In their eagerness to tap the burgeoning youth market, Canadian advertisers have all but abandoned the baby boomer generation, whose size and propensity to buy everything in sight has kept marketers gainfully employed for a generation. But that’s not to say there isn’t life in the old demo yet.

So says Publicis Canada, which is turning the focus back on boomers with In Sight 45+, a new proprietary research study that promises to help marketers further tap the baby boom demographic by dividing it into smaller, more targetable segments.

Serge Rancourt, president and COO of Publicis Canada, says there’s plenty of opportunity to squeeze more money out of the baby boom generation – a group that accounts for one-third of the North American population and controls fully half of its disposable income. The problem is that marketers have tended to treat them as a homogeneous entity, when really they’re not.

‘We need to really start segmenting this market and looking into it,’ says Rancourt. ‘They are the people with the money, but they can’t just be lumped together as baby boomers.’

Publicis is using demographic and psychographic data in an effort to provide marketers greater insight into the wealthiest consumer group of this century.

The demographic analysis will be provided by leading demographer Dr. David Foot, a professor of economics at the University of Toronto, and co-author of the bestselling books Boom Bust & Echo, and its follow-up, Boom Bust & Echo 2000: Profiting from the Demographic Shift in the New Millennium.

Ad industry veteran and consultant Dennis Bruce will provide the attitudinal and psychographic segmentation, through his firm Mindset Creative Planning.

When demographics and psychographics are used in tandem, says Bruce, the market can be segmented more accurately, enabling brand messages to be engineered to be more relevant to each segment.

‘Right now, we’re painting largely with a broad brush. If one can identify more accurately and more sensitively the markets you’re going for, that [has an effect on] everything, including media planning, the values a corporation might bring to market, and the culture that arises from those values.’

With boomers the most cost-efficient demographic to target, it is surprising marketers have let their attention drift away, says Sunni Boot, president of Optimedia, Publicis Canada’s media management division.

‘This tends to be a forgotten advertising demographic, which means there’s less demand for it. Less demand means lower prices, so you can actually reach this group at a very efficient cost point.’

Boot says a valuable byproduct of In Sight 45+ is that, in addition to allowing segmentation by age, education, and financial status, the research is paving the way for geo-targeting – that is, the ability to isolate geographic areas containing large pockets of the demographic target.

Geo-targeting allows clients to optimize their media budgets at the planning stage, says Boot, by using targeted regional media, direct response or sampling programs.

In Sight 45+ will be ready for implementation next spring.