By Ross Honeywill
CEO of the consumer think-tank, the Social Intelligence Lab
The jig’s up all you
Gen Y and Gen X upstarts. Boomers are back in the headlines and they’re
mad as hell.
All we’ve heard about
for the past five years is Gen Y this and Gen X that, with their apologists
snivelling about the impenetrable ceiling created by the generation ahead of
them. They have characterised Boomers as boring old fogeys, grimly hanging on
to wealth and power, and preventing the younger generations from getting a foothold
on the ladder of success.
Well they were right about
wealth and power, and wrong about old. And Boomers have had enough.
Did you know, for example,
that of the 6,000-plus CEOs of New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ listed companies,
only 1.6 per cent are under the age of forty?
Boomers rule. Literally.
Barack Obama at forty-seven is the fifth youngest American President in history.
Obama is a Baby Boomer who, with young daughters in the White House, doesn’t
strike anyone as a senior.
But according to a new
research study, there’s another reason why a band of Boomers is bristling.
Fourteen million of America’s 65 million Baby Boomers are part of an influential
breed know as the new economic order or NEO. These NEOboomers out-perform, out-rank
and out-spend the younger generations 2:1.
Characterised by their
determination never to retire and by their progressive social values, these
NEOboomers vote governments in and out, are more confident about the economy
(yes, even in these times of financial crisis), are less interested in religion
and spend more than anyone else in the economy.
Using Roy Morgan Research
data from 120,000 respondents across three continents, the Social Intelligence
Lab has found that NEOboomers are reshaping our preconceived notions of people
in their fifties and sixties.
For example, almost all
of them, 95 per cent to be exact, are in what is known as the Big Spender category
– that’s the top third of discretionary spenders in the economy.
This compares with only 40 per cent of the younger generations, those parsimonious
Gen Xs and Gen Ys who are supposed to be the marketer’s dream.
Just how much myth-busting
can the youngsters bear? They talk constantly about being better educated than
their parents. Sorry! Almost half of NEOboomers have university degrees compared
to only a quarter of Gen Xs & Ys combined. And then there’s the endless
chat about how much they earn. Half of NEOboomers earn more than $100,000 a
year compared to only 23 per cent of Gen Xs & Ys.
What about the R word:
that’s retirement not recession. Only 8 per cent of NEOboomers are retired.
That means that 92 per cent are happily working and planning their next career.
Compare that with the 19 per cent of the population who have retired, and the
stereotype starts to wilt.
Hold the phone. The mobile
phone, that is. How sick are we of hearing about young people and their mobile
phones? A higher proportion of NEOboomers own mobile phones than Gen Xs and
Ys. NEOboomers are 3 times more likely than the general population and twice
as likely as Gen X and Gen Y to spend up big on their mobile phone bill: that’s
more than $160pm.
So it is that these NEOboomers
are redefining the age clichés. Even the stereotype of the balding guy
buying a sportscar as part of his mid-life crisis is exploding. The Mini Cooper
and the Audi are on the NEOBoomer must-buy list, not the Porsche and the Ferrari.
Then there’s the issue of climate change. These are the people who were
talking about global warming when Al Gore was just a politician. That’s
why two-thirds of NEOboomers are considering buying an environmentally sensitive
hybrid vehicle as their next car. Compare this to less than half of all Gen
X and Y.
While their confidence
as consumers took a rare hit when Wall Street darling Lehmann Brothers collapsed
in September last year, it recovered by Christmas and is leading other consumers
out of the global gloom. NEO consumer-confidence runs an average 15-20 points
above the general population in the US, Europe & Australia. So, they’re
not blinking as the global recession runs its course.
But it’s in their
social attitudes and behaviour that the NEOboomers really stand out. They love
the arts and are far more socially progressive than Gen X and Y and look forward
to an ‘exciting life’ rather than the ‘secure life’
their traditional cousins prefer.
So, next time you hear
someone rattling on about how Gen Y rules the airwaves and the workplace, just
whisper NEOboomer and move on. And as for traditional marketers? Perhaps the
time has arthe latest shiny object.
Ross Honeywill
is a consumer behaviourist and CEO of the consumer think-tank, the Social Intelligence
Lab. He is an internationally published author whose latest book is Lamarck’s
Evolution: two centuries of genius and jealousy.