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Why it's time to retire the concept of generations

For marketers, labeling a target market as "millennials" or "boomers" makes as much sense as grouping all the Capricorns together and targeting them.

September 22, 2014 by Jeff Weidauer — Vice President, Marketing & Strategy, Vestcom International, Inc.

It’s hard to find an article on retail marketing today that doesn’t reference the decline and fall of the baby boomer generation while in the same sentence hailing the millennials, who are destined to become the new top-dog consumer target.

It’s true that most estimates show that millennials (born from about 1980 to about 2000) outnumber boomers. It’s also true that they were raised in a world that has always had the Internet. Most millennials have had a smartphone for years, and they know how to use it.

For those keeping track, here’s how things stack up: boomers are older than millennials, and Generation X is somewhere in between those two. And we’re already looking at the next group, so-called Generation Z, who are still being born and currently constitute 25.9 percent of the U.S. population. That is more than millennials (at 24.5 percent), and Gen X (with a paltry 15.4 percent).  And it’s even more than baby boomers with 23.6 percent.

The whole concept of generations came about specifically as a result of the boomers — that post-World War II spike in the birthrate the likes of which the world had never seen. Those kids were out to change everything their parents valued, and they’ve continued to change the “rules,” whatever those might be. There was truly a generation gap back then, but it really doesn’t matter any longer.

Case in point: walk through an airport and look around. You’ll notice two things: first, you’ll be the only one not staring into some kind of screen, and second, those staring into screens include every age group. Sure, there are a couple of teens in the corner texting, but so is mom. Or they are posting on Instagram, and she is on Pinterest or Facebook. Dad is on his Macbook Pro catching up on work, or just surfing.

The world has, and continues to, change. But all generations are participating in equal measure. People are working longer, either out of necessity or desire. Kids are living at home longer, again either out of necessity or desire. The cross-pollination of technology and tech-driven behavior is ongoing and ubiquitous. Just because you’re a teen doesn’t mean you’re good at tech; conversely, just because you’re a 60-something grandparent doesn’t mean you aren’t. Either way, there is a sharing of ideas and practices that transcends generations.

Millennials, and now Gen Z, have been called out as being more socially conscious, less concerned about brands, and using friends to help them decide on purchase decisions. This may often be the case, but it’s not 100 percent true for the entire generation. More importantly, those traits are not restricted to these younger consumers—they are crossing into all areas of society via social media.

For marketers, labeling a target market as “millennials” or “boomers” makes as much sense as grouping all the Capricorns together and targeting them. Ten years ago I did a study on shopping behaviors for various age groups and found that 50-something empty nesters had purchase behaviors that almost exactly matched 20-something post-college newlyweds. Not much help there in terms of what motivates them to buy, or how to get them to buy more.

Beyond the fact that labeling generations is useless as an identifier in terms of buying behavior, there is no good reason to do so. The side benefit of all that connectivity on Facebook and Instagram is the information that can be gathered, processed and mined for real insights that can drive real results — no matter the generation.

In our connected and monitored world, data is king, and insights are powerful. Only real-time actions, responses to inputs and actual behavior matter now. It’s time to retire the whole concept of generations — that’s so 1960s — and start looking at marketing based on behavior and response to input. Besides, we’ve lost all our creativity with the names; what comes after Generation Z anyway?

(Photo by Vincepal.)

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