Are you still a millennial?

About a decade ago I started looking at "generations" very differently. It all started when I got a message like this:

me: Would you like me to pick up some wine for the dinner?

Nancy's Grandma replied: :) 

This would be very normal today, except for the fact that this person at the time was 65 years old. This was amazing to me! The language I used in the 80s through pagers/beepers and BBboards (all which existed before the internet) had spread so far that this 60 year old lady was now communicating like my generation. I started to ask many people, "Hey, your parents ever send you a ":)" or a "lol" to which almost everyone answered "Yes." 

Since then, I refuse to look at people as numbers on a spreadsheet, that just remain static. It seems we enter the Age of Millennials more than have a rigid line of generational differences. We are now in the Age of Gen Z, we passed through the Age of Millennials in which most of us took on the desire of wanting to do something we love for work and other very optimistic views of humanity. We have now started taking on qualities of the Age of Gen Z, for example "what is real" is now cool instead of what is new or even optimistic. It is a main reason why all these pseudo authentic, vintage restaurants, craft beer, craft ice cream and so on are having success, Gen Z craves truth, realness, but all of us are starting to crave more truth than optimism. A big reason why Game of Thrones is so popular, it shows that the story continues even when the hero dies. It is "real" instead of optimistic, optimism being very much a trait of the millennial age and not of the Gen Z age. Still not convinced, Gen Z they say are the first digital natives. Ask yourself when was the last time you were off-line? Probably only when you cracked the screen of your iphone and went crazy trying to get it fixed as quickly as possible, so you could get back to the connected world.

Even you no longer see an off-line & disconnected world. You still refer to on-line, but so do they. Does that make you a Gen Zer, YES it does! It does make you a Gen Z because we all become Gen Z eventually. We enter the Age of Gen Z and thankfully the age of the millennial has started to die, the economic growth spurt the world had during their early 1990s is well over. We spent the last few years in crises, with terrorist attacks yearly, with a always connect world and which made us all have a more realistic view of the world than the previous age we passed through, the millennials' age. 

When you look at it as an age it becomes not only easy to predict future innovation but also to find powerful insights. It also helps you understand why 16-20 year olds have the biggest impact on culture and always have. Some things that I feel will happen during the Gen Z age, because of the values that now drive us:

1) TVs will get smarter and as they do, the TV adblocker will be an app on your TV screen. (This is actually already developed, patent pending, just waiting for TVs to catch up.) Advertisers will be forced to be interesting, and not just typically cool entertainment.

2) "Live" shows will become a thing on facebook and youtube when producers see that they no longer need networks and can get bigger profits by doing it on their own. It will also be more interactive with the audience. Since it is live, it will also be more real without editing and manipulation.

3) Peer everything. Peer insurance, peer car rentals, peer banking. The biggest disruption of large corporations will come in the way of using the crowd. Peer Insurance for example, friends decide to put money they typically pay an insurance company, into a mutual fund just as the insurance companies do. The likely hood of you or your friends totalling their car are actually very low. This way you will own an asset, the mutual fund, in the end. Just wait until an app makes it easy to manage that. Insurance can become an investment instead of a cost. The majority of insurance companies will fight to keep the business model they have, while 1 or 2 will actually give people what they want and become leaders in the marketing.

4) More social media will move to the self host or disappear model. It will act just as a conversation with a friend, there is no "proof" of what has been said or shown, it disappears, it is the main reason for snapchat's popularity.

5) Make it REAL, make it about us. If Advertisers are going to keep interrupting us, they will at least need to make it relevant. Even facebook has already made it possibel to chose which types of ads you see. Won't be too long before TV will be the same way. Many people have already registered their faces on snapchat, in a few years facebook location service will combine that data with in-store facial recognition software apps and next time you pick up a snickers bar, the in-store camera will identify the logo and your face. A new type of advertising will be invented, but at least it will be helpful information. - "Why not try the Special K bar instead. It will help you stay on the diet you started last week." This is actually already possible, the technology is already there, just no one has combined the different platforms to do so.

6) This will be the first group of people that will not only save the planet but also have to explain a lot of decision their parents have made. The millennial girls that took provocative selfies today will be grandmothers in 25 years. Another reason why the disappear model will be more popular and has been with Gen Z.  

1990: Hey Found a picture of your grandma

2030: Hey found a picture of your grandma

Many of you might already identify with some of the changes. If not, trust me you will also start seeing the change as we all enter the Gen Z age. 

In Conclusion Millennials or Gen Zers are not a segment or target to market to; they are all of us, eventually :) To segment you need to go much deeper than keywords and descriptions found on the internet, people are not some static info on an excel sheet.

About NYLON.

?www.nylongroup.com

We don't believe in telling stories, we believe you must become a story with telling. That story must be recognisable in the 100s of interaction customers have with your brand, not just a commercial or print ad.

To become a story worth telling, brands need to become like Gandhi, Mandela, and so on. They need a unique Point of View: Purpose | Originality | Values ?, a mix of emotional, functional and social benefits.

Helping brands achieve this is what gives us energy, especially on Monday morning.

(It is also why all our clients that follow P.O.V, have seen double-digit market share growth in the first year.)