The New Old: How the Boomers Are Changing Everything . . . Again - Softcover

Cravit, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550228439 ISBN 13: 9781550228434

Verlag: ECW Press,Canada, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Focusing on the Baby Boomer generation, this argument explores how this group is permanently destroying previous attitudes toward aging, retirement, senior citizens, and even the concept of death. An analysis of welfare rates and health-care costs demonstrates that the ?Boomers” are influencing everything from education and employment to housing, health, beauty, and sex. With solid statistical support, this groundbreaking study takes a closer look at new kinds of social relationships as well as new products that can reduce or even eliminate the effects of aging. The topics covered offer a sneak preview of an imminently new society?one in which receiving a gold watch at the age of 65 will simply mean the first half of life is over.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

David Cravit is the senior vice president of marketing for Fifty-Plus.Net, Inc. He has more than 30 years of experience in advertising, marketing, and consulting and has participated in the creation and placement of more than $5 billion worth of media advertising. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

David Cravit is the senior vice president of marketing for Fifty-Plus.Net, Inc. He has more than 30 years of experience in advertising, marketing, and consulting and has participated in the creation and placement of more than $5 billion worth of media advertising. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

David Cravit has over 30 years’ experience in advertising, marketing, and consulting in both Canada and the USA. He has participated at the most senior levels in the creation and placement of over $5 billion worth of media advertising. He is Senior Vice President, Marketing, for Fifty-Plus.Net Inc., which operates the largest Internet portal for Boomers and seniors.

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THE NEW OLD

How the Boomers Are Changing Everything ... Again

By DAVID CRAVIT

ECW PRESS

Copyright © 2008 David Cravit
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55022-843-4

Contents

Cover, 
Imprint, 
Dedication, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 
PART ONE: HOW DID WE GET HERE?, 
CHAPTER 1: The Big Picture, 
CHAPTER 2: Is Mick Jagger a senior citizen?, 
PART TWO: THE NEW OLD LANDSCAPE, 
CHAPTER 3: Back to Methuselah, 
CHAPTER 4: Why is this man smiling?, 
CHAPTER 5: The SKIers, 
CHAPTER 6: I'm gonna spend forever, 
CHAPTER 7: Sex: it's never over, 
PART THREE: BUT SOME ARE STILL CLUELESS, 
CHAPTER 8: "They're only gonna buy one more car before they die", 
CHAPTER 9: Boomer politics: there are none, 
PART FOUR: SO WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?, 
CHAPTER 10: Look in the mirror, 
CHAPTER 11: Shoot the messenger, 
POSTSCRIPT: Stay tuned, 

CHAPTER 1

The Big Picture

In 1952, the first year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, she sent a congratulatory letter to 255 people on the occasion of their 100th birthday. She also sent congratulatory letters to 2,745 couples celebrating their diamond (60th) wedding anniversary.

In 2005, the Queen congratulated 6,914 people for hitting the century mark, and a further 24,304 couples celebrating 60 years of marriage. She also sent congratulations to 576 people for reaching the age of 105 — more than double the number of people who had reached a measly 100 when the Queen first got going.

Here's a graph of the Queen's trendline:

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I offer this as my version of the proof that the population is aging.

But you already know that, don't you?

You can't pick up a newspaper or business magazine these days without reading about it. From marketers to think tank gurus, from politicians to statisticians, from journalists to social workers, everyone has "suddenly" discovered Boomers and seniors.

People are living longer, obviously, so "older people" represent an ever-increasing percentage of the population. This is expected to put huge burdens on existing pension programs, health care systems and other social agencies. Most of what's being written about the aging of the population focuses on numbers — the number of people hitting retirement age, the dollar extent to which they're underfunded (and are they ever), the costs of future medical care, pensions and other entitlement programs, percentages up and down, a glut of statistics.

True, there are plenty of articles about Baby Boomers and seniors as a market (still largely ignored by the media and advertising industries), and their wealth and purchasing power. And there have been a few books about the impact of Boomers on society — individualism, diversity, tolerance, fanatic work ethic, shameless self-absorption.

But for the most part, the aging of the population is seen largely as a matter of arithmetic — more old people, and therefore more problems associated with being old.

Do we really need another book on that theme?

If not, what's my angle? Why should you pay attention?

I believe the big story isn't how many "older people" there are. It's who they are.

An astonishing process is underway today. It's just starting to take shape, and its influence will be felt for centuries — maybe forever. The process is being carried out by the demographic segment that has been poked, prodded, analyzed, loved and hated more than any other group in history — the Baby Boomers.

What the Boomers are doing is, quite simply, destroying our entire concept of aging. The Boomers are, in effect, de-aging. And, since the Boomers gleefully "own" whatever it is they're doing at any point in time, we can readily make their name a part of the label — I call it BoomerAging.

And the differences between "aging" and "BoomerAging" aren't subtle, either. As we'll see, by the time the Boomers get done, all of our age-related ideas and norms will be replaced:

• The definition of "aging" and "old age"

• The "expected" patterns of behavior that have always been attached to aging

• The concept of retirement and employment

• The nature, structure and timeline of education

• Product development, marketing and communication

• The health care system

• Sex

• Money

• And just about all government policy (hint: they're already missing the boat)

These changes will be permanent, too. As a result of what the Boomers are pioneering, being "old" will never mean the same thing again. Thus, the title of this book: the new old.

In the world of The New Old ...

• The idea of being "older" will start much later than ever before.

• It will be characterized by attitudes, behaviors and patterns of spending that we have never seen before.

• It will shatter the assumptions, structures and conducts of business of virtually every industry and every area of government responsibility.

It's not exactly a modest assertion that I'm making.

So before we get started, let's clean up a few details so as to lay the proper groundwork.

What makes me such an expert?

In the first place, I'm a Baby Boomer myself. I'm living through all of the phenomena I'm about to lay out for you.

As Executive Vice-President of ZoomerMedia, I'm in charge of sales and marketing for Canada's largest media company specializing in ...

Ah.

There's the first wrinkle.

When I first wrote this manuscript I wrote "... specializing in Baby Boomers and seniors."

That phrase was perfectly OK with my publisher, and it duly made it into the first version of the typeset layout.

Then the President of my company, Moses Znaimer — easily Canada's foremost media genius – popularized the term "Zoomers" to describe this audience. He started with the idea of "Boomers with Zip" but it quickly expanded to include the entire population of Baby Boomers and everyone older. Within barely a month, the term had spread like wildfire and was eagerly being embraced by the media as well as by virtually everyone who had previously been described as "senior," "elderly," "mature," "Golden Age" and other equally depressing terms. In the next chapter, I'll go into a lot more detail about what Moses did and how and why it's taking off so dramatically. For now, let me just note that we specialize in this market – it's our only business. (They were all babies when, in 1948, Gerber adopted as its ad slogan, "Babies are our business ... our only business" – but of course you'd have to be a Zoomer to remember that!) Our multiple web sites and electronic newsletters generate over a million page views a month. You can find out all about us, and link to our various media properties, at www.zoomermedia.ca.

We also handle communications and marketing for CARP, Canada's largest association for ...

Ah. Again a need to define this audience.

CARP originally stood for Canada's Association for Retired Persons. Then they changed it to Canada's Association for the 50-Plus. Then along came Moses Znaimer and the magic term, Zoomers. So CARP is now Canada's Association for Zoomers.

We own and publish CARP's magazine – rebranded as ZOOMER magazine in October 2008 – and CARP's website and electronic newsletter. We also manage CARP's member benefits program.

Since CARP is...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ECW Press,Canada
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1550228439
• ISBN 13: 9781550228434
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 200
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland