2019 Trends Across Generations

Helicopters, snowflakes, linksters, Slones and yuppies. Every few years the nation reveals a new name for populations born within a certain era, and brands must re-think how they approach a new wave of consumers entering the marketplace and re-adapt for behavioural shifts in other generations as they age.

There’s a lot written in the press about the differences between generations; the personality traits shared by consumers born in the same decade, and what this means for brands tailoring their offerings to suit. But how much, if any, of the reporting we read is based in real, tangible differences between one generation and the next?

Basing your brand strategy on the loose and lazy stereotypes defined by the press is clearly misguided. Pepsi, when targeting Millennials, knew they wanted a popular influencer and Kendal Jenner was a good choice. Their advert fell apart (or, rather, was ripped apart), when they made the basic assumption that their brand could appeal by focussing on one of that generation’s biggest concerns, social injustice. Millennials are known for being socially-minded, but Pepsi needed to dig deeper. They painted millennials with too broad a brush, and they didn’t uncover the alternative uniting factors that might have aligned better with their soft-drink brand.  

Not all brands are getting it wrong, though. Take Vodafone: when they launched Voxi, a mobile network exclusively aimed at younger generations, they clearly took into account the priorities of the market they were pursuing, and understood where their brand could genuinely assist. Voxi identified that Gen Z use their mobile phones differently to other generations – they use much more data than any of the texts or calls available to them – and then constructed a product that suits these differences.

We’ve conducted proprietary research to bring you the genuine uniting and dividing factors between the four generations currently in the workplace to move beyond lazy stereotyping and uncover the attitudes of each generation. In particular, we’ll look at the traits that define each generation as active consumers of brands.  

This report will cover:

• Each generation’s overarching attitudes to their personal and professional lives, highlighting the priorities that ebb and flow over the course of a lifetime
• The online behaviours of each demographic and their main interactions with social media
• The brands each group feels an affinity towards, and how those brands can win (and lose) the loyalty of their target market
• The specific ways your brand can successfully market to each of the demographics, and stand out from competitors in doing so