• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, August 21, 2024

Gen Z is stepping into the DIY world of home improvement, in ways that are decidedly different from the millennials who came before them, according to Home Depot.

For one thing, fewer of them can afford to buy homes, so their projects are often smaller-scale or aimed at apartment rentals. “Their views about home improvement are quite a bit different," said Tamika Hewlett, director of audience strategy and customer lifecycle at the Home Depot.  “They have a different affinity to brands and connect with those brands differently. They consume content differently. They're engaging in different places.”

That requires a new approach, Hewlett said, speaking at MediaPost’s Brand Insider Retail Summit in Lake Tahoe, California. Using deeper social listening than in the past, “we are making sure we foster a deep, authentic connection, and a lot of that is through our storytelling." The retail giant is also using the element of surprise, hoping to let these younger shoppers know that Home Depot’s expertise is always available.

“We’ve been messaging about being a plant parent,” she said. “We probably wouldn't have talked about that several years ago. We’re just finding natural moments to immerse ourselves in the conversation appropriately, but in a way that feels very engaging for Gen Z and the millennials.”

That requires thinking about an “end-to-end customer experience. We have to be thinking about paid, earned and owned media. I’d even take it a step further. To engage with millennials and Gen Z in the right way, we've even got to think about experiential activations.”

Using a customer-first strategy means rethinking the most relevant moments in the shopping journey. “Making sure that we are as relevant as possible and in the right channels is critical for us,” she said, whether the retailer is reaching out to younger consumers who are often pursuing smaller projects, baby boomers who are downsizing, or its Pro audience.

Hewlett noted that while the company engineered many of these message and channel adjustments to lure Gen Z, “we're finding that we're sometimes even over-indexing with some of our more core audiences. They're engaging with that newer content. They see it as fresh, and they trust Home Depot.”

These demographic shifts are happening as the real-estate economy has many younger consumers in a headlock, with higher interest rates and scarce housing trapping many of them. Fewer people moving squeezes companies like Home Depot, which recently reported a 3.6% drop in comparable sales for the second quarter, and rival Lowe’s, which just reported a 5.1% decline.

“I fundamentally believe this is an opportunity for innovation and a chance for us to think differently about how we can go after different audiences,” Hewlett added. “This is a moment when we are asking ourselves, 'How can we be more disruptive with our creative? With our channel mix?’”