Cineworld is the world’s second largest theatre chain behind AMC and globally just two films (Barbie and Oppenheimer) made more than a billion dollars in just 10 days this year. So the cinema industry remains a solid investment choice and Cineworld ought to have been a good investment. To boycott Cineworld was once an idea occurring to nobody.

Cineworld was founded in 1995 and by 2004 Cineworld was acquired by Blackstone private equity group for £120m. The following year, Cineworld acquired the UK and Ireland operations of French cinema company UGC (remember them?).  In December 2012, Cineworld bought the Picturehouse Cinema chain (no plans to boycott Cineworld at this point..).  In 2014, Cineworld completed the takeover of Cinema City International N.V. and from March 2015, the Greidinger family (who owned a controlling stake in Cinema City International) became the largest shareholders in the enlarged company too.  Mooky Greidinger joined the Cineworld board of directors as CEO, having previously been CEO of Cinema City International.  – Reference Wikipedia

Unfortunately the new leaders had a more aggressive risk-taking personality indicated by subsequent decision-making and the idea to boycott Cineworld probably should probably be linked back to this point.  In 2016, Cineworld acquired six cinemas from Empire Cinemas and in 2017, Cineworld bought Regal Cinemas for £2.7 billion! creating the world’s second largest cinema group.  It also allowed Cineworld access to the US market, the largest in the world (to boycott Cineworld for squeezing out the little guy can be one reason).  In 2019, Cineworld invested in a film production company and attempted to buy Cineplex Entertainment (Canada’s largest cinema chain) for approximately £1.7 billion (just two years after spending nearly £3billion for Regal Cinemas…).  – Reference Wikipedia

Well, this gave them £4billion of debt and when the COVID pandemic hit, they could no longer empty enough water from their boat to stop it from sinking.  That is tragic except that many people (figuratively) drowned and the Captain left his staff and passengers to drown whilst he was rescued (the senior management team negotiating an exit package worth up to £28 million according to a Financial Times report and Shares Magazine).  To boycott Cineworld for this reason seems justified.

But don’t worry everyone, the company said it will be ‘business as usual’ for the operating businesses and brands.  And Chairman Eric Foss released a statement saying “Cineworld is ready and fully able to succeed in this dynamic and constantly changing movie theatre industry,”  – CNN Business.

Isn’t that nice..

According to Shares Magazine; The group also expects the proposed restructuring to ‘transform’ the balance sheet with the release of existing £3.62 billion of indebtedness, the provision of £1.17 billion of new debt financing and execution of a rights offering to raise proceeds of £640 million.

Then the administrators will transfer all assets to wholly owned subsidiary Crown UK Holdco and a newly controlled entity of the lenders will have ownership of that subsidiary.

‘‘..the plan is to allow the business of the group to emerge from the Chapter 11 cases as a continued going concern, but it will not achieve a rescue of Cineworld Group plc itself,’ the company said.

How marvellous..  so the management in charge leave with £28 million, the company Cineworld does not stop trading and makes record profits (Barbie etc),  the lenders take ownership so they can use all trading profits to regain their loans at which point they’ll sell Cineworld to make even more money and small individuals investing their savings lose all.  You may think that reason enough to boycott Cineworld.  But isn’t boycotting a way to protest at how big money treats the public with contempt?  They expect you the public to carry on going to your nearest cinema rather than going a little further to a different cinema because they think you are stupid.  They want to steal from you and then think you will go back and hand them more money to sit in their cinemas.

To boycott Cineworld then seems more a question of are you as stupid as the big money people think you are?  Sitting in your allocated seat handing them money.  Or will you vote with your feet and choose any cinema other than Cineworld and Picturehouse to show them they can’t just make your cinema bankrupt so shareholders lose all their money yet keep the cinemas open so the banks and lenders get billions and think we’re stupid enough to just keep buying their tickets and popcorn…

Disclaimer:  Though we would love to see Cineworld have the negative publicity from taking legal action against a media publicity agency’s article about how they have been seen to treat customers and shareholders with contempt, the views and opinions of this article does not necessarily represent the views of YouCom Media Ltd and the boycott Cineworld message is raised as a question.

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, November 2023, London, ‘Boycott Cineworld.’

