The NY Times recently ran a story about a 2-year-old website targeted to Baby Boomers. The article is a classic cautionary tale about strategy and marketing.

The story concerns www.Eons.com, a site specifically designed to appeal to Boomers (of which I am one…the tail end of the Baby Boom!). Eons attracted a lot of blue chip VC money, drove a lot of traffic by buying expensive key words (that had no bearing on the real focus of the site), and then crashed and burned because Boomers were ultimately not terribly interested. Now Eons management is scrambling to come back as a social networking site (join the club), deemphasizing the explicit Boomer focus.

The fact is pretty inescapable that Eons.com did most everything wrong, especially from a strategic point of view. (The original site was executed nicely, just based on a faulty strategy.) What went wrong with their strategy? Let me enumerate the ways:

• The LAST THING Boomers want is to be labeled as such. We don’t want to be viewed as “old.” Ever!
• And neither do so-called “seniors.” (unless they really are seniors, which to me is 75 or 80 plus…John McCain is 72!).
• Creating an age restricted, velvet rope around a label no Boomer wanted in the first place was the dumbest thing a web company could ever do.
• Just as many Boomers don’t welcome that label, you should not assume that a “Millennial” wants to be characterized as such. Nor an African-American, Gay consumer, Hispanic, Gen X’er, etc.
• In fact, forget the labels. Big mistake in marketing.
• Never assume anything (or at least don’t assume too much…some assumptions are unavoidable in marketing).
• Talk to people you know who represent that group. A Boomer would have told the Eons folks that they would never go to a site that immediately places them in an over 50 (which means old to many people) category.
• If 50 really is the new 30, then you should never use the term 50, or Boomer, or middle age, or longevity, again!
• Remember, the Toyota Scion and Honda Element were both similarly designed for and marketed to twenty somethings…young people. Guess who bought a ton of them? Boomers in their 40s and 50s! There is a big strategic lesson here for marketers. People are fundamentally aspirational in their buying decisions, and their lives in general (which is one reason why Barack Obama is having such stunning success in his campaign, and not just for the legions of young people who flock to his speeches and his website.) You’ve go to appeal to individuals’ hopes and dreams, not simply the reality of who they are now.

The Eons strategic misfire is the same one so many companies make – they choose the seemingly easy route and rely on stereotypes in marketing. Huge mistake!! Avoid stereotypes in your strategic planning, in your product planning, in your communications, in everything. People will defy your stereotypes of them every day…just out of principle (and spite!).

The reworked and repositioned Eons.com is now built around shared interests. Not a particularly original idea for a web based community. At least now, however, they have a fighting chance to succeed because they are not turning off their intended target audience from the get go.

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