11 Aug Generation Based Group Cohesion Is The Biggest Marketing Farce That No One Talks About

Marketers are guilty of excessive oversimplification of generation based cohesion groups and that is a recipe for disaster. The millennials and (especially) the Gen-Z are the most misunderstood sections of the population because the differences amongst its own sub-groups are polarizing, to say the least.

She likes social media, she hates social media. He loves marijuana, he can’t bear the smell of marijuana. Concerts are so passe, concerts are everything I live for. K-Pop is the best, what is K-Pop? Give me Nirvana.

This newsletter attempts to challenge marketer’s belief that targeting audience on the basis of generational groupings is a big-fat farce that hippos (highest-paid person’s opinion) in the industry are too obstinate to admit.

Spoiler alert: Behavioural characteristics bind a group together, not a 16-year birth-period window.

The Problem

Let’s look at the problem in more detail and discuss why I claimed that “marketers are guilty of excessive oversimplification”.

A person belongs to the Millennial cohort if he/she was born between 1980 and 1996, whereas, a person born between 1997 and 2013 belongs to the Gen-Z cohort.

According to this oversimplification, my brother, who was born in 1996, has different behavioural characteristics than me (I was born in 1997). Other than him being a bit more miser, we are literally the same person.

Similarly, according to this oversimplification, Polo G and Ryan Kaji can fall in the same cohort (Gen-Z).

When the parameters are so loose, it is obvious that these groups would fail to hold a consistent worldview.

I think the above two examples should be sufficient evidence to convince you that generation-based grouping amounts to invaluable census data, not actionable marketing data.

If you aren’t convinced that there’s a problem when it comes to marketer’s obsession with such cohorts, here are two examples given by Harry (2020):

1. The United States is home to 72 million millennials. If America’s millennials declared their independence and founded The Republic of Avocadonia, they would be the 19th largest country in the world. Yet the industry treats them like a single entity.

2. In the UK alone, there are around 78,000 millennials whose children are also millennials (GWI, Q1 2020). When we say ‘millennial’, we’re labelling tens of thousands of children with the same attributes as their parents, whilst identifying the Gen Z kids a year younger than them as being utterly distinct.

This just exemplifies why our obsession to derive insights from census-based nonsensical data doesn’t make sense. This is what statisticians would call a randomized sample design united by a range of ages.

What Binds People Together?

Like-minded people generally have like-minded consumption practices. This is another oversimplification but it is still better than the one that we aim to challenge.

Let’s see how:

Group#1 (Living in the UK)

Tory Lanez is a 28-year-old guy who reads Guardian. He bought a PS5. (Millennial)

Snoop Dogg (49 yo) also reads Guardian. (Gen-X)

Sony- Let’s show Playstation 5 Ads to Snoop Dogg.

Group#2 (Also living in the UK)

Abhimanyu is an 18-year-old guy who bought a PS5. (Gen-Z)

Devesh is 17 years old. (Gen-Z)

Sony- Let’s show Playstation 5 Ads to Devesh.

Decision Time: Keeping all other *variables constant, which group is more likely to have a Playstation 5 (both members)?

Decide your answer before scrolling further (don’t cheat).

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We will now look at Group Cohesion Score (GCS) to understand which group might be the likely winner. The Group Cohesion Score is an initiative by BBH_Labs to understand the likemindedness of a group.

We will use the UK’s average as a reference point to plot the chart.

“As an entire populace, the UK’s Group Cohesion Score is 48.7%. In other words, the average majority opinion is held by 48.7% of the population”. (Guild, 2020)

So, if the graph below says +0.2 for millennials, that implies that the GCS for millennials is 48.7% + 0.2% = 48.9%.

So, 48.9% likemindedness for Gen-Z and 50.8% for Millenials. Got it? Let’s move ahead now. Just looking at the numbers by themselves doesn’t really manufacture a feeling of disdain.

That is only true until we see the cohesion scores of the newspaper reading community.

People who read the Financial Times have a Group Cohesion score of 57% while those who read the Guardian have a score of 54.1%.

Let’s revisit the activity we did a few moments ago.

If you had chosen Group#1, that means both your observations fall in the “Guardian Reader’s” cohort/community. This gives them a cohesion score of 54.1%.

For Group#2, the thing that unites the 2 observations is their generation, i.e. both the people are Gen-Z. This puts Group 2’s cohesion score at 48.9%.

54.1% > 48.9%

This easy activity shows that Sony has a 5.2% higher chance of selling the Playstation to people in Group 1, even though the members of that particular group fall into different generations (Millennial and Gen-X). 

What unites them here? They read the same newspaper. *Remember, we have kept other things constant.

If you still aren’t convinced that oversimplification on the basis of a 16 year birth period is borderline offensive, then have a look at the chart below. This chart compares the GCS of generations and other social groupings.

The “Daily nut eaters” cohort has an 80% higher chance of likemindedness than the Millennial cohort. People who floss have approximately 1450% higher odds of likemindedness than those who belong to Generation Z.

Understanding likemindedness through people’s consumption habits might sound blatantly terrible to our ears, however, it is not as criminal as identifying likemindedness through generational cohorts.

As I said in the beginning, it is a recipe for disaster.

So, what binds people together?

The data is clear: passions, habits and temperaments unite us, not generational groupings.

Conclusion

Marketers at leading firms should allocate some of their budgets to conduct more research about their potential customers’ behaviours, temperaments and habits. 

This could even open up possibilities for cross-generation targeting, especially for brands that position themselves as a brand for millennials/Gen-Z etc.

For example, TikTok first came into the market as a digital platform for Gen-Z, however, they quickly changed their positioning to “a common man’s social channel with a real shot at organic growth”. 

Soon, TikTok started attracting a more mature audience. This shift has enabled TikTok to become the sweet spot of education and entertainment. Where else have we seen 40-year-old doctors dancing and sharing their insights on Covid prevention, both, at the same time?

Acting on your hunches is acceptable only when you don’t have statistically significant data to fall back onto. We don’t have the privilege of that excuse anymore and therefore we must behave more maturely when making decisions about our customers. 

16-year birth periods should only have a place in the census reports, not marketing charts. Our obsession with generational groupings has caused enough damage and it is time to realize that it is nothing more than a farce.

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A big thanks to my friends at BBH Labs for giving us the gift of Group Cohesion Score (GCS). All the graphs used in the article are also sourced from BBH’s website.