Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Four: Miscellaneous Boomer Collectives

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


In the last story in this sequence, we broached the idea of forming Creative Collectives of experienced, skilled, well-educated, and talented Boomers and other "Grays," who would band together to produce and distribute Content appealing to audiences over age 50, whether in the form of television, webcasts, film, music, theater, or any other Media format. (Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Three: Creative Collectives)

The Boomer Collective concept need not be limited to Media, however.

If whoever is in charge of our current Youth-worshipping economy refuses to recognize how valuable the already more than 2 out of 5 Americans aged 50 and over are to this country's continued economical viability . . . . Well, let's demonstrate it ourselves by banding together and producing pretty much everything!

A few areas of endeavor where Collectives might take hold:


***** Software: In this application-crazed environment, let's show we can outdo 16-year-olds trained as Gamers.

We've heard put-out-to-pasture engineers and assorted IT professionals are now legion. Let them become the new whiz-kids in the software field, in the process producing digital products their age-peers - also legion - might need and enjoy.


***** Invention: Boomer inventors are certainly out there working individually to design and pursue patents for everything under the sun.

We think it's time groups of them got together and assembled into Gray Think Tanks of inventors, designing and engineering products and services with special appeal to the soon-to-be-nearly-one-half-of-us over age 50.


***** Retail: Later in this series, we'll discuss some of our ideas for retailers geared to the Boomer population.

Some Gray retailers might be formed in the Collective mode, as some food businesses have been for decades.


***** Hospitality: Similarly, groups of Grays with solid backgrounds in restaurants, hotels, tourism, or events might want to gear such businesses to both peer audiences and the general public, drawing on a ready-made talent pool of exceptionally experienced people who might actually be cheaper to hire - not to mention more productive - than younger people with little experience (and possibly bad attitudes).

People over 50 are, in general, extremely good at any work that involves dealing with and pleasing the general public. Chances are we've already been doing such work for decades - and what's more, we like it.


***** Development: Future stories in this series will also cover the kinds of housing, business real estate, and community planning our Gray population might like to see more of. Gray Development Collectives could be important in such - one suspects, highly profitable - efforts.

We can see development Collectives of talented and experienced architects, city planners, engineers, retailers, and infrastructure experts of all kinds coming together to found exciting, unique, and economically viable communities focused on over-50 Americans, their needs and desires.


***** Politics: Envisioning healthy and happy and economically thriving lives for Boomers and other Grays  is not only the job of commerce, of course, but also the job of effective politics.

As we've pointed out in other stories, an astonishing 1/2 of eligible voters in our U.S. elections next year - Yes, in 2016! - will be aged 50 and older, a statistic that should also apply in the 2020, 2024, and 2028 election cycles.

In general, an extremely badly informed and/or deceptive Mainstream Media - one hopes it is the former, but fears it is the latter - has kept many Americans in our Gray population literally in the dark about our growing numbers, our growing strength, and our growing potential power to change our own lives - as well as the lives of our fellow Americans - for the better.

We believe that's about to change dramatically, and that Boomers and others over age 50 will begin to reassert ourselves as vibrant and productive political activists starting with the current election cycle.

Many - in fact, the majority - of elected officials at every level of government, as well as their staffs and closest supporters, are our fellow Grays. But so far, there have been few campaigns, issues-oriented or otherwise, geared towards and focused on either Gray voters or Gray issues.

As our power - and our pure numbers - become more widely acknowledged, however, we believe it's likely that Boomer-plus Political Collectives, focusing on specific candidates who speak for us and issues we consider important will spring up all around the country, particularly at the local and state levels.

*******************************************

Why this sequence of stories?

With over 2 in 5 Americans already aged 50 or over - a proportion that may escalate to close to 1 in 2 Americans within a decade or so, it is imperative that our "Gray Population" no longer be considered a "peripheral" or "specialty" market, but rather be acknowledged for what it truly is: a vitally important part of the United States economy.

To that end, we need to encourage all sorts of new businesses, new products, and new services that our "Gray Population" actually wants and needs, as decided by the "Gray Population" itself, not by marketers and technologists decades younger.

We need to encourage Boomer-and-older entrepreneurs; help them as actively as we're helping younger Founders; and fund them at least as aggressively, via traditional venture capital and other means, as we're funding other groups of new business owners.

We're offering this sequence of articles in the spirit of generational solidarity and generosity - and we hope other writers, thinkers, and activists will generate and share ideas of their own.


Let the Boomer Renaissance begin!


Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub    

Prime of Life, Prime Time Audience (an addendum to Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Three: Creative Collectives)

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

 
As we said in our Boomer Creative Collectives story, it's now not only beneficial, but downright essential, that various Media sectors court "Gray" Americans aged 50 and over.

Nowhere is this more important than in the realm of conventional - i.e. not Internet-based - television, which claims to have experienced a significant drop-off in viewing rates over the past year or so.

To be quite frank, we think this may have much to do with regulators' decision to allow a greater percentage of airtime to be given over to advertising. There are simply too many ads on conventional TV, and too many of them are ineffective and sometimes offensive, especially age-targeted advertisements, which were frowned upon until quite recently. (See my story, A Fine Line Between Marketing and Harassment: The Case Against Age-Targeted Advertising)

Nevertheless - and despite the ad-aversion factor - there has been one very bright spot in recent statistics about conventional television. Those under age 50 may be viewing somewhat more Internet-based TV.  Meanwhile, viewers over age 50 are watching as much or more TV-on-TV-sets than ever.

So which audience, exactly, does conventional TV need to cater to and please and coddle? (Hint: our hair is gray.)

In that spirit, and drawing on the premise of our Boomer Creative Collectives idea, I have formed a temporary Boomer Creative Collective of Me, Myself, and . . . . Myself.

In an intense hour of espresso drinking and internal brainstorming, we came up with 20 concepts (some admittedly derivative, some quite original) for potential television series we believe Boomers and others in America's Gray Population would like:

 
1. Spinsters: Call it the anti-Charlie's Angels. Many Boomers are familiar with classic detective novels and, therefore, fans of the great Dorothy L. Sayers and her superlative sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey.

Among the most intriguing concepts in the Wimsey books was Lord Peter's backing of a first-rate collective of "intelligence gatherers," wholly consisting of  bright unmarried women over age 50. There were numerous women in this category throughout Europe - and in the U.S. - in the 1920s into the 1930s, because of the vast number of marriageable males lost in World War I.

Today in the U.S., we have a vast number of unmarried women and men over the age of 50 - although for quite different reasons, discussed elsewhere in this series. Among Boomers, people in our 50s and 60s, fully 1/2 - Yes, 1/2! - are currently single.

We will draw on this theme in other series ideas below.

Here, however, we'd like to suggest a television series about an "intelligence gathering" agency consisting of current "spinsters" - unmarried women over 50. Like Lord Peter's savvy - and often brilliant - "gentlewomen," these skilled modern women would prove perfect covert operatives in a broad and diverting array of circumstances in which younger or male operatives would prove far less skilled.

 
2. Landed: It hasn't happened to a vast degree yet in today's America. But already, we're seeing a new "commune" - communal farming - movement among people over 50 in other parts of the world, including much of Europe.

American Baby Boomers, of course, were gung ho for communal farming in our 1960s-70s bohemian phase, and there are stirrings of renewed interest - mostly for purely financial reasons - now.

We're suggesting a TV series about a group of over-50 friends, who decide to go "back to the land" as communal farmers.

One advantage of such a series is that you could stage it in a locale that has not gotten much coverage on national TV - Oregon, say, where there actually are a fair number of communal farms, or - in a totally different region - rural Alabama or Mississippi.

And like many of the great "family" series of an earlier period - Family itself comes to mind or Seventh Heaven - this one lends itself to a gentle treatment with both dramatic and comedic elements.

 
3. Gated: It may be time for the return of the classic prime time Soap, a la Dynasty or Knots Landing, this time centered around a group of both single and married Boomers, denizens of a midscale (most Boomers can no longer afford upscale) planned community somewhere in the Sunbelt.

