Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers: Perceptions, Principles, Practices & Predictions

By 2010, 30 percent of the U.S. population will be over age 50. Even today, the over-50 segment has $750 billion in spending power and controls a majority of the nation's assets. The generation's front-runners are Leading-Edge Baby Boomers, founders of modern youth culture and then yuppie materialism. This essential marketing guide presents stimulating chapters that will show you:

-- Critical "bipolar metavalues" that influence the buying behavior of Leading-Edge Baby Boomers.

-- Select the right advertising media to achieve your marketing goals

-- LOHAS: a new lifestyle segment that's changing everything

-- How to plan and organize "bandwagon" Boomer events and promotions

-- Exceptional opportunities for reaching Boomers through the Internet.

Brent Green studied psychology in both undergraduate and graduate school, and spent the first four years of his career working as a counseling therapist, where he honed deeper insights about human motivation and behavior. His counseling practice afforded him an opportunity to work with and help a diverse range of patients suffering from a plethora of mentally- and physically-disabling conditions.

For the next twenty-seven years, he has worked in the field of marketing communications. In the capacity of a marketing and creative strategist, as well as an award-winning copywriter, he has had innumerable successful business experiences selling a multitude of products and services to Baby Boomers—from real estate to fast food, and from a new business radio format to a worldwide cycling event. His marketing experiences cover practically every product and service category. Over fifty regional, national, and international awards acknowledge his creative and commercial accomplishments.

The author has also written and published Noble Chaos, an award-winning novel about Baby Boomers during the Vietnam War era. As with any foray into fiction writing, this challenge forced the author to think intensely and critically about the sociology and culture of this coming-of-age period, as well as to understand the indelible values that persist within an influential generational segment. He also has received critical recognition from Writer’s Digest magazine for a forward-looking essay about Baby Boomers in midlife, as presented earlier in this book.

In addition to formal education in psychology and accumulating real-world marketing experiences, the author has spent two decades reading extensively about Baby Boomer demography, cultural developments, and futuristic predictions. In this book, he has incorporated some of the more significant insights gleaned from many hours spent reading and reflecting.

The author is a Leading-edge Baby Boomer. He reached maturity during the critical time when this generation adopted its core values and beliefs. He was part of the party, as well as a curious and critical observer.