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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Ken, how did you get involved in this?

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Speaker 3: I was in the marketing business for about twenty years,

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Speaker 3: had an advertising agency and in Connecticut, and we lost

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Speaker 3: one of our major clients. We couldn't figure out why.

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Speaker 3: We had American Honda Motorcycle as a client. And we

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Speaker 3: had one hundred and forty dealers and the Northeast from

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Speaker 3: Maine to Pittsburgh to Washington, d C. And we were

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Speaker 3: selling motorcycles like crazy in the late eighties. Bikes came

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Speaker 3: in in the late eighties and put them in the dealerships,

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Speaker 3: spent millions of dollars on radio, TV, newspaper billboards. And

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Speaker 3: I get a call from American Honda in California and

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Speaker 3: they said, Ken, did you run the ads and keep man?

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Speaker 3: I'm not liking that question. I said, what's up? And

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Speaker 3: they said, we don't have any traffic. There's no traffic

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Speaker 3: in the dealerships. And they said, but Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha,

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Speaker 3: the big competition, has the exact same problem, and Harley

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Speaker 3: is selling them like crazy. Soud Honda was just scratching

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Speaker 3: your head. So from nineteen eighty six to nineteen ninety two.

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Speaker 3: We tried everything, and eventually all of our dealers closed.

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Speaker 3: Can you imagine they just closed? So we said, well,

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Speaker 3: that's that the rest of the story. Nineteen ninety six

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Speaker 3: Clinton versus Dole October of the year and reading a

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Speaker 3: newspaper here in Connecticut, I was talking about why a

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Speaker 3: particular part of our population, a Generation X that's born

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five to eighty four, is not voting. And

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Speaker 3: so we did some homework and discovered that Generation X

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Speaker 3: is small. There's actually nine million fewer people in Generation X,

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Speaker 3: and from peak to valley it's it's the peak of

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Speaker 3: the boomers to the trough of Generation X is about

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Speaker 3: a thirty five percent free fall. So wherever Generation X goes,

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Speaker 3: they wipe out markets. So that's what got me started.

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Speaker 2: And then what turns it around? How does a company

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Speaker 2: decide what to do for the future.

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Speaker 3: The companies absolutely positively have to know who their end

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Speaker 3: user market is, not who they're selling to, because they

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Speaker 3: might be selling to a conglomerate someplace, or to buyers

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Speaker 3: that are unrepresentative of the end users. You have to

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Speaker 3: know end users, and if your end user market's getting big,

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Speaker 3: you have opportunity. If it's getting small, it's time to bail.

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Speaker 2: Let me use Amazon dot Com as an example. When

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Speaker 2: Jeff Bezols started his company with his life at the time,

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Speaker 2: he was selling books out of his garage. I mean

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Speaker 2: that was his intent. I ran into him a couple

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Speaker 2: months ago, by the way, real genius guy. But he

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Speaker 2: did not anticipate at that time that he'd be the

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Speaker 2: world's largest retailer selling online. Yeah, he kind of like

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Speaker 2: stumbled into it. He just because I remember guests in

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Speaker 2: the beginning of Amazon. I'd say, so, where do we

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Speaker 2: get your book? You know, you're thinking bookstores and stuff,

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Speaker 2: and they'd be saying Amazon dot com. Amazon dot com.

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Speaker 2: But who would ever think that it would explode into

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Speaker 2: the retail establishment. It is to the point where that company,

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Speaker 2: Amazon dot Com has hurt bricks and mortars retail stores

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Speaker 2: all around the country.

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Speaker 3: Sure, and they can anticipate even doing more. There are

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Speaker 3: a couple of monster markets in the United States. One

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Speaker 3: of them is baby boomers, and baby boomers right now

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Speaker 3: are sixty to seventy nine years old. And then there's

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Speaker 3: generation of why millennials that were born nineteen seventy five

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Speaker 3: to nineteen eighty four. Is that right? No, that's not anyway.

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Speaker 3: Generation Why millennials are about eighty eight million. So whatever

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Speaker 3: those two, the baby boomers or the millennials do, it's

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Speaker 3: going to reshape the whole world of commerce in the

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Speaker 3: United States.

