by Jim Gilmartin – Empathy is the most important ingredient in lasting relationships. We all want to be understood by those who want to sell us something. When we think we are not understood, we erect defenses against those trying to connect with us or try to sell us something. However, empathy is not the same as sympathy. You will …
Marketers Have A Sex Problem
by Jim Gilmartin – “Marketers have a sex problem,” wrote Geoffrey Rowan in a recent article, “Sex in Advertising Sells: So why NOT to the Over 50s?,” on FabOverFifty.com. “They slather it liberally onto any brand surface where it might stick — the ultimate consumption aphrodisiac. No one gets fired from a marketing job for saying sex sells. But at …
The Average Baby Boomer Market Doesn’t Exist
by Jim Gilmartin – The purpose of marketing and sales communications is to stimulate awareness, interest and desire in customer minds that lead to decisions to buy. An implicit presumption in marketing is that customers’ minds – at least adult customers’ minds – process information more or less the same way. Therefore, marketers stereotypically direct communication to the “average customer.” …
Stop Putting 10 Pounds Of Copy Into A 5-Pound Page
by Jim Gilmartin – The Conditional Positioning Principle: The less absolutely a brand is defined, the more customers, especially older customers, will define the brand in terms of their unique self-image, personality characteristics and individualized perceptions of need and desire. Baby Boomers are more resistant to absolutism. Absolute positioning (putting ten pounds of copy into a five-pound page), aims to push …
Boomers are Not a Generation New to Technology
by Jim Gilmartin – Boomers adopt tablets, wearable devices and other technologies just as energetically as younger users, according to participants at last year’s Booming Tech forum, which focused on the use of technology in that generation. Boomers “are not a generation new to technology,” said Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This notion that …
More Of ‘The Problem Isn’t The Things We Don’t Know, It’s What We Know That Ain’t So’
by Jim Gilmartin – A while back I wrote an article headlined, “The Problem Isn’t The Things We Know, It’s What We Know That Ain’t So,” quoting Mark Twain. His comment is simply a reflection of a common sense reality. Today, traditional marketing and selling continues to draw on many beliefs “we ‘know’ that ain’t so.” For instance: Marketers once …
Ever Wonder Why Baby Boomers Don’t Respond To Your Advertising?
As people age, they typically move into the higher levels of personality development and become increasingly resistant to advertising. Having seen and listened to tens of thousands of ads over their lifetimes, it isn’t likely that you are going to come up with an ad that a Baby Boomer views as startlingly original. We’ve learned doing the familiar in an …
Want to Connect with Baby Boomers? Be Authentic
David Wolfe, author of Ageless Marketing, tells the story of Reader’s Digest’s efforts to increase readership. Back around 25 years ago there was a successful lifestyle magazine for the older crowd called 50 Plus. Readers Digest took notice of America’s aging population and the beachhead that 50 Plus had established in older markets and bought 50 Plus from its founding …
Digital Marketing To Baby Boomers
So, you created a website, an online marketing plan and executed it. You’re routinely watching your online marketing activity, wondering if you could be doing better in Baby Boomer markets (50 to 68 years of age) because you believe you have an attractive product or service for them, and you know that’s where the money is. You’re thinking about how …
The Power of Women
by Jim Gilmartin As women work later into life and control more financial assets more than half of women say they are upgrading the quality of products and services in their lives. In a study on Boomer women purchasing habits, one 55-year-old woman commented, “Advertisers don’t seem to understand that most of the wealth in this country is in the …
