Can we stop talking about Gen Z already?
It’s time to end marketing’s obsession with labelling generations. Keep Left’s Katarina Farrell makes a case for an alternative approach.
Intellectually, we understand that no two people are the same. Yet, paradoxically, as marketers and communicators, we often expect diverse populations to act similarly based purely on the ten-year window in which they were born.
This is a symptom of age-related generational labels which influences everything from our research methodologies to the way we develop and promote products and services.
You could argue these labels have been created to better focus our marketing efforts. However, studies have found generational terms and assumptions can have the reverse effect and instead serve to shape people’s behaviour.
I love the quote “Some social scientists even believe that the practice of studying generations can obfuscate what motivates people on an individual level.”
Talk about the bloody obvious!!
The ONLY way to NOT ‘obfuscate what motivates people on an individual level’ is to study, research and interview them all individually.
And of course no marketer would stump up the money for that, and leaving aside that you simply can’t contact them all individually, and no researcher can generate a questionnaire and deliver it to all 26m people in AU.
But ask yourself, do I need to know everything at an individual? And even if I did, could I cost the marketing and communication at an individual level?
So that is why relatively robust research methods generally aim for (and often do succeed) to be within 3%. With one caveat … beware the demon of recruitment bias and then respondent bias.
Fine… We’ll talk about gen alpha now.