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Speaker 2: Does age determine what products people buy?

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Speaker 3: Are you kidding? Yes, very very much. And I don't

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Speaker 3: mean to be rude, but I once helped the gene

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Speaker 3: store that were selling Levis to general public. We took

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Speaker 3: them from ten million dollars to four hundred million. Well yeah,

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Speaker 3: and the reason was that we could never satisfy the

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Speaker 3: demands of the market, so we just kept on expanding, expanding,

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Speaker 3: and it was the baby boomers. And eventually, once the

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Speaker 3: baby boomers outgrew their ability to fit Injens, it was over.

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Speaker 3: And then the Gene business it nearly wiped out Levi's. So, yes,

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Speaker 3: age age is everything, age is power. Age. You need

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Speaker 3: to know how big your end user market is and

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Speaker 3: are they getting bigger or are they getting smaller?

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Speaker 2: Because that's everything you told. Also, a great story the

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Speaker 2: last time you were on the program Ken about Harley

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Speaker 2: Davidson and how they missed the mark.

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Speaker 3: And that's sad because I you know, nice American company. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: former President Bush even tried to Former President Trump tried

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Speaker 3: to save them and he but there wasn't anything he

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Speaker 3: could do about it. The fact is, you know, their

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Speaker 3: biggest bike weighs about a thousand pounds and that's a

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Speaker 3: lot of that's a lot of machinery between.

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Speaker 2: Your leg that's a lot of weight for people, especially

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Speaker 2: younger people to hold up.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's the whole idea, is that the baby boomers

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Speaker 3: who created the whole motorcycle market and then graduated into

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Speaker 3: hardly datasen because it was it was an older, more

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Speaker 3: gentrified bike. They can't ride them anymore, so it's over.

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Speaker 3: So you have literally you have Harley Davis and dealerships

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Speaker 3: across the United States were hardly beat on these folks

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Speaker 3: that were selling their bikes and made them build these

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Speaker 3: mausoleums of a dealership and they can't sustain them anymore.

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Speaker 3: So it's hardly his history, don't.

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Speaker 2: You think of marketing executve I would ask the first

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Speaker 2: question to his staff, who's our end user? Folks? I

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Speaker 2: want to hear from everybody, tell me who our end

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Speaker 2: user is? To see if these people know who, then

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Speaker 2: the scope of the company's products are the buyers.

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Speaker 3: Wouldn't you think you know, I'll tell you nineteen sixty

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Speaker 3: five to nineteen eighty four, that's when the Generation X

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Speaker 3: was born. When I discovered back in the late nineties

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Speaker 3: that this was a generation, A twenty year generation A

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Speaker 3: census generation was nine million people fewer than the Baby boomers.

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Speaker 3: And I said, you know, I wanted to know what

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Speaker 3: the percentage was. How much smaller are they? And the

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Speaker 3: number is about eleven or twelve percent smaller. An eleven

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Speaker 3: or twelve percent drop in your market erases you. And

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Speaker 3: if you don't and if you didn't see it coming,

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Speaker 3: that's your fault.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's not rocket science, is it.

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Speaker 3: No? You know, George and I that's It's one of

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Speaker 3: the things that I deal with all the time, and

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Speaker 3: that is folks, don't you understand you think that that

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Speaker 3: it's a good idea right now just to stop having babies?

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Speaker 3: Is that a good idea? You know? After all we

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Speaker 3: can you know, we want to improve our environment and

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Speaker 3: we were concerned about global warming. Let's just reduce the

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Speaker 3: number of people without thinking about the ramifications of that

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Speaker 3: type of a decision when you've literally wiped out future

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Speaker 3: everybody because we all started out as babies.

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Speaker 2: Well, and the problem with that, Kenny, is you got

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Speaker 2: one person will say, well, you know, I don't need

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Speaker 2: a kid, but you got twenty million people saying the

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Speaker 2: same thing.

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Speaker 3: You got seventy five percent of the countries in the

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Speaker 3: world right now present. The only countries that are not

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Speaker 3: have not fallen off on fertility is subsat Era Africa.