Although serious themes would be introduced at times, this kind of series could get away with being mostly campy. And it could feature all sorts of cameos from former Big Stars one hasn't heard about for years. ("Did you see Reginald on Gated last week? Doesn't he look wonderful/terrible/sunburnt/a bit chubby but still sexy?")

 
4. ExPats: By its nature, this series probably has to be mostly comedic, not dramatic. But with so many older Americans deciding to live outside the U.S. - usually in order to conserve cash, although a quest for new adventure is also a motive - it's high time for a series about a group of American "Grays" living semi-exotically abroad.

Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America have become top destinations for our ExPats. I think I would choose Central America, perhaps Costa Rica or Panama, for the series locale. Mexico - too political. The Caribbean - too expensive.

Central American ExPats, in contrast, tend to be people just like you and me - provided we were brave and romantic enough to pull up roots and start anew somewhere English is a second language.

 
5. Old Men and the Sea: Yes, some women want to become "beach bums," too. But pretty much all American men have sand-and-surf fantasies somewhere in their psychic makeup.

This series would focus on at least 2 - maybe 3 or 4 - currently single men over 50, who've decided to live out a long-held dream by purchasing a charter fishing boat operating off Florida or the Gulf Coast or maybe Baja California.

This could be a pure comedy or another "dramedy," a form I believe many of today's Grays would like to see revived, because we find today's crop of youth-conceived and originated sitcoms both coarse and unfunny, while just about the only drama shows left are either cop shows or medical dramas.

 
6. Snake River: But talking about cop shows, good ones are always appreciated and quite popular among Boomers. One or more police dramas with major protagonists age 50-plus will likely appear over the next few years.

I've always thought a good name for a police show might be Snake River, for obvious thematic reasons. And while the Snake spans one city in Wyoming  - Jackson (and nearby Jackson Hole), as well as Washington's Tri-Cities of Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland, this quintessential American river spends much of its time in Idaho and meanders through various cities in that state - Boise, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls, and Lewiston.

This is significant, because demographers tell us Idaho has now become an immensely popular state for Grays to relocate after leaving jobs elsewhere in America. And I'm not sure there's ever been a major television series based there.

 
7. The Rez:  Still on the topic of unusual locales and situations, we've long wondered why no one has come up with a regular series focusing on a community of Native Americans - unless you count A&E's Longmire, which had some Indian characters, or CBS's Northern Exposure, in which Alaskans with tribal connections were prominent.

In neither case, however, were they the primary Star characters. And it's high time to attempt a show in which a broad spectrum of Native American characters have the starring roles.

This concept is Boomer-related, not only because since our youth, Boomers have been fascinated with Native American culture, mores, and lifestyles, but also because the current crop of elders in most tribes includes many Boomers.

If you set a series like this on a reservation plus its surrounding communities, perhaps adding some thematic spice by choosing a tribe with diverse business interests - resources? tourism? casinos? - I think you'd have a hit on your hands.

 
8. Pollifax Redux:  Besides cop shows and Western themes, what do Grays like to watch? Why, Spy shows, of course, along with everybody else.

And I have long wondered why no one has tried to translate to television another classic series of novels, the Mrs. Pollifax series by Dorothy Gilman, which focused on a tiny 60-ish widow from New Jersey, who somehow helped solved a case of espionage; was recruited as a CIA consultant, then an operative; became skilled at judo, karate, skydiving (I seem to remember), and Goddess knows what else; and found true love on a safari with a dashing elderly judge.

This series started in 1966, meaning Mrs. Pollifax was a member of Baby Boomers' grandparents' generation, not our own. But reviving it or creating a copycat series with a tiny widow - or divorcee - or never-married woman - in her 60s as the accidental-but-eventually-accomplished Spy, should be tried.

 
9. The Gray Matchmaker:  And while we are focusing on romance and adventure, with, again, fully 1/2 - Yes, 1/2! - of Baby Boomers now single, we deserve a matchmaking show of our own.

The very successful Bravo series, Millionaire Matchmaker, is occasionally compelling and funny, mostly because some of the folks being paired up are  - there's no kind way to say it - grotesque and, therefore, fascinating in the way a car accident might be.

But we'd like to see something different and, frankly, better in a reality match-up show which features people 50 and above: a matchmaker with integrity and values; clients with integrity and values; and an emphasis on participants' non-surface qualities - intelligence, sophistication, a moral compass - rather than on the swell clothes they're wearing or whether their cleavage and/or wavy hair is satisfactory.

 
10. Wide World of Senior Sports: Perhaps this has been attempted before, but we've never seen it.

How about an extremely diverse weekly series of sporting events featuring over-50 athletes? We think, if correctly publicized, this might become quite popular - and not only among our fellow Grays.

One way to make it interesting would be featuring at least some sports not generally touted on American television. Some exotic possibilities, which have many older participants: Curling. Bocce. Highland Games. Fencing. Dogsled-racing. Equine events.

And there are many mature - and highly-skilled - athletes who now participate in so-called extreme sports, like mountaineering, rock climbing, whitewater canoeing and kayaking, and wilderness skiing.

 
11. Beautiful Losers: You could also call this Meritocracy, as in our Meritocracy Project, which I hope all our Readers know about. (Find a link at the bottom of this story.) But I've always liked the title of the 1966 novel by Canadian writer and songwriter Leonard Cohen, and I think it applies well to this proposed show.

Another "dramedy," this one would follow the fortunes of a group of 60-plus friends, who re-meet at . . . a college reunion? a concert? a Caribbean resort?

Although all are well-educated professionals with top-tier degrees and decades of solid career experience, in one way or another, they're all suffering financially after - take your pick - downsizing, stock market disasters, expensive divorces, small businesses failing . . . .

They're all feeling, at best, sorry for themselves, or at worst, outright despondent. But in the course of renewing their friendships, they decide to pick up stakes and rent a decrepit mansion or somewhere else large enough and cheap enough to be renovated gradually and house them all, while they figure out what to do with the last third of their lives.

That's how this story would start. But it could, of course, go off in numerous directions as the series evolves. Some members of this group of "60-somethings" might go into business together; turn hobbies into new careers; fall in love; run for public office; become keen athletes; undergo religious conversions; cure cancer; promote world peace . . . . Hey, we can take them anywhere!

 
12. The Good Gray Company: No, it's not about Walt Whitman and his Entourage - although that wouldn't make a bad show, either.

This is a possible reality show version of the series above, with both hosts and all participants age 50-and-over.

I say "participants," rather than "contestants" or "pleaders for funding," because this would be a wholly cooperative show, in which everyone is meant to win.

What we have in mind is, after an open application and screening process, choosing a team of perhaps 10 well-educated, experienced Grays who are currently down on their luck financially and want to commit to something new. They'll come from different disciplines useful in forming new businesses: engineering, finance, law, operations, sales, content development, IT.

They will have six months, living and working together and with a limited initial budget from the show's producers, to come up with, design, create, and bring to market a new product or service specifically geared to America's Gray population. The series will follow their progress in by now tried-and-true reality show fashion.

What will be different, besides the ages and strong experience levels of all participants, is that this show will not seek to foment and record dissension and conflict, but will rather emphasize creativity, problem-solving, progress, and decency towards one's fellow business owners.

It would be hoped that each 6-month sequence would result in a significant and possibly important new product or service, with the owners going on to establish profitable and exciting companies.

 
13. Reunion: This one's a lighter show, albeit with more heart and less vulgarity than today's average sitcom.

What we'd like to do is translate the delightful - the best word is "sweet" - British sitcom, As Time Goes By, into a similar vehicle for American actors and audience.

That BBC show, which featured the fabulous Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer, ran from 1992 to 2002. It was the tale of quintessential star-crossed lovers, who lost their chance to be together in their early 20s, and later, he divorced, she widowed, found each other and rekindled their romance.

Clearly, with fully 1/2 - Yes, 1/2! - of Boomers being single, there's now an enthusiastic ready-made audience for this kind of show, particularly - again - if it chooses to concentrate on character and true-to-life situations and forgoes the childish vulgarity that still makes many American comedy shows hard to stomach.

