Boomers don’t want to feel old. Duh.

I just read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal called From Diapers to ‘Depends’: Marketers Discreetly Retool for Aging Boomers.

Author Ellen Byron talks about the important generational shifts between the current cohort of people turning 65 and prior generations.

Where prior generation were willing to be considered “old,” this one isn’t. Good for them, I say, because I’m sure that’s exactly how I’ll feel when I reach that point.

The article caught my attention because it refers to what happens in an ADT call center for their medical alert systems. Operators are being trained to be more sensitive to the way boomers want to be treated. The operators are now working hard to make sure that boomers who call about medical alerts are not being reminded that they’re getting older. I guess the chief problem before was that people would speak slowly to older callers, thinking they couldn’t understand or process normal human speech anymore.

Here’s a video from the Wall Street Journal article:

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