Making a living out of inventing a generation

Let me declare an interest in this blog post – I am jealous.

A couple of years back I gave birth to a new generation, metaphorically speaking, called the Charmed Generation. It has done OK, getting lots of mentions in the marketing press and been adopted by some UK companies, but it has exactly taken the world by storm.

On the other hand, Jonathan Pontell has launched his generation (Generation Jones) into a higher trajectory. I noticed he has emerged again, speaking at the LiveWire: The Summit in San Francisco in June. This is the event when the great and good of the baby boomer world get together.

Generation Jones, are Americans born between 1954 and 1965 (i.e. the tail end of the boomer generation).

As readers of this blog will know, I have big issues with all of this generational behavioural stuff and extracting a subdivision of boomers seems to me like trying to count the number of angels on a pin head.

Pricing the value of a generation's name raises some interesting questions. For instance, I wonder how much "baby boomer" would be worth? Of course the nice thing about valuing generational names is totally separate from their value in improving marketing efficiency. Dick Stroud