Is there any doubt that the baby boomer woman is, in fact, "the ultimate power consumer?" You are invited to be a guest—along with about 300 other top marketers and market researchers--at a webcast I'm leading on the subject of marketing to baby boomer women this Tuesday, December 12, 2006. Participants from around the globe are clients of MarketTools, one of the country's top market research firms, and host of the gala event. The one-hour webcast will be moderated by Pam Kramer, MarketTools' Chief Marketing Officer. Both FH Boom and MarketTools, through a Zoomerang Online Survey, have done fresh research related to this hot topic for this webcast, and you can enroll by following the link to the invitation below. But first, let me tell you how this invitation came to be—a story that says more about boomer women and their growing power than any of the statistics (however compelling they may be) we'll be sharing with you next week.
This invitation finds its roots in a seminal moment in my career as a woman in public relations—the moment I realized that despite our many professional advances, business was still a man's world. It was the 1980's, and my independent PR agency had just completed all the festivities for the grand completion of San Francisco's Embarcadero
Center.
There was another agency involved. His agency was one of "the old boys", belonged to the same club and golf courses as some of the other executives, architects and so on involved with the mega-gazillion dollar project. After my firm commandeered positive front page coverage for the opening that ran around the world, handled a four-block-long party, launched a huge fireworks display, mounted a parade and successfully headed off some major controversies, I overheard the other agency taking all the credit, referring to our firm as the "banner hangers."
Ironically, right around the same time, I began writing books to and about boomers—books that put forth such then revolutionary notions as finding balance between work and life, integrity, simplicity and meaning.
Among my early readers was a young boomer named Theresa McGanney, just getting her start in marketing. We connected around the book topic and shared values-but the decades, several moves and life, itself, intervened and we lost track of one another.
I tell you this because twenty years later, Theresa, who is now marketing maven for Zoomerang, a part of MarketTools, called me "out of the blue." She had been to a marketing conference and seen my latest book "BOOM: Marketing to the Ultimate Power Consumer-the Baby Boomer Woman" (Co-authored by Mary Brown and Carol Orsborn, Ph.D.) and had gone to great lengths to track me down. The result of this long history comes to a head December 12, when I present the guest webcast to MarketTools and Zoomerang clients on the subject of marketing to boomer women. (You are cordially invited to attend, as well, as guests of MarketTools....just follow this link to sign up:
https://lra100.livemeeting.com/LRSRegistration/EC/markettools/1087170044.aspx)
The moral of the story is this. Women who have lived as many decades as Theresa and I have planted a lot of seeds along the way, many of which are just now coming into full bloom. In fact, having reached the tops of our careers, we remember vividly those days when others called us banner hangers and yet, we didn't let it stop us. We, too, are discovering that we have a vital network—something of an old girl's club—that has grown organically and powerfully, a side-product to what we thought we were really doing as we've gone about living our everyday lives. And now, we've each accumulated enough real power in our careers and lives to be helpful to one another just for the sheer joy of it! I'm happy to hang a banner now, and on one side it will read: "Hosannah, Theresa!" and on the other: "What was that guy's name? Nobody seems to recall..."
Carol Orsborn