Marketing to Different Generations

The traditional belief in business is to build a decent product and sell it for a competitive price, reduce your costs as much as possible to maximize your profit, and have great marketing or advertising campaign to drive sales.

Well, that doesn’t work anymore.

Times have changed. Consumers have changed. Expectations have changed…and are continuing to change.

Yes, we are in business to make money. If you don’t make money, you won’t be in business. And, consumers are holding companies accounta…

Gen Z is just getting started and the future customer of every business. They were born between the years of 1996-2010. While they are young, they have all grown up with the Internet in their pocket, smartphones and tablets, and they prefer to use them over a computer.

What Key Events Influenced Gen Z?

• 2000+ - Global Terrorism
• 2000s – Increased Awareness of Shared Family Responsibilities
• 2007-2009 - The Great Recession
• 2007-2013 – Increase in Gun Violence
• 2008 - Election of Barrack Obama…

The generation that the media loves to hate and is the most targeted in marketing was born between the years of 1980-1995. They have taken over the workplace and some don’t even remember a world without the Internet or cell phones.

What Key Events Influenced Millennials?

• 1970s-1990s - Rise of the Personal Computer “A computer on every desk and in every home” <-Microsoft’s First Mission Statement.
• 1980s – Rise of Video Games in the Entertainment Industry
• 1990-1991 – Operation Desert Storm /…

Xennials aren’t often talked about—as they aren’t an official generation. Instead, they are a subset between Gen X and Millennials born between the years of 1977-1983. This micro-generation doesn’t fit into either generation completely and still has enough traits and trends that end up creating a group of their own. They spent their childhoods outside without the need to update social media and were the first to be told to figure social media out in the workplace because of the boom in their ear…

The forgotten middle child or the sandwich generation, previously known as “the slackers” or being the “problematic” generation because they never really tried very hard and are very independent. They were the first generation of “latchkey kids” with dual-income families and an increased divorce rate of their parents. Gen X is the smallest generation born between the years 1965-1979. They are juggling raising their kids, paying mortgages and tuition, getting ready to retire, and caring for their…

Boomers were born between the years of 1946-1964 and grew up with the “American Dream” in the white-picket-fence era of post-World War II. They are the second-largest generation behind Millennials.

What Key Events Influenced Boomers?

• 1955 – Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus
• 1957 – First nuclear power plant
• 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis
• 1963 – President John Kennedy assassinated
• 1964 – Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed
• 1968 – Martin Luther King assassinated
  

What You Need t…

Late spring is when the chatter about “generations in the workplace” takes over my newsfeed. It makes sense, seniors are getting ready to graduate and executives need to know what they are in for with “this generation”. And, every year it is pitched as “something new” or “something impossible” or…well you get the idea - you’ve read the articles.

What’s often not talked about is WHY is this generation the way they are? WHAT influenced them to have the beliefs they have or their responses to mark…