The Importance of Messaging, Part 1: Generations

“As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth attaining youth.” ― Douglas Coupland

There is a kind of excitement that turns into dread that people trying out new ideas have upon discovering that what seemed like something original and good ends up being loathed and even called offensive. Oftentimes, this is not out of malice, but out of being uninformed or misinformed.

Take for example esteemed comedian like Jerry Seinfeld going to a college campus and doing a stand-up comedy routine that doesn’t win the same love and laughter he is used to from his work in the 1990s: Jerry’s routine resonates with Baby Boomers, Generation-X, Xennials (pay attention to this), and some older Millennials, but core Millennials, Zillennials (pay attention to this too), and Gen-Z/Zoomers might not appreciate his humor.

Jerry Seinfeld then concludes he won’t do any more comedy routines on college campuses, believing that Millennials and Gen-Z don’t have a sense of humor. This is the moment that we can hit pause and say, “No, Jerry: you just didn’t prepare your message for your audience.”

When you try to communicate with others, whether it is through engagement with other organizations, prospective donors, volunteers, or general outreach and advertising, it is a huge mistake to try to make others understand and adapt to you rather than seeking to first understand before being understood–incidentally one of the teachings found in Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People.

What Jerry could have done first is research current trends popular among the youth demographic especially on campuses, their sociopolitical values, and compare that to what he wants to say rather than repeating the same message he has done for years. In a social enterprise perspective, this is equivalent to initiating the same project that worked in the past and never paying attention to current research and data showing that there are better ways to achieve the same goals faster, cheaper, and better. At worst, the people you are addressing will not understand you, at worst, they might even get bored with you and dislike you.

In the case of Jerry Seinfeld, he pursued a polarizing approach because Zillennial and Zoomer students didn’t like his sense of humor, often finding it offensive or out of touch, the kind of things their parents and grandparents would laugh at. Rather than trying to understand, Jerry doubles down and creates an unnecessary division instead of building commonalities.

Furthermore, Jerry didn’t even realize that the people he was angry at for rejecting his comedy were multiple demographics, not just one generation–which he had assumed were all “just Millennials”. And even so, within a generation, there are people with different backgrounds and experiences that show that show how different they can be, which is not an unnecessary division, but a distinct identity with its own values that need to be respected.

If you try to push ideas and jokes that were funny in the 1970s, you might get some grandparents laughing, but your peers and everyone younger than you will either get confused, offended, or worse, bored. Likewise, if you try to be too modern, you will appear too juvenile to older audiences and prospective supporters. So where do we find a middle ground?

Two ways to approach this: the first is to create a generic but ultimately bland idea that tries to be universally appealing but will quickly bore everyone. Let’s just say now that this is not the way you should approach a middle ground. The second one, which we highly encourage, is to create a core message and repackage it appropriately for each audience. By following this approach, you may spend more time researching and preparing your ideas, but you’ll save a lot more time, money, and headaches from repairing any possible damage from miscommunications.

An example of this is people believing that you can eliminate a website and phone line in order to do everything on social media because “everyone is on there”. Oh, boy, you couldn’t be more wrong.

If you put everything on Facebook and Instagram, you’ve limited yourself to a predominantly Millennial demographic, with some Generation-X people on the younger end of the generation spectrum, and very few Zoomers because less Zoomers are on Facebook, thinking it’s where “all the old people are” and fearing their privacy and security.

The other faulty assumption here is assuming that all social media is the same–nope, Facebook may have been “it” in the 2000s, but it’s only one of many platforms which likes to believe it is the universal social media platform when it never was the original to begin with, and yet here we have not only Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and reddit, but we have niche platforms and regional platforms unique to language and cultural groups. If you put everything just on Facebook and Instagram, you’ll appeal to a specific group of Millennials and everyone else won’t know you exist, and find you unprofessional because you limit your access to those platforms.

In the Philippines, for example, many businesses do this, and it works in the country because Facebook is offered for free with mobile data access, meaning it costs no money off of your mobile bill or require a computer to create an account and use. This creates a barrier for people who don’t and won’t use Facebook, especially when the common response is to treat those without a Facebook as “stubborn” instead of offering a phone line, website and e-mail, or other means of contacting them. If you force people to adjust to you rather than adjusting to them, you’re only going to lose supporters and possibly make enemies.

In the generational model, you do need a human being in spite of technological advances, because someone’s grandparents in both the Silent and Baby Boomer generations don’t like being on their devices, Generation-X hates being put on hold listening to elevator music on the phone as much as it hates using AI customer support, and finally, the microgenerations of Xennials and Zillennials–groups who have distinct values and experiences–want to at least be acknowledged rather than thrown into a generic broad label. Let’s briefly elaborate on Xennials and Zillennials: Xennials are a microgeneration commonly designated as being born in the range of 1977-1983, having experiences and values that are a mix of Gen-X and Millennial, but being seen as “too young” to be “really” Gen-X and too old and uncool to be Millennial. They had an analog childhood and a wired young adulthood, and are very adamant about not having the tech privilege commonly associated with Millennials, or the cynicism of Generation-X. Zillennials are a microgeneration who are a little less defined than Xennials and are more of a voluntary association of people born between 1993-1998.

What distinguishes Zillennials from Millennials and Gen-Z is that their technology gap for social media and mobile phones, as well as political events that shaped their values, are different: some were too young for Occupy Wall Street and others were growing up when Facebook was already becoming “uncool” for them, some never even had a Facebook account! What Xennials and Zillennials have in common is that the pace of technology affected them more in a much shorter time frame, and as such, it influenced world events and their values differently, requiring specific strategies to recognize and connect with them. Failing to do so and just calling them Millennials and Zoomers in the short run may seem more convenient, but recognizing them will immediately get a lot of gratitude and support. Everyone wants to be seen and heard, especially the people whose parents taught them that “children should be seen, not heard”, a distinct upbringing experience for Baby Boomer and Gen-X children.

So if you want to connect with people of all ages, make sure that you have a plan to address everyone from the Silent Generation to Baby Boomers, Generation-X, Xennials, Millennials, Zillennials, and Zoomers. To begin connecting with them is to first acknowledge that they all exist, listening to them, and finding out what is meaningful for them all and how you can deliver your message that resonates with them.