Baby Boomers are sophisticated consumers of advertising, having grown up in the heyday of mass marketing. Companies that don't understand this sophistication are doomed. Yet many rely on advertising agencies that believe the baby boom market is not worth pursuing as a unique and robust market. The real story may be that most agencies are ill-prepared for tackling the 50+ consumer, but don't want you to know it. In Advertising to Baby Boomers, Chuck Nyren takes on the excuses that large advertising agencies give for not targeting the baby boom audience, and urges companies wanting to attract this formidable market of 76 million people to rethink their approaches. "Companies need to put pressure on their agencies," argues Nyren in his groundbreaking book. Some simple demands, a bit of vigilance, and you and your agency can effectively reach this unwieldy demographic.^

Using familiar examples, Nyren advises how to change prescription drug advertising, discusses planned retirement communities and the ways that they can be made more appealing to maturing consumers, and more importantly, offers valuable advice on the advertising of general consumer goods and services. Exploding the myth that Baby Boomers just want to retreat to their younger years, Nyren explains that Boomers are not hung up on age. "Who actually thinks about his or her age all the time, or even very often?" he asks. "Contrary to social commentators, the media, and certainly advertising agencies, most of the time we are who we are: people in our middle age, and not much different but a little different than other generations were in their middle ages. We're not jumping in mosh pits while juggling cans of soda, trying to be eighteen again.^

We are slyly redefining what it means to be in our forties, fifties and sixties."Chuck Nyren's egalitarian approach to advertising and the creation of campaigns is all-inclusive. A large section of the book is dedicated to helping Baby Boomer entrepreneurs get their marketing and advertising up and running. The author also gives advice and guidance to the small businessperson on how to fashion a handmade campaign. Written to kick start your creative thinking, Advertising to Baby Boomers will entertain you, enlighten you, and make you a critic of every advertisement you see that should appeal to Baby Boomers but doesn't.

The business and marketing industries already "get it" when it comes to targeting the 50-plus demographic. Unfortunately, the advertising industry lags behind. Chuck Nyren tells you why in Advertising to Baby Boomers. Unlike most books about advertising, this one is written for "the client." Anyone with a product or service for Baby Boomers, from general consumer goods to high-tech electronics to planned communities to health care will find Advertising to Baby Boomers an invaluable tool. "Some simple demands, a bit of vigilance, and you could change things around, and get much more than you're paying for," Nyren says. Do you really need an advertising agency? What questions should you ask when interviewing or being "pitched" by an agency? When should you trust your advertising agency, and when should you question its judgments? When do you leave them alone? How do you critique a campaign? These are some of the questions answered in Advertising to Baby Boomers. In addition the author gives advice and guidance to the small-business person on how to fashion a custom-made campaign.