To reach younger consumers, think globally

I had to go to Germany to get the right watchband. What strikes me as odd is not that I paid twenty euros for a watchband, but that I could only find one store that had the size, color, and material I wanted. That the store was in Germany was almost -- but not entirely -- irrelevant. There was the price of shipping and the exchange rate to think about.

Other than that, once I found a website with a product that met my admittedly picky specifications, I placed my order, logged into PayPal, and sent my funds off to Uhrenbandversand in Oranienburg. In a little over a week, I received my package by luftpost.

Pollster John Zogby places me and my contemporaries in an age cohort he calls “Nikes,” because our motto, he says, is “just do it.” This is the group also known as “Generation X,” that hard-to-pin-down bunch that followed the baby boomers. After us comes what Zogby calls the “First Globals,” those born 1979–90. Even more than I, with my euro-spending ways, First Globals see a world without borders.

Understanding First Globals is necessary for marketing to them, and in his book The Way We’ll Be, Zogby details their worldview. Regarding the Kyoto accords, the International Criminal Court and the role of the United Nations, he says, their position is “sharply at odds with the generations just ahead of them.”

To get them to listen to whatever you’re selling, you have to get down to where they are. You have to make yourself equally a citizen of planet Earth, and you need to recognize that, for them, embracing diversity isn’t a matter of political correctness but a habit of mind.

The Way We’ll Be is packed with demographic information not only about different generations but about different mindsets. Zogby describes the major movements in our culture: living with limits, embracing diversity, looking inward, and demanding authenticity. This book is an excellent resource for understanding these movements, which will be key to reaching whatever demographic is your target market.

To reach First Globals, Zogby says you must stretch your borders. Though their worldview may differ from yours, you can successfully reach them by “opening doors, not closing them.”

If you stretch the borders of your business far enough, you might even make customers of First Globals in Germany.