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Think Piece
Why Generation
Y? Here’s Why! by Keith Alan
Deutsch Call them what you will: Gen Y,
Millennials, Echo Boomers, Screenagers, Teenagers, or just plain
kids. Roughly targeted as the group born
after 1976 but that definition grows stale minute by minute they seem to be
confusing adult society (as kids usually do) and frustrating traditional retailers, which
is what this piece is all about. To simplify things, let’s agree
that we are talking primarily about teens (as recent older American generations always
seem to do) and know that we include pre-teens and college kids. Generation Y means teens with a halo
population of about 6 years in either direction. They are 80 million strong, those
kids born in American since 1977, and they are the largest generation in the
nation’s history.And they have much more money to spend than any new market in the
history of American retailing. For this reason alone they will soon be the most
studied generation of any market in the history of advertising. They are driving traditional advertisers crazy. Hey, kids usually do. But this time, too much money is at stake. The Invention of The Teenager The whole idea of the teenager is a
very recent American invention. Just a 150
years or so ago in Dickens’ England, kids were thought of as small adults.
There were no “younger generation” cultures in England. Most kids didn’t go to school. They worked. But they had no money with which to
define themselves. And America inherited that
mindset, at least in major cities, until the 1920’s.
Child labor laws are so new to this fading 20th Century, that it is hard to
remember how new the recent status of kids is in our society. The Emergence of The Teen Marketplace Kids were just not that important to
the social scheme of things in America until mid-20th century when they started having
enough post war disposable money to make an economic impact rock-and-roll, the invention of the long playing
record, growing album sales in the late 1950’s, and the billion dollar explosion of
album sales in the 1960’s. But it is
the 1950’s, that’s when the teenager really invaded the American psyche and
the American marketplace. In the 1950’s teens also started
to seriously influence family spending decisions.
The American auto industry knew that better than all the marketers of the
1950’s except, perhaps, the prescient, mouseketeer engineers of Disney. So the group we are talking about is so large and
so dynamic in our society since the 1950’s that you can’t miss them. Kids. What
do they want? The older generation never seems to know. Certainly the older generation marketers who target the Gen Y buyer have
been going crazy trying to re-invent themselves to stay trendy and cutting-edge. Today’s teen market is too big
for anyone to ignore. That is exactly what a recent International Council of Shopping
Centers study concluded: “too big a consumer segment to ignore.” As if any marketer could ignore them. The Wall Street Journal reports that there
are 57 million Americans under the age of 15. Don’t
try to quibble that 20 million of them are only between the ages of 4 and 8 years old
because every year an important mass of these kids become spenders. The Biggest Single Market of All Time According to Teenage Research
Unlimited (TRU) (847-564-3440) in Northbrook, Illinois, there are 31 million teen buyers
in America and they now spend a total of $141 billion dollars a year. According to Michael
Wood, director of syndicated research at TRU, “This and the fact that teens are at
the forefront of starting trends makes them a formidable group of consumers.” Retailers just can’t afford to live without
kid buyers, regardless of how fickle their buying habits, or how hard they are to reach
with marketing campaigns. Kids still love to hang out at malls
(mall rats), they just aren’t buying at large anchor stores. A study from TRU found teens visit the mall five
times a month on average, but only walk into a department store three times in the
same period. (The study apparenly neglected to ask how often they buy). And other studies indicate that kids are buying
from these stores even less often. This rejection of the big and the
traditional avenues of retail by the youth market is causing a frustrating scramble among
retail marketers to come up with advertising strategies that will reach and influence Gen
Y buyers. For instance, Levi’s sales
fell 13 percent last year. Once the bastion
of teenage rebellion in fashion, Levi Strauss’s sales plummet forced the confused
youth marketer to close half of its 22 American plants and layoff 6,000 workers.
Levi’s didn’t keep its eye on the interracial hip hop, or “phat” fashion trend a
clothing mixture of urban, black-rap, gangsta street crime posturing which is often mixed/mismatched with upscale, not quite traditional,
preppie sport accessories from that most savvy of Gen Y style provocateurs, Tommy
Hilfiger. What? The New Youth Market Today’s youth market is the most
interracial, cross-cultural, and inter-ethenic of any generation in America’s
history. What this means is that although it
makes its impact economically and culturally on the American psyche as a single market,
it’s identity actually keeps shifting in an interplay of influential and synergistic
segments. Broad-Band Brand Messages Don’t
Work This largest group of spending kids
ain’t no Woodstock Nation, or Lost Generation. Its
identity is too fragmented for simple, monolithic categorizing. That’s what the growing list of expensive Gen
Y researchers are telling their anxious
retailing clients who can no longer reach these kids with broad band marketing messages: Like, there’s Board-Trac, a
syndicated market-research study conducted by The Ponzi Group in Trabuco Canyon,
California (949-858-9095) which got its start tracking the exploding group of kids who are
into board sports. Their clients are mostly
apparel and footwear retailers (think Vans). A
primary insight from Board-Trac is that today’s youth market has a very fragmented
brand consciousness which changes by geographic region.
