Jonathan Roth, Executive Director of ION, Ayzenberg’s Influencer Agency
Congratulations to any and all marketers out there who after years of trying feel comfortable in figuring out how best to reach the millennial generation. Please feel free to lose the undercover look and style as well: you can finally shave those hipster beards, take off the ironic glasses and stop pretending you actually like vegan food because if you’ve more or less done it by now. You’ve reached a population of 80 million in the U.S alone, the largest in the U.S. with respect to any that preceded it and a generation on the verge of spending $1.4 trillion per year, or about 30 percent of all retail sales, annually by 2020.
Nice job. Really. Big target, big numbers. Sure, there will be challenges and shifts and changes based on who and how they are, but good work all in all to connect with their “bespoke and artisanal” selves, even if just a little bit.
Then again, as the late author and my college classmate David Rakoff once said in the title of one of his best-selling books, Don’t Get Too Comfortable.
Why Because here comes Generation Z, and guess what, we’ve got a whole new ballgame to play. If you think Millennials are tough to deal with when it comes to traditional forms of online and offline advertising and marketing, buckle up folks, because it is going to be a long bumpy ride with these kids.
So who are they and why will they be more resistant than any generation before them to “top down” advertising and marketing in all its forms? Why is Influencer marketing the best and perhaps the primary way to reach them.
With many thanks and credit to Sparks + Honey for putting a complete profile together, Generation Z is comprised of Americans born from 1995 to present who are currently under the age of 18. Gen Z is first and foremost a population tsunami. They already represent 25.9 percent of the U.S. population according the U.S. Census Bureau, a percentage which exceeds that of the Millennials.
Think they don’t have money yet That they are too young to matter Not so. Gen Z according to Mintel receives $16.90 per week in allowance, which translates already to $44 billion a year in spending power.
Key characteristics for marketers to understand include the fact that they like to collaborate, they like to share, and that they prefer what they deem authentic content to any other type — and they really like to make their own rules, so to them, whatever they say, goes. They are pure digital natives — some call them “screenagers” — who like to interact, like to collaborate and prefer the influence and opinion of each other more than any other generation that preceded them. They are technologically savvy and prefer to innovate rather than to just receive information or messaging, or expertise.
Key words when thinking about Gen Z and their characteristics include: authenticity, collaboration, two-way perpetual dialogue, independent, self-authority. As a result, Gen Z digital experiences need to drive value around authentic content. Brands need to be integrated into what they are experiencing and doing online and offline. Brand messages must be consumed voluntarily as part of an organic integration with what they are experiencing, seeing, watching, playing and doing.
Armed with the existing knowledge that consumers in general across all generations trust a referral from their personal network at a rate of 90 percent and also that this number will go up with this generation, marketers must prioritize the influencer as the way to reach them. That said, marketers must be careful in doing so — the influencers they choose must be truly recognized as such, and anything that smacks of pure promotion without true integration into the ebbs and flows of what this group is doing digitally and in the real world simply will not work.
Generation Z influencers have power over a cohort comprising roughly 25 percent of the U.S. population and which by 2020 account for 40 percent of the population.
This population has no interest in anyone else’s authority but via its own peer-to-peer or elevated “peer influencer-to-peer” interactions both digitally and in the real world. Figuring out how to manage and scale the two sided network of brands and these influencers, the best of whom will be true “brand soulmates” for these brands. They are capable of influencing vast and high-spending consumer audiences and will be critical to the ability to successfully market to the largest generation in U.S. history for many years to come.
