Strauss and Howe’s 1991 book, Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, tallies the Baby Boom generation (made up of people born between 1943 and 1960) at 79 million people, the largest generation in U.S. history.  The potential buying power of a group this size wasn’t lost on marketers, evidenced as early as a Newsweek article that ran August 9, 1948: Population: Babies Mean Business. Here are some of the article’s points:

• Women’s Wear Daily estimated that people spent $225,000,000 on clothing for infants and children in 1939.  By 1944 that amount almost doubled to $420,000,000. In 1946 it reached $700,000,000; and in 1947 it climbed even higher.
• The Chicago Sun-Times reported that annual sales of prepared baby food rose from 400,000 cases in 1934 to 2,700,000 cases in 1941 to 15,000,000 cases in 1947.
• The sale of recordings for children rose from 2,000,000 in 1941 to over 30,000,000. Some half-dozen new companies entered the children’s-record field in the first six months of 1947 alone.
• Despite a shortage of raw materials, the number of toy companies doubled between 1942 and 1947.
• Production of juvenile furniture in 1947 was 54% above 1946, which in turn was 39% above 1944.
• Production of children’s books also swelled. The three major magazines for the very young—Child Life, Jack and Jill, and Children’s Activities—had combined circulations of 1,300,000 in 1947.

From the day boomers were born they became the apple of every marketer’s eye. That trend would continue for the next 60 years.

By 1953 companies were beginning to sense a shift in society. The civic-minded attitude of the veteran-laden G.I. generation was being replaced by a much more self-absorbed one. General Motors responded by releasing the Corvette, a sexy new sports car with only two seats. Two years later Warner Brothers produced Rebel Without a Cause about a troubled youth who bucks authority and marches to the beat of his own drum. Do your own thing, baby. Right on.

As Boomers came of age over the next three decades, reflections of their idealistic and even pretentious nature were everywhere:

• 1969: Dr. Thomas Harris releases I’m OK – You’re OK, a self-help book designed to solve one’s problems through “Transactional Analysis.”
• 1978: The Village People release their second album, Macho Man, which includes the title song, along with “I Am What I Am,” “Just a Gigolo” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody.”
• 1983: Dashingly smooth solo spy James Bond stars in Octopussy, which raked in $187 million at the box office.

Products, and the marketing that went into them, revolved around hype and pretense. As marketing guru Roy. H. Williams stated in his June 7, 2004 Monday Morning Memo:

“Most branding campaigns are costumes worn by advertisers to the Media Masquerade Ball. They were the hot ticket during the pretentious Baby Boomer years when blue ribbons went to those wearing the best costumes…”

“…in the past, advertisers had only to claim to stand for some misty-eyed claptrap and idealistic Boomers would choose the product -  “Coke wants to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, and furnish it with love, grow apple trees and honeybees and snow-white turtledoves… I believe in world peace, too, so I’ll buy Coke instead of Pepsi.”

Time to Get Real

Today’s civic-minded generation regurgitates the ideal-driven pretense gobbled up by Boomers. Market yourself as “amazing, astounding and spectacular!” and they hear “blah, blah, blah.” If you want to stay relevant with the 72 million in the Millennial generation:

1.     Pull them towards you with true perspectives and values rather than pushing your products and services with hype.

2.     Identify potential challenges to your message and address them directly. Be transparent.

3.     Start a conversation: create a blog.

A Mayan Myth predicts that the end of the world will occur on December 12 2012.

While I’m not certain this is true, I do believe that December 12, 2012, will mark the end of the publishing world as we know it.

I’ve been a maverick in the book industry for more then a decade. I make people uncomfortable. I speak the truth. Hearing about change (and making change) is always tough, especially in an industry that, let’s face it, hasn’t changed much since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440.

Last summer, I proclaimed “Book Publishing 2.0 Is Now.”

At Book Expo America in 2009 and 2010 I spent some time ranting at publishers, predicting what the future of publishing would look like, and suggesting what I would do if I were a publisher today looking to preserve both reputation and business. Few listened.

But this time, unlike my attempts to reform the industry in years past, publishers actually flocked to me like flies to honey. But they didn’t like what I had to say.

Even today many of my friends among big and midsized New York-based publishers listen to me — but they aren’t willing to accept my news.

Here’s the headline: Traditional Book Publishing is DEAD.

I’m not the only one who’s been telling this story over the last couple of years.

