"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." -C. S. Lewis
"Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be." -Khalil Gibran
Many organizations--perhaps YOURS--have increasingly been finding religion in "launching a Gen Y marketing strategy" over the past couple years. Really? Given the tens of thousands of advertisements that Gen Y had been exposed to over the past three decades, their consumer preferences for traditional products & services (YES, this includes financial institutions) were largely formed a decade or more ago. You are too late to that party unless you attracted them in the prior decade. You may not care YET about Gen Z because you're large, growing, financially stable, diversified, etc....but you WILL care when Gen Z mothballs you in cyberspace over the coming decade. But why?
As Spire Research & Consulting detail, Generation Z is comprised of approximately 1.8 billion consumers, comprising 26.57% of the population. Aged between 7-16 years old, Gen Z only knows a world built upon a mobile multi-channel platform. Extreme comfort with social networking technology and its inherent culture of transparency and immediacy represent the Gen Z lingua franca. They don't hear your radio ads or see your print advertisements about great auto loan rates, and while you may not think that's important because most of them cannot purchase a vehicle YET...your competitors who already buy ad space on Facebook or Google, and post relevant videos to YouTube have already built brand recognition with them. And, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Gen Z is brand loyal and are becoming increasingly bigger spenders than even Gen Y was at the comparative age.
Gen Z is communicating with one another 24/7/365. Good, bad or just plain dull, YOUR organization's service, employee behavior, decor, convenience, inconvenience, lack of web chat, lack of mobile banking, etc. will be posted to blogs, social networking sites, and streamed globally by the most enterprising of their members. As Galia Myron chronicles, the most common activities the teens described while blogging "were playing video games (65 percent); watching television (45 percent); doing homework (40 percent); going to music, dance, or martial arts lessons (38 percent); browsing the Internet (29 percent); and participating in faith-based activities (22 percent)." But pay particular attention that a large population of the teens were "apt to record feeling of boredom (65 percent)" while blogging, because if YOUR organization's social media presence remains bland and uninviting, you (and your target audience) could find yourself hearing all about it on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
What is YOUR organization doing differently than YOUR competitors to differentiate yourself from the financial institution morass? Gen Z will bank with their parents' bank or credit union, but only if their members perceive a relevant relationship between the institution and themselves. You won't be able to simply count on the legacy effect.
Do you feature culturally relevant individuals and phrasing in your youth marketing efforts?
Do you adequately staff your social networking presence, or like many institutions do you give lip service to social networking, tossing an occasional lame blog post or tweet out there like a crumb to the masses?
Do you employ a member of Gen Z in an active advisory and communications role? Pick yourself up off the floor and give it some serious consideration...because YOUR competition already has that individual on their team.
Are YOU ready to embrace your Gen Z strategy...or will you simply continue to dress an old Gen Y marketing strategy in chic clothing and expect it to look like anything other than grandma in a mini-skirt...the numbers won't lie.
