Maureen Rogers over at The Opinionated Marketers notes with amusement a conference focused on “Marketing to Men, Women and Boomers.” First reaction to the conference theme: people over 50 are. . .neither? Second (more serious) reaction: anything that gets ad agencies to pay more attention to Boomers is good–so, segment away if you like. Speakers at the Nov. 12-13 event in New York City include PrimeTime Women author Marti Barletta and marketing uber-guru Seth Godin. He’s scheduled to speak on the Boomer track at this event, and has posted on mistakes marketers make when they ignore older consumers:

For a long time, the easy way out was to believe that 18 to 34 year olds were open and seniors were closed. Web surfers are open, National Enquirer readers are closed. etc. etc. Then the baby boom happened. Baby boomers have been open their whole lives. And now they are seniors. So all the conventional wisdom goes out the window. Senior travel, senior fashion, senior experiences… it’s all fair game, because there’s a different demographic inhabiting that age group now.

I’d just add that not all Boomers are seniors. . . today. There are clear lifestage differences between these two groups that will persist another 10 to 15 years. One small example: how Boomers use the Internet compared with seniors.

Americans are eating more spicy food, but it’s not due to a big increase in culinary adventure. Turns out taste buds start to go as we age–and when that happens, people eat  spicier food. The Boston Globe explains that the Boomer age wave is driving a major increase in spicy food offerings on grocery shelves, and the popularity of ethnic restaurants featuring hot food:

“So far, few marketers or researchers have studied the link between boomers and spicy food. The industry is just now starting to draw the connection, food scientists say. Research in this area has been slow in part because the science of smell and taste is complicated and still emerging. What’s known is that at a certain age - after about 40 for most people - the number of nerve receptors in the nose and tongue that respond to smell and taste dim and decrease. As that happens, complex flavors become duller. Sweet and sour tastes decline sharply; salty and acidic tastes remain brighter for longer. The tastes that penetrate the fog most clearly come from another group of flavors called sensory irritants. These hit the body not through taste or smell, but through the chemosensory system, which conveys sensations like touch, temperature, pain, and pressure. A list of foods in the sensory irritant category reads like a roster of modern flavorings: habanero, jalapeno, black pepper, horseradish, ginger, cinnamon. All of them - generally lumped together as “spicy” or “high-flavor” - help kick up the overall sensory experience of eating.”

Evidence of the trend turns up in older Americans’ preference for more flavorful cheeses, visits to websites for spicy food aficionados, and growing use of the word “spicy” on restaurant menus. (Yes, there’s actually someone tracking this–MenuMine, a database maintained by the Foodservice Research Institute.)

I talked recently with Robin Wolaner, founder and CEO of TeeBeeDee, the latest social networking site launched for Boomers. Others include Eons, Boomj, Rezoom and Gather. Robin launched TeeBeeDee in September, backed by $4.8 million in venture capital. TeeBeeDee joins a wave of sites betting that Boomers will join younger audiences in adopting social networking in big numbers. She’s shown a knack for correct bets before, having launching Parenting Magazine in 1987 just as Boomers were becoming parents in droves. She later sold Parenting to Time Inc., where she continued to work on magazine success stories like Martha Stewart Living and Sunset Magazine.

Robin, are you a serial boomer entrepreneur? Parenting launched on the crest of the boomers-as-parents wave. Is it about generational information needs for you?

That’s the most positive way to say it! I keep sticking with what I know. I think it takes a lot more talent to do something for an audience you’re not part of. Fortunately the generation I’m a part of is a pretty big group. It feels easy to trust my gut, but TeeBeeDee isn’t just for Boomers. It’s a state of mind as much as anything else. It takes a level of affluence and health and vitality to have a desire to keep growing. There is a fork in the road at mid-life. Some people can’t take the steps to reinvigorate their careers and relationships. But the mindset of the person joining our site is, ‘I’m in pretty good shape, I’ve got a couple decades ahead…I’m going to make the most of things.’ ”

Over half of MySpace users are over 35. Why wouldn’t Boomers just hang out there?

MySpace has way more profiles than members, and a lot of them are fake. Marketers are using it to reach a teen market. Boomers are not going to see it as their site, or a place they are comfortable. We’re really a hybrid. We’ve created a site where people could exchange information about their experiences—it’s not about sharing with people you don’t know. Facebook is connecting with people you already know; TeeBeeDee is about expressing yourself and learning from people you know through the site.

