A pair of university researchers says baby boomers should brace themselves for a new wave of advertising that plays to their sense of nostalgia as marketers come to realize that boomers, not their
younger counterparts, should be the target of marketing campaigns. There's a couple of examples out there already, according to Darrel Muehling and David Sprott of Washington State University. These
include the Coca-Cola ad showing people once again wanting to teach the world to sing and an ad for Aleve featuring former "Star Trek" star Leonard Nimoy. Muehling and Sprott contend that as the baby
boomers age into their 60s, such ads are likely to become much more common. "Right now, the major television networks tell you that those between 18 and 49 years of age are the only ones who count,"
says Muehling, chair of the marketing department at WSU. "But that's an assumption that needs to be revisited." And since older people have much more life experience than the young, "you logically
assume that you will see an even more pronounced effect with nostalgia-based advertising when dealing with an older population," Muehling said. A nostalgia ad is any ad that evokes a bittersweet
recall of the past, says Sprott. It can recall an earlier time in which a person was alive, or even a time before they were born. But in general, life experiences that people have in their 20s - and
the music, cars and clothes that accompanied those experiences - form the basis for nostalgic feelings. "Stuff we experience right out of college structures the general preferences for the rest of our
lives," says Sprott
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