What’s the Big Deal About Gen Z?
There are over 67 million Gen Z-ers in the United States, 149 million in China, and 2.5 billion people worldwide, making us the largest generation and a key audience for your outreach.
Gen Z is unique to other generations:
- We utilize different platforms to communicate with each other globally (TikTok, Instagram, etc.)
- We enjoy different/newer forms of outreach (Short-Form Video, Augmented Reality, etc.)
- We generally respond to different kinds of content better than those in other generations.
Since we’ve spent our lives on phones and TV, cutting-edge technology (specifically XR) is the perfect thing to grab our attention and make us remember your company's name.
Sorry, but flyers and junk mail just aren’t going to cut it.
Key Takeaways
- Immersive and interactive experiences help your school stand out to Gen Z-ers in a time when everything is already accessible on our screens 24/7.
- Because of the pandemic, young people’ really want to interact in a safe and yet very interpersonal way, turning to virtual reality as a way to connect with people and make decisions about our communities and future.
- The corporate world is catching on: major brands like Sony, Google, and the NFL are
successfully investing in AR campaigns to reach Gen Z-ers.
Give Young Adults What They Want: New & Exciting Stuff
A recent McKinsey study found that Gen Z students view consumption as “access rather than possession.” We see everything from the shoes we buy to the schools we attend as an “expression of individual identity”.
📷 Source: McKinsey (2019)
What does this mean? It means that Gen Z-ers connect deeply with and care a lot about the choices we make, paying attention to every aspect of products, like their impact on society and the environment. We care about individual expression, and so want to feel represented by and excited about our what we bring into our lives. You need to reach out to us in a way that will make us feel at home, whether that means showing them how awesome your company life is or how similar our values and strengths are. It also means conducting outreach in a way that grabs our attention and creates a feeling of belonging through access to your company life.
Cool Tech is in Fashion
The next challenge is effectively conducting outreach: A Dell Inc. study found that 80% of Gen Z-ers aspire to work with
cutting-edge technology, and 91% said that technology would influence their job choice among similar employment offers. This fascination with the newest technology, combined with its influence on outreach makes XR the best way for Gen Z-ers (cooped up in our homes due to COVID) to experience all your company has to offer. In fact, as Samantha G. Wolfe, NYC Adjunct Professor and Founder of PitchFWD, said, “These types of digital world experiences are almost expected by Gen Z consumers, who have turned to shared gaming as a way to connect with their friends during the pandemic.”
To not only be competitive with other companies in the same market, but also with YouTube and other content that keeps us up all night, you need a way to draw us into visualizing life at your company, or life using your products, and XR is that way.
Nowhere else can this be better seen than in the XR gaming revolution. With games like Pokemon Go attracting loyal Gen Z-ers, the proof of how much we love the new, whether that be for its novelty or superior experience, is in the pudding. Pokemon Go and XR games like it have the unique ability to immerse Gen-Zers in a different reality in a way no other competing technology can. The popularity of these games that can augment reality offer up a lesson: stay ahead of the curve with AR and young people will come to experience your company in a way that others simply cannot match!
📷Source: David Grandmougin
This Stuff Works!
Nike is a prime example of how XR can be used to attract people. In order to promote their new T90 soccer shoe to teens in Hong Kong, Nike built off of excitement for the Olympics and the Euro 2008 tournament and used an AR campaign to boost interest. They hid codes throughout the city for kids to scan with their cameras, at which point AR visualizations of the T90 shoes would appear for browsing along with an invitation to download an app and see the shoe from every angle in 3D. This initiative resulted in 60% of participants downloading the app, along with thousands of interactions.
The success of another AR content marketing company, 8th Wall, also supports the case for XR’s growing impact on Gen Z. Currently, they power more than 5,000 web AR apps and conduct AR campaigns for companies like Sony Pictures, Miller Lite, and Porshe.
The numerical proof of XR’s efficacy is simply indisputable. Home Depot reported that its new AR Product Visualization Feature boosts conversions by 2-3 times that of non-AR benchmarks. Additionally, Herschel Supply Co., a backpack and accessories retailer, found that its AR visualization feature for online orders led to a 152% increase in Revenue-per-Visit.
Sunrise XR partners with a variety of companies
in order to help them reach this new generation of consumers as effectively as possible.
So…What Should You Do?
Effective XR outreach to young people can look like many different things. Sending out
promotional materials that include XR will get us to open your emails, thereby increasing engagement with your company through marketing.
Additionally, virtual events such as
site tours and group meetups over virtual reality will give us the confidence and space with which to build connections around the company and really grow attached to it. Regardless of the outreach measure, the incorporation of XR into it can be exceptionally helpful for more accurately reaching Gen-Z in ways that commands our interest and makes us look your way!