Companies sometimes struggle with Gen Z as customers or employees. But there is help: advice to address young people correctly.
Are there specialists for understanding Gen Z? Yes, consulting companies in particular have now founded their own departments. Including one of the largest agents, Edelman, with sales of more than $1 billion in 2023, as The Guardian reports. There are also a number of smaller companies that often help the top 500 companies in the world when it comes to Gen Z.
Who was Gen Z again? The people also known as Zoomers were born in 1996 at the earliest and 2015 at the latest. This is followed by gene alpha, which has so far only been described in theory; But most of them are still too young to gain real insight. Millennials came before Gen Z.
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The main question: What makes Gen Z tick?
Of course, the teams in the above departments consist exclusively of young people between the ages of 20 and 30. The ZEO, the head of the consulting group called Gen Z Lab founded at Edelmann, is Harris Reed. The title ZEO is based on the American classic: Chief Executive Officer or CEO for short. According to his own statement to the Guardian, the 26-year-old regularly deals with global corporations that are trying to adapt to Gen Z.
What do these “Gen Z consultants” advise on? On the one hand, it’s about breaking down prejudices. Campaigns are often created that are simply based on clichés, as Reed explains. Without advice, a real understanding of the values that, according to him, guide large parts of Gen Z often falls by the wayside.
He always tries to shake up those responsible:
Don’t run a weird, old-fashioned campaign! You have to watch, otherwise you will not succeed. I don’t mean to be rude, but if your older customer base dies out, who will still buy your product?
Corporations must move with the times and exert a positive influence on society, the environment and also the climate crisis. It doesn’t matter to Reed and most of his colleagues at Edelmann and beyond whether this happens purely out of profit motive or out of real, inner conviction, as Edelmann’s ZEO explains.
Why is Gen Z so important to companies? Gen Z is the future and is also becoming more and more interesting as customers. The older they get, the more purchasing power there is behind this generation’s beliefs. In addition, surveys that Edelman himself is responsible for show that for members of Gen Z, what a brand stands for is very important. Gen Z wants their money to go to companies that are committed to a sustainable and socially just future.
Generation Z also has a special relationship with the office that is fundamentally different from that of previous age groups. Many of them started their professional lives during the pandemic or shortly before and therefore did not get to know normal working life. Now they are celebrating it: Generation Z is now finding a new reason to go from home to the office