PR firm Edelman this week launched Boomer Insights Generation Group, the latest in a string of big agency divisions to specialize in Boomer marketing. Others already out there include FH Boom (Fleishman-Hillard), JWT Boom and Focalyst. Edelman indicates a “growing number of clients” in need of Boomer-focused solutions. The group’s thought leader is Marilyn Mobley, an Edelman employee who writes the Baby Boomer Insights blog. Edelman research indicates the need to segment the Boomer audience, with Mobley observing:

Too many companies market to Boomers as though we’re defined by our age. Yet, one of the key findings of the Strategy One/Edelman Boomer Insights & Implications Study is that a full 28% of Boomers don’t see themselves as Boomers as all. Can you imagine spending millions of dollars marketing a car to people who have committed to walk everywhere they go? And yet that’s what companies do every day when they crank up their marketing and advertising campaigns and aim them at this massive group called “Boomers.”

No debating that; I’ve felt for some time that one of the worst ways to target this audience is by slapping on the “Boomer” label.

Paid subscription and pay-per-view video have a bright future–and both will be driven by Boomer consumers, according to Saul Berman, who heads IBM’s global media and entertainment strategy practice. In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent AlwaysOn conference in New York , Berman talked about the broad trends IBM sees comin down the road in the ongoing advertising and content revolution.

Newsday editorial cartoonist Walt Handelsman seems to be driving a major surge in traffic at the Newsday website, with a good deal of the gains coming from his wonderful Boomer send-up noted here before the holidays, “Bored, Tubby Mild.” The New York Times notes that Newsday waas one of the top five sites in December, with 6.45 million unique visitors. That’s double or triple Newsday’s usual numbers. The paper credited Handelsman’s move into animated cartoons for the gain:

One cartoon that recently attracted viewers featured a baby boomer couple coping with aging problems like knee replacements, using the song lyrics “Bored, tubby and mild” sung to the tune of “Born to Be Wild.” Mr. Handelsman, who is 51 and falls into the baby boomer demographic himself, began using an online technology in 2006 to create animated video snippets and now has his own blog on the Newsday site.

Handelsman has won two Pulitzer prizes for cartoons.

Television networks are slowly waking up to the importance of grown-up viewers as their audiences fragment and decline. They’re affluent and more loyal to legacy media…or so they thought. Turns out adults are getting tougher to reach through traditional channels according to a Multichannel News report. Citing research from Wolf Resource Group, the article notes that adults 25 to 54 spend more time online than do younger demos–even though the kids are thought of as the Internet generation. Other highlights:

• 42 percent of YouTube’s audience is 35 to 54
• 30 percent of Boomers participate in user-generated content–although just 10 percent create content themselves
• Adults age 35 to 49 are the biggest users of digital video recorders–31 percent use them at least once a week, compared with just 26 percent among 18 to 34-year-olds.

Marketers will miss out if they rely only on traditional legacy media to reach lucrative Boomer audiences–especially as younger Boomers edge into the 50+ category.

More evidence that venture capitalists are focusing on the 50+ market surfaced this week with the launch of Caring.com. The site takes aim at one of the most pressing, but problematic, Boomer information needs–caring for aging parents. Caring.com is the brainchild of Andy Cohen, a former manager at Intuit, and aims to provide resources for caregivers with elderly family members. The company raised $6 million in launch funds and went live earlier this week.

There are plenty of regional caregiver information resources around the country. But no one has yet successfully cracked the national market–even though the long-distance information need is real, with adult children struggling to provide care to parents hundreds or thousands of miles away. The opportunity is big, with Caring.com citing figures stating that 34 million adults provide “personal aid, financial assistance, or both, to an older family member.”

Here are the challenges:

• Much of the caregiver advertising market is local, not national. Obvious categories include the various segments of senior housing, health care and medical providers, and financial advisers.
• Big brand advertisers confuse the Boomer and senior demographics. Caregivers may be Boomers, but all those images of wheelchairs and walkers put off marketers of luxury goods, high end retailers, etc.
• Few caregivers identify themselves as such, and their information need often pops up in a crisis environment. That presents interesting audience development challenges.

News coverage of Caring.com’s launch is at Advertising Age, Reuters and CNET.

My column in today’s Chicago Sun-Times deals with the new wave of explosive growth among health information websites. The trend is fueled by the growing number of mid-life Americans who see the web as a primary source of guidance on health matters. Earlier post on Focalyst research documenting the trend is here.