Lee Iacocca target market

Hey, it's Dean. I'm in Amsterdam today in the middle of our summer world tour. I wrapped up in London yesterday or last week, ended up in Amsterdam this week. And I just saw in the news that Lee Iacocca passed away.

And that reminded me of what an incredible marketer Lee Iacocca was, when specifically what an amazing target marketer he was. And you know, if there's not familiar with the specifics of what Lee Iacocca did, one of the first things that he was largely credited with is introducing the Mustang to the world. And looking back on it now, when you realize that what Lee Iacocca did did was get in front of a phenomenon. He got in front of the largest baby boom in history.

He got in front of the just, you know, 1964, the baby boomers were just turning 18 years old. The youngest of them were just turning 18. The baby boom goes from 1946 to 1940, 1964. And so when you look at that in 1964, you had the leading group of baby boomers was turning 18 years old.

And what were they going to want? But they were going to want young, appealing, inexpensive, sporty cars. And that's what the Mustang delivered on. Mustang was something that captured the imagination of an entire group of people.

And it became the most popular selling car. And you know, it created a amazing success for ford. And then 20 years later, what Lee Iacocca did for Chrysler was get in front of that same group of people 20 years later. They're now not 18 years old looking for sports cars, but they're 38 years old 20 years later, and they're looking for minivans.

And he invented the minivan category and another huge success and really turned Chrysler around. Chrysler was in trouble. He brought quality and this amazing, you know, introduction of a brand new category to the largest group of people who were all turning 38 at the time, and another 20 years of that same birth rate of people right behind them. And so I look at things like that demography as an inevitability.

You know, you look at it that if you have something that is ultimately appealing to 18 year olds at 64 in 1964, and there's going to be, you know, millions of them every year right behind it for another 20 years. You know, you've got yourself a hit on your hands now when you fast forward and you do it again when they're 38, you've got yourself another incredible hit. Well, looking, even just taking the same demographic trends right now, if we look at it Here we are in 2019 and we're smack in the middle of one of the things that is shaping the entire economy here. We've got 10,000 plus people a day turning 60 years old.

And that will continue for another 20 plus years. That, you know, when you look at the 60 to 65 age group of people who are retiring, entering into their golden years here, and the transfer of wealth from the baby boomers parents to the baby boomers as they're aging, who've already already done successfully for themselves, it's going to be this incredible transfer of wealth that's taking place right now over the next 20 years. You also look at what's going on on the other end of this. If we look at it now, it's hard believe, but the youngest of the millennials or the, the Gen Y kids that were born in 2000, just think about that for a second.

Born in 2000 are 19 years old this year. They just did. I was, I was laughing because they did kind of exit interviews at the NBA draft this year and they showed the kids that were drafted this year things from the 90s. And they couldn't picture, they couldn't name what things were of pictures of things in the 90s.

Like even the group Outcast, they couldn't, they couldn't recognize big boy and Andre 3000 or what an Easy Bake Oven was or a Nintendo or Sega Genesis game console, you know, Easy Bake Oven. They didn't know what all these things were because they had no frame of reference for it. But you think about it right now, what's happening, you know, with major groups of population, what is it going to be inevitable that they're going to need or want or buy, you know, in the next 10 to 20 years? Amazing.

Lee Iacocca was a master of it. Did it, you know, at the top of the game twice in a row with the Mustang and the minivan. And I think that when we look at it now, we're going to have more opportunities just like that if we just stop and kind of look at what's around us and what are the trends that are happening right now. Pick one and get in front of it.

It. Have a great day.