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Marks & Spencer’s once had a property portfolio of £1.2bn where 96 percent were freehold assets.  Inevitably when a new CEO takes over and seeks a quick fix to problems of poor sales, they consider selling assets, so it was no surprise when in 2016 M&S sold 76 stores to a private equity firm for half a billion pounds.

However, a clear example where such brands are not just focused on retail marketing but also property marketing.

Each brand location is therefore a long-term financial commitment that will either become a balance sheet asset or liability.

Store location is however, an important part of the marketing mix.  New store openings often assigned to the brand’s marketing agency to build PR around and ultimately increase footfall to a self-sustainable level to recover investment.  But everything begins with brand location assessment.

Each brand has its own factors on a check list developed over time spent understanding their business.  Trade area mapping is performed to assess demand.  A good agency will employ mathematical modelling techniques, multiple regression analysis and spatial interaction models.

Basic checklist factoring can be used in nearly all cases without such assistance however.

Brand location checklist factors often already used by media agencies include: Local population size for customer base; Age profile; household size of local populace; income levels; disposable income; home ownership levels; life-style measures; cultural and ethnic groupings (are they more disposed to your brand or less?); general economic stability; occupation classifications; ‘Pedestrian flow’; Pedestrian entry routes to the location; What is the public transport like?  What types of public transport are there?

Other factors include; Car ownership levels in the area and in the increased store radius that car travel facilitates; Will the location allow for your own parking?  If you build a carpark on the location, will the reduced square footage of land used for the store recover the investment for the land effectively ‘lost’ to parking cars? ‘Signage’, what is the visibility like for that brand location?

And now the interesting part of retail location marketing – What are the competitors doing in that area?  Are there anchor stores?  Is there cumulative attraction? What turnover do you estimate gaining and how long before you break-even?  What is the saturation index?

Other aspects include cost control; How does the purchase price compare to your plans? What are the leasing terms? Are there any building restrictions? Have the building costs been factored into the break-even analysis? What does your marketing agency plan for building your footfall up from zero to the required annual amount the brand needs to meet investment targets?

As you can see, there are many factors on a brand’s checklist that make expansion less than straight-forward.  It’s important that all business partners are aligned and not just specialists in their niche field.

An agency aware of what’s involved with brand location analysis will understand how they fit into the overall picture.

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Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Sept 2019, London, ‘Brand Location.’

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Brand association is also achievable with packaging design.  The square foil wrappers of Durex condoms for example make you associate the packaging with sex.

When the retail shelf is full of similar products, packaging can connect to other strong drivers for the purchasing decision achieving more by association than an above the line advertising campaign alone.

Good packaging can create competitive advantage by emphasising the brand, the brand’s USP’s, or increasing the life of the product.

In terms of advertising reach, the packaging of a brand will penetrate into the consumer’s home and remain in the consciousness for however long until it’s consumed or completes its lifecycle.

Packaging must actually cover several areas of the advertising communication function.  It has to focus heavily on A.I.D.A. by gaining the attention of the consumer in an often crowded environment with other similar products vying to be seen and bought.

Packaging must also then persuade the consumer that it’s advertising will match the contents (effectively explaining why it should be picked up and purchased).

Some brands struggle with this concept and opt for a nice easy transparent window where the consumer can see the contents.

Of course brands can also find that difficult which is why when you think about it, the stickers on the transparent packet of meat in the supermarket (sirloin steaks for example) is always covering the less attractive area of the meat (a strip of fat or gristle for example).

Packaging can connect other benefits to the brand product such as recipes for its use.  They form a reason to buy that product over similar.

Another aspect to incorporate (just when brands thought it was challenging enough to communicate their messaging on such a tiny space), is the ever-increasing demand for information from the modern consumer linked as it is with regulations from government (nutritional information, health warnings, source of origin, full ingredients etc).

Packaging must also say whether it is recyclable and how.  Packaging design can create the USP necessary to gain mass awareness similar to advertising, by improving functionality.

For example don’t packets of tea still contain tea dust..?  Packs of sugar still leak, well, sugar..?

Think of that bottle of olive oil that drips down the side of the bottle after pouring..?  Imagine how many units that first manufacturer sold who created the packaging of a second lip inside the bottle which eradicates drips?

Coca-Cola designed their glass bottle in such a way that it is instantly recognisable, even in the dark.  With the sense of touch alone, we can distinguish a bottle of coke.

