Beyond Binary – Communicating With Gen Z

The Ipsos Corporate Reputation team were recently joined in a round-table discussion at The Ivy in London with 12 leading corporate communicators, to explore the implications of our recent Gen Z research.

A follow-up to our 2017 report on the lives of Millennials, our new Gen Z study looks at the subsequent generation (those born from 1996 onward) as they hit adulthood, examining their levels of trust in business, media use and recognition of 'fake news', ambitions for the workplace, and more.

Generational analysis often gets a bad name – Millennials are blamed from everything from 'ruining hotels' to 'killing the wine cork', colouring the perception of a whole generation and leading to bad decisions. 

Our analysis of Gen Z – "Beyond Binary" – recognises the nuance and variation between cohorts, and the tensions within this one generation. But that doesn’t mean we can’t say something useful about emerging differences and similarities.

The report outlines a range of trends that will shape firms’ positioning and branding; how they engage with consumers and other stakeholders; and the products and services they offer in future:

  • Generation Z drink less, have a lower intake of sugar, and engage in fewer sexual activities and commit less crime. 
  • Ethical and social issues are at the fore – but Gen Z are neither a cohort of activists, nor are they selfish snowflakes.
  • The 'crisis of trust' in business is overblown.
  • Gen Z are much pickier about online sources of information, combine information from multiple perspectives and draw conclusions based on an interpretation of all of them.
  • Brands can realise new opportunities from a generation whose lives are so intertwined between online and offline.
  • More fluid career paths, holistic job satisfaction, and integrating employee wellbeing with success could appeal to a generation entering the workplace under pressure, yet showing fewer signs of materialism.

If you would like to explore the implications of Gen Z for your organisation, markets, or region, please get in touch.


There's an increasingly wide variety of possible lifestyles, attitudes and behaviours 

As the title of our report alludes to, Gen-Z are in many ways 'beyond binary': social norms are changing, with a wide possible variety of lifestyles.

This fluidity is something that brands will have to understand – the 'types' of people organisations need to look at have extended massively, and implicitly telling people they can only be one thing or the other would be a serious mistake.
 



This impacts on what they’re willing to buy: for many organisations, it will mean moving away from gender-specific products or communications – for example Generation Z are less likely to want gendered clothes, shoes, sports goods, perfume and deodorant.

More mild than wild

Recent years have seen a generational decline in a number of behaviours associated with rebellious youth. Compared to Millennials at the same age, Generation Z drink less, have a lower intake of sugar, and engage in fewer sexual activities and commit less crime. New data from our study seems to suggest this is driven by a stricter cultural, technological and legal environment, not as a result of communicating the risks around these behaviours. 

Gen Z are also less materialistic: fewer than a third (30%) feel the things they own say a lot about how well they are doing in life, compared with 42% of young people seven years ago.

Ethical and social issues are at the fore:

Our research found a significant increase in British teenagers who say they have avoided certain products because of the conditions under which they were produced or what they are made – from 19% in 2005 to a quarter (26%) in 2018.

Equally the globalisation of the feminism movement and the use of social media as a space for young women to share and support has not gone unnoticed by marketers. Respectfully participating in this growing conversation and changing landscape (for example through campaigns focussing on positive body image and messaging that actively promotes strong women) is key.

While technology has been democratising – making age, seniority or established connections a lot less important to whether you can have an impact or not – Gen Z are neither a cohort of activists (just 15% of Gen Z teens would contact their MP about an issue, compared with a quarter of Millennials in 2005) nor are they selfish snowflakes (this cohort are just as active in social causes as previous generations: formal volunteering rates are high, and levels of social action are significantly up).

A 'crisis of trust' in institutions is overblown

Fears about Generation Z rejecting the basic trust relationship between institutions and their citizens or consumers are looking just as misplaced as they were about Millennials.

