Baby Boomers or Age Busters?

Action to take

If you are a Baby Boomer, adopt a new designation for your generation.

Why

Baby Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. Boomers’ claim to fame is that
they are so big they can’t be ignored. But Boomers need a new public relations firm.
Is size all the generation stands for? The previous generation knew PR and called
themselves “The Greatest Generation.” Now that’s great marketing.

Baby Boomers need to drop the Baby. Boomers are well out of diapers and
have changed quite a few diapers themselves. Eighteen years is really more than one
generation and earlier and later Boomers had quite different defining events.
What most distinguishes the Boomer generation? They have redefined aging.
Boomers made 50 the new 30, etc. It wasn’t rhetoric. Though often overweight,
Boomers tend to look and act twenty years younger than people used to act at their age.
The change has come from their spirit and determination. It affected a paradigm shift in
how people age. To give proper credit, however, they also had a lot of help from medicine,
science, and cosmetics.

So let’s give Boomers the credit they deserve for helping all of us to look and feel younger.
Let’s change their name from Baby Boomers to Age Busters.

Quotes

I hope to die young, as late as possible.
~actors Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy

Humor

Radio talk show caller: I’m 75, Flo. I used to want to live fast and die young!
Flo: And now?
Caller: Well…now I just want to die young at a very old age.
~Flo & Friends cartoon by Campbell Bigel

We could certainly slow aging process down if it had to work its
way through Congress.
~Unknown

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Anti-Aging Psychologist Dr. Michael Brickey is keynote speaker and author of the Oprah-featured book, Defy Aging and 52 baby steps to Grow Young. The books and his Reverse Aging anti-aging hypnosis CDs comprise his anti-aging system.

Boomer Advertising

Action to take

Take a tip from Madison Avenue ad firms and pitch your lifestyle to the
age you choose to perceive yourself to be.

Why

Advertisers call it psychographics–using demographics in marketing to
determine the attitudes and tastes of a market segment. For Baby Boomers
psychographic studies prompted marketing to the Baby Boomers’
perceptions of their age and lifestyle. Boomers perceive themselves as a lot
younger than we used to associate with their chronological ages. Hence
50 is the new 30, etc. Some may see it as denial. I see it as supremely realistic.

Our perceptions and stereotypes for what people are supposed to be like at
40, 50, 60, etc. are typically based on how our parents’ generation aged.
We have to have some reference and our parents have been our role models.
But Boomers have a vision of being much younger than those stereotypes and
refuse to go along with expectations. Eventually, advertisers caught on and
marketed to their perceived ages. The ads in turn reinforced the Boomer beliefs
that they are forever young.

You can perceive of yourself as younger, older, or about the same as
stereotypes for your age. Thinking of yourself and your lifestyle as younger
fosters being more active, resilient, hopeful, and healthy. You’ve got to like choices
that give you everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Quotes

I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
~George Burns

Humor

The perfume industry missed one important Boomer psychographic.
Yes there are perfumes that make you smell sweet. But if
Boomer women really want to attract Boomer men, they need
a perfume that subtly, imperceptibly smells like pizza.
~Mike Brickey

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Anti-Aging Psychologist Dr. Michael Brickey is keynote speaker and author of the Oprah-featured book, Defy Aging and 52 baby steps to Grow Young. The books and his Reverse Aging anti-aging hypnosis CDs comprise his anti-aging system.