When Nintendo starts producing video games for boomers, you know the middle-aged crowd has arrived. At least in the minds of marketers.

However, if you think the image of an excessively happy grey-haired couple will turn them on, think again. Robert Mason, a principal at Toronto-based consultancy Boomers Marketing, stresses that the last thing boomers want is to be reminded of their age, and that a far more effective modus operandi is to depict age-neutral images that reflect a certain lifestyle. It’s a method that can require significant segmentation work but, judging by the experience of the marketers in this story, one that is well worth the effort.

Mason has definitely noticed marketers flocking to the boomer crowd lately and says it’s about time. ‘Advertisers should have been targeting the ‘over 50′ for the past decade,’ he says. ‘It’s taken that length of time for the reality to set in that a lot of people are leaving the 18-to-49 target group and going off marketing’s radar screen. And companies are starting to realize: ‘Hey, we’re letting a lot of business get away.”

Companies like Nintendo. The videogame giant released ‘Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day’ in April and will add ‘Big Brain Academy’ this month. Brain Age, a series of exercises designed to keep the cerebral cylinders firing, is a definite push for the boomer market. On its website, Nintendo goes so far as to tell its new target, ‘after decades of exercising your thumbs, Nintendo moves to your mind.’

A surprising move for a videogame company, for sure, but a smart one too. For one thing, it taps into the reality that middle-aged consumers want to fend off the aging process. And then there’s the potential pay-off of connecting with a, well, booming, population segment. As Mason points out, the boomer group – consumers born between 1946 and 1964 – is the fastest growing demo in Canada and it will be for several more years. By 2011, about one-third of Canadians will be over 50.

Consider too that they are relatively debt free; 80% own their homes, and only about 24% carry a mortgage. They earn on average 43% more than their younger counterparts, and they represent two-thirds of Canadians with a net worth in excess of $100,000. Specifically, the 50+ crowd controls 55% of Canada’s discretionary spending. No wonder marketers are salivating.

But that doesn’t mean they’re getting it right. In fact, for many, quite the contrary. ‘When a print ad is done for the over 50, everything we know about advertising gets tossed out the window, and they stick on a visual of the smiling, grey-haired couple,’ says Mason, himself a boomer at 53. ‘We really don’t need to be reminded of our age. What I want is for you to tell me the benefits of your product or service. Sell me.’

Mason has worked in the ad biz for 30 years, first at Procter & Gamble, and then on the account side at agencies like Young & Rubicam. With partners, he founded Boomers after he turned the magic age of 50 and suddenly realized his opinions no longer mattered to marketers. ‘I used to do a lot of research panels. They would ask screen questions, like ‘what age bracket do you fall in?’ I said ’50 and above,’ and it was ‘thank you, we don’t have any more questions.’ The plug was pulled on me.’

After asking his similarly aged pals what they thought about advertising geared at them and discovering the response was negative more often than not, he decided to do something about it. A year-and-a-half ago, Boomers Marketing was born.

However, Mason concedes that not all marketers are completely hopeless at speaking to older Canadians and that a few actually excel at it. Mason points to fitness chain Curves as an example, citing its depiction of both young and old in advertising images. ‘There’s no stigma, there’s no huge direct campaign that reminds people they are over 50,’ notes Mason. ‘They’re targeting a lifestyle and a benefit and people are responding to it. It’s including the boomers, but not excluding [others].’

Becky Frusher, communications manager at Waco, Tex.-based Curves, points out that while the fitness franchise’s broad demo base encompasses females 35+, boomers are the main market and that the overall goal has always been to portray women ‘as they really are’ in TV and print ads, as well as in the firm’s custom publication Diane. ‘We also recognize that women want to better themselves and [find life-work] balance,’ she says. ‘So we want to offer support in those areas.’ Since its inception in 1992, Curves has grown to include 9,500 franchises in 41 countries, and there are plans to open 3,000 more locations in the next five years.

The path to achieving success, as Curves has, starts with segmentation, says Mason. ‘I think one of the greatest myths is that all boomers are alike – you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all – when, in fact, the segmentation in this group is even richer than in younger people.’

