How to attract fans born in the 90s? Successful brands are using these 5 strategies

Trying to label young people may seem lazy, but it is necessary to gain insights into this consumer group from a marketing perspective. This is a prerequisite for acquiring high-quality incremental users with strong spending power and open mindsets.

What can you infer from the following events?

● The 56-year-old high-end ice cream brand Haagen-Dazs has completely renewed its packaging, logo, and stores around the world, changing its luxurious and noble style to a simple and fresh one.

● BMW MINI launched its new car on the WeChat public account “Rebecca’s Fantasy World” and sold 100 cars in 4 minutes with a total price of 28,500,000 yuan.

● A memorial service ceremony using electronic music and chanting was held at the Teruno-ji Temple in Fukui City, Japan, and was broadcast live on the barrage website.

● 360 Smart Home held a press conference in Beijing 798, inviting a group of comedians to launch smart products in the form of a drama performance.

● NetEase News and Ele.me opened a “ Sangcha ” pop-up store in Shanghai, which went viral on social networks .

These brands and organizations may be bold and daring, or have unique ideas, but the purpose behind them is the same: to attract the attention of young people. "Young people" is a term with extremely broad connotations and extensions. "Post-90s", "Post-95s", "Millennials" and "Generation Z" are all its synonyms.

It is necessary to gain insights into this consumer group from a marketing perspective. Where are young people’s pain points, itch points, and disgust points distributed? How can we do marketing to win the hearts of young people? These 5 insights may help you sort out your thoughts.

1. Post-90s generation becomes the leader of discourse system

Those born in the 1990s and 1995s were born with the Internet. They are more skilled and efficient in acquiring information. Their open mind towards new information makes them the inventors and fermenters of popular discourse systems.

Max the Mouth Cannon, Fat Ass, Awkward Dancing, Hole-Earned Lip, Black Question Mark Face... a series of words created by those born in the 1990s and 1995s are popular to varying degrees. In the context of the "post-metaphor era", the "as long as I'm happy" people born in the 1990s and 1995s let themselves go and create new words, while the somewhat guilty people born in the 1970s and 1980s show an attitude of admiration, becoming learners and promoters.

This phenomenon has brought unprecedented challenges to marketers , because as a discourse system, it is becoming increasingly difficult to "guide" and "please" young people. They are always able to discover or even create fresh and interesting concepts, phenomena or things for the first time, which makes a large number of mediocre products and marketing lose their foothold and can only receive "uninterested" evaluation.

Strategy: Let yourself go with the young people, or let yourself go more than them

In order to attract young people in the "post-metaphor era" who know too much, brands must either cater to them or come up with even bigger ideas than them, and be creative enough to leave young people confused and impressed.

The spokesperson for Japan's "national popsicle" BLACK is a little man with ugly simple lines. He is good at dancing sad and awkward dances, singing the advertising song "If this ad is going to increase sales, it would be damned", and even performing the dirty and stupid "underwear removal" dance. He is very popular among young people for his flaws and black humor.

2. Standard “experiencers” who like to pay for “small happiness”

The concept of "smart consumers" was first proposed by Google in 2016. It refers to people who advocate the value of " smart consumption and enjoy life ". This group of people spend a lot of time online and are willing to spend a lot of time and money to choose high-quality products: they will distinguish between soap bases and amino acids to understand the effects of facial cleansers; they will learn about mortise and tenon structures to choose the right furniture; they will browse all the reviews of all brands on the market to buy a sweeping robot...

Under the trend of consumption upgrading, young people no longer pick up a brand or a product from the shelf at random. They are also unwilling to hear empty slogans such as "make life more quality". They prefer practical and humanized detail designs, and like products and marketing that can bring "little happiness".

Strategy: Play the sentimental card sparingly, and eliminating "small but certain sadness" is the best way

Feelings may impress the "elevated class", but they may not necessarily make them loosen their grip on their wallets. Metaphysical sentiments need to be implemented in products and services in order to make the post-90s generation feel the sincerity. Products and services that can help those born after 1990 solve their “small but real disappointments” are the right approach to gaining recognition from the “elite generation”.

Compared to their predecessors who used price or noble origin as a measure of the quality of goods and services, those born in the 1990s are more concerned with seemingly trivial issues that will not cause any harm if not resolved. This is precisely what can bring them "little happiness" and is also an indicator of their sense of quality of life.

Problems like being unable to open web pages because the WiFi is too slow, being locked out of the house because you forgot to bring your keys, and having your eyes hurt by the light when you get up at night to turn on the lights... These problems won't kill you if they are not solved, but they will drive you crazy. They can easily resonate with young people and make them feel like, "I've been in this situation too."

For example, the 360 ​​Smart Home products recently launched, such as the 360 ​​Safe Night Light and Smart Door Lock, have addressed such "small but real frustrations" as "it's too blinding to turn on the light at night", "sliding door handles", and "the signal in the bathroom is too poor and I can't open the web on my phone while using the toilet". These products have been developed to address the daily needs of young people. This marketing strategy, which starts from young people's minor emotions such as fear and boredom, not only clarifies the specific functions of the product, but also fully pampers the post-90s generation who are prone to anxiety about trivial matters from an emotional perspective.

