tm) who will share everything I know and think about it!