Some of their adverts don’t even say anything, they just show a bottle.  The advertising is just showing you what the packaging looks like (quite amusing).  Certainly on the shelf then that image is easily seen.

Packaging has to keep its contents safe.  Consumers don’t want to get home with chocolates for a loved one that are all jumbled up or melted.

So, you need a careful box with hollows for each chocolate’s shape.  The Happy Egg company has to keep the eggs from being broken long before they can advertise why their eggs are happy and the competitors aren’t.

Once that is mastered, packaging can get down to the job of communicating brand messaging.  While packaging often has no home in the media budget, if you don’t ask your agency to produce effective packaging communications, you will waste millions of budget on above-the-line advertising just to get the same level of sales.

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Glossary:

USP – Unique Selling Point

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Nov 2018, London, ‘Packaging Sex.’

The post Packaging Sex appeared first on YouCom.

So, a product with a larger market share will deliver better ROI than a product with a smaller market share.

There are exceptions when a small brand can generate higher ROI than those with greater brand presence, but it is not the average.  The stronger the brand, the better it performs.

This of course means brands who have reached the top and are the market leader, will need to become very aggressive, very quickly if they see a competitor eroding that market share.

One strategy to eliminate the competition is loss-leading.  A large brand will have several key product brands underneath it and the deep pockets that higher advertising ROI brings.

This allows the brand to run one of its lines as a loss leader, under-cutting the new competitor to price it out of the market.  Once the competition has been eliminated, it can then raise its price again to a profitable level.

Brand Marketing managers need to give thought to ‘analysis of competitor response’.  A good example is the brand Filofax.  It dominated the market for years and the short-term retaliatory plans it probably once had, became forgotten.  Consequently, when other products suddenly appeared, they lost rapid share.

Brand marketing needs to communicate a brand’s core values.  BMW drivers aren’t buying a car, they are buying ‘the ultimate driving machine’.

Mars eaters are not buying a confectionary snack, they are buying something to energise for work. Rest and play’.

The IT manager buying an IBM data system is not buying a tool to store the company’s servers, he is buying the added-values of size, reputation, recognition, awareness, reliability and support.

Many companies offer cut-price unknown equivalents.  Supermarkets now offer their ‘basics’ range of similar products at lower prices.  Yet consumers still go for the brands.

That is the result of the brand marketing manager’s strategy and long-term vision.

Consumers also recognise something they need from the company’s brand marketing.  A man does not buy a box of unbranded basics chocolate for a woman to satisfy her hunger.  He buys a brand that communicates something about him to her.

Often, he hopes she will remember something about the advertising of the brand and associate it with him (one reason why a woman will receive a box of Milk Tray on a first date than a pack of Kinder).

Perhaps there is also the brand perception of value leading to her playfully telling him off for spending too much on it.

Or perhaps it’s known to be sold in only a few retailers meaning praise is given for making such an effort towards their relationship.

There are many brands which have failed to make a profit or win shelf space.  These are a result of the brand marketing manager failing to integrate all elements of the marketing mix.

“The brand marketing manager needs to use multi-channel marketing strategy to ensure the target audience receives the message that communicates the added-values unique to that product.”

But the purpose of brand marketing is to gain and maintain a loyal customer base in the most cost-effective way that delivers the highest ROI.  That will lead to longevity and longevity leads to power.

Power of course is not just the preserve of consumer products and therefore neither is brand marketing.  People can be marketed and develop a brand.  Celebrities or politicians, business leaders or athletes, they all can become their own brand.

Rap artist Jay-Z famously said he is not a businessman, he is a business, man.  When a person develops their own brand to such an extent that they are representing known attributes just by their appearance or name, they become a business in themselves, just like the consumer brand that becomes a market leader.

Successful brand marketing communicates to satisfy the consumers emotional and rational needs.  A consumer may evaluate several brands of whisky in a supermarket on a rational basis looking at pricing, whether it’s a blend or a malt, the age of the whisky etc.

But they will also be measuring emotional needs such as social acceptance, the prestige of the brand, the opinions of friends towards a brand, how the advertising made them feel when they saw a brand in a media channel, etc.

The successful brand marketing manager will research and understand the extent their brand satisfies those two needs and develop a marketing approach around them.

