67: Generation Z Explained with Special Guest Sarah Weise

Stop. Don't hit pause on the podcast. Don't move to the next one. Trust me, you're going to want to listen to this episode. You may have seen the title Generation Z and think to yourself, I don't care about this generation. Yawn. Next. But trust me, Generation Z matters. One, it certainly matters if you're a parent of a teenager because you are going to learn all about how their brains work and how we can get through to them. It also matters if you own a business, if you run a business, or if you are in the business of trying to get customers motivated and engage them. Most of you listening, you're probably baby boomers, Gen Xers. I may have some millennials in the group, but mostly you're at the stage right now where you are trying to engage this younger generation and you're not quite sure how to do it. My guest today, Sarah Wise, she wrote a book called Instabrain, the New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z. Yes, it's a marketing book, but it's also insight into Generation Z from A to Z. Everything that you need to know about this generation from a level as someone who runs a business or owns a business and you know, you need to reach this group trust, trust me, there is so much valuable information in this interview. I urge you to stay to the end. So keep listening. Sarah, hello and welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, Molly.

I wish I could turn this into a five part series on Generation Z and how we can look at this generation. And one episode would be for organizers, people that need to put on annual meetings. The second one would be for marketers, but the third one would be for parents of teenagers, of kids who fall into this generation. Because Generation Z is the up and coming generation, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, today they make up 40% of American consumers. They are the largest living generation today. And not a lot of people get that. Like, we're still focused on marketing to millennials. And there's this other generation that's kind of creeping up that surprise, we're here.

Well, now that fact is that statistic. I read in your book, the New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z. And when I read that, I was surprised by, by that stat. But there's a caveat to it. The reason why it's the largest living generation, correct?

Yes. The largest living generation today.

Yes. Okay, so we, you know, for so many years it was how do we reach baby boomers? And then there's my generation, Generation X, which everyone seemed to Hopscotch over. Nobody cares about my generation. It seems like we had great music, but other than that, nobody wanted to reach us. But then we move into the Millennials. And certainly in the work that I do, everybody talks about Millennial. How do we reach them? And there is some ambivalence, if not a little anger towards them as well, because it's a hard group to gather. So I just wanted to quickly, Sarah, go through the generations, and if you could also start even before we do that, give me a little. A brief bio on what brought you to your. To your background and then how you found out that there is gold in them hills with Generation Zone.

Okay, sure. Well, I run a small market research company, and for the past couple of years, we've been doing work with both large and small companies. You know, everything from innovative startups to big brands like Google, to try to figure out who this Generation Z is so that we can market to them more effectively. And the world, the world is changing. I mean, when you think about the stats, 51% of the world population today is under 25, like, over half. Okay, I know. If the stereotype's true, I mean, that's a lot of brunch.

It is a lot of brunch. Avocado toast. But you mentioned a very important company there. You said Google. So I know there's a lot of organizations trying to reach this market, the millennial market, the Gen Z market. But now you're mentioning one of the largest in the world's trying to reach them as well.

Yeah, absolutely. And in one of the first studies that we started doing related to Generation Z, it was because we. We were working with Google, and the problem was that teens weren't searching. And so they were kind of like, hey, will you go figure out what these teens are doing? Because they aren't searching. Like, what are they doing on their phones all day long? They have them with them all day.

And they're on them all day. But now define, Sarah, define searching.

They were not. They're not going to google.com or not going to a browser and actually doing a search.

And we know in my generation, I have teenagers, they are on their phones all day. So what are they doing instead?

Well, they're doing a lot of things with their phone, but they're not searching nearly as much. They actually are very. They're much more curated in terms of where they find information. They're very clear on where to look for certain types of content. They don't go to Google for everything. Like past generations. Used to do so. For example, when you think of all the different apps on a teenager's phone, you're thinking about Instagram and Pinterest and Twitter and YouTube and TikTok and Snapchat and text message and Facebook and all these other things. They have very distinct you reasons to like post to one or to look for content on one versus the other. They're not going to Google for everything.

