Monday,July 26th, 2010At some point, you realize there is a generation behind you and they are not the same. My realization came a number of years ago while watching a beer commercial. I commented, “I don’t get it.” My husband who was obviously into the finer aspects of beer commercials, replied simply, “You weren’t supposed to.”
Kathy Macdonald
It was that simple. I can almost point to the date on the calendar when I realized Madison Avenue was no longer interested in female drinkers of my age group. I was not heart-broken … but it did raise my level of awareness. There were a lot of advertising campaigns that were no longer targeting Boomers. How could this have happened?
Easy. There were now enough Gen X’ers in the buying population to be of interest to those in marketing. They understood better than I did at that moment that what is funny and appealing to one generation may not even be understood by another!
Unfortunately, many of us in event planning and conference planning fail this test daily. We do it in the music we pick, the choice of theme, and even the colors of the program. I learned this from my daughters when I returned from a national workshop carrying a case in colors only “someone my age” would like … duh!
Some of our worst sins are committed in our choice of language with the use of phases such as “he sounds like a broken record.” This makes perfect sense to anyone born before CDs or the iPod … it dates us otherwise. I’ve been collecting words and phrases that a whole generation may not know … pagers, 8-tracks, microfiche, filling station, encyclopedia, picture film, long-distance call, mimeograph … the list goes on.
Should we care? Is this being too sensitive or overly PC? I don’t know. Now that Mad Men is popularizing Madison Avenue once again … I am safe referring to Madison Avenue as a phrase for a few more years.
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Kathleen is the founder of The Macdonald Group and frequently works with CXO Marketing helping organizations redesign event-based experiences. Before founding The Macdonald Group in 1991, Kathleen was a principal with Baker & Company, a Dallas-based management consulting company. Prior to Baker & Company, Kathleen was an internal consultant with the Organizational Research and Development Staff of General Motors. Kathleen is a co-founder of the Michigan Leaders Read Series. She is one of a handful of consultants certified in the Experience Economy methodology. |
This is a session I am looking forward to. It’s extremely important that we understand ways to bridge the gap between generations, especially between the Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers. Many associations have leadership that is aging and the generation behind them is not filling the gap. This could be detrimental to any organization. Also, if we don’t learn how to communicate to all generations, we will miss an opportunity to increase attendance at meetings, which hurts our chance for generating additional revenue.
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