The right agency then amplifies that approach.

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Glossary:

ROI – Return on Investment

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Mar 2018, London, ‘Brand Marketing.’

The post Brand Marketing appeared first on YouCom.

Communications going wrong very rarely costs lives (millions of lives were lost in the above example), but they will cost market share, company survival and jobs.

The advertising agency Ogilvy once used the word ‘obsolete’ in an ad campaign, only to later learn that 43 percent of US women had no idea what the word meant.  Amusingly, this made the advert itself ‘obsolete’.

But even if you do your research to create the most effective advert, the only place where near noiseless communication can be made is the cinema.  Everywhere else, there will always be ‘noise’ to distract consumers from your brand message.

Marketing Communications is the exchange of information.  It is not a one-way flow.  Talking at or to your audience does not imply successful communications in your brand marketing.  It only occurs when the audience receives the advertising message that the sender intended to send.  There can be a lot of obstacles along the way.

Marketing ‘noise’ is the most common.  This is the cause of that target audience receiving many other messages from your competitors at the same time as your message.  Learning how to cut through the noise is what good marketing is all about.

In addition, rejection, misinterpretation and misunderstanding are other obstacles added to the usual noise.

Don’t forget that the audience is given five means of receiving your message.  Sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.  That’s not to say a “rub here for the smell of fresh bread” is going to sell your product, but good marketing will combine a visual and audio campaign on TV/magazines and Radio with for example, packaging (touch).

There are also non-verbal means of communication.  Crowded areas can send a different message to the brain than a spacious office (which conveys a message of wealth or power).  Gestures and movements send messages alongside your advert’s main message.  A click of a briefcase, the closing of a door, these kinetics all send a signal to attach to your product.

But to reach the receiver, the agency needs to understand what is important to the audience, how will symbols and signs, gestures and movements be interpreted?  The message must then be ‘dressed’ in the appropriate way and sent via an appropriate media channel.

Even if it gets through to the receiver, it may be altered by all the other ‘noise’ from competitor messages meaning time of day, and PEST factors need to be accounted for also.

Communications agencies are by no means experts, but your message stands a greater chance of reaching the target audience and increasing sales.

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Glossary:

PEST – Political, Economic, Social, Technological

Data source:

Cutlip, S Center and Broom, G (1985) Effective Public Relations, 6^th Edition, Prentice Hall International, New Jersey.

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Sept 2017, London, ‘Communications Theory.’

The post Communications Theory appeared first on YouCom.

Hospitality marketing ensures employees treat customers as guests, greeting them with pleasure when meeting them for the first time and when old customers return.  This creates brand loyalty in a fractious marketplace.  Pret do this very well.

A survey of 4,500 consumers by Market Force, asked consumers to rate their satisfaction with their last experience at a coffee shop and how likely they would be to recommend it to friends. The data was averaged to rate each company brand on a Composite Loyalty Index.

Pret also rated the highest on seven of the eight critical drivers of satisfaction, primarily driven by ‘friendliness of staff’.  Courtesy for customer’s needs extends to all forms of marketing communication.  Face-to-face like in Pret, but also telephone and online interaction.

Title-nine sports are a California based sports company who greet customers put on hold with the marketing message “Hey wait! Don’t hang up! Our goal is to get you through to a real live person in 20 seconds!” If 20 seconds pass and the customer is still on hold, a new automated message plays “Oh brother, we didn’t make our goal, if you’d like to be credited for the time you waited, just tell our customer service agent and they’ll take care of it”.  The credit is typically applied only if requested (where the number is surprisingly low) and given in company tokens (gift card) to be used for yet more purchases.

Brands realise that the customer lifecycle is more important than short-term sales and seek to build customer loyalty to gain repeat business and upsell opportunities.

In the USA, hospitals make a lot of money from people as they don’t have a national health service free at point of use like in the UK.  They know the reason most families start using a hospital is to give birth and with so many birthing centres and hospital, they face stiff competition.  Stiff competition and a service/product that opens the door to further ‘sales’ opportunities requires hospitality marketing.

Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, USA, offers new mothers afternoon tea and cakes.  In Cleveland Clinic, each room has a Jacuzzi, mothers can eat and have fresh juice at a ‘nourishment bar’ or dessert tray.  During the final night of their stay, new parents dine in their hospital room on filet mignon or seafood provided by the Hospital’s ‘Stork Club’.

