While many marketers have not yet grasped the value of this booming demographic, the smart ones will realize that 50+ is the gift that keeps on giving.

Who will own caregiving the way Johnson & Johnson's BabyCenter owns the motherhood lifestage? The potential cast of characters is broad: publishers, aging-in-place tech companies, pharma, health plans, health care providers, housing developers, contractors, care/case managers, authors, the government.

It's hard to imagine a media distribution platform better naturally suited to a Boomer campaign than this one. The Boomer television viewer (especially the vibrant, educated Boomer woman) already embraces PBS -- which is a lot more than you can say for the AARP.

The evidence continues to mount that there is a new mentality among consumers, especially Boomers, when it comes to spending money on goods and services. If your job is to figure out how to best motivate them to spend it with your company, your job has a new normal, too. It's much harder.

Eighty million consumers earning $2.5 trillion annually with 2.5 times the discretionary spending power of any other group, holding 75% of the nation's current wealth and standing to inherit between $14 and $20 trillion over the next 20 years seems to me like a group worth targeting by marketers.

Rather than moving through life in the linear lifestyle of the World War II Generation, these new matures are creating a life stage "mosaic" -- moving in and out of a variety of life stages in a dynamic fashion. Each of these life stage changes creates unique consumer opportunities. That is, suddenly consumers are looking for products and services that may never have been in the consideration set before this life stage.

What is really needed, of course, is giving women -- and at least three women -- a seat at the tables where marketing decisions are being made. These women will not represent all women, nor will they represent women "perfectly" -- as if such a thing were possible. But they will represent themselves fully -- which is just what men have been doing all along.

They want to do business with those that not only provide sought-after experiences but want a relationship with them and will take actions to maintain that relationship. They also expect outstanding personal service and, if they get it, they will keep coming back and tell their friends.

We thought it might be more helpful to readers of this column if we compare today's Boomers at ages 55-64 to the spending the Silent Generation did 10 years ago at the same age. Oops. There's no comparison.

If they expect to prosper, companies have an obligation to tell older consumers how their brands and products add value to their lives. And, we have an obligation to provide these companies with the foundational knowledge from which they can develop appropriate products, services and marketing plans that will serve all Boomers -- even those who may soon be characterized as "old."