marketingmanagement
At C-Level
Generations Are More Than Labels By Michael Krauss
michael.krauss@mkt-strat.com
H
istorically, the filters in our brains for marketing purposes have been age, income, gender and race. We now must add generation.” So says Chuck Underwood, a management consultant and founder of The Generational Imperative Inc., an advisory firm that works with companies including Procter & Gamble, State Farm, Coca-Cola, Macy’s and others on generational issues. Underwood is the host of a PBS series, America’s Generations, a frequent lecturer on the influence of generations, and author of The Generational Imperative: Understanding Generational Differences in the Workplace, Marketplace, and Living Room.
Many marketers and marketing pundits have been waxing rhapsodic about generations of late—particularly millennials and their baby boomer progenitors—but Underwood offers some unique insights. He gets granular and hones in on generational core values, which, he says, will “exert significant influence over each American consumer’s decision making.” “Each generation has very different tastes, preferences, expectations and needs from the products and services they purchase and from the customer service that they receive from the person who sells it to them,” he says, and these preferences and expectations are formed early. You know how when you hit your 30s or 40s—or 50s or 60s, for that matter—and you’re surprised
28
by what you see in the mirror because you still feel, think and, in some cases, act like you’re 25? That’s because your identity and your perspective on the world becomes relatively fully formed by the time you hit your mid-20s, Underwood posits: “Generational core values are created during roughly the first 18 to 25 years of our lives. … During the formative years, we try on different core values for size. We reject some and keep others, and by the time we get into adulthood, the core values that we’ve molded are going to largely be with us for life, even though we will change and evolve.” Yes, we’re all individuals and there are a myriad of ways to group consumers besides age brackets, but there’s something to this “generational
core values” thing, Underwood says. They guide everything from personal behavior and relationships to purchase decisions, career choices and lifestyle preferences. Brands that have leveraged these generational distinctions have found success, he says. “In the 1980s and 1990s, Cadillac sales should have been skyrocketing because the boomer generation was reaching luxury car age, life stage and income level,” he says. It was a preferred brand of the previous generation— the Silent Generation—but it was failing to connect with boomers. “They viewed Cadillac as their father’s car,” Underwood says, so Cadillac developed a generational marketing strategy starting with its product development and extending into its communications. “They designed a car for boomers in 2003,” Underwood says. It was the CTS model, a mid-sized luxury sedan heralded as the “first modern Cadillac” and designed to compete with brands such as Audi, BMW and MercedesBenz. Rather than showing the car pulling up to a country club, Cadillac’s TV spots showed it coasting down dusty roads with Led Zeppelin raging in the background, Underwood says. “After 20 years of lagging sales, Cadillac suddenly shot up 16% in one year because of the CTS.” Another generational marketing success that Underwood likes to cite is Old Spice. “Proctor & Gamble purchased the brand and wanted to find out if Old Spice would appeal to Gen X men,” he says. “They conducted generational research and found out that they could not easily sell Old Spice to Gen X men because to them, Old Spice was ‘my father’s’ or maybe ‘my grandfather’s’ deodorant.” P&G elected to skip a generation. To target younger consumers, P&G repackaged the brands’ products in bright red boxes and then distributed samples in schools’ gym classes, Underwood says. “Within two years, Old Spice had surpassed Right Guard as the deodorant of choice for what would be the next generation”—which, at the
marketing news | November 2015
MN Nov 2015 1-64_10.23.indd 28
10/23/15 4:10 PM
At C-Level
time, hadn’t yet earned its “millennial” label, he says. I asked Underwood if he had any career guidance for younger marketers who belong to the millennial generation. His face lit up. “Right now,” he says, “three generations dominate the workplace: boomers, Gen X and the millennials. Millennials need to understand that they have come of age in very different times and have very different core values than the four older generations. … In the workplace, millennials need to understand that their generation’s primary strength— which their Gen X and boomer bosses like—is their knowledge and speed with technology. But other than that, millennials have gotten off to a significantly rocky start with employers. If you are a millennial who can overcome your generational shortcomings, you’ve got a great chance to advance.” Accurate or not, the millennial generation has been saddled with perceived shortcomings in the workplace, including a flawed sense of entitlement; unrealistic expectations about entry-level pay, positions and promotions; short attention spans; a lack of punctuality in getting to
meetings on time and finishing tasks; and a lack of independent thought and mental toughness, Underwood says. “Employers around the country echo these sentiments: ‘My millennial employees want me to be their parent and I don’t have time.’ ” In reality, older generations should look beyond millennials’ perceived shortcomings because “millennials are going to become an excellent career generation,” he says. “They are idealistic. They’re empowered. They’re engaged. They’re eager to please, and they do the job well. … Millennials are permanently redefining what it is like to live life in early adulthood. It has an informal title: extended adolescence. Millennials are postponing serious career commitment. They’re postponing marriage and parenthood to their latest ages ever in this country. And they are taking their 20s to sample multiple professions and employers. That is revolutionary and probably permanent. It’s going to be good because when millennials do reach their 30s, they’re going to know what they want. They’re going to have a rounded background from what they did in their 20s. They will be more mature and ready for
marketingmanagement
happy marriages and raising happy kids. They may take a decade of young adulthood to sort things out because their generation knows that they are going to live well past 100, so they’re going to be putting in 70 or 80 years of work,” he says. As for millennials’ predecessors, the boomers who are now taking the lead in C-suites across the country could do good things for corporate America, Underwood says. “Boomers began their leadership era about four years ago. Their formative years were the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s. Very different times [from the preceding generation’s formative years]. Very different teachings that burnt into boomers core values of idealism, compassion for others, vision and accountability. Their core values should positon them for both ethical leadership and excellent treatment of U.S. workers once again,” he says. “Whether the boomers deliver or not, we won’t know for a while, but they have no excuse for failure.” m MICHAEL KRAUSS is president of Market Strategy Group based in Chicago.
November 2015 | marketing news
MN Nov 2015 1-64_10.23.indd 29
29
10/23/15 4:10 PM