Can you identify the brands that Baby Boomer women love the most?

Last week Ad Age columnist Judann Pollack ran an entertaining and thought-provoking column called “The 15 Biggest Baby Boomer Brands.”

Here are the 15 brands Pollack listed:

1. Levi’s
2. Harley-Davidson
3. Volkswagen
4. Slinky
5. Noxzema
6. The Beatles
7. L’Eggs
8. Pepsi
9. Absolut Vodka
10. Saturday Night Live
11. Facebook
12. Frye Boots
13. Coach Bags
14. Clairol
15. Club Med

Lists like this are meant to provoke debate, of course, but my own reading suggested that something else was going on in this list, something that confirmed ongoing misconceptions about Boomers.

The Baby Boomer generation is notoriously unwieldy: 77 million Americans born over an 18-year span from 1946 to 1964. If we are going to think about Boomer women as one generation we have to think of the average Boomer; and, as I’ve written before “median” Boomer was born in 1957 and came of age in the 1970s.

Yet marketers continue to view Boomers as relics of the 1960s, permanently attached to brands that either peaked before the Boomer was 25 or lacked the staying power to play a role in anything but a small part of their adult lives.

Let’s look at the Ad Age list again. Brands like Slinky, VW (if you mean the Beatle and not the Jetta), and Noxzema seem like icons for the Boomer’s older sibling rather than a woman born in 1957. Other brands, like L’Eggs and Club Med, have lacked the staying power to be true Boomer “power brands.” It doesn’t help marketers today to stereotype Boomers as unimaginative shoppers looking for the faded brands of their 20s.

What did Vibrant Women tell us?

But it’s not my opinion that matters, it’s the opinion of the 40 million Vibrant women who spend 80% of the Boomers’ discretionary dollars. We asked the members of VibrantNation.com to share their all-time favorite brands. Here are a few examples:

• Polo/Ralph Lauren. A brand that gained its first standalone store in 1970s epitomizes the Boomer generation with a iconic combination of quality, imagery and a sport that few consumers would ever watch.
• Martha Stewart. Just because Martha Stewart didn’t launch her empire until the 1980s doesn’t mean that Boomers didn’t embrace their fellow Boomer’s desire to live a better-organized and –designed life. Does anyone honestly think Martha is a “Gen Y” brand?
• Jack Daniel’s and Miller Lite. These examples shared by our members remind us of the frustrating question why no beverage alcohol company is willing to embrace its two most profitable and under-recognized demographics: consumers older than 29 and women.
• Cosmetic brands like Clinique, Aveda, Dove and Olay. And hair coloring brands like Fructis and L’Oreal Preference. Boomers continue to explore and devote themselves to new brands that get them (and their bodies) right.
• Fashion brands like DKNY and Michael Kors (also created by Boomers) that reflect their self-image, and footwear brands like Ecco and Merrell that have long served their desire to be both active and comfortable.

Conclusion

These are just a few examples, but they should remind marketers that “Boomer brands” means a lot more than brands that became popular in the 1960s. It also means:

• Brands that embraced Boomers when they needed them (Olay, Fructis, Merrell, and Subaru)
• Brands created by other Boomers (Martha Stewart, Starbucks) that met real needs
• Brands that launched as Boomers came of age and remain strong today (Polo/Ralph Lauren, Clinique)

Old brands and new brands will continue to win over Boomer women, but only if that marketing means appealing to their genuine interests and needs and not luring them back to a period (1967, for example) when they were only 10.