Readers of this blog may recall that as of Friday, I swore off the pig in a python as a metaphor for boomers, confronting for the first time the fact that the snake’s tail (and more chilling--the void beyond the snake) was in sight. (See "Tail Spotted")
Frantically searching to reframe the notion of the snake’s tail into something more inspiring, I found it at MPlanet, where Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and Jason Zajac, General Manager, Social Media, Yahoo!, discussed “The New Economy.” Happily, the key to the new economy is the notion of "The Long Tail"—Anderson’s timely and insightful notion that the age of the “big hit” for marketers (the head of the demand curve) is being eclipsed by a world in which there are 55 million blogs, empowered consumers and a thousand “niches in the tail.”
A bunch of those niches would be us, the baby boomer generation, which segments into a number of categories: leading and trailing, male and female, conservative and liberal, rich and poor, kids still at home—kids gone, married and single, here, there and everywhere and etc. etc. And “Long Tail” theory goes a long way to helping us understand why there is high interest in reaching out to this aging segment of the population, which in years past, just kind of faded away into something on the spectrum between serene old age and a long, sad decline.
Until I heard about the long tail, I thought that the secret rested entirely on the verve, will and passion of my peers 42 plus—along, of course, with improved nutrition and medical care. After all, at the turn of the last century, people could expect to live, on average, to be about 47 years old. Many of us will live four decades or longer—continuing to work, contribute and hopefully, make trouble.
Now, I realize while all this is true, there is an equally compelling explanation. As Anderson tells us, the real reason is that the notion of segmentation has become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade or so. Smart marketers are no longer relying on the holy grail of targeting 20 percent of the population in order to make 80 percent of their sales. In fact, they have come to realize that segmentation is not even primarily about identifying which is the most valuable segment—but rather, that each segment is important.
Baby Boomers are one among many micro-targets. But I think Anderson would at least grant us this: given how many niches we occupy on the snake’s tail, we can still make quite a rattle.
Carol Orsborn