BRAND BUILDING 12 Q2 • 2021 FEATURE


Creating a Cultural Shift in Marketing


GEN Z: By Liz Brody g


en Z’s presence is hard to ignore. According to a Bloomberg analysis of United Nations data, and using 2000/2001 as the generational


split, Gen Z nudged ahead of millennials in 2019 as the world’s largest demographic. Today, they equate to 40 percent of US consumers and have a buying power of up to $150 billion. By 2026, Gen Z will number 86 million US consumers. But what should really wake marketers up is the cultural shift this generation is ushering in. Born after 1996, Gen Zers came of age with iPhones in their hands and social media as their schoolyard and have never known a world without the internet. Thanks to the pandemic, the rest of the world has been catching up to them at warp speed, says Eric Jones, VP of Corporate Marketing for WP Engine, the global managed WordPress hosting platform. “If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s taught us about having a virtual-first mentality in everything that we do.” Jones is so convinced of Gen Z’s importance as a


key to effective marketing that he commissioned an annual survey by WP Engine in 2019 to understand how Gen Z thinks and acts. According to Jones, all marketers—not just those who are trying to reach Gen Z—need to fundamentally change the way they’ve been doing things to stay in the game.


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