Work

As a marketer, charting the cultural anthropology of an audience or society is not merely an interest, it is the lifeblood of my work. The charting of my own generation has been particularly important to me, not only because it is my own community, but it has always been and will remain through our lifetime, the largest societal swell in the country’s history. When I began in the business of marketing, in my early twenties, I was hired specifically to bring the idea of our youthful generation to companies like Avon and Revlon and Elizabeth Arden. In my thirties I looked to establish the unique issues of women consumers to the strategic planning of brands, and I was among the first to identify the generational divide of men and women Boomers into more narrow and complex segments of psychographic attitude and choice, especially in regard to the luxury market. I lectured extensively about these issues – to top trade associations, major magazines and to countless annual meetings of major corporations.

The issues our generation face today, as we move through our 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, suggest a fresh assessment of where our work and our lives has led us. Generations before us rarely had the luxury, the opportunity or the need for such evaluation, or the option to change a career or a life-plan so far into a fully lived life. And so it continues to be, as it has since we were first identified as the Youth-Quake Generation, one long and challenging ride, defining its time, long before and after generations that preceded or followed us have done.

As a note, I’ve always written my own copy for ads. There was (and is), for me, no separation between the communication of the visual and the written word. Branding is the discipline of translating the personality of an entity (a line of products, a place, an object, a service or a concept – or even an ‘artist’ or ‘author’) into a form or forms that can be clearly understood by its targeted users. In many ways, the idea of “personal style” is exactly the same exercise. How we present ourselves -- in our homes, in our dress, in the maintenance of our lives, tells the world who we are.