• Reuters, Friday, July 14, 2006 1:34 PM

You've heard of the Baby Boomers, Generation X, Gen Y, the Tweens, and all the other demographic groups targeted by marketers. Now meet a new one: the Grups. They are in their 30s and 40s, but they're young at heart and act more like people in their 20s. The big difference is that they earn a lot more disposable cash and they're willing to spend it to maintain a youthful lifestyle. The term "grup" was coined in a New York magazine article, and comes from a "Star Trek" episode featuring a planet run by wild children trapped in perpetual youth. The children call Captain Kirk and his crew grups, short for grown-ups. Rarely seen in pin-striped suits, grups of either sex can easily be spotted in discreetly branded battered jeans, T-shirts and old-school trainers, while blasting the latest Raconteurs or Flaming Lips tracks through permanently attached iPods. "People don't think they're bucking any sort of trend by still going clubbing when they're 35 or 36 and wearing Converse trainers. Everything's much more fluid," said Laura Simpson, manager of ad agency McCann Erickson's Pulse UK consumer insight division. "There's a broader movement in society toward staying youthful for longer, [a]trend our clients are certainly aware of."

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