WE ALL CHANGE THROUGH EXPERIENCE
By Bobby Riley | October 21st, 2009
Illustration by Glen Cummings/MTWTF (Photo: John Day/Getty Images)
From the subtitling of our blog you may know by now that we are doing our best to pursue a broader and deeper understanding of the concept of ‘consumer experience’ and more importantly what that means for us as people. Dan Vogelzang has done a good job a laying out some definitions on consumer experience as we understand it as an underpinning to many of our discussions, which may be worth checking out, if not already.
Pushing forward, Sam Anderson writes in New York magazine that, “The brain is designed to change based on experience, a feature called neuroplasticity. London taxi drivers, for instance, have enlarged hippocampi, a neural reward for paying attention to the tangle of the city’s streets. As we become more skilled at the 21st-century task (moving through many bits of information quickly) the wiring of the brain will inevitably change to deal more efficiently with more information. Neuroscientist Gary Small speculates that the human brain might be changing faster today than it has since the prehistoric discovery of tools.” From generation to generation some adapt better than others, but the new comers will definitely have the advantage as always. It’s said IQ’s increase 10% from one gen to another, but don’t hold me to that stat.
How will this change affect experience and communication across multiple generations? i.e. Traditionalists (born prior to 1946) all the way through Gen Z (born after 1997). It’s a question worth pondering, for sure.
We know from Strauss and Howe that as generations cycle, the team generations (such as gen y) are usually followed by individualist generations, which many are calling Generation Z, who more like generation X and will be more self-directed, but significantly more sophisticated in processing information at lightning speeds and ultimately smarter because of it. Generation Y is considered to be the most educated generation in history. Not only have they had more access to information and teaching, but they also did way more homework than any of their predecessors. Gen Y is known for being good kids, rule-followers, close to their parents and very good students. Which means they are terrible at figuring out what they want to do at any given time. No one taught them. Gen X, on the other hand, was left to their own devices at an early age and is very self-directed. (So self-directed that they are basically unmanageable, but that’s another blog post on it’s own.)
So, beyond the understanding of the unique and meaningful cycle of progression we encounter from generation to generation, how are we going to adapt to the social phenomenon described by Harvard Business in a recent post Are You Ready to Manage Five Generations of Workers? The article references a time in space never before witnessed of five generations collaborating side by side. They include: Traditionalists (born prior to 1946), Baby Boomers (1946 and 1964), Gen X (1965 and 1976), Gen Y (Millennials, 1977 and 1997), Gen Z (2020, born after 1997).
At Soldier we have begun to take note and engage in the conversation amongst ourselves along with other brand executives and brand purveyors to discuss the challenge and ‘opportunity’ about this social and cultural conundrum of reconciling past, present and future generations in real and authentic ways, but want to continue to explore the conversation from bottom-up, left-right, right-left, diagonal, telescoping, etc…
How will this change color brand invitation, evolution and preservation? The HBR article focuses mostly on workforce, but I think many of their questions/concepts transcend the internal culture to our role as marketers and designers i.e. next generation talent, reverse mentoring and probably the most critical is the next generation of highly discerning consumers (HDC) who are hyper-connected, who are used to rating everything and everyone in their lives. Where the name of the game is symbolism, what you stand for and how you compete. What’s next?