Introduction
Really? A book about marketing to boomers? As the most consumptive
generation in history, do boomers even need to be marketed to?
In a word, yes. Boomers 3.0: Marketing to Baby Boomers in Their
Third Act of Life shows how to market to baby boomers from a cultural
perspective, fi lling a very large gap in the universe of business books.
“Boomers 3.0” is a reference to the third (and fi nal) version of boomers’
lives, a period of time that has already begun and will extend to the 2040s.
The fi rst version of boomers lives’ (Boomers 1.0) comprised their child-
hood and young adulthood from the 1950s to the 1970s. The second ver-
sion (Boomers 2.0) encompassed their middle adulthood from the 1980s
through the 2000s. Boomers 3.0 thus addresses baby boomers’ later adult-
hood that will continue for the next two to three decades. Boomers’ third
act of life will be different from their fi rst and second, I propose, meaning
organizations should take a different approach to marketing to them than
in the past. Creating meaningful relationships with baby boomers in their
third act of life should be a priority for all kinds of businesses, something
that demands a new kind of thinking and an alternative set of tools. This
book offers a way to contextualize business objectives within a culturally
based, forward-thinking framework that fully leverages what is perhaps
the biggest story of our time and place.
Doing so will be well worth the effort. A solid case can be made that
the graying of America or age wave is the most significant socioeconomic
trend today, as 65 million (of the original 76 million) boomers (who in
2017 range in age from 53 to 71) head into their senior years en masse .