An interesting twist might be to seek out and find real-life stories of star-crossed lovers who broke off their relationships after high school, college, the Army, early jobs, but who - 30 or 40 years later - found each other and are now together.

I personally know of several such romantic stories - and I'm sure you've heard of some, too. We could feature one such vignette every episode in the last five minutes of the show.

 
14. Newer Tricks: Another British show I'm surprised has not been translated into a series for American Gray audiences is the still-running New Tricks, which began in 2004.

I just love this show (partly, I confess, because I have a mad crush on Dennis Waterman), which follows the adventures of a special kind of "very cold case" police squad, which consists of a still-on-active-duty inspector in her late 40s, and three retired-then-reinstated policemen in their 50s to 70s, given the job of solving ice-cold cases, sometimes decades old, for which brand-new evidence has just been discovered.

And Yes, U.S. television has had cold-case series galore - but never one with a cadre of elderly but sophisticated and savvy - and often downright wise - detectives, adept at sussing out the long-forgotten motives and actions of "persons of interest" who have aged right along with the main characters.

 
15. Winterglow: We think there's also room for an over-the-top campy novela-like series with mostly Gray characters, which, in fact, might be produced in both English and Spanish versions for an "all-Americas" audience.

Clearly, the location of choice is Florida, and we came up with the fictional town of Winterglow, which, besides having allegorical overtones, would be right at home among other Florida towns, which include Winter Park, Winter Garden, Winter Haven, and Winter Springs.

We envision a Carl Hiaasen-like cast of characters. (If you haven't read any Hiaasen, you should.) And since Mr. Hiaasen is alive, well, and only 62,  perhaps he'd want to participate in this kind of series.

 
16. Professor Smith Goes to D.C.: OK, that's a bit awkward. But Boomers are now so passionately interested in politics - in percentages not seen since our Golden Youth days of the 1960s and 70s - I think we'd like to see a series with a protagonist over 50 - male or female - who becomes involved politically because of a local issue; gains a bit of fame because of it; decides to run for Congress; wins; and despite being a well-educated and sophisticated citizen - that's why we've tentatively made her/him a college teacher - has to learn the ropes in the wild-and-crazy world of Washington politics today.

We'd want this show, another "dramedy," to be more in the cinematic tradition of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Meet John Doe than the propaganda-heavy - and usually Left-wing-biased - "political" shows of recent years.

In fact, it would be beneficial to make Professor Smith a down-the-center Moderate, with an unclear Party affiliation. And the series should focus as much on the basic realities of becoming a Congressperson - we'd want several ex-Congresspeople as series advisors - as on specific issues.

Since the protagonist will be a Baby Boomer, we can make much or most of his/her staff fellow Grays, a refreshing change from typical political series which often skew towards a very young cast.

 
17. Remarkable: Since people who've passed their 50th birthdays are naturally interested in the topic of longevity, we think there would be a solid audience for a "This Is Your Life"-type series celebrating the current activities and achievements of Grays who are, by any measure, Remarkable.

Actually, while Boomers in their 50s and 60s might be the producers and hosts of such a series, it might want to focus primarily on people significantly older than Boomers, in their late 70s, 80s, or occasionally 90s - highlighting a "You're never too old" theme.

When I was writing for the magazine Parade, I did a popular and widely-read cover story on Older Entrepreneurs and another on Centenarians - the ultimate champions of longevity and resilience. I mention this, only because I think I could come up with the first 20 - or 50 - or 300 - possible "subjects" for a series like this in ten minutes flat.

Here are just 20 possible Remarkables to find and profile: a chef, a mountain climber, a crusading judge, the chief of an Indian tribe, a Civil War re-enactor, a game designer, a dress designer, a ski instructor, a champion fisherman, an ambassador, a general, a dog breeder, a horse trainer, a small-town mayor, a large-city mayor, a prison chaplain, a visionary architect, a futurist, a medical researcher, a gentlewoman rancher.  Yes, that's 20!

 
18. The Longevity Report: Speaking of longevity, Boomers and other Grays might like watching a prime-time magazine show on the general topic of living longer, healthier, and better.

The trick, though, is to make sure it is not skewed to medical procedures and pharmaceuticals, which we believe the vast majority of people under the age of, say, 95 are not anywhere near as interested in as some zealous Kiddie marketers seem to think we are.

Instead, the show should focus on exercise, diet, non-invasive health procedures, and folk remedies, as well as offering short pieces on breakthroughs in the science of longevity and . . . well, essentially anything that fits in.

It is important that all hosts and segment producers are themselves over the age of 50. This needs to be a show about, for, and by us - Grays ourselves, not some 22-year-old's vision of who the typical over-50 American is.

 
19. Make Me Beautiful Again: The Longevity Report would focus on Gray health and fitness topics from the inside-out. This possible companion show would focus on people over 50 from the outside-in.

You'll remember our previous Boomer Business Idea story about a Make Me Beautiful Internet site. (Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Two: Make Me Beautiful Again) This series would bring the concept to television - with a twist.

What we'd want to add to the Internet site's format is filmed illustrations of actual beauty practices or procedures, with guest subjects serving as the (happy-to-do-it) "guinea pigs" for segments about, for example, hair restoration; under-eye circles; eyeliner tattooing; tooth-capping or anchoring; abdominal core slimming and strengthening . . . . We all know what we want to hear about and improve, and this show should appeal as much to male Boomers as to females.

 
20. Team Sage: This series is linked to concepts from our Meritocracy Project, which we referenced above.

The eventual centerpiece of this University-based Project will be setting up mechanisms for matching the now very large pool of the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed," which we believe numbers about 400 million individuals worldwide - the majority of them over age 50 - with the true "Unmet Needs" of our planet: in infrastructure, manufacturing, healthcare, education, and social services.

Team Sage would be a purely fictional, somewhat romantic, but tied-to-core-truths series that stems from the above idea.

It would center around a Project-based think tank somewhere in the U.S. - perhaps on a University campus - headed by the charismatic Dr. Sage (female or male) and his/her crack team of development and project experts, all or most of them over age 50.

The Team would be called in by nations - mostly poor ones - around the world to handle a specific and acute problem that needs to be solved quickly and efficiently: digging out after a mudslide? a standoff between  poor farmers and an agricultural agency? an outbreak of a strange disease? a mission school under attack by rebels? a teensy weensy stock market crash?

Whatever the problem, our Sage and Gray think tank can assemble and send in a proper Team to help.

 
21. To Be Continued . . . .

This batch of television concepts took me just an hour of internal brainstorming to come up with - and slightly longer to flesh out into an article.

So just think what a Boomer Creative Cooperative could accomplish!

**********************************************  

Why this sequence of stories?

With over 2 in 5 Americans already aged 50 or over - a proportion that may escalate to close to 1 in 2 Americans within a decade or so, it is imperative that our "Gray Population" no longer be considered a "peripheral" or "specialty" market, but rather be acknowledged for what it truly is: a vitally important part of the United States economy.

To that end, we need to encourage all sorts of new businesses, new products, and new services that our "Gray Population" actually wants and needs, as decided by the "Gray Population" itself, not by marketers and technologists decades younger.

We need to encourage Boomer-and-older entrepreneurs; help them as actively as we're helping younger Founders; and fund them at least as aggressively, via traditional venture capital and other means, as we're funding other groups of new business owners.

We're offering this sequence of articles in the spirit of generational solidarity and generosity - and we hope other writers, thinkers, and activists will generate and share ideas of their own.


Let the Boomer Renaissance begin!


Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! Project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. 

 

Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Three: Creative Collectives

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

 
The figurative hand-wringing and moaning has become incessant. There are just not enough Viewers or Listeners or Readers or possibly Imbibers-by-Osmosis of all sorts of Content, with that dramatic capital C.

Well, one obvious solution is to produce Better content - with a capital B. And one way to do that is by stopping the egregious neglect of the group of Content Imbibers who most feel they've been badly neglected - the more than 2 in 5 of us - soon to rise to nearly 1 in 2 of us - who make up the "Gray Population" age 50 and over.

We Baby Boomers - now in our 50s and 60s - are especially miffed at our recent neglect by the Gods of Media, because we've been influential within Media realms pretty much since we were born - as creators, as initiators, and as consumers of Media in all its forms.