Do you see Boomers shifting their time and attention away from traditional media in order to hang out on social networking sites?

The most telling statistic, when you look at what Boomers are doing online, is that we look just like younger people but are not yet networking in big numbers. So you have to believe one of two things: One, we are never going to network, because our concerns about privacy are such that we won’t do it. Or, second, we just haven’t had the right site yet to make networking worthwhile. That might be TeeBeeDee or some other site. I’m not predicting that all Boomers will network. But it is valuable. But it’s It’s changed my life in many ways, and I think Boomers will find the sites where they can do this.

What is the value Boomers will find in networking?

Networking has value when it has a purpose. Purposeful networking will happen in greater numbers. No one is as motivated as you are to get the answers you need. That is why networking can be purposeful—it’s not just about hanging out—people our age don’t have the time for that.”

And how will that affect traditional media that count Boomers as very important parts of their core audience?

The threat to traditional media is not uniform across segments. For example, there always will be a place for fashion magazines—in print and online. But when it comes to finding out information in a specific need-based way, that will move to sites like ours. As soon as advertisers find ways to reach the audiences they want in new, targeted ways, the old categories are threatened.

How do Boomers differ from younger social networkers in terms of their online behavior?

The comfort level of Boomers is lower than with younger users when it comes to personal revelation. That’s why we let people post with user names, instead of real names. This audience needs to have that option. During our beta test, we saw that people will start out with a user name—and then they change over to their real names after they get comfortable.

What are the business metrics for success at TeeBeeDee?

This is a good time to start a consumer Internet-based business. Membership and engagement are key, and so are frequency of visits and time spent on the site. We are a 19-person company, so we don’t have high overhead. We’ve raised enough capital to develop this business. The initial model is advertising based, but we’re not counting on ads for the first year, because we are growing the community. Our advertising launch will be in November.

More is sponsoring a one-day Reinvention Convention in New York next Tuesday. It’s a consumer event featuring usual-suspect speakers on midlife issues like money, diet and careers. Wachovia and Harley-Davidson are sponsoring, and today’s New York Times says the conference is “a sign of the shifting attitudes toward older consumers.” More is a standout success story in convincing marketers to target 40+ women, but no one has cracked the code yet with a similar title for men. The only magazine that comes close is Rodale’s Best Life, which has seen its rate base jump to 450,000 and ad pages soar. But it targets a slightly younger target (35-54). And More publisher Brenda Saget Darling tells the Times certain categories “still have this obsession with youth,” especially fashion.

At least, that’s what the Financial Post thinks. The paper reports that growing numbers of marketers are tired of unsuccessful efforts targeting 18-to-35 year olds, and have realized Boomers have the money and preferable consumer habits. And here’s one you don’t see every day: Canada’s biggest traditional department store–The Bay–is pinning its hopes for survival on the 50+ crowd. According to one analyst:

[Boomers are]….”the only hope department stores have to survive in Canada. They will never get young people to open up their wallets so they have to get older customers to shop there,” he said. “This should have happened 10 years ago when everyone was blindly chasing youth.”

Can you think of a single mainstream department store in the U.S. that would admit this? I can’t.

Media companies are scrambling to build up their online health information websites, and new Focalyst survey research spotlighting Boomer media preferences in this area show why.

The New York Times noted the trend a few days ago with a story on the Hearst Magazines acquisition of RealAge Inc., a consumer health website that lets users determine their “real age” using a variety of factors like exercise, diet and weight. Hearst also is working to build out more content across its existing stable of sites, such as Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan. The story also notes an initiative at U.S. News & World Report aimed at bulking up on health information. Health also has been a major area of focus, of course, for Boomer-specific online launches such as Eons and TeeBeeDee and magazines such as More.

The Focalyst survey data underscores just how big health care media will be for Boomers as they age. The survey compares preferences of Boomers and older “Matures” when it comes to seeking advice and information on health-related matters. I’ve edited down the findings to zero in on Boomer likelihood to turn to online media for health information. Print media, television and radio also are beneficiaries of the trend. You can find the full press release and findings here.