See Dick. Dick is forty. A middle-aged Baby Boomer. He is a systems analyst for a public utility. He married Susan, the girl next door. They have three children – Brad, Adam and Rick. His secret ambition is to get a hole-in-one.

Dick drives a new car. It's fun to ride in the new car. "Your car is rad dad," said Adam. "Real rad."

See Jane. Jane is a thirty-six year old divorcee. She lives in an impeccably clean house in Dayton, Ohio. She is a bank loan officer by day and an Amway distributor by night.

See Sally. Baby Sally just turned thirty-four. She is a public relations director for a winery. A single woman, she lives and works in Mill Valley. And except for her nephews, has little to do with her family.

Father and mother are in their mid-sixties. The live in a sprawling retirement village in Palm Springs. Father and mother recently returned from a tour of the Holy Land.

What happened to Spot? Well...

He grew older. Just like all the others who were part of the Boom Generation.

Yes, those cute little moppets who read Dick and Jane primers in postwar America are known as the Boomers.

An unprecedented swell of humanity coursing its way through American Society.

As Dick, Jane, Sally and their parents, Father and Mother, continue to grow older, they are creating new opportunities, new markets and new challenges.

There are more than 76 million boomers in the United States today, representing nearly one-third of the consuming population. That's a lot of Dicks and Janes.

"Gray America," the portion of the population sixty-five and older, is growing rapidly as well. These older Americans are better educated and boast more disposable income than their parents.

Combined, these two markets represent roughly half of all Americans. And their wants and needs are impacting all segments of society.

Just who are these people we call customers?

(Change pace)

Dick and Jane grew up in postwar America. The vast industrial machine demobilized and a new prosperity took America by storm.

Factories that once turned out tanks and planes by the millions now turned out refrigerators, televisions and automobiles instead.

Father and mother, who grew up in the midst of the Great Depression, were now raising Dick, Jane and Sally.

It was an unprecedented explosion of children. The fathers and the mothers of these children, haunted by the dual specters of Depression-era poverty and hunger, were determined to give their offspring a better life. A life filled with things they worked so hard to get. The sprawling tract house. The self-defrosting refrigerator. The new car. The television.

In retrospect, it was a much simpler time than today. Daily decisions weren't nearly as complicated in this either/or society.

People either got married or they didn't. They worked full time or not at all. It was Ford or Chevy. Chocolate or vanilla. Bathtubs were white, telephones were black and checks green. ...