Boomers were the first generation to have television screens as our close companions since babyhood.

We embraced the Golden Age of Cinema our parents' generation - give them the credit - had created. And we transformed and modernized movies in our turn.

We revolutionized popular music and initiated the age of radio-on-the-go.

And although we are not yet thrilled about some very recent "improvements" in Media technology - for example, we tend to think watching video on little bitty smartphone screens kills the eyesight - we're as tech-savvy as any generation in history, inventors and early initiators of Modern Media as we know it today.

 
Don't Hate Us Because We're Creative

 
If Boomers (people aged 51-69) and the many Americans older than Boomers (those age 70 and older) no longer contribute as much as we once (recently) did to American Media of all kinds, it has nothing whatsoever to do with our knowledge - ever-growing! - our experience - superb! - or our general level of creative talent - better than ever!

No, it has to do, as we've related in several previous stories, with economic transformations that have demonstrably not succeeded and which continue to harm our society, our politics, our economy, and our culture.

Because recent governments have been unable to create many additional jobs in an absolute sense, they've tried to "handle" this lack of growth by unceremoniously removing workers who've passed the imaginary Gray Maginot Line we've placed at age 50 - or in many cases, even lower - subsequently "repackaging" these jobs as "new" ones and handing them over to younger workers or a few other favored constituencies.

But that's politics, while this sequence of stories is about business solutions.

The current reality is that there is now a humongous talent pool of Creatives over age 50, in Los Angeles, in New York, in Washington, and all around the country, many of whom are hurting for cash, hurting for productive work, and - perhaps most of all - hurting for renewed recognition as the experienced and educated and sophisticated and immensely talented people they still very much are.

 
Content Needed, Content Producers Looking For Work - Sounds Like a Great Match to Me!

 
Although it seems 100 percent logical to try to match the Content one presents with the Audience one needs to attract, in America, we've lagged the rest of the world in producing solid and interesting and compelling Content those over 50 will want to consume.

Our economic "Out with the Mature, in with the Kids" policies have prevailed within our Creative industries, as well as within our economy as a whole.

At last, though, there seems to be some recognition that things need to change, particularly in areas like "traditional" - i.e. non-Internet-based - television, which Americans under age 50 are watching less of, while Americans over age 50 are consistently watching more.

What we're proposing is one way to create and package and market good Content produced by and for Boomers and others over 50: Collective "shops" of various kinds, guided by, staffed by, and driven by the now-underutilized talent pool of Creatives who've been sitting on the sidelines itching to participate in viable Media projects.

True, many leading lights in the realms of both U.S. television and U.S. film - actors, directors, producers - have set up their own studios or production houses over the past few decades, focused on projects in which they themselves are the major contributors or in which they play a key supervisory role. And as these leading lights have themselves aged and become part of the Gray Population, their sponsored projects have tended to "skew older" in terms of both Content and participants.

But we are not aware of many - perhaps any - studios or production houses specifically identifying themselves as creators and purveyors of Content for Boomers and other Grays. And we think there should be such entities.

Going a step further, we think at least some new studios and production houses geared to Gray Content could be established by groups of older Creatives themselves, even without the seal of approval of an over-50 Megastar actor, director, or producer.

Whether based in specific locations, with participants under one roof, or based digitally, with Creatives in various locales working together via remote technology, we'd love to see brain trusts of highly-experienced but under-employed writers, producers, and other Creatives cobbled together and becoming active to create quality Content - conventional television, webcasts, films, theater, music productions, and spectacles of all sorts - with stories and themes appealing to audiences over age 50, while cast, crew, and others involved were also heavily skewed to participation by Boomers and other Grays.

Purely as a personal brainstorming exercise, the next story in this sequence will offer 20 ideas for future television shows that Boomer Creative Collectives might want to work on.

I hope many Readers will come up with their own ideas and that they will work - if they are able - towards making Creative Collectives for Boomers and other Grays a reality in the not-very-distant future.

**********************************************    

Why this sequence of stories?

 

With over 2 in 5 Americans already aged 50 or over - a proportion that may escalate to close to 1 in 2 Americans within a decade or so, it is imperative that our "Gray Population" no longer be considered a "peripheral" or "specialty" market, but rather be acknowledged for what it truly is: a vitally important part of the United States economy.

To that end, we need to encourage all sorts of new businesses, new products, and new services that our "Gray Population" actually wants and needs, as decided by the "Gray Population" itself, not by marketers and technologists decades younger.

We need to encourage Boomer-and-older entrepreneurs; help them as actively as we're helping younger Founders; and fund them at least as aggressively, via traditional venture capital and other means, as we're funding other groups of new business owners.

We're offering this sequence of articles in the spirit of generational solidarity and generosity - and we hope other writers, thinkers, and activists will generate and share ideas of their own.


Let the Boomer Renaissance begin!



Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub    

 

Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea Two: Make Me Beautiful Again

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

Our next idea for a business Baby Boomers would undoubtedly like: a truly responsible and trusted interactive Internet site focused on beauty, health, and fitness fixes for people aged 50 and older.

And Yes, there are several existing sites which purport to do this. But we think they're not keeping their promises to our Gray Population for several reasons:

*** Many sites are linked in one way or another to pharmaceuticals and/or costly and sometimes risky medical procedures.

As we've said elsewhere, there are current assumptions among (23-year-old?) marketers that once a human being passes some invisible Maginot Line into Old People's Land, he/she is prey to every disease ever discovered - and some we think the marketers just made up.

 

They believe we Navel-gazing Oldsters spend our entire existences obsessing about these diseases and how many pills we can pop to cure them or prevent them or ward off evil spirits aligned to them or . . . . Well, what can one say, except that these pharma-friendly assumptions are wrong - and idiotic - and insulting - and maybe downright sadistic. And that most of us over age 50 are thoroughly sick and tired of being seen as sick and tired.

The site we propose - our working title is Make Me Beautiful Again - will have nothing whatsoever to do with pharmaceuticals nor with diseases per se. Its purview would, however, include beauty and fitness-related services, including those administered by some medical and dental professionals. Tooth-capping and implantation should be in our sights, for example, as should procedures dealing with baldness, unwanted hair removal, treatments for improving skin, and exercise and diet regimens.

 

*** Many existing sites excessively promote the products and services of small groups of advertisers.

Make Me Beautiful Again would maintain an honest, neutral, and totally unbiased stance towards specific companies, product lines, treatment regimens, and practitioners.

Indeed, at the core of our proposed site's activities would be empaneling a group of trusted and intelligent guinea pig reviewers - perhaps 3 men and 3 women over 50 (including me) - to try out various products, health and fitness regimens, practitioner services, and the like and report back on their efficacy or lack thereof.

Everything tested and tried would be aimed at people over 50, not at the general population, and reviewers would be chosen based on their past histories as respected journalists, researchers, and purveyors of useful information.

 

*** Many current sites are skewed towards Celebrities, rather than the 99 percent-plus of us who aren't Celebs.

The already Rich-and-Famous don't need a site like this. They can spend their gazillions - and undoubtedly are doing so - on products and treatments the rest of us can't afford. Nor would we possibly want to, since so many aging Celebs seem to have chosen the cookie-cutter plastic surgery approach to turning back the clock. Alas, the resultant Franken-Beauty they've achieved is more likely to stop clocks than rewind them, relying, or so it seems, on equal parts injected pharmaceuticals, extreme weight loss, and rubber cement.

Not for us! Our site would focus on products, procedures, and regimens that are inexpensive, available, and accessible to all, aimed at fostering non-toxic and natural incremental improvements in how we feel and how we look. If only a movie star or Wall Street mogul could afford a product or procedure, we'll pass.

 

*** Most beauty and fitness sites are dull and dry, with a sell-sell-sell mentality.

While we wouldn't wish to obsess on Hollywood and celebrities, we'd be willing to utilize stories including them - or anyone else or anything else - as a means of spicing up the site and gaining interest throughout the Internet.

