Sit a group of Leading-edge Baby Boomer women in a formal focus group setting,
and you’re likely to hear concerns about the state of their savings and health.
But follow them out to the ladies room, and you’ll get an earful on what they
talk about when they think nobody’s looking. The truth is: some of the best
intelligence is so fresh that it is quite simply not yet quantifiable. In this
month’s Femail Focus, we nominate our candidate for a hot issue that has not yet
made it onto the researcher’s radar screen.
Having launched fresh this month, you can visit our new Boomer Women Marketing
Group Blog where we give voice to under-the-radar (not to mention over-the-top)
opinions, critiques and other perceptions about the demographic we live and
breathe. And so, without further ado, our chart-topping number one “blogworthy”
issue for Leading-edge Boomer women:
Daughters-in-Law
This topic can melt otherwise confident and competent grown-up women into
puddles of insecurity, regret and/or anger in less than the blink of an eye (or,
in the case that inspired this “unfocus group” finding, less than a glass of
wine). It’s huge — and only the tip of the iceberg. For enmeshed in this
uber-issue are corollary concerns that pertain not only to mothers of grown
sons, but also aunts, cousins and other Baby Boomer women who may have no
children of their own but have plenty of opinions about the next couple of
generations, nevertheless.
Just what is this corollary uber-issue? How to hold your tongue when you’re
dying to give your adult offspring advice on where to live, where to work, how
to spend/invest money, how to stay healthy or even where to “meet someone.” And
even closer to the bone: once they have offspring, how do you deal with your
opinions about how the grandchildren are being raised?
This Baby Boomer generation of women, who vowed to do it differently from the
way they were raised by their austere World War II and Depression era mothers,
has largely indulged their children all their lives. Envisioning the future,
they and their offspring were to be one big happy family. And, indeed, this is a
generation of adult children who have remained closer to their parents — often
feeling more like “friends” than the hierarchical models of parenting within
which their Boomer parents were raised. This holds true most of the way through
the twenties. In fact, as many of the offspring of Boomers have delayed getting
serious about marriage until thirty or even later, everybody becomes lulled into
a never-never land of uninterrupted familial bonding.
And whether it’s your son or daughter who has procreated with another Baby
Boomer’s child, wait until you all go out to dinner together and the proud mom
and dad fail to discipline your precious grandchild, who is busy flinging fried
chicken fingers at total strangers in a classy restaurant.
And yes: this is what Leading-edge Baby Boomer women talk about while they’re
standing in line for the lady’s room.
So what are the implications for marketers? Plenty. Take the issue of
grandparenting, alone. Consider that the number of grandparents in this country
will grow to over 115 million by 2010, the average age of a first-time
grandparent being 47. Pay attention now: Boomer grandparents spend about 29% of
the $50.3 billion spent by U.S. grandparents on their grandchildren. (More than
double what was spent a decade ago.) Grandparents comprise close to 17 percent
of toy sales in the U.S., with individual 55-64 outspending per capita than the
25-44 age group. (Sources: AARP, The Census Bureau, American Demographic, NDP
Group, Roper Organization)
It is probable that this demographic aspires to the kinds of marketing messages
that are meant to appeal to them: bucolic extended families enjoying each
other’s presence and doting on their generations of grandkiddies. But the truth
is that, along with the high points of granddaughter’s ballet recital and
home-made birthday cards, there is the potential for high tension. Paint too
rosy a picture, and you might find yourself with a message that has backfired
against the stark reality of your target demographic’s lesser life.
Any marketer who can figure out how to help close the gap between aspiration and
reality on this one will be a real winner. One category that is already rising
on this tide: video cams, cell phones with digital cameras built in and any
other technology that allows families separated by distance to stay in touch.
And if there’s any product or service out there that will help ease the tension
out of the Baby Boomer mom’s wish to spend her holidays with her grown son’s
family, it’s money in the bank.
So here it is: our first “unfocus group” finding: the hot prediction of what is
destined to reach beyond the lady’s room and into the Baby Boomer woman
mainstream in the not-so-distant future. Next month, we return to the in-depth
article format of our Femail Focus e-newsletter. But whenever you want to fly
with us beneath the radar, check to see what new and blogworthy topics have come
up for us between issues.
SOURCE: Carol Orsborn & Mary Brown – www.imagocreative.com