I have been speaking at conferences since about 1995. In the beginning of my tenure as a panelist, speaker and keynoter I felt as if I was talking to myself. These were the heady days of the early internet and most of the people attending the conferences were internet people. We were, in fact, talking to ourselves. Loudly and with passion. But we were not convincing anyone (but ourselves), we weren't selling to anyone (but ourselves) and we really weren't listening to anyone (but ourselves and our most direct competitors).
Eventually a new group began attending these conferences. And, importantly, we started getting invitations to speak at conferences aimed at broader topics and audiences than the glatt kosher technorati. People actually were coming to learn something. They had been sent by their companies to try to understand this new and very scary world of online marketing. They came from marketing companies (aka clients) and were shortly thereafter joined by their agency counterparts (who, of course, had to learn the same basic lessons as their clients).
In the 'baby boomer marketing' space I have felt a certain déjà vu all over again. It has been 1995 for the past three years. There is the normal array of conferences about marketing to "boomers and beyond". But the audiences are almost always ourselves. We, the evangelists of this 'new' audience. We, the creators of web properties, products and services for and about this 'new' audience. Who is not there are the marketers and their agencies whose products and services make great sense for this audience.
We need, as an industry, to do a better job convincing broad-based events – events chock full of marketers and their agencies – to put the very best of us on the stage. And we need, as an industry, to stop creating and attending and speaking at events where everyone there looks and sounds like us. Until we have an audience that is actively listening rather than sagely nodding their heads in total agreement, we are wasting our time.
Jerry Shereshewsky has formed a new marketing consultant firm, GrownUpMarketing, to help agencies and marketing companies strategically understand the 45+ market and the relevance to their particular brands. Jerry can be reached at jerry@grownupmarketing.com
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