Generational Marketing Mistakes

Being as it’s about halfway through 2018, it seems that market researchers have suddenly become aware that the next generation is entering their adulthood.  They haven’t figured out what to call them yet (centennials, generation Z, iGen or whatnot) and there’s not a lot of agreement on when, exactly, the generation began (somewhere between 1990 and 2000, depending on what they’re trying to prove) … but apparently, they are understudied and there’s money to be made by being the first to market with a study that defines what this new generation is all about.   Even if it’s completely premature and wrong.

The same thing happened with the Millennial generation: studies came out describing their attitudes and habits when the generation itself was prepubescent and hadn’t had time to form attitudes and habits.  And sadly, the “findings” that were published in the early days tended to form a cognitive filter.  So the profile of the Millennial today – pushing forty, paying a mortgage, advancing in their career, and otherwise doing the “adulating” thing – has changed little from the time when they were teenagers still living at home and working part-time jobs.   

And though I would happily be proven wrong by time, I strongly suspect the same is happening with the market research on Generation Z: they are talking to teenagers about their spending and financial habits, about their tastes as consumers, about their attitudes toward the workplace – well before they have had any experience leading an adult life.   

I’d feel a bit less panicked about it if I were to see a present-day study of the Millennial generation – and better, to see it done by one of the experts who studied them prematurely, who admits to having jumped the gun and come to the wrong conclusion.  But sadly, these are the same “experts” who see the new opportunity in misrepresenting the next generation – to admit they were wrong in the past would be to discredit their present work.

And their clients are little better.   Rather than recognizing their folly and straightening themselves out, updating their research in order to better serve the Millennial market, they are simply moving along. They are writing off the last generation and pursuing the next, gearing up to make exactly the same mistake.  Lather, rinse, and repeat - and watch as history repeats.