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Marketing and politics
buffet baby boomers

WHEN the phone rang in the early evening a couple of weeks ago, a youthful-sounding fellow asked for "Mrs. Oh-yah-ee." The title and mispronunciation were dead giveaways. He did not know me and was either peddling or soliciting.

"You selling something?" No, he said. He was conducting "market research" about restaurant dining.

Not wanting to waste his time and mine, I told him I worked in the media, media types generally being unacceptable candidates for such surveys, though I've never been clear on why.

"That's OK, that's OK!" he said in a voice choked with hope that I wouldn't hang up on him like a zillion other people had surely done already.

I felt sorry for him, working probably at minimum wage at a job that almost invites rude remarks with its intrusiveness.

Relenting, I told him to wait while I turned down Bob Schieffer, who was delivering the day's news between "purple pill" and impotency drug commercials.

The survey guy began asking baseline questions, one of which was about age. He rattled off ranges, something like "are you between 18 and 25, 26 and 33, 34 and 41, or older?" When I replied, he sighed deeply, hurriedly thanked me for my time, then disconnected.

I'd been rejected for being "older."

I wasn't put out. I wasn't surprised. Market research these days has no use for the opinions of older people. It's all about the 18- to 49-year-olds. Tick past that stage and you're set adrift on the chilly ice floes of consumerism, worthless as far as advertisers, television producers and product developers are concerned.

It makes little sense to dismiss the baby boom generation, seeing as how people 50 and older hold more than half of the nation's wealth and spend a whole lot of it on goods and services. Yet more and more, boomers seem to be encountering disapproval for their numbers and their perceived dispositions.

Short of dying faster, boomers can't do much about their mass, the result of post-World War II pregnancies. But the way Capitol Hill politicians fuss and stew about Social Security payouts, you'd think boomers were a bunch of selfish dependents raiding the nation's banks when, in fact, they have filled the treasury with their contributions.

In lobbying for privatizing Social Security, President Bush tried to pacify a segment of the generation when he promised that those now over 55 would not have to worry about benefit cuts. Perhaps the president bought into the fallacious "me generation" tag often applied to boomers or maybe he thought if he divided one group of Americans from another, he'd pick off others in ones and twos and, in the conflict, conquer enough to push through his ill-begotten plan.

So far, his campaign hasn't worked because Bush and his people have put a lot of faith -- maybe too much -- in marketing and demographics. While Madison Avenue may be able to sell teeth-whitening strips through a reality show aimed at younger viewers, TV programming isn't the same thing as social policy. The public, at least at this point, still recognizes the difference.

This is not to say that studying behavior and influence in general terms of age, gender, income and region can't generate desire and produce profitable results and that people aren't swayed by advertising. But it is wrong to think that these methods will work all the time, every time.

It's true that people my age tend to watch the evening news more than those in their 20s or teen years, but this doesn't mean all our interests converge. I'm still in the dark about what ailments those purple pills cure, and I have no use for Viagra.

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