Gen Alpha is rising as
the most influential new household decision maker, in large part because of the impact they have on what, when and how their parents buy.
Gen Alpha (those born 2010-2024) wield over $28B
in direct spending, and $100B in overall spending. They are a key household decision-maker in categories across the board from travel and retail to food and beverage to
healthcare and automotive. So if you’re a marketer looking to impact and engage Gen X, Millennials, or Gen Zs, you’d better ask yourself how well you know the
Gen Alphas living with them.
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One of the things that makes Gen Alpha so uniquely influential is their enmeshment with their parents. For previous generations, maturity came
with autonomy and rebellion. But for Gen Alpha, the relationship between parent and child is characterized by interwoven identities, blurring the lines between roles, creating the rise of the
"parentified child" and the "child-like parent." Marketers must recognize the importance of listening to the constant dialogue between parents and children; tuning out either voice means
misunderstanding the entire family market.
Here are 5 key implications for marketers:
Spark cross-generation impact: If you want to change the buying
behaviors of Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, you’d better leverage the influencers of Gen Alpha. The brands that collaborate with these influencers well will spark generational
propagation planning.
Be willing to break the Rules. For no reason: Brands that bend towards the unhinged are winning with Gen Alpha not only because they are
entertaining, but because they are joining their audience in openly rebelling against the overthinking, overengineering, and overstrategizing of older generations. Marketers, long obsessed
with telling stories, will need to contend with a generation drawn to “no plot, just vibes.” And consider the ROI of joining Gen Alpha in reveling in the act of being messy, unpredictable,
and human.
Help the parents chill out. Gen Alpha is growing up amid hurry, overwhelm, noise, and boundaries. The biggest contributor to this
overwhelm isn’t them, it’s their parents’ anxiety. If brands want to build a bond with Gen Alphas and prove themselves as trustworthy advocates, they will need to
stop marketing to their parents’ anxiety and instead help parents show up as confident leaders, not worried concierges. Marketers can be part of redefining good parenting in a way that sparks
independence and self-worth for both the parents and the kids.
Be a male role model. The boys are struggling. Today, boys account for over 70% of all school
suspensions and are four times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. For young boys of color, this label is applied even more aggressively; by age nine, nearly 40% of Black boys have
already been suspended or expelled at least once.
Yes, men continue to hold positions of power across the world. But the world is telling boys another story about themselves: at
7, you are a disruption; at 18, an academic failure; and at 30, a buffoon father. Like the Gen Z boys before them, we are handing Gen Alphas a script that says
they don’t have problems, they are the problem.
And brands have been part of creating the "role model vacuum" that extremist creators and spotlight-hungry leaders
are more than happy to fill. Gen Alpha boys need a middle ground, role models who are both competitive and respectful. Energetic and empathetic. Confident and kind. Who are the men your brand
is lifting up as models of strong masculinity? How are you elevating male figures, creators, partners who can tell a more balanced story of what it means to be a man?
Embrace
contradictions and nuance. Gen Alpha is the most diverse generation in U.S. history, yet they are being raised in an extremely polarized culture. As the first majority non-white generation
in the U.S., their complex identities defy the simple narratives marketers crave. This is a generation for whom authenticity is non-negotiable.
And first, marketers must
understand what "authenticity" even looks like - it can have wildly different meanings depending on who you are trying to reach. What does authenticity look like to the individual? In their social
sphere? In culture at large?
As marketers, we must commit to consistently abandoning generalizations, asking ourselves who is being overlooked, and pushing ourselves
to embrace the paradoxes.