• by Brent Green , July 26, 2010

In marketing and business there are always naysayers. Some believe Boomers have become fatigued as a consumer segment and it is all downhill from here.

"Baby Boomers have peaked," commented investment manager Harry Dent, author of The Roaring 2000s, a book severely lacking prescience. "They're going to slow the economy down for the next 12 to 14 years."

Dent and others who share his views may be discounting important insights about the Boomer generation. From a historical perspective, this generation has always been a fountain of opportunity for those who are good at predicting what is important to Boomers.

Historian Steve Gillon, author of Boomer Nation, observed: "In 1958, Life magazine called children the 'Built-in Recession Cure,' concluding that all babies were potential consumers who spearheaded 'a brand-new market for food, clothing, and shelter.'"

Arguably, Boomers are tomorrow's built-in recession cure. This generation is the future of traditional healthcare, pharmaceuticals, anti-aging products, luxury automobiles, retirement housing, continuing education, adventure travel, online social networking, aging-in-place technologies, financial services, home renovations, traditional print and broadcast media, and purchases for grandchildren.

Ken Dychtwald, author of Age Wave and Age Power, succinctly described the value of Boomers to the future of business: "When they reach any stage of life, the issues that concern them -- whether financial, interpersonal, or even hormonal -- become the dominant social, political, and marketplace themes of the time. Boomers don't just populate existing life stages or consumer trends, they transform them."

Perhaps Boomers have peaked in their spending power across all business categories, relative to the late 1990s, when most were in their peak earning years, but aging creates transformational opportunities for farsighted industries. Plus, myth-busting research demonstrates that Boomers are not brand-loyal, a hackneyed argument to dissuade focus on the market. Research for "TV Land" found that 26% of Boomers are not at all brand-loyal versus 21% of their children, the Millennials.

Nielsen, the goliath global research company, just added another exclamation point to arguments in favor of Boomer business value. In a July 21 Marketing Daily article, Sarah Mahoney interviewed Doug Anderson, Nielsen's SVP of research and development:

Nielsen's research says Boomers dominate 1,023 out of 1,083 consumer packaged goods categories, and watch 9.34 hours of video per day -- more than any other segment. They also comprise a third of all TV viewers, online users, social media users and Twitter users, and are significantly more likely to have broadband Internet.

"Marketers have this tendency to think the Baby Boom -- getting closer to retirement -- will just be calm and peaceful as they move ahead, and that's not true. Everything we see with our behavioral data says these people are going to be active consumers for much longer. They are going to be in better health, and despite the ugliness around the retirement stuff now, they are still going to be more affluent," Anderson says. "They are going to be an important segment for a long time."

Nielsen's pronouncements are hardly earth-shattering from the perspective of those of us who have been writing and speaking about the Boomer segment for years -- including regular contributors to this column.

But the company's imprimatur could actually facilitate market awareness and renewed business focus. So I say, "Welcome to the revolution, Nielsen. Glad you could join us."