Marketing studies show women make 75 percent of health-care decisions for their families and make medical decisions for elderly parents.  So attracting mothers with hospitality makes commercial sense.

The search for competitive advantage in mature industries will come down to not where you advertise but what you advertise.  The creation of value-added services and supplementary services to make your product/service/brand stand out from the competition.

Managers must be aware of selecting the right mix of supplementary services (no more but also no less, than what is needed) and the right agency will help you to do that.

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Data source:

Survey by Market Force, a leading global customer intelligence solutions company.

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, Aug 2017, London, ‘Hospitality Marketing.’

The post Hospitality Marketing appeared first on YouCom.

On the 12^th May 2016, Michael Kors opened their biggest store in Europe on Regents Street, London.  For the first time there is now a men’s product range in-store.  YouCom Media looked at the marketing on offer from past campaigns and devised a course of action for how to take product marketing of fashion brands like Michael Kors to the public.

Product marketing for a retailer examines what products will be offered (in the case of Michael Kors, this is identifying the number of items in a range on offer.  How strong is the product line?); It looks at who will be their target customers (how does your marketing communications connect with the type of segment the product wishes to attract?); How are the products going to reach those customers (the distribution channels); And what pricing will the products be offered?

The 16,000 square-foot space in London’s West End is Michael Kors’ largest boutique in Europe, boasting three floors of Kors collections.  Michael Kors is celebrated the world over for his affordable must-have-handbags.  Nearly every woman has either got a Michael Kors bag in her wardrobe or wants one.  His aim, he said, was to make women ‘fall in love’ with his designs.

Michael Kors wanted a façade that houses a kitsch modern interior, with dark Macassar wood floors, Venetian wallpaper and made-to-order marble fixtures. The ground floor has the Michael Kors accessories range, the first floor has a wide women’s wear range and below-ground is the men’s collections.

Product Marketing Managers are the Voice of the Customer to the rest of the company. They have to gain a deep understanding of customer engagement with the product and drive that engagement. Michael Kors ultimately went for the GQ man with an underground pool table, drinks bar, white lighting and many models serving the customers.

To launch the new products for the opening of the new store #MyArrival  was launched across platforms to follow four European men on their journeys to London.  Each man has a unique style and social following to push the new men’s product range to the London audience; Matthew Zorpas, founder of The Gentleman Blogger with 128,000 followers; Parisian blogger Romain Costa; Mattias Swenson, a co-founder of bloglovin.com used by over 20 million; And DJ Laurens van Leeuwen (dating Victoria’s Secret Angel Romee Strijd and pictured above).  This followed #SetYourSights a campaign more tailored to the female product range that has noted over 2.8 million hits.

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Required reference:

YouCom Media News, April 2017, London, ‘Product Marketing with Michael Kors.’

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The Lost Generation

Also known as the Generation of 1914.  This is the age group who fought in World War I. The members of the lost generation were born between 1883 and 1900.  This was the first of the list of generations marketing categories created.  Sadly, none of this group are alive today.

The Greatest Generation

Also known as the G.I. Generation.  This includes the veterans who fought in World War II. The members of the G.I. Generation were born between 1900 to 1924.  This group had high attention spans like their predecessors of approximately 1 hour plus, as they spent their time reading detailed newspaper articles that looked more like academic texts than the snappy stories we read today, or authors like Dickens.  They required intelligent marketing, editorials, localised Direct Mail works well.  They are of high morality and ethical.  They fought, they served, they gave us our freedoms we enjoy today.

The Silent Generation

The Silent Generation are also rather romantically known as the Lucky Few.  This includes men who fought in World War II, the Korean War and many who fought during the Vietnam War.  Similar to the Greatest Generation, the Lucky Few respond well to localised direct mail and (formal) personalisation, possessing long attention spans like their ‘greatest generation’ parents. Typically an attention span of this generation (decline of older age aside) is between 40-60 minutes as they often read the lengthy novels and newspapers of their parents.  The members of the silent generation were born between 1925 and 1945.

