The Consumer and their digital narative

The Consumer and their Digital Narrative

The generation I am creating this identity for is Generation Alpha, showing a new possibility for digital fashion and digital creation. My previous research into Gen Alpha has shown a lot of facts leading to a technologically advanced and driven generation, as a research by McCrindle research says “From shorter attention spans to the gamification of education, from increased digital literacy to impaired social formation, these times impact us all but transform those in their formative years.” (McCrindle, 2021)

Technology is something that is always changing and evolving and something that fashion needs to keep up with, especially with the NFT space in terms of sellable art and graphic content. My consumer is someone who values new technologies and new ways of consuming content digitally, I know this because of the way video games and online content has changed in recent years. For example, Fortnite changed the way we consume content through their ‘Pass’ system. This system is basically like levelling up and unlocking new content as you level, but they put this levelling system behind a pay wall, so you pay a certain amount at the beginning of a season and you can unlock as much content as you’re willing to play.

“A key takeaway is that digital consumption in games is at once both easy to ‘see’ but also highly abstracted, making it very difficult to pull apart what people are actually consuming when they engage with the monetization layer of contemporary digital games.” (Joseph, 2021)

This quote was taken from an article talking about the pros and cons of this system and how it can be seen as a negative step in the video game space as it takes away some clarity as to what you’re paying for and adds the element to having to play further for the content you’ve actually bought.

Practically, this could look like a Discord server in which people gain access to this behind a subscription or purchase of a ‘battle pass’ esque code. Then once in this server, you have access to a catalogue or wardrobe of New Codes clothing that cannot be found anywhere else, making it an exclusive experience. So instead of investing in a brand or within a company, you invest within a tribe if you like, a group of likeminded people who also follow a similar uniform, but this can range from augmented reality filters, to virtual reality filters and even NFT’s that can have monetary value outside of the appearance of the item.

I believe this appeals to Gen Alpha’s technological mindset and the visual/ interactive format they need. I think this also appeals to the idea of being more diverse, as this can lead to a worldwide community, that has no restrictions in terms of gender, age and race. These are key characteristics of Gen Alpha’s according to a study from Iberdrola (Iberdrola, 2021).

Some of the problems that Alpha will have are supposedly things like a reduced attention span and “less development of creativity and imagination. Without questioning the skills that the Alpha generation will acquire thanks to new technologies, it should be stressed that as the use of physical toys is reduced, the development of imagination and creativity will suffer.” (Iberdrola, 2021), this means that new ways to stimulate will need to be found and I think augmented reality and looking at blending these physical and digital worlds will do this. They can imagine the world, through a digital lens.

This has come hand in hand with a digital landscape in terms of how monetisation has and will be subject to change for the younger generations, this acceptance of paying for a service that you may not fully use or take advantage of is something that is a lot more prevalent with Gen Z and Alpha. The amount of subscriptions to streaming services that younger people have and other subscriptions such as YouTube, Twitch and potentially Instagram, but this is still in its framework.

Through research I found this as the reasoning for this monetary change on Instagram “Like Facebook’s service, Meta, the parent company of the two social media platforms, has said it will not collect any fees from creators using the service until 2023 at the earliest. The move is part of Instagram’s belief that creators need to have more control over their business as it looks to continue building the tools to allow them to do so, both online and offline.” (Douglas, 2022). This suggests a move to eventually monetizing the platform as whole in years to come or moving to a new platform that does this altogether.

These changes show how big brands and companies are predicting the new generations will consume and spend their income, through virtual and digital outlets, even more than we do now and I can see fashion brands jumping to monetise in these ways sooner rather than later so I think it’s important for the exclusivity and luxury values within New Codes to give people something that can work towards, or something they can build on, for now being something simple like exclusive graphics/ filters etc. Generation Alpha will continue to discover the world through technology, so what about a new virtual world through the same techniques and methods.