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Generational Marketing

Is generational marketing just age marketing or more?


Currently the generations are split up as follows:


Tweens aged 9-12
Ipod generation/Millennials - current teens
Generation Y aged 16-33
Generation X aged 34-44 (also known as Baby busters due to the drop in birth rate following the baby boom) 
Baby boomers aged 45-65

The chart shows the birth rate (births/thousand population) in  the US. The baby boom can clearly be seen in the blue line.
From: "Vital Statistics of the United States, 2003, Volume I, Natality", 

Other generations include:
The post-war generation born 1928-45
The World War 2 generation born 1922-37
Depression era generation born 1912-21

Generation marketing takes into account the age, values , experiences, family life cycle stage, group memberships.

It is different from age segmentation as the each generation will have different experiences and be exposed to different products, technology and ideas which form their values and affect their group memberships.

These values also include attitudes to advertising itself, research by Chris Halliburton published in Market Leader, Q1, 2010 showed that the ipod generation/millennials looks for honesty, rather than believing PR and advertising. They prefer to be informed of a product's features and make the decision themselves whether they want to purchase it.

A 50 year old currently will think very differently and have different ideas, interests and sentiments than I will at the age of 50. They will also have different nostalgic triggers.


An example of generational marketing can be seen in the clip below. Iggy Pop was a famous rock star in the late 60s/early 70s, so people of that generation will identify with him. In the ad his little puppet talks about partying, which is something the target audience of the advert who identify with Iggy would remember, but he says he'd rather play golf. A reflection of the target audience's hobbies, which have most likely changed with their life cycle stage, and they now play golf instead of partying.

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