Like, TRU publishes the annual Teenage
Marketing & Lifestyle Study that goes to clients like Coke, Nike, Teen People,
Wet Seal and MTV, (www.teenresearch.com). Like,
The Zandl Group in Manhattan publishes a bi-monthly Hot Sheet for clients like
Universal Studios, Stride-Rite Shoes, and The Gap Inc.
Like, Sputnik Inc, also of New York
Cit, produces Mindtrends, a biannual video which focuses on “the most
influential trend-setters and creative young people in the world” for companies like
Reebok, Timberland and Rockport. Sputnik
principals Lopiano-Misdom and Joanne DeLuca also publish Street Trends, a
publication that focuses on alternative, or extreme, youth segments that influence
mainstream popular culture and buying trends. Marketing~Music~Fashion~Media~Technology The realization that the youth market
is actually a very segmented group of related, synergistic buying cultures, lead Bozelle
Worldwide, a New York advertising agency, to establish separate departments to research
teen segments for their clients. According to
Bob Taber, senior partner/director of strategic planning at Bozell’s New York office
(212-727-5000) today’s youth market can be divided into 6 youth culture segments: Hip
Hoppers, Trendies, Thrashers (skaters), Rockers, Country, and Anarchists. These segments are based on the convergence of
music, fashion, media, and technology attitudes. Keep Your Eyes On The Music How could Levis’s know? Well,
they might have subscribed to one of these syndicated studies, but even more important,
the people at Levi’s should have kept their ears and eyes on the music, man. Since the youth posturing of the duck ass rock n
roll 50’s, when the youth market first found its buying power, the music has always
been the heart, the mind, and the fashion energy center of generational identity. (And in
fact, the big plan to save Levi Strauss, the company just reported, is to spend $15
million, half of all its marketing capital for the next three years, on music tie-ins.) How The Hell Did Hilfiger Do
It?” It may be too late for Levi’s. So let’s look at the case of that preppie
provocateur, Tommy Hilfiger, who really became hip only after he hopped on the music
bandwagon and segmented his marketing appeal. Though
his success was set up years before, the turning point for Hilfiger came in March 1994
when rapper icon Snoop Doggy Dogg, then in the headlines for a murder indictment as well
as musical success, swaggered on to the Saturday Night Live stage dressed in baggy, gangsta
pants and self-possession, but also draped in a preppie sport jersey branded boldly with
the Hilfiger logo. Bam!
Hilfiger sales exploded up $93 million the next year. Let’s forget about his modest beginnings,
peddling jeans in upstate New York. By 1984,
with backing from Hong Kong tycoon Mohan Murjani, Hilfiger set up his own shop and put out
his first famous ad, a dud, in which he compared himself to upscale designers like Ralph
Lauren and Calvin Klein. The industry
laughed. He appeared to be a pushy imitator
of the polo (Polo?) preppie, yacht sport set. But he soon found his niche embracing
baggy black street styles which he filtered through his preppie instincts. Instead of pleasing no one Pow! he
found he could please everybody. By
1992, when his clothes first caught on in a big way with black teenagers, he was selling
hot to the inner-city youth culture, without losing his original upscale, middle class
department store audience. Stylistic Invention Cultural Dissonance Hilfiger’s genius was to mix
what any other designer would have known were incongruent cultural styles and attitudes. Hilfiger added urban flair and baggy black street
swagger to what had been a conservative, and imitative, preppie line of clothing. He embraced cultural dissonance, mixing yachting
sport symbols, expensive detailing, and quality fabrics with the subcultural phat
(bulky) silhouettes so popular with inner-city hip hoppers.