For instance, we might run a story which asks over-50 actors or politicians or sports figures what they do when they need to lose a few pounds quickly for a movie role-television debate-tournament appearance. I'd be interested in reading that. Wouldn't you?

But the site would strive to maintain a good balance between catchy stories and those that are primarily informational. And we'd avoid the hard sell like the plague. For example, if one of our reviewers tried out a piece of new exercise equipment that worked fabulously for him, we'd make sure to balance his positive opinion with information on any possible negatives or drawbacks to the product.

 

*** The majority of health and beauty sites have failed to take advantage of current Internet technology.

We wouldn't! We'd make sure to include podcasts, audio, interactive features like quizzes and reader sound-offs, as well as references and links to other sites and reading material.

 

So how would we monetize all this wonderfulness?

Clearly, there are many possible ways to do it.

While we've been vehemently against heavy-handed forced advertising of all sorts, I can see the site being sponsored on a week-by-week basis by product or service providers whose equipment, beauty products, dietary supplements, or beauty-related procedures have been favorably tested and endorsed by our reviewer cadre.

We might well allow such reputable marketers a non-intrusive place on the site, perhaps allowing them to run advertorials periodically - preferably written by us for quality control and to make sure they don't go over the line in terms of heavy-handed enthusiasm.

Or we might permit selling bits of material we produce - stories, podcasts, quizzes, or anything else - to other sites, including E-zines and media consolidators.

In any case, I think Make Me Beautiful Again is a business concept to which many Boomers would respond in a very positive fashion. It's an idea for a media service which is needed and would be widely appreciated by the "Gray Population."
 
******************************************

 

Why this sequence of stories?

 

With over 2 in 5 Americans already aged 50 or over - a proportion that may escalate to close to 1 in 2 Americans within a decade or so, it is imperative that our Gray Population no longer be considered a peripheral or specialty market, but rather be acknowledged for what it truly is: a vitally important part of the United States economy.

To that end, we need to encourage all sorts of new businesses, new products, and new services that our Gray Population actually wants and needs, as decided by the Gray Population itself, not by marketers and technologists decades younger.

We need to encourage Boomer-and-older entrepreneurs; help them as actively as we're helping younger Founders; and fund them at least as aggressively, via traditional venture capital and other means, as we're funding other groups of new business owners.

We're offering this sequence of articles in the spirit of generational solidarity and generosity - and we hope other writers, thinkers, and activists will generate and share ideas of their own.


Let the Boomer Renaissance begin!

Baby Boomer Business Ideas/ Idea One: Airbrushed Identities

by Dr. Ellen Brandt

We start our sequence of Businesses Boomers Might Like with an idea suggested in our earlier story, Beauty and the Boomers.

We argued that there is a widespread negative perception of what the average Baby Boomer looks like, despite the facts that we are only in our 50s and 60s and are generally far healthier and more fit than previous generations were at this stage of life.

Much of this negative perception can be placed at the foot of Anti-Boomer rhetoric and propaganda, most coming from well-organized political cadres, with misguided economic agendas aimed at stifling the U.S.'s "Gray Population" of people aged 50 and older - even though (or perhaps, because) we now number more than 2 in 5 Americans, rising to close to 1 in 2 Americans within the next decade.

The only way to grapple with that part of the equation is politically and culturally, via the polls and our influence in the media.

But there's another, more easily tackled, reason that Boomers are perceived to be less attractive than we are - and doing that tackling could lead to the establishment of some very solid businesses which so far don't exist.

As we said in Beauty and the Boomers, we believe the vast majority of men and women in our generation look perfectly fine when you meet us and view us in person.

But we don't look particularly fine when our faces are translated digitally, whether on conventional television and film or via the newer and still-being-refined technologies like podcast players, still-photo phone cams, or communications services like Skype.

I will go a (perhaps important) step further and assert that a major reason - maybe The Major Reason - our "Gray Population" over age 50 seems to be utilizing these photo-centric technologies far less than younger people are has nothing whatsoever to do with our basic ability to use them and a lot to do with our fear that they will make us look yucky.

As we've said in previous articles, Boomers - and many of those older than Boomers - have been utilizing and been comfortable with computers and other digital technologies since such technologies were invented.

So if we are - all of a sudden - seemingly mass-reluctant to use smartphone still-cams, Internet podcasts, and telecommunications services with a central visual component as much as Plugged-in Youth are using them, it's likely there is something at work here other than "technology aversion," as some anti-Gray rhetoric would have one believe.

And that reason is: These technologies fail to translate Boomers' innate sexiness and gorgeousness into digital form.

You think we're being vain and ridiculous, Young'uns? Just you wait! Most of these technologies are not just "social," for one thing. They are widely used for business purposes, from remote conference calls to marketing to recruitment and hiring.

In fact, the business community - and media - and politicians - all have a very large stake in making sure that every new improvement in digital presentation and communications is utilized by the widest possible group of citizens, including the already 43 percent of us who are over age 50.

 
Yes, the Science is Almost Certainly There
 
The kinds of new services which we're proposing would offer customers the ability to enhance their basic attractiveness in video phone, video cam, and video player formats.

The user would submit either a still photo she/he already has on hand or have the ability to "scan" his/her face into the service.

If a scan were used, the customer would be able to "airbrush" it, the way digital magazine editors have done for years, until it is at the point of both attractiveness and recognizability with which the user is completely satisfied.

At that point the service(s), through whatever patented means they come up with, would store a facial "template," which could then be synchronized with expressions and speech patterns, so that it would become one's realistic and official "moving avatar" in podcasts and remote communications applications of all sorts.

I think the market for services like this would be beyond immense, provided they worked well, were easy to use, and were priced moderately.

I'd sign up in a heartbeat - as would pretty much every politician and political officeholder in sight; nearly every actor, author, and news personality; a large number of business people at all levels; anyone job hunting or offering jobs . . . . Well, who wouldn't sign up for something like this, if it worked right and were priced right?

The question then becomes, can it be done well? And with some concentrated R&D, we think it can.

A rudimentary search of the scientific literature shows that the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) has held symposia on technologies very close to what we are proposing - so academic and government-based engineers have been working in this area.

Interestingly, the basis for this research seems to have begun with forensic studies. We all know about those age progressions police agencies do to help find missing children, figuring out what a child of 5 would look like at 15 or 25. Well, apparently, you can do the opposite and figure out what a current 75 year old would have looked like at 55 or 45.

Meanwhile, those other whiz-bang technologists connected with publishing and Hollywood have been doing serious R&D on digital aging and anti-aging for decades, in order to make their human subjects look more terrific on the page, the screen, or - more recently - the computer.

So can what we're proposing be done technically? We're very sure it can. And that it should be.


*************************************************
 
Why this sequence of stories?

With over 2 in 5 Americans already aged 50 or over - a proportion that may escalate to close to 1 in 2 Americans within a decade or so, it is imperative that our "Gray Population" no longer be considered a "peripheral" or "specialty" market, but rather be acknowledged for what it truly is: a vitally important part of the United States economy.

To that end, we need to encourage all sorts of new businesses, new products, and new services that our "Gray Population" actually wants and needs, as decided by the "Gray Population" itself, not by marketers and technologists decades younger.

We need to encourage Boomer-and-older entrepreneurs; help them as actively as we're helping younger Founders; and fund them at least as aggressively, via traditional venture capital and other means, as we're funding other groups of new business owners.

We're offering this sequence of articles in the spirit of generational solidarity and generosity - and we hope other writers, thinkers, and activists will generate and share ideas of their own.

Let the Boomer Renaissance begin!




Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub    

Beauty and the Boomers

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


You're OK. We're OK. But maybe not so much on Skype or selfies.


The last couple of blogs in this series (see Boomers Versus Gallup and Boomer Myths and Misperceptions) may have been perceived as "downers," as we talked about some of the ways pollsters, economists, politicians, and our too-concentrated "mainstream media" have been getting the Baby Boomer generation absolutely wrong - sometimes on purpose.

They've tried to advance political or cultural agendas that seek to push the "Gray Population" off center stage - in the U.S., Europe, Japan, the rest of the Developed World, and China - at the exact moment in history when people over age 50 constitute fully 2 in 5 citizens - and consumers - and voters - in these countries, a statistic that may rise to close to 1 in 2 of their citizens within the next few years.

