Centennials aren't millennials, claims one inbound marketing agency

Our Rose wrote a good piece the other day about her experiences working at an inbound marketing agency. She pointed out how ironic it was that a group of millennials were calling her a millennial, when she’s actually nothing of the sort.

She is, in fact, a centennial; someone born after 1995 (feel old yet?) Centennials are also known as Post-Millennials, the iGeneration, Founders, Plurals, or the Homeland Generation.

So hang on, why aren’t they millennials if they were born close to the turn of the millennium? It’s easy to see where confusion can reign and the lines get blurred; one of the main causes being everyone’s always talking about millennials.

There’s a raging war happening in the media and on the internet between millennials and baby boomers (depending on what you read and where you go), with the latter claiming millennials are soft snowflakes and the former arguing that boomers are saddling them with unfair debt.

There’s always someone that gets caught in the crossfire though, and it’s centennials in this case. Fairly or unfairly, they get lumped in with the millennial generation, mainly because they’re just as online focused as their forebearers.

There’s also the spending factor. Millennials get focused on because they’re the largest generation; bigger than baby boomers and about to enter their peak spending years according to research by Goldman Sachs.

Cents and sensibility

Why mention centennials? Because, increasingly, we’re coming across more and more companies that are guilty of the above: melding centennials into their millennial marketing strategy.

The reasons we’re hearing are pretty logical, too – but wrong. The main one being along the lines of ‘they’re all on the internet though, aren’t they?’

While a good point, it’s also totally wide of the mark, and underlines why you need to investigate your market and work with an inbound marketing agency to carve out highly-accurate personas to speak to potential quality leads on a personal, human level.

The internet’s an ever-evolving beast with new start-ups and established companies releasing new hardware and software on a regular basis to totally disrupt traditional ways of doing things and – in a lot of cases – make life a whole lot easier.

That evolution also falls to centennials who, yes, are connected and growing up online, but are also reacting to that shifting online landscape to evolve the brand experiences of the future.

A widening generation gap

That’s according to a study by Forrester Consulting (commissioned by American Express) called ‘Raising the Bar: How Gen Z Expectations Are Reshaping Brand Experiences’ to discover the brand expectations of centennials compared against millennials.

The generations have less in common than you think, showing again how essential it is to work with an inbound marketing agency to discover more about your market, its likes and its dislikes before you spend time and money on a marketing campaign.

Digital is an essential part of both generations’ brand experience, but the study shows exactly how the internet is changing the consumer landscape. For a lot of centennials, the phone is a no-go with only 38% choosing it as their preferred method of communications against 49% of millennials.

One response which also underlines the power of informative and creative content is that 31% of centennials will investigate and explore online resources to solve a problem with a product or a service on their own. Only 18% of millennials will do the same.

There’s a huge amount to take out of the survey and we suggest you give it a read. Centennials are twice as likely to leave a brand because of poor responsiveness on social media for instance whilst mobile responsiveness is also a huge factor when it comes to their purchasing decisions.

Most telling – especially for those that are melding millennials and centennials together in their marketing strategies – is the report’s conclusion: “Gen Z is ushering in a new world order of empowered and entitled consumerism.

“[Brands] need to become customer obsessed and deliver experiences founded on the pillars of empathy and delivering utility such as immediacy, personalization, security and entertainment.”

That makes a lot of cents…

All of a sudden, the gap between millennials and centennials looks quite large.

Recently, too, we’ve seen multinational brands try and fail to reach out to millennial audiences in extremely awkward ways. This again goes to show how important it is to create personas with an inbound marketing agency in the UK or beyond, to reach out to audiences in the right ways.

We’re mainly looking at you, Pepsi, whose recent mash of what they believed were millennial issues in an advert caused a massive backlash of negativity against the brand for being out of touch. McDonald’s has recently come under fire, too, for its bizarre attempt to try and reach out to audiences through an off-the-mark child bereavement campaign.

It’s little wonder they’re trying new emotional marketing messages, though, when only one in five millennials has tried a Big Mac. It’s fair to assume that number is probably lower when it comes to centennials, too.

The ability of crafting personas with an inbound marketing agency simply can’t be overstated to learn when it comes to your marketing communications. Even the most subtle differences and trends in the generations can be a powerful weapon when it comes to reaching out to individual leads within your market.

So, what are some of the key trends between millennials and centennials that separate them from each other? Again, it’s an ever-evolving landscape that you need to keep an eye on.

The differences between millennials and centennials

In general, millennials are known to favour experiences instead of possessions, with a new spending analysis showing that they’re even sacrificing leisure spending and time at the gym to spend more time in pubs and clubs.

Millennials may also be a mobile-focused generation, but centennials are typically more mobile-native than any other. Again, generally, that has helped to promote a culture of short attention spans with centennials experiencing sensory overload from mobiles, TV, desktop and laptop computers and other devices on a regular basis.

That’s not an overwhelming negative though, and has contributed to a lot of the generation picking up sharper decision-making skills to filter out the noise. A key factor in them dropping brands that aren’t socially-savvy, perhaps?

Learn from an inbound marketing agency

Persona creation with an inbound marketing agency will help you learn more about your market, their likes and dislikes and let you target the right people in the ways that matter most to them; centennial, millennial, boomer and everybody else in-between.

Generate fresh, targeted inbound leads and reach out to the markets that matter most to you in creative ways by contacting the Six & Flow team today. We're a UK inbound marketing agency based in Manchester, with big ideas on how to help businesses grow. Get in touch to find out more.

As an experienced inbound marketing agency, we’ve worked with brands from all backgrounds to deliver bespoke inbound strategies across a variety of channel. We help people better identify and attract those who matter most to their growth ambitions. Want to know more? Read “Lessons from an inbound marketing agency”.