Boomers and Financial Planning

NSON Opinion Research recently conducted a telephone omnibus survey in conjunction with Dr. Les Harris, president of Mature Marketing and Research, and author of two books on baby boomers: After Fifty and After Sixty.

NSON asked 570 people who were 40 years old or older what type of financial planning assistance, if any, they used. Over 60 percent of respondents said they do not use stockbrokers, accountants or other financial consultants to assist them with their financial planning activities.

However, people aged 55 to 64, the age bracket immediately prior to retirement, are using financial consultants more than younger and older groups. The study also showed that women are more likely than men to use financial planners.

When color isn't a good thing

Ever since newspapers have added color to their pages, it has become more difficult for older eyes (that's 50 and over and sometimes 40) to read many of the advertisements. The reason is that advertisers have gotten sucked into believing that if their ad has a colored background it will be more eyecatching.

The comics are especially bad offenders. If you love Doonesbury, it is frustrating not to be able to see the words of your favorite characters, but when those words are in tiny type, on gold, tan, or green backgrounds, they are really hard to read. And Doonesbury is certainly not the only offender.

One reason advertisers, comic strip artists, and others believe that type on color works is that they often look at the draft from a laser printer. The type from that printer will show up much clearer than on newsprint which absorbs the ink.

Most of the books on boomers that we publishing these days have a section that talks about the physical issues that begin to affect people as they pass into their 60s. Advertisers should be aware of these. Like it or not, they do have an effect on response rates. And twentysomething advertising designers aren't as tuned in as they should be.

For more on this, consult books like Advertising to Baby Boomers by Chuck Nyren, After Sixty, edited by Leslie Harris and Michelle Edelman, and Baby Boomers and Their Parents by George Moschis and Anil Mathur.

Baby Boomers and Vacations

As baby boomers turn the corner to their sixties and head into retirement, most travel companies are trying to figure out how to target them. In her new book, Turning Silver Into Gold, Mary Furlong says that most boomers are eager to travel and they are looking for out-of-the ordinary experiences including adventure travel, educational travel, and luxury travel.

It's not surprising that Boomers want to travel. Cheryl Russell writes in the latest edition of American Consumers, the newsletter from New Strategist, that Americans have the least vacation days of any developed country. She points out that on Americans get an average of only 13 vacation days a year and they have 3.5 million square miles in the U.S. (besides the whole rest of the world) to explore.

Says Russell, " The Europeans must feel sorry for us. The British get 28 vacation days a year on average, the Germans 35, and the French 37. And they have a lot less territory to cover. Maybe it is time for a new quality-of-life statistic, the How Much of Your Country Have You Seen Indicator, calculated by dividing vacation days by square miles times 1 million. Higher is better. The French have 37 days a year to explore their 211,000 square miles. We have 13 days a year to explore 3.5 million square miles. The French indicator is a lofty 175.2. Ours is a measly 3.7. You can bet the French are much more familiar with their geography than we are with ours."

Many Boomers have worked since they were teenagers and want to finally have some fun. This could be a problem, even when they have time on their hands. In their new book, Baby Boomers and Their Parents, George Moschis and Anil Mathur, point out that some boomers will barely have enough money to stay overnight in the motel down the road, let alone travel extensively and expensively. Still, those who do have money enough are ready to hit the road and looking for new, fun options with which to enjoy retirement.

What? An ad agency doesn't want my business?

Chuck Nyren is a savvy copywriter who believes that many advertising agencies are missing the boat by not employing baby boomer copywriters and designers at their agencies. However, he also lays some of the onus for making sure that advertisements are age-appropriate at the doorstep of the client. While he encourages clients to consider the services of small-to-medium-sized agencies, he says there are some reasons why these agencies may not accept a client. These are just some of the insights you will find in Chuck's book, Advertising to Baby Boomers.

In most cases, small-to-medium-sized advertising agencies want you as a client. Some good reasons why they may not accept you:

• If a conflict of interest exists, (an account with a product or
service similar to yours) an ethical agency will not handle
you. However, because they are small or mid-sized, the
chance of this is slim.

• In good times, some smaller agencies overextend themselves.
Rarely do they turn away business, but it does happen.

• Some agencies do not like to handle products they believe
to be harmful. A few might not handle liquor, wine, or
beer. Others are environmentally conscious.

• Agencies often turn down political campaigns for (you
guessed it) political reasons, or because they do not want to
alienate their clients. (If you were a Republican, would you
be thrilled about your agency handling a Democratic
campaign? And vice-versa.)

• More often than not, small to mid-sized agency owners are
very involved with their clients. Some only want to handle
a manageable number of accounts. Give them credit for
honesty and integrity.

• A few agencies think of themselves as specialists. For
example, some agencies specialize in the health industry.
They may handle a few non-health, but related products and
services (for example, insurance). But if you walk in with a
revolutionary new egg beater or a reversible, edible necktie,
they might just tell you,“We don’t really know much about
this type of product, don’t know how to advertise and brand
it, so you would be better off with another agency.” Again,
give them credit for honesty and integrity.

Two queasy reasons why they may not want you for a client:

• An agency might consider your company or product or
service unworthy to be in their stable. Every industry has
snooty companies.

• Related to the above, they may not want to handle a specific target market
because they believe it will reflect poorly on their agency.
Along with Baby Boomers and their elders, some agencies do not want to target ethnic groups, religious groups, or certain economic groups.

Confusion about Baby Boomers

A total of 76 million Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. The peak of births was in 1957, hence the news that there is one person in the U.S. turning 50 every 8 seconds. That is true for 2007, but it won't go on forever. And we are hearing a lot of misinformation these days about the baby boom.

Cheryl Russell, editorial director of New Strategist Publications and considered the guru of data about the baby boom generation, says that the baby boom peaked with 78 million people in 2005, having added 2 million people plus from immigration. Since most people immigrate when they are in their twenties and thirties, the baby boom was gaining about 200,000 people a year during the 1980s and 1990s. Now that boomers are aged 43 to 61, there are fewer immigrants in their age group to add to their numbers. Add to that the fact that there are about 223,000 deaths among baby boomers each year and rising, the baby boom cohort is beginning to shrink. Expect the number of deaths to grow by about 10 percent a year. In short, Boomers have reached the tipping point in growth and now their cohort is beginning to shrink.

A radio news story the other day said the number of baby boomers is increasing and would shortly reach 80 million. That's just plain wrong. Baby boomers are a strong consumer group for many products and services. But don't let anyone tell you that their numbers are growing stronger.

Believe it or not, some time in the next decade they will be outnumbered by the Millennial Generation as immigrants add to the population in that cohort.