I think that it is time to recognize that the echo baby boom is at the front door of the housing industry and knocking (or maybe tweeting).   Are we ready?   I don’t think so.

Recently in my article “The Path”, I advocated that builders and developers had to go out and talk to brokers, potential purchasers, and their own sales people about what new buyers were looking for in a home.  Trying to re-cook the “efficient” existing product from a couple of years ago was not going to serve up a valuable meal in this new environment.  I don’t think a restaurant serving leftovers is a good business model.

In April I was at the Urban Land Institute Spring Conference in Boston.  I am part of a “council” that focuses on community development.   It consists mostly of senior level types, men and women, mostly over 40 and many over 50 years old.   We were lucky enough to have a couple of younger guests in the room with us.  One was a presenter on design.  The other was the son of one of our members, a community developer in Arizona.   Both were in their mid-20’s.

One of our quick topics was how companies were using social media.   The result was fascinating.   Many of the people in the room had only the vaguest idea of what Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, and other social media platforms were.   Almost none knew how to use them.   Most indicated that they had web sites, but did not know how they worked or when they were last updated.
 
Luckily, our guests began to fill in the gaps on a very basic level.   Their discussion led to deeper questions from the audience about what kind of housing they and their age group desired.   Furthermore, they began to discuss how to best communicate with their age group.

What became painfully evident over a 10 minute period was that the ways that owners and senior managers of development and building companies thought about their product, marketing, and target clientele was not coincident with those who were becoming the actual “new purchaser”: the echo baby boom. 

While we have been dealing with several years of industry upheaval, the echo baby boom has been getting older and, all of a sudden, they are becoming “the market”.    Worse, we do not have an idea of what they really want or how to best communicate with them.   

What is certain: the old paradigms and business models are not going to work the way they have in the past.

Now I am not saying that Twitter, Facebook and other social media are a magic formula for communication or for building a market naturally.   However, what I do know is that I do not know enough about social media platforms and the echo baby boom to make a reasoned judgment regarding how they fit into an overall plan for marketing.  
 
I also am fairly certain that Apple would not be running a homebuilder or community developer the way that we currently do.

If a wise man knows that which he does not know, I think we should all set out on a path to wisdom and at least begin to know this market and how to engage with them on multiple levels.  
 
My best idea from the day is that any of us over 40 probably needs a 25 year old mentor (or maybe several of them).   It does not mean that you abdicate decision making, but it does mean that you have to learn a new market and how to relate to that market and what better way to do that than have a mentor to help you begin to understand.
   
My guess is that those who figure out how to do this will prosper and those who do not will be run over by an oncoming train, wondering what just hit them.

So, as they would say: “Cowboy Up!”, find yourself a 25 year old mentor, and begin to live the future.
PS:    For those who want a head start on understanding the impact and nuances of digital media, my friend Rodney Hall of the Talon Group in Dallas suggests two books: Viral Loop (By Adam Penenberg) and Crush It ! (By Gary Vaynerchuk).