A lot of food for thought

The second edition of Brent Green’s book, marketing to leading-edge baby boomers, has just been published. This article gives a good idea of his views.

I like his style of writing and whilst I don’t agree with everything he says he has a great ‘feel’ for the subject.

He talks about: “two sociologically distinct generations have been wrapped neatly in this nineteen-year package. The leading-edge boomers are different from their younger brothers and sisters in some fundamental ways. He goes on to catalogue some of the world events that were going on at this time.

I am very interested in the concept that experiences in our teens determine the way we behave, as consumers, in our 50s and beyond. There must be a relationship but to what extent and how important, compared to events much earlier in our life, is not clear to me.

My worry is that we sink into simplistic stereotyping of these attitude-forming teen experiences that is determined more by our personal take on life than reality.

For instance, in the US the Vietnam War is seen as one of these universal attitude-forming experiences. Undoubtedly this war, and all of the protest movement that went with it, must have done something to the collective conscious of everybody around at the time. The question is what!

We are talking about events that took place 30 years ago and no doubt our memories of what it was really like at the time and how we really felt might have distorted a jot?

So let’s reverse the theory and look at what is happening today and try and predict how this will impact teenagers when they reach their 50s. We can’t know the relative historic importance of 9/11, the Iraq War and fissure in US society caused by the second term Bush presidency. We can be pretty confident in predicting that these events are pretty damn important. No doubt some sage in 30 years time will be pondering on their importance to 50+ consumers (or whatever they are called then).

If anybody has any ideas what he/she (or it) might be saying let me know. I haven’t a clue. Dick Stroud www.20plus30.com