Boomers in Canada

My old chum Chuck Nyren is quoted in an article appearing in the Ottawa Citizen. As always Chuck talks a lot of sense as does Matt Thornhill, another of the US Boomer marketing experts.

There is another article in the paper about how to segment the Boomer market. There was a fashion a few years back for dicing and slicing the ‘N’ Zillion Boomers into a discreet groups/tribes and then to give them a silly name. I am as much to blame as anybody else for doing this sort of stuff. However, when I have used lifestyle segmentation I have tried to ensure it is based on some sort of research.

When I first started working in the 50-plus business I collected these daft sounding names. The last time I looked I had a couple of hundred. Here are four more I should add to my collection:

• Autonomous Rebels
• The Connected Enthusiasts
• Anxious Communitarians
• Disengaged Darwinists

Isn’t it odd that lifestyle segments names never include titles like “boring old sod” or “naïve and arrogant”. These being characteristics I have noted in some of my own age group I have encountered in the past week or so.

An observation about the web layout of the newspaper. I can see what the designers are trying to do but I fear that they have been a tad too clever. Certainly I had problems viewing the thing on my Apple. Dick Stroud