It’s Time To Get To Know ‘Gen Z’

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Talkin’ ’bout my generation … 


For years, “X” has marked the spot for advertisers and marketers seeking to maximize their ROI. This has involved, for the last 25 years or so, a focus on “Generation X” — a group of slackers that first came to the public’s collective consciousness as disaffected and exceedingly annoying.

Thanks, Ben Stiller. He’s the Director of the 1994 not-so-cinematic classic Reality Bites, featuring the hunk of the era — Ethan Hawke — and America’s favorite “weird facial expressions” actress, Winona Ryder.

The movie rode this stereotype into the Clinton Era, giving us a mediocre film that at least spawned a pretty awesome soundtrack. Yes, KIIS-FM in Los Angeles banged U2’s “All I Want Is You” in power rotation in May 1994 thanks solely to this film, and the rush to flee the Colour Me Badd fad by embracing the plaid.

Fast-forward 23 years, and marketers aren’t talking about Gen X anymore. Failed attempts at “Gen X Radio” can now be put in the Box of Shame along with all of those “hits of the ’70s” disasters dreamed up in 1995.

It’s time to talk about “Generation Z,” and the youngest of this group.

It may be scary to fathom this, but we’re talking about teens born from January 2000 onward.

What’s possibly scarier is why the media industry C-Suite shouldn’t ignore this cohort, based on the latest Think With Google report shared with the RBR+TVBR Editorial Ohana by noted programming consultant and Nielsen Audio antagonist Randy Kabrich.


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