The Baby Boomers

This is the generation that was born following World War II.  Members of the baby boomer generation were born between 1946 to 1964.  At this time due to the end of the World War, there was a marked increase in birth rates and prosperity.  This generation is the generation still alive today which common consensus agrees has the most wealth for brands marketing products and services to sell to.  They are also widely regarded as the most educated and self-motivated.  The baby boomer is most likely to own more than one home in more than one country with more than one car.  They worked hard and saved for a good pension.

Baby boomers were the first generation to see a marked decline in attention spans due to the changes of the world around them. Consequently, they respond well to localised direct mail and personalisation, catalogue marketing, coupons and voucher marketing, cinema advertising, billboards, signage, TV advertising, editorials, radio advertising and PPC.  Baby Boomers are less knowledgeable for online marketing (unless their career required later learning), so PPC to this group is simply the first results on the search page and more effective than natural search results.

Directory marketing run by our Direct Response department works very well for this generation and most would use their local BT Phonebook rather than look for a business online. Attention spans for baby boomers would be typically 20 minutes as their novel of choice became more Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel or Jack Higgins than the Dickens of their parents i.e. shorter novel length, smaller vocabularly and faster plots. With a penchance for broadsheets requiring more time to digest, 20 minutes was broadly what the brain required and therefore became the approximate attention span of this generation (Darwinism states the brain evolves to meet its environment and advertisers must evolve to meet the same changes).

Generation X

Usually abbreviated to Gen X, this generation were born after the baby boom and retained a lot of their parents’ traits.  They also desire to exceed their parents’ achievements.  Generation X are highly educated, active, balanced, happy, and family-oriented.  They were the first generation to have a great surge in entrepreneurs.  These are the go-getters and self-starters.  They are ambitious and were the last generation to have a good attention span (although further decline was noted in comparison to their baby boomer and silent generation parents).

Attention spans of Gen X people declined by approximately 9 minutes from the previous generation to approximately 11 minutes. This generation grew up with Thundercats rather than Thunderbirds and with Dungeons and Dragons rather than The Jetsons (childrens cartoons for Gen X and Baby Boomers respectively). However compare both those differing cartoon types to the Teletubbies of 1997 (Millenial generation era) and you can see one example of why attention spans shorten from an early age.  Members of Generation X were born between 1964 and 1980 and will still be found reading a broadsheet or novel.

Generation X are the greatest group for multi-channel marketing, able to process the editorials effective with the Baby Boomers, yet still be at ease with mobile app advertising and natural search results.  Cinema advertising works well with this group the most frequent audience and radio advertising also.  Localised direct mail starts to become less effective with this group and personalised mail whilst still effective is starting to become less able to stop the journey from the letterbox to the bin.

Outdoor advertising such as out of home and alternative marketing like guerrilla marketing is effective for Generation X people.  TV advertising is still effective but less so as people can now pause live TV and turn to services such as NetFlix and Amazon TV.  Generation X looks past the PPC results for the natural search results.  In some studies, participants ignored PPC completely beginning their reading at the first natural search result.  Printed directories are less effective for this generation although the earlier members still use them.  Online directories are however highly effective because of how they filter through into the natural search results on Google, Yahoo and Bing.  Members of Generation X were born between 1964 and 1980.

Millennials

Often known as the Millennial Generation, or Generation Y. The Millennials are generalised as having traits of greater confidence and tolerance, but also a new sense of entitlement and narcissism that wasn’t seen in such numbers from the previous list of generations.  In the millennial generation this group are a mix of those still with traits of generation X and those whose attention spans were beginning to shorten dramatically.  By the end of the millennial period, attention spans had shortened to just 12 seconds (compare that to 11-12 minutes of their parents).  This has had a great impact on advertising campaigns to this audience and many brands were too slow to adapt their marketing.

Advertising messaging needs to be much shorter to this group with more imagery.  Millennials have a sense of being let down, that the world isn’t the way they thought it would be.  This entitlement factor mostly isn’t met by reality.  Sujansky (2009), states that Millennials “continually show up late for work, ask to leave early, always turn down overtime requests and wonder why they haven’t been promoted after just one year on the job”. There is a lot of ‘job-hopping’ in this generation, rather than patience to learn a trade. In fairness to this generation, they are simply adapting to the changing world around them and will be more tech-savvy than their predecessors, less content to accept the status quo and more likely to question saying ‘why not?’.