Boomers - now in our 50s and 60s - and all others in the 50-and-above age cohort need to stay vigilant and aware of such anti-Gray agendas and anti-Gray biases and prejudices, if we are to separate Friends from Foes, cultivating the former and avoiding the latter.

But as the title of this series demonstrates, it is now time to move beyond mere Anger and frustration and to embrace a new and positive Activism, not only because it will help our generation, but because it is of crucial importance, as we seek to help all generations, as well as our economy, our country, and our World.

We're going to start by talking about a certain kind of Activism Boomers have embraced pretty much since we were in diapers - the need to regain our dominance as business founders, "creatives," and entrepreneurs.

The next dozen or so stories in this series will outline some of my own, admittedly personal, suggestions about the kinds of companies, products, services, and business models our generation might respond to in a positive fashion.

And No, I am not a tout marketing companies and products which already exist. As many readers know, I have a rather dim view of marketing aimed at Boomers these days. (See A Fine Line Between Marketing and Harassment: The Case Against Age-Targeted Advertising).

I think professional marketers - in the aggregate - have misread and misjudged our generation badly in recent years. Of course, that's entirely understandable, since their ranks rarely seem to include actual Boomers anymore and are, we suspect, crowded with those who dislike us, dismiss us, and essentially disrespect us.

That needs to change.

And also, No, I'm not particularly afraid that the ideas for new companies, products, and services I am going to suggest will immediately be "stolen" and exploited by others - even if that could be partially true.

Ideas are inchoate until they are realized and put into action. Those of us who truly care about the Boomer generation and seek to help our fellow Boomers seize the day need to encourage - not be afraid of - creative thinking in a collective, as well as purely individual, sense.

In fact, here's a little test that you may find highly instructive: Go to your favorite search engine - any one you choose - and do a News search for Baby Boomers. I guarantee you will be thoroughly disgusted at what you see - and, more to the point, what you don't see.

The vaunted "mainstream media" in the United States - which some researchers now believe is restricted to just 4 or 5 conglomerates of related "partners" - has imbibed the Anti-Boomer rhetoric we talked about in earlier stories, even if some of them haven't been active participants in strident propaganda.

I guarantee that the results of your News search, whatever engine you use, will consist primarily of public relations blurbs from marketers of one sort or another - which, of course, are in no way actual "News" - stating that their internal research proves Boomers need to be sold whatever they are selling, which nowadays comes almost exclusively under the headings of pharmaceuticals or financial services - the two business categories I believe the vast majority of Boomers don't want to hear one more word about, ever again, on pain of death.

Meanwhile, real News about Boomers, collectively or individually, seems to have disappeared. You will be hard-pressed to find stories about Boomers' continued impact on politics, on entrepreneurship, on economics, or on the media itself - although we - and everyone else over age 50 - are now having a greater, not a lesser, impact on all of these realms of life than ever before.

In any case, this story will be the first of several casting ideas into the media ether - where one hopes some of them may attract supporters and crystallize into actual business formations.


We Think We're Still Attractive - And We Want You To Think So, Too

We're starting our sequence of Businesses-Boomers-May-Want articles in a somewhat roundabout way, which will - I promise - end with our proposing three distinct and diverse kinds of businesses which I believe our generation would like very much and would utilize, if they existed.

We'll devote a separate subsequent blog to each of these three suggestions, which - in different ways - are focused on the general concept of Boomers and Beauty.

Business Idea One is about Perception - specifically, about very negative perceptions of what the average Boomer really looks like. We believe such negative views of Boomer attractiveness stem from two major causes - one technical and one based on pure prejudice.

Let's start by "outing" the prejudice - or more to the point, those who have inspired it.

Some of you will remember our popular blog series (2009) Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation. That series started with a piece called You're Decrepit, Greedy, Narcissistic Luddites-So Turn Over the Country to Us, which you might want to re-read, not only to refresh your memory, but also because pretty much every kind of bias we catalogued back then is, alas, still very much with us.

One of the things that story talked about was a widely-circulated article in the on-line publication Mashable, which made negative - and rather silly - comments about Baby Boomers' usage of technology, particularly focusing on E-mail.

This article, which may or may not have been written by an 11-year-old, was illustrated by a photograph of a befuddled elderly gentleman in a plaid flannel shirt, who appeared to be a minimum age of 98 - or possibly, 108.

Boomers, we note, were aged 44-62 - Yes, 44-62! - when this story came out. Quite a lot of us found this illustration of what "a typical Boomer" might look like a tad disturbing - worthy of, say, Nazi propaganda about Jews or the Ku Klux Klan depicting the attractiveness of Black Americans.

Well, guess what? Mashable and quite a few other publications which are somehow included in the concentrated "mainstream media" (Internet edition) are still illustrating most stories about Boomers - and soon, mark my words, Gen-Xers - with photos of people so elderly and frail, you expect them to disintegrate before you get to the end of the story.

Even pieces about prominent individual Boomers, especially if they are female, are often graced with photos which make their subjects look like the proverbial death-warmed-over.

Being ornery, if I see this kind of propaganda-by-photo, I tend to post a comment about it. For instance, although I am a Centrist Republican and at a far different point on the political spectrum than Hillary Clinton is, I get angry - and am not shy about saying so - when I see one of the many photos of Secretary Clinton, still an attractive woman, contrived to make her appear like a stand-in for the Corpse Bride.

I hope readers of this piece will at least consider making their own voices heard when they see similar propagandistic attacks-via-photo on anyone over age 50 - politician, celebrity, or ordinary Joe or Jane.

I understand, however, that in this imperfect world - and extraordinarily imperfect media environment - bias, prejudice, malice, and blatant propaganda will remain with us.

So let's turn our attention to the other major cause of Boomers being considered unattractive - current technology, especially as it applies to the Internet.

I believe the vast majority of today's Boomers - people in our 50s and 60s - look perfectly fine when you view us in person.

But we don't look anywhere near as fine, when we are "translated" digitally, whether we're talking about conventional film and TV or the apparently cruder newer technologies like podcast players, still-photo phone cams, or communications services like Skype.

I hasten to add that I am in no way an expert on why this is so. But we all know it is so - that as one ages, one simply does not look as good on camera as we did when we were younger.

That's why I think there could, should, and would be a mammoth market among Boomers and others over age 50 for new kinds of services which were somehow able to mask or enhance our basic attractiveness in video phone, video cam, and video player formats.

I'm going to do some quick research on this topic and expand on this suggestion in a separate story. Look for it over the next few days.


My Soror, the Celebrated Cappy


I'm going to approach Business Ideas Two and Three by an even more circuitous route, an episode of the new CBS buddy cop series Battle Creek, which ran a few weeks ago and both surprised and delighted many Boomers.

The episode featured my former Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sister at the University of Pennsylvania, the lovely and talented Candice Bergen.

Bergen, who went by the nickname Cappy when she matriculated at Penn, was our most glamorous Miss University by far - very tall, very thin, very blonde - as well as a very nice person.

Despite her being a sorority sister, I didn't know her well - nor, I believe, did many at Penn, since she was constantly off on exciting modeling - and later acting - assignments around the world, a roster of commitments that caused her to drop out of school at the end of her sophomore year.

Bergen has not been seen much on screen the last five years or so. So I'm sure many of her fans and fellow Boomers were both delighted and surprised to see her on Battle Creek last month as the morally-challenged but loving mother of lead actor Dean Winters.

We were delighted, because it was a terrific performance, and one hopes it will lead to a frequent guest star gig, if the series continues.

But we were also a bit surprised, because two decades after her TV superstar stint as Murphy Brown (1988-1998), Bergen looks like . . . .  the rest of us Boomers.

Please don't misunderstand. I think she still looks great - but great-different, in the ways women in their 60s tend to look different from women in their 20s - or their 40s. She is, of course, still tall. But she is less thin, less angular, and less blonde, more womanly, more rounded, and more mature.

