Monday, October 21, 2013

The Generation that Isn't



As the weather here begins to get colder, I get ready for another retail season. Sure, it’s not the retail season that I particularly care for. The only plants that get sold are Poinsettias and the occasional potted house plant. However, I’ve found that you can learn a lot about sales, marketing, trends, and culture in general by just observing what happens during the holiday season. If the upcoming retail season proves to be anything like the rest of 2013, we will see businesses pour millions of dollars into marketing geared to entice Generation Y. Some of that marketing will help to generate millions of dollars in holiday revenue while a most of those efforts will miss in some fashion. Companies will hope to break even, or possibly realize that those marketing efforts were costly risks.

It feels like every business magazine that I’ve flipped through in the past few months has at least 3 articles aimed at getting Generation Y involved. Everybody wants to get their hands on those Gen Y dollars! In the horticultural and agricultural industries it seems to be at a peak. We not only want to get these “Millennials” or Gen Y-ers to buy our products, but we are also looking for better ways to incorporate these people into our companies. There are THOUSANDS of articles out there offering what seem like miracle cures for the plague, and sure they have probably helped a lot of businesses make a few more dollars, but has anyone out there really hit the grand slam yet? Is anybody really bringing in this new demographic in astronomical numbers? The answer is: No.

This would be such a terrible post if I just ended it there. It’s like in college where the professor would hand you a test back marked with the questions you got wrong, but he refused to let you see the answer key to see what the right answers were. If no one’s truly getting it right, what is wrong? Are our industries just that unappealing to Gen Y-ers? Are plants irrelevant to society? Have we seen the last of the pretty flowers? I would say the exact opposite is the case. Plants are really freaking cool, and when done the right way, even young people think so! The problem lies in our assumptions of this mass of people. We have taken the most diverse generation ever and put them into one clump. Generation Y includes far too many different subsets to be placed into one group. It’s like putting all the kids in high school in one clique and trying to sell them the same c.d. We spend our marketing efforts trying to reach this general audience and it doesn’t always work. Even if the research suggests that it should work, sometimes we come out empty handed. How can we change that?

I’m sorry if you were hoping that this blog post would offer you a solution to your Generation Y conundrum. It will probably leave you with more questions than answers. However, in this case, I assure you, questions are better. The first step to taking a better look at this Generation Y is to take the image that you have of the typical Millennial and forget it. Start over. We no longer live in a society where one or two model citizens sum up an average generation. Your marketing campaigns can no longer target the whole of Generation Y. You have to dig deeper than that. You have to find your target demographic within that demographic, and if you want to reach multiple audiences, it might require you to develop different strategies.

Who are you trying to cater to? Stop thinking of what the average Millennial looks like, and think about what your Millennial customer looks like. Then once you’ve identified that target audience, make sure it is real! Do your homework! Does this idealized person even exist in the real world, or have stereotypes clouded your judgment? Only once you have found your realistic target segment can you begin to develop a strategy to expand your customer base into this Generation Y.

Don’t worry, I didn’t plan to leave you hanging for too long. If this concept of a multifaceted generation interests you, stay tuned for my next post highlighting some of the key faces of the generation.

As always I hope everyone is doing well! I’m all over the social media scene, you can find me anywhere from Pinterest to LinkedIn. Let’s connect!

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