28 Jan CAPTURING & RETAINING GEN-Z’S BUYING POWER
Born after 1998, Gen Z are those entering high school, completing their undergraduate degree in college, and young professionals starting their careers. They’re very different from Millennials, and their rapid entrance into the workforce increases the complexity of managing and working across generations. Growing up during the most accelerated and changing period of technological advancements in history has imprinted Gen Z with new behaviors, preferences, and life expectations.
Millennial and Gen-Z generations’ buying power will soon overcome any other generation alive today. Gen-Z alone was estimated to account for 40% of global consumers in 2020.
The question is, how can brands ensure they’re reaching, capturing attention, engaging with, and converting this new wave of consumers? Like Millennials, Gen-Z is apt to engage on social media, via short-form videos, and with solid influencer reviews or endorsements, both organic and paid.
While those channels will drive increased visibility and engagement with Gen-Z buyers, it’s equally crucial for brands to provide transparency and authenticity when marketing to younger generations. These qualities will set brands apart from those who think they can still glaze over the details to get away with unfair or unethical business practices.
Gen Zers’ spending power is around $143 billion, and retailers and brands are still trying to figure out how to appeal to them. Here are the opinions of our communication experts about how companies can approach them, with their spending habits and expectations are completely different from older generations.
Gen Z Gets Involved
Gen Z gets involved because the parenting model for them is much more inclusive. Gen Z’s are being brought up in a more ‘democratic’ environment than older generations. Parents include them actively in decision-making throughout their upbringing. As a result, they are critical thinkers from an early age; they use their fame or notoriety for greater causes usually social or political. Figures like Rowan Blanchard are a testament to this when they don’t become the typical ‘divas’ just dedicated to buying clothes and being cute, but instead use their platforms to talk about civil rights, social inclusion, and like Blanchard, take on intersectional feminism, in an effort to erase traditional paradigms and replace them with forward-thinking ideas. Gen Z’s are communicators from the get-go, which is why this generation is so powerful.
Daniela Martucci
Gen Z is Self-Taught
This group was not exposed to a “Google-free world”, so it is easy for them to manage digital tools, and perhaps they think that the older generations don’t have valuable teachings. They like to learn on their own. The development of apps and do-yourself tools is a way to attract this group.
Victor Melo
Entrepreneurs
I notice an orientation towards entrepreneurship and openness to learning about new or unconventional topics at an early age, at least not seen in older generations. It’s not just that they all want to be YouTubers, but they tell you they want to start a business or learn programming from an early age. They are creative and self-taught. I think we have to include them in the content development. Although we are trained to put ourselves in the shoes of millennials, Gen X or baby boomers, this generation has to be involved. The gap created by the digital age where they were born is more significant than other gaps that society has gone through, and we have to find ways to find and learn these insights.
Marla Gomez
Digital Nomads
They don’t feel tied to anything, and they want to make their own experiences, live day by day, they don’t worry if they don’t have a job today because somehow they can get a job anywhere since many of them have a second language almost natively. That allows them to expand to jobs anywhere in the world. Their world is what they can show through their cell phone, and they have no problem showing everything.
They live much more open sexually with a different look towards the ones we used to know as ‘different’, today they are all integrated. They are the change towards a new lifestyle. Perhaps it is necessary to think that everything they are looking for is based on a very open experience and therefore, the products or services offered to them must accompany this path to continue facilitating their insertion in the world.
Adrián Levy
Gen Z is Bright
They are aware of the world around them from an early age and mature beyond their age compared with older generations. This generation is the most diverse of any group, but they are also the most educated. There are informed and multitasking at early ages. How to appeal to them? A huge challenge. Capsules of valuable information, short statements full of meaning, authentic content, real aesthetics (as a reaction of millennial’s style), immediate but meaningful solutions, different points of view, music and games over other entertainment sources. Gen Z has grown up in a period of unprecedented changes and uncertainty, and they are learning how to face this stress.
Gizzella Bruck
Gen Z Cares
Gen Z cares about our society and planet. They want to make their mark by making our society better. When we begin to integrate into the world and society, adapting the message to the current social context, we use the means and tools we have today to communicate.
It is key to remember what we wanted at that age (many of us still didn’t have it clear) and understand they feel they care more. Do not lose sight of Gen Z’s concerns.
Mairim Gomez
Are you interested in learning more about Gen Z consumers and how to apply these insights to your campaigns? At DMH we can help your business by developing effective communication strategies with powerful insights capable of attracting the right consumer. Contact us to learn more.