Brands Using Social Media for Gen X
Jeremy Owyang, social media analyst at Forrester and web strategist par excellence, wrote on a topic I don’t see as often as I’d have expected in the blogosphere: How Brands Reach Gen X Using Social Media. Gen Y yes of course, but not Gen X. This generation - I should say my generation - born 1961 to 1981 seems like an afterthought between the economically mightier generations that sandwich it, the boomers and boomlets, the present and future windfall segments of marketing convention.
Jeremy’s post struck me as another lens through which to look at our own blog, Brands That Ripple. Really, we’re attacking the same question from another angle. When we look at how brands use social media to engage kitchen table issues - personal finance, careers, healthcare, education, leisure are the 5 we’re looking at - what we’re really looking at is how brands use social media to engage various markets, including those we segment as generations. In this lens, these kitchen table issues touch Gen X in a unique and central way - precisely because we are sandwiched by boomers and boomlets. We are the ones at the peak of our careers, balancing personal finance, healthcare, education, and leisure worries as we take care of children ranging in age from toddlers to teens and young adults (the boomlets) and parents (boomers) who approach retirement in the middle of the greatest recession in 50 years.
Bottom line, for marketers Generation X is an interesting psychographic insofar as we’re bearing a heavy brunt of today’s kitchen table issues. Those brands who can use social media to engage our kitchen table issues have a great opportunity to engage us.