Hurry, Hurry, Hurry, step right up! See Three of Today’s Most Profitable Segments Together at One Event.

Men – Women – Boomers!

They are going to be talking about us again. Us boomers. Except they are calling us seniors. A whole bunch o’ folk will be gathering to talk about marketing to men, women, and boomers. (Boomers apparently don’t fit in the first two groups.) We are sexless!

The more I dig into the background of the speakers and the companies they work for the more outrageous it gets. For twenty years, boomers have been told “when you hit 35, you don’t matter.” Now we are the new found goose for marketers trying to justify their existence to CEO’s (who are boomers or older.)

The guy that is getting top billing on the program is “all-bow-down-to-the-might-Oz” Seth Godin who had this flash of brilliance and wrote a book about it.

For a long time, the easy way out was to believe that 18 to 34 year olds were open and seniors were closed. Web surfers are open, National Enquirer readers are closed. etc. etc.

Then the baby boom happened.

Baby boomers have been open their whole lives. And now they are seniors.

Wrong! Starbucks breath. We are not seniors. The oldest of is is 61. The youngest is 43. Or so. Seniors? Get behind the counter at your bagel shop and ask the next woman who is 50 if she wants the “senior discount.”

hee.

The rest of the program is sure to provide some real laughs for us. Here are the people that will be talking about marketing to us. Left to right:

• Seth looks like he could be a boomer – he doesn’t give his age on his blog and I don’t care enough to wiki him.
• Marti – yay! Gray hair. I bet she doesn’t walk around New York that way.
• Cheryl – Xer
• Charlie – who cares, he’s in a dying business anyway.

So Seth will talk about marketing to seniors.

Marti will talk about…

“50- to 70-year-old women are about to become the richest demographic in U.S. history, according to Marti Barletta in her new book, “Prime Time Women.”

Way to go Marti – Powerful Women with bucks. You gave your demo some respect. You’ll probably do OK.

Cheryl will talk about…

Group President and CMO of Zimmer Holdings, Sheryl is an innovation leader and will demonstrate how gender specific solutions and product extensions can create value and impact your organizations bottom line.

I’m a part-owner of Zimmer and there is NO WAY this snot nosed kid should be running a program called:

Sex and the Knee Replacement – Shape matters More than Size!

First of all, she’s too young to know anything about needing – really needing – a knee replacement. Second, she’s in the business of marketing friggin’ joint replacements, what product extension is there for a joint replacement? Different colors?  Third, there should be no marketing department in the health care industry because they just pass out freebies to docs and hospitals to bribe MD’s and the AMA to send more medicare money their way. Fourth, the topic of her talk is stupid. Trying to be cute and clever for her marketing pals, she comes off and unprofessional and unoriginal.

Charlie will talk about…

Who cares? He’s in a dying business and is into his second life. That’s where the boomers shop for real estate alright – in a virtual world.

There are going to be some great laugh lines coming out of this conference. I just wish I could be there to share them all with you.  I’ll be on the look out for them to pop up in my RSS reader. If you see any I miss, be sure to share them — you seniors you!

It’s going to be a laugh riot I’m telling you.