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Speaker 3: On this, I believe like thirty five countries there. But

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Speaker 3: I don't know what's going to happen in s Africa.

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Speaker 3: But I do know what's going to happen in the

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Speaker 3: rest of the world, and that is if we don't

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Speaker 3: embrace this fertility issue, we're cooking ourselves. We're going to

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Speaker 3: have real problems in twenty thirty years.

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Speaker 2: You say, by twenty one hundred, China will lose half

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Speaker 2: of its population, right.

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Speaker 3: What China has done? Yeah, and this is this is

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Speaker 3: what I fay. Okay, George, Well, why can't China have

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Speaker 3: more kids now? If they're gonna if their population for

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Speaker 3: the first time in their history, is actually shrinking, and

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Speaker 3: it has last year and this year, why can't they

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Speaker 3: just have more kids? Well, for the last forty years,

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Speaker 3: they've been eliminating parents. And the last thing I knew

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Speaker 3: was if you wanted to have kids and needed.

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Speaker 2: To have parents, that's right. So they ran out of

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Speaker 2: those the available source of kids thing go.

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Speaker 3: Yeah and so, and you can't fix it. And uh,

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Speaker 3: I've had folks saying, I mean, well maybe if they

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Speaker 3: just had babies. Now, No, you can't do that because

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Speaker 3: it would just make your population even more lopsided. You

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Speaker 3: cannot do that. What you have to do is either

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Speaker 3: do immigration or fold the tent. And China and the

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Speaker 3: Asian countries are xenophobic. They don't do immigrants, so they're

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Speaker 3: going to fold the tent.

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Speaker 2: When you speak for groups about marketing and demographics, what

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Speaker 2: type of questions do they ask you.

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Speaker 3: Well, ironically, it's very very similar to what we're doing

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Speaker 3: right now. Is people always want to know politically what's

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Speaker 3: going to happen. So that's you know, I share that,

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Speaker 3: and I try to share that in an unbiased way,

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Speaker 3: you know, from a distance and just using numbers. But

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Speaker 3: they also want to know what their future is. And

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Speaker 3: very few of them, it really don't even have a clue.

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Speaker 3: Don't even have a clue that the amount of people

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Speaker 3: in their market is going to create their destiny in

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Speaker 3: four or five years and they and they miss it.

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Speaker 3: So yes, they want to know about that. But I

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Speaker 3: also talk about things like, you know, what's going to

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Speaker 3: happen with different cultures, what's going to happen with the

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Speaker 3: populations of the world. Where is it now? Where will

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Speaker 3: it be? You know? I guess in the in just

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Speaker 3: a few years, one in five people in the world

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Speaker 3: are going to live in Sub Sahara Africa based on

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Speaker 3: their high rate of fertility. One in five.

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Speaker 2: Pretty big number.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's huge. Yeah when you think that, Yeah, it

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Speaker 3: could be easily a couple of billion people right now.

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Speaker 3: The South Ara Africa, I guess is bouncing off a

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Speaker 3: billion people. I mean, it's pretty close, but it's a

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Speaker 3: lot of countries.

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Speaker 2: When you made the prediction that you thought Donald Trump

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Speaker 2: would not get elected, is that changeable or is that

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Speaker 2: based on right now or.

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Speaker 3: What is that? You know? I don't know. You're taking

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Speaker 3: me into a territory that I know a little bit about.

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Speaker 3: I really believe that we're looking at a forty million

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Speaker 3: plus advantage for liberals over twenty twenty. It's substantial, that's huge. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: of course it is and if if for some reason,

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Speaker 3: you know, Trump loses the kids, who if the conservative

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Speaker 3: lose the kids, that's it. You can't. We're baby boomers

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Speaker 3: are dying about by the third of us are already dead.

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Speaker 3: Where the big lump at the aging part of our population,

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Speaker 3: and the big lump in young people is currently twenty

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Speaker 3: to forty. They're incredibly powerful. More and more people that

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Speaker 3: you know in gen Z that are younger than them

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Speaker 3: are coming of age to vote, about one every eight

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Speaker 3: or nine seconds. It's the world's going to be a

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Speaker 3: different place. We will be liberal.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam

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