by Jim Gilmartin – An esteemed colleague once told me that no category of business expense contains as much waste as marketing. The amounts are astounding. Some marketing-related activities are estimated to cost companies about $500 billion annually. There are those that consider that figure is double what it should be. That claim is not as outlandish as it might …
Marketing To Baby Boomers: Stories Connect
By Jim Gilmartin – Most of us love stories. That’s nothing new. However, marketers need to understand better the value of storytelling in communicating messages. As we age, stories play an even more important role in how our brains process information about your products and services. Jonas Kaplan of the University of Southern California published a study in January 2016 …
Want To Connect With Baby Boomers? Get Your Messages Creatively Right
By Jim Gilmartin – Contrary to the perception that aging brings a calcification of shopping habits, many over-50 consumers diversify their spending habits as they grow older. That diversification, plus the narrower tactics of contemporary marketing practices, makes them much tougher to reach through advertising. As older consumers and the Baby Boomer cluster move from the crowd-think of their youth …
People Make All Purchase Decisions
“All purchase decisions are made by people.” Gavin Finn, CEO of Kaon Interactive, wrote in a recent article. “While data science and analytics have become an essential element of every modern marketing arsenal, it is wise to remember that people make all purchase decisions.” He goes on to say, “Even in business purchases, the individual decision-makers are subject to the same …
Baby Boomers Clearly Into The Fall And Winter Of Life Stages
Today, the oldest Boomers are 70+. The core needs and maturational changes in values, views and behaviors of 70-year-old Boomers are not materially different from those of 70-year-olds in the past. Boomers’ differences from previous generations are more differences of style than of substance. The core needs that are part of what defines us as human beings, such as self-actualization …
To Connect With Baby Boomers, Be A Servant Marketer
By Jim Gilmartin – Contemporary theories of marketing are increasingly defined in the context of collaborative relationships between a marketer and customers that operate on behalf of meeting needs of the latter. But honoring this idea is often problematic because a continuing focus on sales quotas pressure marketing and sales staff to concentrate more on making deals than on helping …
Experiential Segmentation: Allowing Boomers To Personally Define Value
By Jim Gilmartin – Greater individuation brought into the marketplace by Baby Boomers lessens the usefulness of traditional customer segmentation for reasons of simple economics. The greater the degree of individuation (the older we get, the less alike we become), the smaller the sub-groups; the smaller the sub-groups, the less cost-effective it is to tailor marketing programs to such groups. …
Do You Ever Wonder Why Baby Boomers Are Not Loyal To Your Brand?
By Jim Gilmartin – Companies, often encouraged by legal counsel, regularly resist expressing vulnerability, sometimes at great expense. A classic example took place in the early 1980s. The Audi 5000 was reported to accelerate spontaneously from a stand-still without driver involvement. Audi responded with not even a token amount of compassion and vulnerability. It said simply that drivers were at …
To Connect With Baby Boomers, Shift Your Marketing Paradigms
By Jim Gilmartin – A paradigm is not a way of doing things; it is a way of thinking about things. A new marketing paradigm cannot be understood according to the rules of the paradigm it replaces. Says brain researcher Bernard Baars in In the Theater of the Brain, “Our inability to report intentions and expectations simply reflect the fact that they …
Are You Willing To Swim In The Deep End To Connect With Baby Boomers?
by Jim Gilmartin – In a post written by Lori Bitter on Dec. 21, 2015, headlined “The Psychology of Marketing to Grandparents”, she discusses the value of understanding four of Abraham Maslow’s attributes and how they relate to connecting with grandparents. This is a follow-up to my comments applauding Lori’s insights. I mentioned that in In July 2008, David Armano …
