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The first Baby Boomer, A New Jersey mother and grandmother turned 61 on New Year's Day, 2007 and she has the distinction of being the very first Baby Boomer. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, of Cherry Hill, N.J., was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946. During this era, an American baby was born every eight seconds.
Today, boomers' kids and grandkids are entering college and gaining some freedom from their helicopter parents. These new consumers are a marketer's gold mine.
For example, credit card companies are getting creative in marketing to college students by seeking out partnerships with third-party marketers. College kids are a potential gold mine--one of the few growing customer segments in the saturated credit-card market. And they're loyal, eventually taking three additional loans, on average, with the bank that gives them their first card. David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report says, "It's hard to walk away from a market that's actually generating new customers."
So it is that JPMorgan Chase has teamed up with an outfit called BicyTaxi to reach students here at the University of Michigan and nine other colleges that ban credit card companies. The bank offers students free off-campus pedicab rides accompanied by recorded messages about Chase+1, a card geared toward students. "We think this is a very positive campaign for students," says Chase spokesperson Tanya Madison, who says the bank used the program last year, too.
The credit card marketers' latest tactic is to co-sponsor campus seminars on financial literacy....with credit card applications usually handed out afterward. Even schools that ban traditional marketing make an exception for the events, figuring they benefit students. The United College Marketing Service, which runs such programs, says credit card companies are sponsoring 70% of its more than 1,000 seminars this fall--and that there's a yearlong waiting list for banks wanting to sign up. "The more you ban [the marketers], the more demand for seminars will soar," says Larry Chiang, the company's founder.
Source: BusinessWeek, October 15, 2007