Offer based advertising, money off, price match advertising all works well to this group.  Aspirational advertising and advertising better suited to storytelling using real-life examples of other customers work best. Channels such as radio isn’t suited to that.  Cinema advertising works, Mobile apps, outdoor, out of home and natural search including online directories all works well for this generation group.  Signage is less important as this group are less brand loyal and drive vehicles less than previous generations.  Members of Generation Y were born between 1980 and 2000.

Generation Z

The list of generations concludes (until 2025) with the group that follows generation Y (the millennials).  They are occasionally referred to as Generation Alpha but more known as Generation Z.  Generation Z is highly skilled with technology.  But they are also under more social pressure than any other generation before them.  Their lives are all shared and online.  Society has moved toward expectations for all young people to aspire to University education while apprenticeships and early employment are all but unheard of.

Unfortunately, due to the changes observed in the millennial generation, the average Generation Z member has a documented attention span of only 8 seconds (for context and we apologise to use such a worn analogy; a goldfish has an attention span of 7 seconds). Yes Generation Z multi-task, yes they can do more simultaneously than their parents, but 8 seconds is not anything to be proud of and is something brands need to adjust to with their marketing plans.  Members of this generation were born from 2000 and the category won’t close until 2025.

How to Advertise to Generation Z and to prepare for when they form your main customer audience

Generation Z are most notably at ease with today’s communications.  They have grown up with the internet and social media.  They are familiar with viral videos, virtual interfacing, international gaming, and comfortable with technology in general.  Unlike previous generations a greater than average proportion of their social interactions is from social media websites.

It is a widely held view that growing up through the crisis or recession of 2008 has given this generation a feeling of unsettlement and insecurity.  This combination of social factors makes Generation Z one of the hardest to advertise to.  They are clued up and will switch off from traditional advertising.  With today’s options to pause live TV they have more resource to remove themselves from brand messaging.

Indeed, Generation Z watches more YouTube and online video than traditional TV (and TV advertising or sponsorship).  In a way, this shows how brands must change how they organise their advertising and marketing (more emphasis on digital, social media, video, imagery and reviews).

Advice 1 – Images Are Important

Generation Z has grown up with visual communications. Every one of them has tablets or big screen smartphones. They can filter and edit pictures and have entire conversations with just photos (think Pinterest, Instagram or Snapchat).  We advise clients to keep imagery as a constant central theme through their messaging to this generation.

Advice 2 – Short Attention Span

The average Generation Z member has an attention span of only 8 seconds (a goldfish has an attention span of 7 seconds).  Generally, attention spans have decreased by 4 seconds since the Millennials (Generation Y) who were the last to actively challenge the world around them in a way where they were forced to memorise, learn, adapt and multi-task without the help of an electronic device or peer sharing.

Therefore, Generation Z marketing must maintain short, snappy content. Lots of soundbites, use of repetitive slogans and jingles.  You will begin to notice politicians adopting the same strategies of repetitive short slogans to cover both this (increasing) generation plus their parents.

Reach out and yank their attention fast or they will be past your content and on to other brand messaging.

Advice 3 – Real Life Reviews

Generation Z is the social media generation.  They will share content and therefore will more quickly identify advertising.  If brand messaging is or appears to be genuine advice and useful guidance (or just interesting to their group) Generation Z will retweet, repost, or share it digitally or by word of mouth.  This increases importance to review management and review gathering (services offered by our Direct Response team).  Good Google+ reviews will increase your brand engagement with this generation.

Advice 4 – Hunt Them Down

Facebook is now more popular with the previous generations (including the baby boomers).  As it becomes populated with mum’s and dad’s, Generation Z are turning to other channels such as Twitter or Tumblr.  For this reason, YouCom Media had chosen to focus our own brand engagement on social platforms other than Facebook.

Social Media Management will become increasingly important for your brand as this generation Z gets older.  Remember, the first of this generation Z (born in 2000) are already 16 years old now.  In a few more years they will become your main customer audience, looking to move out, requiring driving lessons, insurance, storage, banking, finance, car rental, solicitors, and with increasing disposable income for opticians’ products, mobile phones, clothes etc.

Follow the YouCom Media news posts to see the next developments.

• Our Facebook news
• Our Twitter news
• Our Pinterest news
• Our LinkedIn news

Required reference:

YouCom Media News, January 2017, London, ‘Generation Z  attention spans’

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