Why does the media think Boomers are smiling, vapid idiots?

I’ve talked about this for years:

Invasion of The Baby Boomer Pod People

Invasion of the Baby Boomer Pod People Returns

Sleepy Baby Boomer Internet Villages
There are so many now that I can’t keep up with them. And they’re all the same. I get emails practically every week from people wanting me to visit and blog about their new, wonderful site just for Baby Boomers …

Advertising to Baby Boomers Can Be Tricky Business
At first it was refreshing to see folks over forty-five portrayed in ads and on the web—but now almost every 50+ site is centered around generic photos of smiling, vapid, mindless people in their fifties and sixties, usually in warm-up suits, always prancing around beaches, if not staring lovingly at one another, then in groups, arms draped and tucked every which way like groping octopi.

And recently:

Next Avenue: Baby Boomers & PBS
Isn’t it a tad patronizing to assume that Baby Boomers need to be taught how to live and handle their lives?  Just reading that makes me itchy and queasy … Will they be resurrecting Mr. Do-Bee?

Soon we’ll have another magazine and website that will be … well, I don’t know what it will be – but if the promotional copy and graphics are any indication …

The New York Times Company Planning to Launch a New Magazine for Baby Boomers … BetterLiving.com, coming Spring 2011, features articles and information about the things that are important to active boomers.

Of course, if you read the marketing fodder - everybody over fifty is a baby boomer. Same demo: Old. Same interests, same needs. 

Actually, there are two distinct demos – something marketers need to know:

• Baby Boomers who scream and jump in the air on the beach
• Baby Boomers who scream and jump in the air on their motor scooters.

Recently I have been embarrassed to be part of this generation. The reason? Madison Avenue. Madison Avenue is never wrong. They’re the neighbor across the street that sees you in the way you don’t see yourself. They’re young, they’re cocky, and what they say about the older generation becomes the truth. People still think there was a real Mr.Whipple, so I know whatever Madison Avenue says about us is what everyone’s going to believe anyway.
—Albert Brooks

Maybe next year we’ll explain it all to them.
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Thanks to my wonderful publishers at Paramount Books, I am now represented by Speakers.com:

 

 

 

See you in 2011.