Bergen's love interest in the episode was played by veteran quirky character actor Chris Mulkey (age 67) of Twin Peaks fame - also still quite dishy, but looking very different from a couple of decades ago.

I think most Baby Boomers who happened to see this episode of the new CBS series were pleased - pleased, first of all, that their age-peers in Hollywood were still getting at least a few plum roles highlighting their personalities and continued sexual attractiveness.

But they were also probably secretly pleased that even such remarkable physical specimens as Bergen and Mulkey now look - and are not afraid to look - like pretty people in their 60s, rather than pretty people in their 20s or their 40s.

And this leads to two more business ideas we'd like to see put into motion.

The first: A new major website, promoted as being a must-see destination for Boomers and others over 50, called something along the lines of "Make Me Beautiful Again."

The site would offer articles, blogs, podcasts, and audio surrounding the general topic of health, fitness, and beauty for both men and women who are part of the "Gray Population."

It would also offer totally non-biased reviews of health and beauty treatments, fixes, and non-pharmaceutical cures, from a small cadre of well-educated, experienced, and respected Boomer professionals and experts.

A site like this - I happily admit it - is one of the kinds of businesses I myself would love to become funded to start up. I think if it were very well done, it would be a monster hit from day one.

It would also present a much-needed and more positive view of Boomers' real interests in health, fitness, and beauty than that currently permeating the ranks of marketers and advertisers, who seem to think the entire Gray Population sits around worrying about exotic diseases we don't have and almost certainly never will - and the pharmaceuticals invented to treat them. Or that we are obsessed with drastic assembly-line plastic surgery, like the Tawdry Trollops - excuse me, Real Housewives - of Minneapolis, Montevideo, or Myanmar. (Why do all these poor deluded women look alike?)


Let Us Create - Collectively


The funny and sexy performances of Bergen and Mulkey in Battle Creek also suggest another kind of business - or rather, a new business model - which I hope may gain rapidly in prominence and success over the next few years: Creative Collectives, working on concepts, products, and services our Gray Population wants and needs.

In terms of Hollywood - or Bollywood - or maybe Dollywood - I'm talking about the establishment of production houses, independent studios, and screenwriters' collectives focused on producing quality media for, about - and most importantly, by - the Gray Population itself.

Creative people over 50 who need more work are all around us. Many desperately need the cold, hard cash. But we also seek a renewed sense of recognition and the emotional compensation of being people who still matter - in fact, matter a lot - as our society, economy, and culture evolve to embrace a rapidly aging Demographic.

We'd like to see Creative Collectives of Boomers and other "Grays" spring up, not only in the worlds of film and television, but also in theater, radio, pop and classical music, publishing, and the Internet.

In "conventional" - i.e. non-Internet-based - television, there should and, in fact, will be a burgeoning market for "Gray"-oriented material, if what many media gurus are predicting comes to pass, and fickle Youth abandon their TV sets to watch more and more programming on smartphones, tablets or any of the other "mobile" possibilities so many futurists are touting.

We'll expand on this possibility further in an upcoming blog and will also explore how the Creative Collective model might be applied to other kinds of Boomer-oriented businesses.

In fact, we intend to expand all three Boomer Business Ideas introduced in this story as the next three blogs in this series, followed by a number of other articles describing a diverse array of products and services we'd like to see developed by "Gray" entrepreneurs  - and funded by a creative "new-old" breed of Venture Capitalists, who can see the lasting value of investing in businesses over 2 in 5 Americans might patronize.


Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub  

Boomer Myths and Misperceptions

by Dr. Ellen Brandt


Are unreal real estate statistics distorting the perception of Baby Boomer "wealth?" That's just one of several important topics economists and academics simply are not researching - and can't afford to neglect much longer.


One major effect of the Anti-Boomer propaganda campaign, which has simmered just under the surface of our political and cultural life the past several years, is that it has provided a careless excuse to stop doing very much coordinated and in-depth research on the Baby Boomer generation.

Every five minutes, it seems, some think tank or political group promulgates yet another new study on the Hogging-the-Limelight Millennials: how they are "about to change" housing or consumption or debt or technological progress forever and ever.

Meanwhile, the "Gray Population" of citizens over 50 becomes more and more ignored by government, foundation, university, and industry researchers. This, despite the fact, as we have stressed in previous stories, that people age 50 or older  already make up 42-43 percent of the population of the United States, Europe, Japan, the rest of the Developed World, and China - a figure that may rise to 48-49 percent of these countries' populations within the next very few years.

When economists and other researchers neglect, as a bloc, over 2 in 5 citizens - over 2 in 5 consumers - over 2 in 5 voters, such neglect becomes not only foolish and misguided, but dangerous, impacting policy decisions that have the power to threaten our economy, our country, and our world.

I believe we have reached that point here and now - and that the situation has to change here and now.

Instead of relying on a web of politically-motivated propaganda aimed against the "Gray Population" - and the pernicious Myths and Misperceptions it has spawned - let us collectively, as Americans and as world citizens, have the courage to perform the hard research that's needed and find out what is truth and what is pure bias and partisan distortion.

Here are just a few topics I'd like top-notch researchers to begin to tackle:


***** Boomers' Real Estate "Wealth" - Fact or Pure Fiction?  Let's face it. A very large proportion of the postulated "wealth" of the Baby Boomer population stems from the fact that our generation bought the "everyone needs real estate" spiel hook, line, and sinker.

Male or female, married or single, urban or rural, college-educated or not, Boomers have been overwhelmingly sold on real estate assets since we came of age. And the lion's share of our presumed net worth consists either of real estate we live in - our homes, condominiums, co-ops, or, in some fortunate cases, vacation properties - or real estate we own for professional purposes - small office buildings or office condos, retail stores, restaurants, small job shops and manufacturing facilities, and farms.

But pretty much all of this real estate - for both personal and business use - is "valued" for tax and insurance purposes at what is generally much more - in many cases much-to-the-Nth-degree more - than what it could possibly be sold for, if it were to be liquidated right now.

Anyone who owns a home of any kind will know this from personal experience. With the regular procession of housing Booms and Busts over the past 30 or 40 years, both tax and insurance assessments are much more likely than not to overvalue the typical Boomer house, co-op, or condo at anywhere from 50 to 300 percent more than what could be realized from its immediate sale.

The situation may be even worse, at least in many parts of the country, if we are talking about tax and insurance valuations for farms, farmland, small professional office buildings, or traditional Main Street retail establishments.

So, Dear Researchers, let's figure out how all this over-valuation affects your determinations of how "wealthy" property-rich, cash-poor Boomers are.


***** Boomers' Investment "Wealth" - Most in the Hands of the One-Percenters?  Similarly, many of us believe that estimates of Baby Boomers' investment-based assets are now way off - or in any case, mega-skewed towards the deep and dark-pool coffers of just a tiny fraction of absurdly well-off One-Percenters, most connected with Wall Street or venture capital, in their traditional and non-traditional permutations.

The other 99 percent of Boomers - or certainly, the "lower" 90 percent of us -  have been the primary victims, metaphorical cannon fodder in the line-of-fire, of the extraordinary Market volatility of the past three decades.

Think of it as a true War of Capital, in which we have been the advance regiments sent into the trenches - where many of our "investments" simply died. What's worse - if we are thinking, as it is high time we should, in terms of wasted education and talent and brainpower and lives - a very large proportion of those who've been wiped out have been professionals and managers who were formerly at much higher rungs on the proverbial Wealth Ladder.

Whether we lost the bulk of our life's savings in the Battle of 1997, the Battle of 2001, the Grand Battle of 2007-2009, the recent Semi-Grand Battle of 2012-2013 (for resource and currency-oriented investors), or any of the myriad earlier Market Battles of the 1980's and 1990's - well, however we were bent, folded, and mutilated by Markets-as-Computer-Games, an absurdly large proportion of Boomers are now paupers, in investment terms.

The current Tech-and-U.S. Dollar- oriented "Boom" Market, many of us feel, was quite literally orchestrated - with outright malicious cynicism - to "redistribute" much of the confiscated wealth of Boomers' life's savings into the pockets of a new crop of Millennial One-Percenters, recently "anointed" via venture capital deals and IPO's - and even some government programs.

