Retirement Opportunity is Calling!
I spend a lot of time talking about the Millennials.
There is no question…. the Millennials are the drivers of the U.S. consumer and house & home marketplace.
They are the ones out there buying their first-time homes or selling the condos to get a yard complete with a swing set, kiddie pool, sand box, family room, laundry room and garage.
They are the ones where the moms are saying “I work from home now based on my schedule or I quit” to their bosses… and the dads are out buying lawn mowers and learning how to garden.
The blog that I posted last month challenged the news stream about folks not going back to work because it was easier to collect Uncle Joe’s Pandemic funds — which was not the driver of the challenges employers face.
In that blog, I highlighted the Millennial moms staying home and also the Boomers retiring.
Since then, a series of news articles have posted highlighting nearly the same facts and stats I shared last month.
One of the articles that ran in the Wall Street Journal this week bore the headline, “Retirement Muddle Jobs Policy.”
The FED Chairman, Jerome Powell is quoted in the article as saying, “This is an extraordinary time, and we really don’t have a template of any experiences of a situation like this.”
Then the article goes on to state, “Some older people (actual phrase used) who were laid off last year may have decided to retire rather than look for new work in the middle of a Pandemic.”
Those “older people” … folks like the author of this blog post! … are Baby Boomers… 75 million folks born between 1946 and 1964 who now post the age of 57–75 years.
While not all of the 75 million can retire today and secure their monthly social security checks, the vast majority can … and will.
Let’s step back and look at the pre-Pandemic… pre-housing shortage… pre-inflationary economy retirement mindset.
Here at EXPERIENCE we work with a set of lens of looking at the American populace on the neighborhood level that consists a set of nicknamed market groups.
A set of those groups bearing nicknames like “Cruisin’ to Retirement,” “New Empty Nests” and “Middleburg Managers” that we bundle up into a target group we call, “Transitioning Boomers.” A group that we may soon call “New Retirement Boomers.”
This is a group that has sheltered money in stock portfolios with dreams of someday having that house on the beach… or intown hi-rise… or country farmhouse overlooking a winery… or an energy-smart eco-green environmental habitat.
Today, if there are any of those dream houses available, they last no longer than hours on the market and sell for anywhere from 30–50% above the asking price.
The fashionable intown neighborhoods are transitioning too.
Those Starbucks are no longer open for reading the New York Times and the Whole Foods has evolved into an Amazon.com sub-brand. And the taxes on those intown houses are about 30–50% higher than the retirement funds are engineered around.
Grandkids have since arrived as their Millennial sons and daughters work to renovate those “mid-century homes” built in the 1970s with the harvest gold and avocado appliances that today with some new paint brand names are “hip” and “cool” all over again.
These are the same Boomers that went to retire a couple of years ago and live the “good life,” only to face the challenge of caring for parents who had lived longer combatting medical conditions that in the past resulted in quicker partings.
Not only have financial and house & home dreams changed, so too has the headset of staying healthy and being well.
Are there some Boomers who retire and relish the ability to do nothing but sit out on the front porch?
Yes there are some.
They are part of groups with nicknames like “Hometown Retired,” “Traditional Times” and “Simple Pleasures” — many of which worked what remained of blue-collar and service jobs with homes anchored out in the ‘burbs and small towns.
Do not surprised to see more “Transitioning Boomers” move to dwell in like ‘burbs and small towns as those same communities get resettled by Millennials who see those same communities with a fresh set of lens.
EXPERIENCE is working on an interesting project with a juice brand coming into the U.S. from abroad. The leadership running the company are convinced that opportunity resides with Millennials… an opportunity that just might exist.
But there may be opportunity to also reach out to the newly retired!
I challenge business and brand leadership to move beyond the BGOs (Blinding Group of the Obvious) of reaching out to the surge of new retirees.
A great exercise to do…
** Pull together a set of brand advertising that has historically targeted folks in their 60s and early 70s
** Pull together another set of brand advertising that has historically targeted Boomers since their 20s
** Post them up on a wall or the tops of tables
** Write down common threads you see
The first take-away is easy… what brands have historically voiced in reaching out to folks in their 60s and 70s is what NOT to do.
The second take-away is a bit more in-depth… once you dig below the surface of the historic Boomer brand advertising, list out the emotions… the aspirations… the tonality of the historic advertising.
The nuggets of insight that will drive brand strategy to tap into the retiring Boomers lies in that second list.
The first client that I secured and allowed me to start up EXPERIENCE back in 2003 was Emory Healthcare.
We created a positioning brand platform driven by the Emotional Ignition Point of “Advancing the Possibilities.”
It shattered through the “We Make You Feel Better” and “We Care” healthcare brand voices at that time.
It drove those seeking deeper options to combat Cancer and Cardiac issues to contact Emory. It drove the physicians and medical researchers to form bonds with Emory to pioneer new patient solutions and medical frontiers.
Leadership we worked with at Emory is no longer there. The CEO is now up in Greater Detroit. The CMO is retired. The head of R&D is retired now too.
Emory Healthcare is no longer an active EXPERIENCE client.
There is a new set of ads running right now that feature empty-nest Boomer couples talking about getting their check-ups, tests and X-rays either direct from Emory or an Emory-aligned medical provider.
God love the new brand team at Emory, but what they are doing right now falls in that list of what NOT to do in that exercise above.
Trust me… as a Boomer myself… I aspire to do more!
Give me a call at 404.245.9378 if you want a facilitator to take your leadership team through the exercise I suggested above.
The LARGEST group of retirees is now emerging in the American Marketplace! Capitalize on it!
