Gen C: The Generational Marketing Hybrid

“In the last of this Generational Marketing series, Neil Osborne goes full circle and explains how, instead of separating ageist cohorts, the emergence of Generation C binds generations together.

A market-making merger has happened. You didn’t know? Yes, M&Ms and chocolate bars merged – creating a deliciously successful conglomerate. It’s a whole new category. No longer just separate crunchy colours, M&Ms are now bound together, in a block of choc-yumminess.

You may recall at the beginning of this series, that I likened generational marketing to sorting M&Ms into colours, “… each generation owns its distinct differences and shouldn’t be marketed to (or eaten) together.” Generation C breaks that mould. Instead, its closest likeness is the new M&M Block – a mashup of previously distinct and ageist cohorts – bound together by the letter ‘C’ (but not as in chocolate). They’re Generation Connected.

Traditionally, marketers grouped people into homogenous 15-20 year-of-birth chunks. However, with change happening in such compressed periods, the idea of using demographics such as age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or geography as a group’s defining characteristic, has vanished. As I said of Gen Z, things are changing too fast. “… a five-year old today, is likely to have a very different frame of reference to either a teen or tween, because the evolution of technology has changed their worlds so fast.”

Now, marketing must be mindset focused…”