Don't believe it, Dear Researchers? Start doing some intensive, honest research to find out if we are right.


***** Anti-Boomer Propaganda Canard #1 - Boomers Were Spendthrifts, So They "Deserve" the Whirlwind They've Reaped: The average Baby Boomer hears this sort of propaganda, jumps up and down, and says, "Phooey."

Again, if there is any truth at all to the Conspicuous Boomer Consumption Myth, it applies squarely to the One - or at most, Few - Percent of very wealthy Boomers, who themselves are probably no worse nor better than the Gilded Crowd which has populated every generation recently, whether we're talking about 90-year-olds or 10-year-olds.

Much of this Myth has been fostered by our irresponsible "MSM," or Mainstream Media, which has glorified Big Spenders - generally Big Obnoxious Spenders - from the worlds of popular music, sports, entertainment, and, occasionally, business, feeding us a never-ending diet of programming featuring millionaire matchmakers, celebrity apprentices, Hollywood personalities to "keep up with," and Tawdry Trollops - excuse me, "real" housewives - from Samarkand, Montevideo, and Timbuktu.

The reality for the Rest of U.S. Boomers is markedly different and always has been: a valiant struggle to pay for such "frills" as groceries, electricity, heating oil, mandatory insurance, and property taxes that grow and grow, while the assets that they're based on diminish and fade into rubble.

All this, while many of us face the Ultimate Triple Whammy: Our life's savings gone, courtesy of financial predation and economic cataclysm. Ageism so pervasive, there's no chance of our ever earning them back. And virtually no programs or special help for our generation - because the faux Propaganda says we're "rich."


***** Anti-Boomer Propaganda Canard #2 - Boomers Have Less Debt Than Other Generations, So All Is Well: This is the first of a series of "Yes, But" propositions.

Boomers do have less debt now than most younger people - but for how long, now that so many of us are close to the edge of a bottomless financial pit?

"Less debt" can be good and bad. And at this point, for Boomers, there's a lot of pure Bad mixed in with the meager Good.

We have "less debt" because we have paid off our mortgages, in many cases, years ago. But as we outlined above, our real property is mostly way-overvalued, often in bad repair, and we can't "put it to use" financially, since we generally can't qualify for home equity loans, which have largely gone the way of the dodo.

We have "less debt" - i.e. investment-leveraged debt - because we no longer have much in the way of investments. Some of those eligible for investment-leveraged debt have made out like bandits in the recent Market "Boom," house-of-cards or not. But it wasn't us.

We have "less debt," because Boomer entrepreneurs, even long-time small business owners, have been more and more ignored and neglected, while both venture capitalists and government programs continue to favor 22-year-olds with trendy software or gaming businesses, deliberately shutting out not only mature founders and business owners,  but also the majority of industries and sectors in the full business spectrum.

And we have "less debt," as we stated above, because far from being Spendthrifts, the majority of Boomers are timid and cautious spenders these days, focusing on necessities and shunning all things "discretionary."

While possibly a good thing for the Boomers in question, this last point is problematic for our economy. And like so much else we've outlined, it deserves much further research.


***** Anti-Boomer Propaganda Canard #3 - Boomers Were the First Generation to Benefit Widely From Two-Income Families, So All is Well: The second of our three "Yes, But" propositions.

In our early career years, this was absolutely and categorically true. About as many Boomer women as Boomer men received undergraduate college degrees. And in line with Boomers being - using any metric you choose - the best-educated generation before or since, Boomer women made great strides in the number and prestige of advanced professional degrees awarded - Masters and Doctoral degrees, medical degrees, law degrees, M.B.A.'s, and engineering degrees, as well as many other kinds of credentials.

Naturally, these well-educated Boomer women - and wives - wanted to put their educations to use. And they did.

But there have been several glitches in this rosy "two-income family" scenario.

Educated women tend to marry later, if they marry, and more of them choose to remain single.

Women of all education levels did not tend to make big strides in career advancement and salary parity until about 25 years ago, which didn't help Boomer women in the early parts of their careers.

And all Boomers, men and women alike, have tended to hit a "Gray Ceiling," as rampant Ageism and Age Discrimination has been permitted to take hold over the past two decades.

But most important of all: Boomers have the highest divorce rate of any generation in history. Fully one-half of all Boomers - that's 1 in 2 of us! - are currently divorced, widowed, or never married, a figure that will go even higher, as the "widowed" part of the mix increases.

Even if one subtracts the estimated 10-15 percent of Boomers who identify themselves as "gay" - and these Boomers may be living alone as well - there are now an absolutely staggering number of Baby Boomers who, far from benefiting from "two-income households," are struggling to survive on just one, possibly greatly diminished, income - if they are lucky enough to have an income at all. 


***** Anti-Boomer Propaganda Canard #4 - Baby Boomers Own the Majority of Our Nation's Small Businesses, So All is Well: The third of our "Yes, But" propositions.

Boomers were, are, and will be, until our last dying breaths, the most entrepreneurial generation on record. We may be the last American generation to wear the badge of "rugged individual" proudly and happily. In any case, we do love to create new businesses and run them, and we've been up until now willing to take any number of risks to do so.

Alas, many of those risks have not paid off. Every single one of the economic cataclysms roiling the U.S. economy the past several decades has also hit U.S. small business owners - and hit them hard. Outsourcing, the hollowing out of manufacturing and resource sectors, housing crises, market crashes, and a whole series of mini-depressions in Main Street America - all have taken their toll.

Add to these currency volatility, lack of export support for many industries, rising costs of healthcare coverage and insurance, and government policies that place geopolitical concerns far above the needs of most entrepreneurs, and you have a small business universe with many serious problems - no matter whose hands it is in.

Boomer-owned businesses have also, of course, lately fallen victim to the historical aberration in the allocation of Venture Capital, which we discussed above.

Over the past several years, the lion's share of Venture money has gone to just one sector - Technology, especially software and gaming. Many of the founders and early-stage entrepreneurs supported have been extremely young - in their 20s or even their teens - while entrepreneurs over age 40, let alone 50 or 60, have been spurned and neglected. So, of course, has the wider universe of non-Tech businesses - which, in general, tend to produce more profits, more jobs, and more general economic development benefits than "Tech" has ever done.


Time For Some Myth-Busting - and Some Serious New Research


All of these Myths and Misperceptions - assumptions about Baby Boomers' wealth, assets, and financial viability, which may well be proven flat-out wrong - need to be examined consistently and in-depth by a dedicated cadre of Researchers within government, academia, foundations, think tanks, and private industry.

Within our universities, we'd like to propose the formation of new departmental units - or perhaps, whole new departments - focused on, if not "Baby Boomer Studies," at least on "Graying America Studies" or "Generational Studies."

If most top-tier schools now have "Women's Studies" departments, some "Men's Studies" departments, many "African-American Studies" departments, and even a few "LGBT Studies" departments, why in the world are there virtually NO academic departments focusing on the "Gray Population," which will - not may, but will - present the biggest challenges and opportunities for our economy and our culture over the next several decades?

Promoting research projects focusing on the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed," a group consisting of an estimated 400 million individuals worldwide, is a central component of our Bring Back the Meritocracy! Project, about to move from its conceptual to its operational phase.     By extension, this research will also focus on the Baby Boomer generation, since Boomers are thought to dominate the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" cohort.

We urge all Boomers to learn about our Meritocracy Project, which we believe will mark a turning point in this nation's attitudes towards Meritocracy; Higher Education; the role of experienced and well-educated citizens; and the pressing need to embrace and utilize the talents, skills, and intelligence of people aged 50 and older.

Now that we've explored the downside of Baby Boomers' financial progress and prospects, the next several articles in this series will look at some potential upside: new ways of working; of earning money; and of forming businesses and other entities which fellow Boomers and other Americans want and need and from which they can benefit. 
     
  
Ellen Brandt, Ph.D. is Founder of the Bring Back the Meritocracy! project, an ambitious and broad-ranging non-profit, non-partisan, non-controversial effort to help the "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the U.S. and abroad. Read about it at:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub