Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers

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Summary: Practical approach to more successful boomer marketing
Review: An insightful and intellectually thought-provoking book, and the most helpful marketing book I've read in a while. The author's articulate, yet succinct approach gives the reader a clear understanding of the growing opportunity that awaits those who effectively communicate with the Leading-edge Baby Boomer segment. Most importantly, the strategic marketing framework plus Green's colorful, real life examples and psychological perspective, provide readers with a solid, concise grasp the cohort. This is a practical guide that I will re-read and reference to help my healthcare company get better results and more dollars from a lucrative segment.

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Summary: Green Gets the Boomer Story Right
Review: As the words "aging boomer" rise in frequency in marketing venues, like feathered scavengers circling a fallen animal in the bush, countless boomer "experts" appear out of nowhere offering clients "the" answer to cashing in big on so-called boomer markets.

Most of what most of these "experts" dish out to whomsoever will listen is bunk. However, Brent Green's "Marketing to Leading Edge Boomers," is solid. It approaches the task of explaining where boomers -- especially leading edge boomers who have always been the most activist segment of the boomer cohort -- are in their worldviews, values, needs and behavior as they move ahead on their journey through the second half of their lives.

While Green's book is not a "how to" recipe book for embarking on that new or next campaign targeting boomers, it is better than that. The formulaic approaches that most readers of marketing books hope to glean from their readings just don't hack it in older boomer markets. The greater degree of individuation, introspectiveness and autonomy that typically emerges in the second half of makes knowledge of the traits of boomers' behavior in the second half of their lives -- which Green delivers on -- more useful that absolutist prescriptions for what to do that characterize most books in the marketing genre.

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Summary: Boomers shared values predict profound consequences
Review: Green develops an interesting approach to cohort marketing by presenting the sociology of the boomer generation. His initial thesis rests on an important observation by a German social psychologist called a "zeitgeist." As Green posits in a stimulating essay near the end of the book: "When a middle-aged individual struggles with aging, it is called an identity crisis. When a generation struggles with the same fact of life, it is called a zeitgeist-a shared feeling for an era, a spirit of the times." Green argues that the leading-edge boomers shared an extraordinary zeitgeist when they became young adults due to the galvanizing influences of the Vietnam War era and the cultural revolution. As a result of this unique passage into adulthood, they share many unique generational life-values. Now that they have become middle-aged adults, boomers are sharing another zeitgeist that will not only change the way they behave in a consumer society, this shared experience of aging by such a large and influential generation will eventually change America's conception of aging ... hopefully for the better. In this context, Green's book also poses a warning about generational discrimination and ageism, a combined concept he calls "genism." The book is crisp but intellectually powerful and raises many interesting ideas that connect social psychology with buying behavior. This book truly stands apart for its insights and how the writer expresses these ideas in clear, easy-to-read prose.

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Summary: Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers
Review: If you are a baby boomer and/or marketing to baby boomers, you will find this book intriguing and enlightening. It is a marketing book, a social commentary book, and a literary book all in one.

My advice is to read chapters one and two first to get an excellent overview of generational designations, and a concise description of the baby boomer demographics and history. Then move to the Afterwords at the end of the book - "Baby Boomers at Midlife", "Becoming digital...a Boomer's trip," "Net space meets headspace," and "Baby Boomers, 2028." These are quick, delightful reads, and they give you an entertaining and literary feel for the subject matter and for the author's outstanding writing ability.

Once you've digested those portions, go back to the beginning of the book and dig into each chapter. You'll find a wealth of factual information, historical perspectives, and future implications for boomers and those marketing to boomers. It's a fascinating, sometimes unsettling read, especially if you are a baby boomer yourself.

The author, Brent Green, has written a well-researched, insightful and original book about marketing to the baby boomer generation. I haven't seen anything else like it out there. I highly recommend it.

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Summary: A sociological and business breakthrough
Review: Marketing to Leading-Edge Baby Boomers absorbs one's own thoughts of how Vietnam & the '60's and '70's chiseled much of this generation's current perspectives and values. Brent Green succinctly describes how this baby-boom generation opts to retain their youth, exuberances, and imperatives from that '70's era, but in a more mature, seasoned way. An inciteful take on who we were, and are as a demographic result of this time in our history. The chapter on how boomers don't see themselves necessarily growing older in lifestyle choices, but rather, living younger - so well states the context in which this group seeks its current lifestyle and consumption choices. A must read for putting into text a descriptive canvas of this unique generation...

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Summary: A marketing book by someone with a marketing track record
Review: Some new marketing books "catch the wave" and achieve overnight bestseller status, especially those that promise instant success: permission marketing, viral marketing, emotional marketing, and on and on. Green's book does not give pat formulas or suggest easy answers; it reveals insights and proposes strategies. The book is full of anecdotes and case studies from his successful career in marketing. That's a plus. It's refreshing to read a marketing book by someone who has actually been a practitioner and has a track record. Too many marketing books are also way too theoretical or academic. The author admits his own activism during the Vietnam War era and couples the lessons of that time with decades of experience as an advertising executive. He provokes new thinking about social issues often taken for granted (at least by me until I read the book). The book made me aware of what some marketers are doing well and what a larger group is doing wrong when it comes to baby boomer advertising. Green shares interesting insights about boomer history, debunks some myths that crop up in conservative media, and calls for a better conception of aging. If the author is so inclined, however, it would be helpful to see a second edition with more "how-to" information.

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Summary: This book has it all
Review: This book achieves a dual purpose that I found extremely gratifying. It helped me understand the leading edge baby boomers in a way that I never have before. It also gave me insights about specific ways to market my services to this group.

I've read many books that give general marketing ideas, but none that goes right to the heart of this unique group of men and women and offers information that I can use to reach them.

As a bonus, the book is enjoyable to read and offers unexpected and interesting insights about the world around us.

From beginning to end we feel the care and humanity of the author and know that marketing means more to him than selling product. It means meeting people where they live and engaging them in such a way that they leave the encounter feeling they were deeply nourished. It means working together with people to make a better world.

This is an exceptional and unusual book which I highly recommend for your consideration. After reading it, I couldn't wait to put many of Brent's insights into practice.

Rating:
Summary: This book has it all
Review: This book achieves a dual purpose that I found extremely gratifying. It helped me understand the leading edge baby boomers in a way that I never have before. It also gave me insights about specific ways to market my services to this group.

I've read many books that give general marketing ideas, but none that goes right to the heart of this unique group of men and women and offers information that I can use to reach them.

As a bonus, the book is enjoyable to read and offers unexpected and interesting insights about the world around us.

From beginning to end we feel the care and humanity of the author and know that marketing means more to him than selling product. It means meeting people where they live and engaging them in such a way that they leave the encounter feeling they were deeply nourished. It means working together with people to make a better world.

This is an exceptional and unusual book which I highly recommend for your consideration. After reading it, I couldn't wait to put many of Brent's insights into practice.