The latest Ipsos Global Trends Survey found that Gen Z are just as likely to trust companies as other age groups in established and emerging markets. Trust in businesses is notably higher among emerging markets – with half (52%) of the population saying they have a high level of trust compared to 37% of the population in established markets. But Generation Z are on a par.

This is perhaps helped by Gen-Z’s ability to separate the multitude of information online into fact and fiction, relevant and irrelevant … a skill Millennials had not mastered when younger.

The increasing triangulation of information

Gen-Z are much pickier about online sources of information, and more inclined to triangulate – drawing information from multiple perspectives, using a basket of information sources ranging from online to word of mouth, and drawing conclusions based on an interpretation of all of them.

  • There’s been a huge drop in trust in online news sites since 2010. Only half of kids aged 12-15 believe most or all of what they see on news websites and apps compared to 87% of children the same age in 2010.


  • Social media follows the same pattern (although trust levels were never as high as they were for more official news outlets): 40% of 12-15 year olds in 2010 felt that things they saw on social media were either entirely or mostly true; just 24% of Gen-Z 12-15 year olds think that now.
  • A third of Gen Z’s media time is spent communicating (on social networking, messaging apps and similar), and there has been a general rise in competition for attention (across all generations, 90% of people admit to using a second screen / device while watching TV)

It is therefore important for brands and institutions to diversify the media through which they communicate, deliver tailored content, and more effectively link online and offline.

Personalisation is expected. But transparency and privacy are vital.

It’s not all about risks and downsides.

Brands are realising the new opportunities brought by new technologies and a generation whose lives are so intertwined between online and offline.

Younger people are slightly happier than older groups to share data with companies in return for the personalised services and products they have grown used to – presenting an opportunity for brands to drive real, personal engagement with consumers and other stakeholders by encouraging customers to gear their self-expression to support campaigns.

  • Disney combined Gen Z’s love of sharing on social platforms with their enthusiasm for charitable contributions, by donating $5 to Make-a-Wish for every photo uploaded by users wearing Micky Mouse ears and using the hashtag ‘#shareyourears’. The campaign raised $1million, which Disney doubled due to the “overwhelming outpouring of support”.
  • Multi-screening can be seen by brands as an opportunity to enhance calls to action. An example of this was Sonos’ 2015 ad campaign to encourage digital searches. People who searched ‘Sonos reviews’ after seeing their advertising were presented with a page full of five star reviews on Google

But, brands that succeed in this space need to be transparent about their practices. Gen Z have grown up with a sense of the value of their data, and have a greater understanding of how to set their privacy levels online so that they only share the information and activities they want to: consumers should easily understand what data is being collected; for what purpose it will be used; and what benefit it will yield them.

The future of work

Gen Z start their careers with far less direct experience of the workplace and of professional working relationships – the proportion of 16-17 year olds with a part-time job has more than halved since 1997.

Their ambitions also rise beyond just making money: although young people are feeling the pressure to be successful, a decline in materialism among teenagers compared with Millennials at the same age perhaps harbours a change in what Generation Z judge as success.

Employers are beginning to respond – for example by swapping the traditional 'corporate ladder' for a flatter, less hierarchical 'corporate lattice' – and an evolution towards more fluid career paths, holistic job satisfaction, and integrating employee wellbeing with success could well cater to a generation under pressure, yet showing fewer signs of materialism.

Of course, putting an entire generation into a box is never smart, particularly with this varied and fluid generation, as a number of other effects can also drive differences amongst age groups.

It is important to differentiate between generational ‘cohort effects’ (where an age group has different views and behaviours from others, and they take those with them as they age) versus other ‘period effects’ (where everyone changes in a similar way at the same time because of a societal shift or event), or ‘life cycle effects’ (where our attitudes and behaviours change as we age).  

And most importantly, country and culture can often have a greater impact on behaviour than age cohort.

If you would like to explore the implications of our generational research and these trends for your organisation, markets, or region, please get in touch.

Our Generation Z report is the second in an ‘Ipsos Thinks’ series of generational research.

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