Aging America

America is getting older. And while I have read several articles about how marketing is shifting toward the utilization of non-traditional media due to new technologies, I’m not sure this will be effective in the baby boomer population. Turning to YouTube, Facebook, and targeted consumer advertising is conducive to Generation X, but these same internet gurus are not necessarily spending money. The technology era has not leaked into the lives of our parents in the same way it has taken over ours. In fact, many of them still read the printed newspaper, watch TV with commercials, and don’t even know what Facebook is.

Companies are smart to introduce marketing strategies that reach out to the younger people (since we are the consumers of the near future). However, there seems to be a “cut-off” in the population and those that were born before a certain date have managed to avoid using computers and other electronics for entertainment and those born after have integrated every aspect of the innovations into their daily lives. If the marketing trend is shifting toward the younger of the two, but the older group is the one growing in size, we might say that marketing is moving backwards.