He abandoned the traditionally
subdued preppie and severe European upscale palette of Calvin Klein and Armani, that had
dominated American fashion for 15 years, for vivid, teen-inspired, board-sport colors that
looked fine with his American flag logo. And
this brilliant stylistic mismatch appealed to both the black and white teen market a
market that he helped pull together. At a time when the interracial,
multi-cultural, segmented, but brand conscious Gen Y market was emerging, Hilfiger
was there with a marketing identity and quirky, but traditional style that said it all
and spoke loudly with an impossible to miss logo (and a color scheme) that became part of
the statement! Selling With The Culture~Celebrity
Icons Its the American Dream marketed to
black and white kids in perfect union. But
the marketing genius doesn’t stop there. After establishing the identity, and boldly
branding it with that big flag logo, and bright color scheme, Hilfiger adopted a heavy
advertising campaign that has been based more on association with youth celebrities
than on fashion design or style. Hilfiger even managed to tie-in with
Nintendo on a Nintendo 64 computer and arcade snowboard game and promotion in 1,000
Hilfiger in-store boys departments across the country.
The new board-sport-inspired games are more a Hilfiger advertisement, remembered
for the endless repetition of his flashing digital flag logo, than for their breakthrough
virtual Xtreme sport experience. The Power’s In The Logo, Not The
Clothing What we learn from Hilfiger: sell
through the convergence of music, fashion, media, and technology. Sell with the psychic center of Gen Y’s
identity; don’t try to sell to that center.
Nike recently had a disaster of a campaign because it stopped selling with
the wave. Hilfiger never creates anything new. He
just mixes and matches among elements already happening out there. And Hilfiger’s advertising has insinuated and
branded itself on this market’s consciousness like no other merchandiser. Marketing Model Brand
Extension And in the Hilfiger model lies the
key to success for all next millennium retailers. As
soon as his brand was accepted, and teens, black and white, wanted to be seen wearing
Hilfiger Hilfiger aggressively extended the brand identity to other targets. He
developed a women’s line, marketed with celebrity-centered icons, that is selling
like crazy to both adult women and young girls. Tommy
Hilfiger Athletics is a whole new division, and could go so far as to license the brand to
sporting goods like board-sport gear and more. One
marketing analyst quipped that a Hilfiger hardware line could not be far away. A new study by the international
mindset analysis firm, Saatchi & Saatchi (212-463-2328), found that Gen Y’s
lives have been shaped by digital media as no other generation, and that marketers must
build brands with them rather than for them. Brand
expansion grows more important in novel ways to anchor the interplay between virtual
buying habits online (for price comparison and necessity shopping) and shopping that
depends on the real experience of merchandise (and browsing and impulse buying) that will
take place at real property locations that must depend ever more on entertainment
experiences and a strong sense of physical place to compete with more convenient virtual
e-commerce. Alternative Brands And as Levis has discovered, old
brands may be devalued very quickly in today’s marketplace. Unless a retail brand has captured the imagination
of its market the way Hilfiger has, there is a growing tendency for small, highly
segmented (alternative) brand merchandise to sell much better than old time, broad-band
brands. Just like the death of general
interest magazines on the newsstand 30 years ago, we may be seeing the death of general
appeal brand merchandise as price competition and segmentation become more available to
the Gen Y buyer. Levi’s management says that they
have lost half their market share in jeans, from 30 percent in 1990 to about 16 percent
last year, to generic price competitors like Gap and JC Penney’s house brands, to the
master, Tommy Hilfiger, and to cutting edge alternative brands like MUDD. Of Levi’s predicament, Dan Drath, senior
analyst at TRU, observed: “Levi’s needs to have the look and feel of these small
brands. If they fall completely off the teen
radar screen, then when teens grow up, Levi’s will be gone.” And population studies done by a
dozen research firms, including Bozell Worldwide, indicate that the Gen Y market
will continue expanding, with ever greater buying power, at least through the next decade. So retailers better learn to stay loose (phat?),
keep their eyes on the music, and fragment their advertising campaigns with lots of
offbeat small brands based on the concepts of the hot retailers that are selling--until a
brand hits it big--then extend that brand identity for all its worth in every marketing
medium technology offers. Take a tip from
Tommy Hilfiger. Mix up your cultural
references, brand everything in sight, and celebrity advertise to any segment that
emerges. But whatever you do, never take your eyes off the music. Contact Information: Catherine Fisher, Tommy Hilfiger
U.S.A., Inc. 25 West 39th Street New York, NY 10018, 212-840-8888; Joanne Davis, Bozell
Worldwide, 40 West 23rd Street New York, NY
10010, 212-727-5000, e-mail: davis@newyork.bozell.com,
home page: www.bozell.com.; The Ponzi
Group/Board-Trac, 21371 Silvertree Lane, Trabuco Canyon, CA 92679, 949-858-9095, www.theponzigroup.com; Teenage Research
Unlimited, 707 Skokie Boulevard Suite 450, Northbrook, IL
60062, 847-564.3440.
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