Tuesday 11 January 2011

Baby Boomer's lifestyle: Escaping the norm..


"Jhon is stuck in Milano, he has to wait there 6 hours for the next available flights"
"Really? What is he doing in Milano?"
"I think he went to visit his daughter, he has been there for a week now, he posted that a week ago on Facebook.. It's too bad he got stuck in the airport. His wife already accepted the facebook party inviation for the community event we are going so I'm guessing now they won't be able to attend that."

Facebook? Community event on facebook? Live mobile updates from the airport? How? When? Where? I am amazed! I'm just sitting in the tube having in front of me two baby boomer representatives watching at their up-to-date-with-technology mobile phone doing conversations about online social networking.

Back home my grandmother hardly even knows how to send an SMS and whenever she tries to call me she ends up calling somebody else.. Maybe that's why she hasn't called me for a while.. The other "me" might have blocked her .. I don't blame him.. I would have done the same if somebody was mistaken me for their granddaughter and wanted to know whether I ate or if I'm wearing enough clothes so I don't get cold.. Ok.. That was just an irrelevant point, back to the story..

But she is after all a baby boomer, she was born between 1946 and 1964, she does own a mobile phone like the Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers and the phone was chosen based on her technological lifestyle. She just wanted a phone who she can open quite easily, be able to see clearly and call up her friends and relatives with no hassle. After all.. "Boomers adopt technology as they need it" and my grandmother does need it. She use it to interact in her offline social networking. She phones her hairdresser for her normal Saturday blow dry and goes to the hairdresser and socialise. She calls up my cousin to ask him if he wants something for dinner and when at home she invites her neighbours for coffee..

Unless we want to consider the baby boomers as Gen-Xers with higher level of wrinkles, the difference of offline and online social networking in baby boomer's life makes if reasonable for a new generation segment to be introduced: the tech-savvy baby boomers and marketers selling products to this segment need to adapt in their different lifestyle.

That's what marketers needs to keep on doing: Catering for the different lifestyles.. The power of Marketing!

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