Beyond Millennials: Reaching ‘generation alpha’
By Mylan Vu (left), country manager, Australia at Hotwire
The customer voice today is more powerful than ever before, with a growing number of channels and platforms available for consumers to air their opinions. As customer expectations continue to evolve, brands must prepare for the next generation of consumers, who will have markedly different expectations for interacting with brands than predecessor generations including millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers.
The next generation of consumers will be upon us before we know it and they’ll be known as “Generation Alpha”– a term coined by social researcher Mark McCrindle to describe the cohort of individuals born from the year 2010 onwards.
From birth, technology has permeated every aspect of the Generation (Gen) Alpha’s life. They’ll think, learn and play in a fundamentally different way to any generation before them. This generation has been using touch-screen devices from the age of two, with the ability to talk to Alexa by the time they reach school age.
Connecting with Generation Alpha
When it comes to communicating with Gen Alpha consumers, it’s all about the fit. Marketing campaigns must be tailored to each platform, while keeping the overall message consistent across the board.
Brands might be misunderstood if their messages don’t communicate with Gen Alpha in the right way. Marketing messages must therefore be authentic and clear about what they stand for, to ensure their brands are not interpreted as uninvolved or opposed to social issues important to this group. Take for example the widely mocked Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner. While Pepsi’s intention was to promote a message of unity across borders, the brand instead painted a highly unrealistic and insensitive image of a protest where a can of Pepsi ended a racial conflict. This resulted in consumers perceiving the ad to be an attempt by Pepsi to co-opt a social movement for financial gain, with many even calling for a boycott of the company’s products on social media.
The marketing lesson here is clear – when brands want to portray themselves as supporting a movement, they must put careful thought into their messaging, ensuring the support they are providing will have a genuine social impact. Otherwise, they risk appearing misaligned with their audience and potentially losing customers. Ultimately, as the Pepsi backlash demonstrates, the next generation of consumers are very easily turned off a brand that doesn’t align with their political and social views.
As social media and digital have exploded, marketing has transformed in many ways, however great content creation and storytelling still remain at its core. It is therefore more crucial than ever for marketers to tell their story in a clever, concise and meaningful way in order to cut through the noise. The brands succeeding today are telling brave and authentic stories, and employing an omni-channel messaging strategy. Apple, for instance was named the world’s most valuable brand of 2017 according to Forbes’ annual study of the most valuable brands in the world. How’s Apple leading the race? Simple, Apple delivers one consistent narrative to its customers across all of its products and services, whether it’s hardware, software or retail stores.
As we’ve already seen with Millennials, proactive communications campaigns are no longer just about educating the consumer. Instead, they look to be engaged through meaningful commentary. Throwing facts at consumers just doesn’t stick any more. Ultimately, focusing on targeted placement through select channels will prove to be persuasive and drive the desired results for brands.
Setting a new gold standard with technology
For a generation raised among technology, there may be no such thing as too much screen time. Brands and marketers looking to reach Gen Alpha will need to adapt to stay relevant and remain sensitive to consumers’ changing attitudes and preferences. In order to achieve this, they must stay on top of emerging technologies.
As technology continues to develop, AI-driven voice technology such as Siri or Alexa especially will increasingly become a common means of communication between human and machine. Increased access to technology and media means consumers have never had more choice – something Gen Alpha has already come to expect. According to a 2017 report by Roy Morgan on children’s media use, 74 per cent of children aged six to 13 use a tablet and 74 per cent of 12 and 13-year-olds use mobile phones. Youth today also have more tools at their disposal, from search engines to automated recommendations, allowing them to research and scrutinise their options before making their own choices.
Growing up, Gen Alpha will gravitate to brands and channels they already know and trust. If they’re used to relying on augmented reality (AR) tools when they shop for groceries, they will expect the same when they come to buy car insurance. To be effective, brands must provide the variety of communication platforms that today’s youth expect. As gadgets such as smart devices and wearable technologies collect more and more data on their users, organisations must tailor their offerings more precisely and develop products based on feedback.
As Gen Alpha comes of age, marketing teams will have to adapt and learn to communicate in new ways, across a number of channels, embracing new technologies like voice, AI and machine learning. Through the use of data-driven insights, marketers will have an increased opportunity to demonstrate incremental brand value through customised messaging. Ultimately, engaging customers with snappy and socially meaningful campaigns will be the key to reaching an audience that demands trust and transparency across every touchpoint of the brand journey.
10 Comments
Someone else is managing Australia now. Or is such a ridiculous title an Alpha thing?
It would be interesting to calculate the potential economic value of ‘Generation Alpha’ to today’s marketers.
Does anyone have any reliable data on how much pocket money 8-year-olds get nowadays?
Kill me.
Let’s be clear here.
Generation X was named because almost nothing connected them, and nobody knew what the fuck to call them, so just like the mystery Brand X, they were called Generation X, as in “Generation who the fuck knows”
After X we get Y.
Which is what Millennials were called for a while before people in adland thought, “well this sucks, let’s call them Millennials because there were all, I dunno, people…while the millenium changed from one millenium to the next millenium. That’s a thing, right?”
And so Millennials. Hashtag amazeballs.
So what comes next?
Well, Gen Z, obviously. Except that sounds like a Generation of zombies and so what do we do?
Well, why not go all the eay back to the start of the old alphabet and hey look at that, Alpha! Sounds dope! These kids will be… I dunno, like alpha-ish. Better than all the others in some…to-be-defined way.
And after that, there will be Generation Beta, (which will suck enormously for anyone born after 2020) and these guys will be identified by, I dunno, like, being tested on. Beta testing. Yeah that’s a thing.
But here’s the real thing.
There is almost nothing that connects an 18 year old with a 35 year old.
At 18 many people are living with their parents,
at 35 many people are parents.
At 18 many people are in school
at 35 many people teach in schools
I could go on, but you get the idea.
If you look at the research (and I’m talking about the real research here, not the shit your strategy retard cobbles together from his facetube slash tumblrgram studies), you will finds that the correlate that actually distinguishes most people is this:
Do you spend more than 9 hours a day on the internet?
If yes, you are one kind of person
If no, you are another kind of person.
Seriously.
That’s the difference.
And the reason for this is because as we are slowly discovering. The internet, and social media is turning people into junkies.
And if you take an 18 year old junkie and a 35 year old junkie,
you’ll find they have an awful lot in common.
You really don’t dribble this shallow rubbish out to your clients do you?
Honestly, do some real research and contribute some actual insight and knowledge.
In a world of internet monopolies, channels are decreasing, there is less choice and the opinion of individuals bar a handful of paid influencers are lost in a sea of data and algorithms.
And people still drink Pepsi.
Nonsensical bullshit. Sadly the author will never be able to understand why, because they’ve demonstrated their inability to think critically while writing this drivel.
Just that. Oh dear.
Bullshit is unavoidable when people are convinced that they must have opinions on and speak extensively about things they know virtually nothing about.
That’s really well put.
Was almost worth wading through this article just for that comment.
…but this is the wrong site to write 1000 words without actually saying anything.