About a couple of years ago marketers across the word were falling over each other to better understand the Millennials generation as opposed to say Gen X and thus better “millennialize” there marketing strategy. In past year though I have noticed a backlash against generational segmentation. Besides fatigue there could be a couple of other reasons:
1) The pace of change in technology, socio-economic and cultural has leading to meaningful age cohorts being much shorter than the traditional generational cohort of 15-20 years. While in the 1950s and 60s it might have been rational to expect a 20 year old and a 30 year old to have a similar socio-cultural framework, such an assumption would be laughable today. Perhaps we in marketing need to shift from a generational framework to a “in-undergraduate- college-together (IUCT)” framework for the young – that is a four year age cohort starting from age 15. So the age segmentation framework would be 15-18 19-22, 23-26 and so on.
2) While shortening the age cohorts might yield marketing dividends for some time, there is a paradigm shift underway that would usher in an age of personas instead of the age of segmentation. Adtech now allows targeting of marketing communication to finer and finer segments and will one day soon, with the help of AI, allow for individualised customisation of marketing communication. And in a decade or two as 3D printing and flexible manufacturing becomes the norm, a age of true product individualised customisation could dawn to complement the age of messaging customisation.
This transition of age cohort segmentation to an age of personas would have paradigm shifting implication beyond the domain of marketing – in politics, in education, in pop culture and the arts. A recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times hints at this shift.
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