Parliament: Brand by Birth Year
Written by Bri Thomas, Creative Director.
When a client tells me their audience is "everyone," I start thinking about birthdays. A brand doesn't land the same way at 25 as it does at 70, and most of that comes down to how much noise a person grew up with.
So here's how I see each generation's relationship with brand, from the folks who had three TV channels to the ones who've never known a world without a feed.
Boomers
Boomers came of age with a handful of TV channels, the morning paper and a radio station or two. If a company bought airtime, you saw it, and so did your neighbors. Information arrived streamlined and mostly matter-of-fact, which gave everyone a shared understanding of what was out there.
There also wasn't that much out there. Fewer brands meant fewer decisions, and a brand didn't have to fight for attention so much as show up. Once a Boomer picked something, it tended to stay picked. The detergent your mother bought became the detergent you bought.
Gen X
Gen X inherited the quiet market just as it started making things up. Think of the fat-free craze, when whole grocery aisles promised guilt-free cookies that quietly made up the difference in sugar. The promises grew louder and the fine print got smaller.
I'm not sure Gen X ever got the chance to tell advertising and brand apart. For most of their lives, the two arrived as the same thing: a bold claim in a thirty-second spot. Like their parents, they're creatures of habit. They didn't comparison-shop or dig into what was behind the label. The brand they knew was the brand they were comfortable with, and comfort won.
Millennials
Millennials hit adulthood right as the market exploded and the technology turned over. Facebook showed up and birthed Comparison culture. They were fed a steady stream of advice on how to parent, what to eat and what a good life should look like. Much of it contradicted itself, and a lot of it came from someone selling something.
So they figured it out themselves. They read reviews, flipped packages over to check ingredients and asked who was actually behind the company. I'd argue millennials were the first real stewards of brand, the first generation to investigate it instead of inheriting it.
Gen Z
Gen Z watched all of this happen and decided to flip it on its head. For them, the product isn't really the point, and a good story isn't enough either. They want a story they get to be part of, one where they still feel like they're the one in charge.
A brand can invite them in, but it can't steer too hard. Polish it too much and it reads as trying too hard, and gives them "the ick."
Gen Alpha
They're growing up with brands that talk back, recommend things and remember what they liked last week. What they'll expect from brand is still being written, and I suspect they'll be the ones writing it.
So who's in the room?
This is why "everyone" makes me nervous. A seventy-year-old wants to know you'll still be the same brand next year. A twenty-two-year-old wants to know they had a hand in what you became. Good brand work can hold both, but only once you know who you're talking to.
Bri Thomas is the Creative Director at Hoot Design Company.
