{"id":51492,"date":"2025-01-27T18:54:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T18:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/advertising\/how-to-reach-the-largest-demographic-part-i-shifting-the-focus-to-gen-z-mcfadden-gavender\/"},"modified":"2025-01-27T18:54:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T18:54:29","slug":"how-to-reach-the-largest-demographic-part-i-shifting-the-focus-to-gen-z-mcfadden-gavender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=51492","title":{"rendered":"How to Reach The Largest Demographic, Part I: Shifting the Focus to Gen Z – McFadden\/Gavender"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The natural course is that every generation has a period of influence before being replaced by a younger generation. Advertisers have ridden the ups and downs of this transference of influence for decades. Now, however, the biggest demographic in history is starting to exert its spending power, and companies need to be ready to cater to the quirky whims and desires of Gen Z if they want to stay profitable.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Torch Has Been Passed\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

In his 1961 inaugural address, John Kennedy told the world that \u201cthe torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.\u201d Kennedy had a good reason for saying this: he was the first president to be born in the 20<\/span>th<\/span> century\u2014in 1917. When Kennedy spoke of a \u201cnew generation,\u201d he was referring to himself and, to drive the point home, the word \u201cgeneration\u201d appears a total of four times in that speech.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kennedy probably never considered that, to the baby boomers\u2014a demographic poised to explode upon American culture just three years later\u2014he wasn\u2019t part of any \u201cnew generation\u201d; he was the older generation against which they would, by the end of the decade, rebel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way it\u2019s supposed to be\u2014one generation suddenly loses its influence and is replaced by the next.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Advertisers, marketers, and successful companies have been riding generational waves for seventy years. First, it was the post-war Silent Generation of the 1940s and 50s, who were replaced by the Baby Boomers in the 1960s and 70s, who were replaced by Generation X in the 1980s and 90s, who were replaced by Generation Y\u2014Millennials\u2014in the 2000s and 2010s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And now, as we begin 2021, the torch has once again been passed to a new generation: Generation Z. <\/span>Generation Z<\/span><\/a> is a demographic that was born, most experts agree, between 1995 and 2012.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Baby Boomers, with 74-million constituents, were once the biggest generation in history; however, as the number of Baby Boomers declined to 72 million in 2019, Millennials overtook them with 73-million constituents. Those numbers are impressive until they\u2019re compared with the population of Generation Z, which has more than 90-million cohorts, as shown in this graph from <\/span>Statista<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Even those who have previously weathered a generational upheaval in marketing strategies will not have a precedent for the demographic tsunami that\u2019s already begun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Those who think they merely have to tweak the strategy used to market to millennials should prepare for disappointment. The two demographics are not at all alike. The differences between Millennials and Gen Z\u2014from role models and attitudes to attention span\u2014are significant, as shown in an interesting infographic from <\/span>Vision Critical<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, as you may have noticed, a significant number of Gen Z are beginning to take over the workplace, which means they\u2019ve got money to spend. Estimates are that Gen Z is already spending an average <\/span>$143 billion<\/span><\/a> per year and they command nearly <\/span>40% of all consumer spending<\/span><\/a>, and that\u2019s with only half of Gen Z being old enough to work. Even more startling is that the trailing edge of this generation will be just nine-years old in 2021, so look for their influence to steadily increase for the next two decades.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Other than its enormous size, here\u2019s what makes Gen Z so different: They have never known the world without the internet; they had smartphones from an early age; they\u2019re the first generation in almost a century that spent their formative years in a time of economic recession; they perceive information visually; growing up in a multichannel world, they have what\u2019s generally considered to be the shortest attention span in history.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s usually unfair and often unkind to make generalizations about any group, but are there characteristics that many Gen Zers share that would give clues to the best marketing strategies to use? Here\u2019s what we found:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n