Certainly this has been DaimlerChrysler’s strategy as of late. Judy Wheeler, VP marketing at the Windsor, Ont.-based automaker, says the firm has courted boomers for several years, but has only been launching products specifically created with them in mind for the past two years. ‘We are definitely going after the boomers – they’re wealthier, more active and living longer than their parents,’ she says, adding: ‘When we develop products, we look specifically for holes in our lineup where we think there is an emerging market and we design the product for that target demo…. We figure out what vehicle would be of interest, and what they would want, and that’s how the product is designed.’

Vehicles geared at boomers include the Chrysler 300 series, the Dodge Magnum and the Dodge Charger, as well as members of the Jeep family. However, each caters to a specific subset of the boomer crowd. ‘The Dodge consumer is looking for value and distinctive styling, but also a very practical vehicle,’ says Wheeler. ‘With Chrysler, it’s the same demo, but they want luxurious styling, so we use things like wood interiors, whereas Dodge would [look] more sporty. And when you take the 40- 60-year-old Jeep customer, they want a nice vehicle for the office, [that translates into] something outdoorsy on the weekend.’ The advertising strives to speak to these distinctive needs.

Although boomers are mass media consumers, there are also discrepancies in media choices among the various sub-groups, says Wheeler. For example, the Chrysler driver is more inclined to tune into talk radio, attend theatre, and watch dramas, whereas a Charger driver would listen to classic rock, go to movies, and watch sitcoms.

Chrysler’s slice-and-dice approach appears to be working: In February, the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and Dodge Magnum brands combined to achieve a record high sales month with 30, 241 total units sold. (In February ’05, those numbers were 17,913.) And Jeep brand sales were 11% higher in February ’06 versus ’05.

Like DaimlerChrysler, Toronto-based retail chain Tabi has clued into the fact that not all females over 45 are cut from the same cloth. The retailer, which sells classics, has broken its broad 45-to-65 demo into several personality cohorts, each of which it attempts to address through merchandising efforts.

‘We do a walk through the store and say: ‘Could so-and-so shop here?” explains director of marketing Arlene Lebovic. ‘The woman in her 40s, for instance, would be a working career mom with a busy lifestyle, so we would think about what kinds of things she would wear, and how she would wear them. Another group might be more free spirited and prefer cottons and layering pieces.’

This focus on personality and lifestyle is reflected in Tabi’s advertising as well, which mainly consists of DM. The chain also recently launched a contest and print campaign to find the new face of 40+. (See ‘Behind the idea.’) Patrons seem pleased with the new merchandising program. Lebovic reports that 75% of customers surveyed like the styling – and not one participant said they felt alienated. And when it comes to the retailer’s database, active numbers are up by 20%.

It just goes to show that if you take the time to truly get to know boomers, they’ll open their wallets. After all, as Mason says, ‘people over 50 don’t stop drinking Coke and buying jeans, and all of a sudden start only buying hemorrhoid cream.’

Behind the idea

The Face of Tabi

With competitors like The Gap and Reitmans (both of which are introducing new banners geared at boomer women) nipping at its heels, Tabi wanted to establish itself as a forerunner in the 40+ market, says director of marketing Arlene Lebovic. ‘While they’re still kind of figuring it out, we’ve spent a couple of years [doing that] and [want to put] ourselves out there in a leadership position.’

But, to do so, the Toronto-based retailer needed a new campaign that would stand out like a Betsey Johnson concoction at a Bay Street function. The answer came during focus groups that tested consumer reaction to a breast cancer campaign featuring a marine-biologist-cum-model.

‘She was probably one of the faces most people could identify with, because although she was beautiful, she still had realness to her,’ says Lebovic. ‘Women said: ‘We can all be the face of 40, because it’s any woman in this room.’ So we thought: ‘Hmmm. They’ve been saying, I can’t identify with 20-year-olds.”

At the same time, the retailer realized that, while there are currently few players in the market – Northern Reflections and Cotton Ginny being main competitors – they all share the same twentysomething models. So it became clear that they needed a fresh face that reflected the audience more accurately.

Enter Tabi’s first model search, which will give women the chance to become Tabi’s Face of 40+. Three finalists will star in a photo shoot in Canadian Living magazine – as well as receive an all expenses paid weekend in Toronto and a $500 Tabi wardrobe – while the grand prize champ will be signed to a national modeling contract for three Tabi promo campaigns. Says Lebovic: ‘We wanted new faces that our customers can identify with and who better than those people who shop at Tabi?’