FW: Generation V (apparently)

From: Melissa Bolling
Conversation: Generation V (apparently)

News
Forget Generations X and Y: Here comes Generation V
Companies must overhaul their marketing plans to target the latest group,
Gartner says
Heather Havenstein (Computerworld) 15 November, 2007 08:00:02

Much has been made of the stereotypical characteristics of the generations
that followed the Baby Boomer era. The same can be said of the latest
generation, but Gartner warns marketers to define them by their online
actions rather than their birth dates. In a report released this week,
Gartner said that traditional marketing methods won't work with this new
group of consumers.

The latest group, dubbed Generation Virtual, or V, is made up of people from
multiple demographic age groups who make social connections online - through
virtual worlds, in video games, as bloggers, in social networks or through
posting and reading user-generated content at e-commerce sites like
Amazon.com, said Adam Sarner, senior analyst at Gartner.

The V generation is made up of people who are drawn to the Internet's "flat
meritocracy" where people can gain status and acknowledgement through ways -
like providing advice or recommendations or excelling at a video game - not
generally available in the physical world. Basically, Generation V is made
up of people who replace physical experience with an online experience,
Sarner added.

The online distinction is important, he noted, because companies looking to
sell products and services to this generation of consumers can no longer
rely on traditional demographic data like name, age and address to tailor
marketing messages. Generation V is more likely to interact with marketers
anonymously - through an online persona made up of all their online
behaviors, Sarner said.

"We have to start dealing with this idea of anonymous, multiple personas
interacting with our businesses and how to do that," Sarner said.
"[Businesses] are creating a world with processes to get them to purchase
things. Virtual environments will be a way to orchestrate customer
exploration, [but] underneath is the reality that they are providing goods
and services."

Over time, gathering details about the online personas of consumers will
become far more important than the mining of demographic data, he added. By
2015, Gartner asserts, more money will be spent marketing and selling to
multiple online personas than money spent marketing to off-line consumers.

For companies to prepare to market to Generation V, Gartner recommends:

* Organizing products and services around multiple online personas;

* Selling to the persona not the person;

* Creating virtual environments as a way to orchestrate customer
exploration toward purchases;

* Shifting investments from known customers to unknown ones; and

* Developing and retaining new employee skills to attract, connect,
contribute and gain insight from generation V and their virtual
environments.