…Imagine what a great horror movie plot this could be. Picture it.. 69 Million Gen-Z’ers slowly plodding through most of the major cities looking straight down at their screens. As they FaceTime and text their friends unaware of their surroundings, cars are smashing into one another in a desperate effort to avoid accidentally running them down. Fire hydrants explode sending high pressure streams of water into the sky! Fires break out everywhere! But the “Z’s” massive heard of destruction moves forth. Because there are fewer 16 year old drivers now then at any time since the 1960’s, legions of them leave behind the scorched landscape which they’ve walked over like mindless drones. Being taxed to the limit by an overwhelming avalanche of social media traffic, servers crackle and shoot sparks before they melt into smoking puddles of plastic. Because the Z’s find Brands more important than price, marketers pull all of their targeted advertising and flood mass media with Awareness messaging causing chaos and fear in the MarTech industry. Digital Planners, Salespeople and programmers demand reparations from their governments as marches turn to riots. With only 33% of Gen-Z expecting the economy to improve, a vast pessimism permeates the young workforce…imagination and innovation are smothered. Companies implode! Wars rage! World Economies Collapse!!!
Ok, ok… I think we’ve gone a bit overboard. But for real, The NPD Group has taken a deep dive into Generation Z. When compared to Millennials the study notes the Z’s are Self-taught, Conservative/money orientated, entrepreneurial, pragmatic, Extremely Confident, always connected and diverse. OH NO THEY DIDN’T !! Research has also shown that they over index on soup and green tea consumption, are above average painters and are immune to Reduplicative Paramnesia; a rare psychological disorder consisting of the delusional belief that a place or location exists in 2 or more places simultaneously, or that it has been “relocated” to another site.
The study categorizes Z’s as those born from 1997 onward. The “first connected kids” are the older part of Gen-Z born through 2005 and the younger “technology inherent” group which began in 2006 is “STILL BEING BORN”. Pretty impressive! Gen-Z has arrived even before their entire set has materialized. Why stop there? We need more of them. Lots more.. Building 15-20 year analytical constructs for large swaths of the population is so passé. Boomers (1946-1964)?? Tons of disposable income, but just not cool. Generation-X (1965-1979)? HA! What a bunch of deadbeat middle aged children of history. Millennials(1980-2000)? Please…They are so broke they can’t even afford to pay off last nights’ Cauliflower Bread Pizza and 6 pack of craft IPA’s. Gen-Z will be the paradigm-shattering group of brilliant cyborgs that will be the founding fathers of anti gravity, free energy solutions and equal income for all via the internet. Let’s push the envelope to include more Z’s! 100 Million? 200 Million? Take your pick.
From 2018-2024 we can have the “AI Enabled” group. They have access to knowledge and learning assistance like no other generation before them. 2025-2029 can be the “Ambient Collective” group that has taken this knowledge and reverberated it in a hypersonic feedback loop of Quantum computing powered Social connections. Notice how the subset time frames get shorter? That’s due to exponential growth aiding in the dawn of sentient cosmic awareness. Finally, Gen-Z’s 35 year stretch ends with the 2030-2032 subset, the “Orchard of Esoteric Knowledge” group. Good luck marketing to these wizards! They have no use for Brands as the ego has been totally dissolved into the collective; individualism and self-expression have given way to the advancement and betterment of the hive.
Honey Nut Cheerios becomes the bestselling source of human sustenance in history.
