Millennials are old news, a report by media company Sparks & Honey reveals that Generation Z are the group advertisers should be scared of.
The Generation Z 2025: The Final Generation report examines the Generation Z, those born after 1998, and forecasts their buying habits till 2025. It is hoped this report will allow businesses to better understand and prepare for this next generation.
Sean Mahoney, vice president and editorial director at media company Sparks & Honey, argues that in the future Generation Z will no longer be defined by narrow demographics such as age, race or location.
“Everybody (will start) to exhibit lots of different traits that will dissolve the sense of traditional demographics,” Mahoney told CNBC.
“It’s not going to be about your race and your age and your location; it’s going to be about your mood and the connectivity between people who are not necessarily outwardly the same.
“We’re left to focus on moments and how they make us feel. Happy, sad, alone or connected – these are states that we all experience as human beings.”
“In order to ready for something like that, rather than play catch up like everybody did with Millennials, we think it’s really important for you to start to understand what is going to happen in the very near future and prepare yourself as a brand, as an industry, as a government and as individuals.”
“Generation Z will still have their individual preferences and affinities, and marketers will try to personalise messages in increasingly sophisticated ways,” Mahoney explained.
“But we’ve identified a strong trend toward privacy that will make focusing ‘personalised’ content more and more difficult. Gen Z will be more engaged with the curated than the personalised, as they hide from programming in search of choice.”
