Generational Marketing: Do the Math

Why Generation Size Matters to Marketers and to Everybody with a Stake in America’s Future

Kenneth Gronbach

According to Mr. Gronbach, for years, marketers have held on to unwavering beliefs that have dictated how they market to their consumers. But the hard truth is that the changes we see in marketing and business are based on one undeniable factor — the size of the generations we are selling to. As each generation ages, what they buy and how much they buy will change. Each product and service has a “best customer” that sustains a business. As these customers grow up, the smartest marketers will stay ahead of them — and their money. In The Age Curve:, How to Profit from the Demographic Storm Ken shows executives and entrepreneurs how to anticipate this wave of predictable demand and ride it to success.

Based on comprehensive research, Gronbach reveals how our largest generations, the Baby Boomers and Generation Y, are redefining how we market and how businesses can anticipate their needs more effectively. Complete with entertaining examples of companies like Apple who have perfected their strategies for building a loyal customer base, as well as those who haven’t (Levi Strauss and Honda Motorcycle), this book will show readers:

• how to determine their best customers
• how successful companies are earning the loyalty of Generation Y and cultivating allegiance to their products for years to come
• why Generation X is a much less valuable market than any of us have been led to believe

Questions Peter Clayton Asked Ken Gronbach

• Your book is based on a very straightforward premise: the changes we see in marketing and business are based on one undeniable factor—the size of the generations we are selling to. What do savvy careerists need to know?
• You started your career in the auto industry, and write extensively about it in your book. Has Detroit hit the perfect storm with $4+ gasoline?
• You write Generation Y offers a massive opportunity for marketers - is this just a numbers game?
• Gen Xers have been unfairly branded as unresponsive consumers and “slackers” (there are simply 11 percent fewer Gen Xers than Boomers) that’s 9 million less…and how this small group of young adults spurred the huge housing crisis and may seal the death of Social Security.
• Why has it been so hard for marketers to rap their brains around the fact that 9 million less of something does not equal more?
• You are CEO of KGC Direct, a consulting firm specializing in direct marketing, growth management, and business turnaround - who do you work with?

About Kenneth W. Gronbach

Kenneth W. Gronbach is a nationally recognized expert on demographics and generational marketing. He frequently speaks to groups of marketing professionals and regularly counsels Fortune 500 corporations as well as large and small businesses across the United States. He doesn’t claim to have unlocked the secrets to a particular generation’s psyche, or profess to have special language and strategies guaranteed to win unresponsive consumers. Instead, he shows his clients how to identify their “best customer” and calculate whether its buying power is expanding or shrinking by using the most obvious information: the number of U.S. Births from 1905 to 2005.

“Large and small generations, alternately moving and aging through the marketplace, determine many a company’s success and failure,” Gronbach observes. “When a large generation, such as the Boomers, leaves the market and is replaced by a smaller generation, such as Gen Xers, sales are going to drop.” In the course of his work to get marketing professionals and business leaders to pay attention to this clear-cut concept, Gronbach was driven to write THE AGE CURVE: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm (AMACOM 2008). “If you can understand the principles of shifting demography, you can forecast with uncanny accuracy what markets are growing and what markets are slowing,” Gronbach says.

Gronbach is the founder, president, and CEO of KGC Direct, a consulting firm specializing in direct marketing, growth management, and business turnaround. He was previously the president and CEO of KGA Advertising, a consumer products-focused advertising agency, which he founded and grew from zero billings to close to $40 million in 21 years. Before launching his career as an entrepreneur, he was Advertising Manager for Bob’s Stores, which he helped grow into a retail chain from one store in Connecticut, and Director of Advertising for Volkswagen of America in Culver City, California. His many notable professional achievements include inventing the Jean Machine, a highly profitable retail jean vending system; creating the catalyst for a downtown renaissance in Middletown, CT by revitalizing a derelict inner city 1860’s department store; convincing Tyson Foods to back out of a $16 billion acquisition of a red-meat processing business, on the strength of Generation Y’s trend away from red-meat consumption; and implemented the introduction of a new line of Honda scooters into major metropolitan markets in the Northeast United States. He has authored one previous book, Common Census (2005), and his ongoing market research is often quoted.

Gronbach is a graduate of a California State University at Long Beach, with a degree in Communication and Public Speaking. He lives in Haddam, Connecticut, with his wife and two teenage daughters. A member of the Baby Boom Generation, he considers himself hip at age 60 and far from ready for retirement. “I am convinced that Boomers simply are not going to get old the way our parents got old,” he states.

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