3. The younger age of mind is just a symptom, and the “early midlife crisis” is the truth

Young people nowadays are not interested in seriousness and extremes. They like to call themselves "babies", use emoticons instead of words, and cover up reality with the second dimension. All of this makes this group of people look very different from the traditional sense of maturity and stability, reflecting a tendency towards younger mental age.

On the other hand, the post-90s generation has begun to feel the trouble of the "pre-midlife crisis": they are keen to share their fitness check-ins on WeChat Moments , are willing to pay for knowledge , prefer products that exude the atmosphere of "consumption upgrade", are somewhat incapable of dealing with love and interpersonal relationships, are full of anxiety about career development, and feel desperate about housing prices...

The popular culture such as "sorrow" and cynical "hip-hop" in recent years is nothing more than a shell of the young people's spirit, and wrapped in this shell is the same anxiety as that of middle-aged people.

This is also the reason why negative energy marketing has become so popular. On the one hand, it directly points to the anxiety in the hearts of young people and triggers their strong emotional resonance. At the same time, it must be covered with the cloak of sadness, complaints, humor, etc. to soften this anxiety and allow young people to accept the heart-wrenching facts with a self-deprecating attitude.

Strategy: Use cute, silly, and sad gestures to vent anxiety in a subtle way

Just like in the past few decades, the "top star" of Japan's Sanrio Company has always been the gentle and cute Hello Kitty, who doesn't even have a mouth, bringing positive energy and healing to young people of the same generation. However, the situation has changed in recent years. An "Egg Yolk Brother" with unknown gender, soft body and depressed expression has become the new favorite of young people, winning countless fans with his lazy, cute and mean attitude.

If Hello Kitty is an exquisite lady, Gudetama is a sloppy and useless teenager. It helps young people vent their anxiety about the "pre-midlife crisis" in a humorous manner, which fits their emotions of being frustrated but able to find fun on their own, and thus becomes a new generation of cartoon internet celebrity .

4. The “instant” generation, IWWIWWWIWI mentality is the norm

Faced with diverse consumer choices that can be satisfied at any time, young people have extremely limited time and patience to stay on a certain product or brand. There is a term that can describe this mentality: IWWIWWWIWI, which is the abbreviation of "I want what i want when and where i want it." Translated, it means "I want what I want now; I want what I want right here."

This emphasizes both "what I want", which means that young people's consumption is mostly based on their subjective self-mentality, and "when I want it". This desire to get it immediately reflects the younger generation's behavioral habits of "instant consumption". They rarely plan or consider before purchasing a consumer product, but instead act quickly when the product meets their immediate expectations. As consumers are getting younger, the consumption behavior of buying after reading and buying if they like will become more and more common.

Strategy: Promise “fast” and reduce user psychological costs

In view of the young people’s consumption mentality of “getting something immediately when they want it”, businesses must of course first elevate “speed” into a brand characteristic. In addition to improving supply chain efficiency and shortening the time cost of each service link, are there any other tricks to please the customers? KFC in Thailand is very clever. The way they highlight "speed" is to design the product packaging box into a dynamic halo. Anyone who sees it will be surprised by the new KFC feature that is "lightning fast".

Therefore, there are many ways to "please" young people. It is not necessary to adopt a "heavy mode" of changing the appearance. For example, KFC has seized the "instant mentality" of the younger generation and added a "built-in acceleration" design to the appearance of the box.

Five: Oppose routines and refuse to be a "personality commodity bag"

Should literary youth visit Douban , wear MUJI , listen to folk songs, and read Raymond Carver?

People born in the 1990s are not obsessed with labels. Not only do they dislike the label "post-90s", they also resist labels such as "literary youth", "new middle class", and "light luxury".

The younger generation hopes to highlight their own characteristics and express their own tastes and moods through the products they consume. They also prefer products with emotional attributes and are often indifferent to cold industrial products. After all, it is the soft elements such as cuteness, obedience, loveliness, passion, and courage that make the products on the assembly line stand out from the crowd.

Strategy: Break the “fixed pattern” and say goodbye to the conventional routine

For this reason, it is difficult for brands targeting the post-90s generation to use terms such as "high quality", "luxury" and "exquisite" to justify their products. Instead, they should use methods that young people are keen on and find novel, so that they will fall in love with a product because of their emotions rather than out of vanity to show off to others.

Here is a question: If your family wants to promote a skin-nourishing essence, how would you introduce it to young people?

Ask beautiful celebrities to endorse the product and create a female image in the TVC that has many suitors, is glamorous and has the aura of a protagonist? Sorry, those born in the 90s think that is all lies. A serum advertisement in Thailand uses a humorous and nonsensical approach to make young people curious about the serum. What they did was to have a girl take a fish, sail across the ocean through storms, and finally feed the fish to a blue whale, and then... the whale vomited in her face. This bizarre story strings together the key words of essence products: France, deep sea, nourishing, etc., and presents it in a way that impresses young people. In particular, young people ultimately choose it not because it is a famous brand, but because it is a new product with personality and fun.

Conclusion

The lives of people born in the 1990s and 1995s have ten thousand aspects, and each aspect has a hundred thousand colors. No matter how much analysis and interpretation there is of this group, it is not enough to fully summarize them and label them. What marketers can do is to summarize some rules from countless appearances, gain insight into some essences, and use this as a chart to sail to the sea of ​​young people.