For example:

• On what became known as publishing’s Black Tuesday, in December 2008 Random House completely reorganized and Simon & Schuster laid off a large part of its staff.
• Last year, Steven Covey and his Go digital publishing company made an exclusive deal with Amazon.com to have Amazon sell two of his bestsellers – “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and “Principle-Centered Leadership” — solely in digital form.
• Recently, best-selling author Seth Godin announced he’s “Moving On” and will no longer publishing with traditional publishers following the publication of “Linchpin.” (Also read his follow-up interview on Galley Cat.)
• And Mitch Joel is correct when he says, “This is a lot bigger then Seth Godin…”  It’s about transparency and talking directly with consumers.
• It used to be that 20,000 to 30,000 books were published a year. In 2009, there were 760,000 new books published. That’s more than a two thousand percent increase. Staggering, isn’t it? (Download Bowker’s 2009 Book Industry Essential Facts)
• Yet amid this torrent of product, B&N is losing money and even this titan of brick-and-mortar bookselling sees the writing on the wall regarding the future of traditional publishing (and book-buying)
• And of course you’ve heard of big losses at Borders, major executive turnover there and job losses at both the corporate level and at individual stores

I could go on and on with the doom-and-gloom of an industry whose only good news is digital publishing. Which, of course, scares traditional publishers to death.

So let me tell you what I’ve been telling publishers for the last two years, that they, and you, need to WAKE UP and hear.

By the end of 2012 the dynamics in publishing and the economy will have shifted so much that traditional publishers will either be acquiring emerging publishing technology and evolving — or going out of business.

• By the end of 2012, 50% or more of all books will be sold in a digital or electronic format.
• By the end of 2015, 80% or more of all books will be sold in digital or electronic format
• By the end of 2015, “new” digital books will be sold at an average of $0.99 or less

Publishers need to realize that they are on the same path the music industry has been on for a decade. They need to avoid making the same mistakes record companies made and instead focus on a more “open” source form of publishing the recognizes the money isn’t in the book content but what that content leads to.

We should look to Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org, and to a younger generation for the future of our business and publishing models. It is rumored that Matt turned down a $200 million offer to buy Wordpress. At the recent Engage Today 2010 conference in Calgary, Canada, Matt neither confirmed nor denied this, but he did say that had he turned down an offer of $200 million, it would have been because he was concerned the buyer might take his open-source publishing model and turn it into a closed-source publishing model.

The future of publishing is open source, free content leading into premium content.

I know I’ve come across as a doomsayer, but trust me when I say that I really believe that these are exciting times. Because once again, content is what counts. For so long book publishing was all about marketing: those with the money were those who succeeded. Good content was the exception, not the rule.

The Internet, the iPad, the Kindle, the smartphone and other such devices have leveled the playing field.

Online content is king, as we have already begun to see with e-books and digital books. Digital books will be judged by their content, rightfully so, and the long-tail effect will result in more content actually being read and consumed then is currently done with traditionally bound books.

Again, I am thrilled to be part of this exciting age for books and for content. If publishers would stop flogging their dead horse and really identify what they had to offer (and how to offer it), they too would be excited.

I’m looking forward to December 12, 2012, the Death of the Print Book Industry. Who’d like to participate in a funeral to celebrate this great industry’s death, and to proclaim the birth of a new one?

Nurturists would argue that our values come from our parents. I think it’s in our very nature to define our own. For one thing, nobody likes to be told what to believe. If you’ve got a working brain and the tiniest spark of independence you want to decide for yourself. It’s also completely natural to become bored by a mindset (or car or house or job or diet). The soul yearns for change. A break in the monotony.

The last 400 years of human history seem to side with me. Since (at least) 1584 (events that year included  the English expedition to Roanoke Island to establish an English colony in the New World), society has been rocking back and forth on a pendulum, forty years at a time. Idealism builds for twenty years and then burns out for the next twenty. Civic-mindedness swings the pendulum the other way for twenty years and then undergoes a twenty-year cooling off period. Back and forth and forth and back for as long as you care to research it.

Rewind forty years from now to 1970. The Baby Boomer generation was in full swing and the thing its members valued most was individualism. Boomers made judgments and decisions based on their own standards, refusing to conform to the community-driven principles of their parents. And now, four decades years later, people in the Millennial Generation are swinging the pendulum back in a direction their grandparents can be proud of. Whereas Boomers thought of “me,” Millennials think “we.”  Whereas Boomers bought the idea of “I’m OK, You’re OK,” Millennials come more from the “I’m Screwed Up, You’re Screwed Up” camp. It’s raw, it’s real and, if you ask me, it’s extremely refreshing.

Why You Should Care

This renewed sense of civic duty comes with a sense of responsibility to look out for one another. Couple that attitude with all the technology that today’s generation has access to and you’ve got word-of-mouth at a universal level. If your audience suspects even the slightest bit of shadiness your approval rating will drop faster than President (insert name of your choice).

The Key to Being More Relevant Than the Competition

Separate yourself from anything that so much as flirts with hype or pretense. Drop any charade and let people see you be real. What do you believe in? What do you stand against? How are you making a difference? Do you have any flaws? What are they? Tell them what they want to know. Be honest – more transparent than you’re comfortable being – and you’ll continue to be a part of the conversation.

Our natures respond to civic-idealistic swings. It’s not so much nurture as where we are on the pendulum.