Okay, now you had mentioned though that the older generations, they may search. So let's, let's take a moment to discuss the different generations and could you highlight key characteristics of that generation? So where do you usually start? Who are the old timers that we start with?

Well, we've got the, the silent generation, which is even before the baby boomers from about 1928 to 1945. So you've got the silent generation, then you have the boomers about 1946 to 1964 birth years. You've got Gen X which is from about 65 to 81. So pretty wide, wide birth year range. And then you have, then you've got millennials. But in between Gen X and millennials, there's this really interesting micro generation. And this is actually where I live. I'm in this micro generation called the Oregon Trail generation. And this generation is a generation where we are technically at the tail the very oldest millennials. So we're technically in the millennial range, born in the very early 80s, but at the same time we didn't have high speed Internet in our homes growing up. So our behavior is more closely aligned.

To Gen X. Oh, so that's very interesting distinction there. The micro generation is based on technology. So it's that murky area between a digital native and a digital immigrant, as they used to call them now. Oregon Trail, that is based on the game.

The game, yeah. So when I was a kid in the early 80s, that's what you played when you went to school. You went to school and you shared with one computer for like three or four kids. And you all got this huge floppy disk that you had to put in and you went across the country on the Oregon Trail and you had to try to shoot squirrels to stay alive and not die of dysentery and all the fun things associated with that.

Oh, when I read that in your book, I mean, talk about a term, a phrase that I have not seen in decades. And as soon as I read that in your book, I went, wait a minute. And I immediately conjured up that floppy disk though. What an interesting. So there's other People than you that kind of refer to that micro generation, correct?

Yeah, yeah, it's a pretty, it's a well known gen. It's a little generation. I wouldn't say well known, but it is a, an official generation. I didn't make up that term. So then we've got Millennials and then the millennials were born around like 83 to 94. And then we've got Gen Z. So Gen Z is the kind of the younger group born between 95 and 2006. And then even younger than that, we've got Gen Alpha. They switched the Alphabet on us.

Okay. And Gen Alpha. And how old would be the oldest member of gen alpha?

Like 12 at the most.

12. Okay. My head, I'll start crying if I have to think about marketing to 12 year olds at the moment. But so the areas. So in the work that I do, I work with a lot of organizations who still have like, I will speak to a room of predominantly baby boomers and they'll definitely be Gen Xers in there. But I also get members of the silent generation, especially when I'm speaking to a room full of directors, like a board of directors. So they may be retired in their day to day job, but they're, but they're still volunteering or actively participating. And when they talk about the millennials, whenever there's a definitive, like the group, like the millennials, like their, their eyebrow, their eyes will roll in the back of their head because a lot of struggle with trying to bring millennials to the table. They say they're entitled and they're narcissists and they, they don't care about our business, they don't care about anything. So could you describe the millennial, the key characteristics of the millennials? But then I want you to explain how they differ from Gen Z.

Okay, great. So I think what's most striking about Gen Z is how truly different they are from millennials just a few years older. And the reason Gen Z and millennials are not the same, they are so different is because they grew up with very different things going on at the same time as they were being raised. So I can talk through a few of the main generational differences.

Okay, please do.

First of all, there was a massive shift in parenting. So there was this shift from helicopter parenting or tiger parenting, which characterized Millennials, to tech parenting, which characterizes Gen Z. And what that means is that whereas helicopter parents kept Millennials tethered to them, these tech parents taught Gen Z how to find information on their own online and at the same time. So they kind of produced kids that were a little bit more independent and at the same time they terrified them about all the risks involved in going online.

So.

So everything from online predators to identity theft, Generation Z is. You'll find they're much more risk averse in terms of what they're posting online.

Oh, as opposed to millennials?

Yeah, Millennials are defined as like the over sharing generation. Right.

Oh, and which is different than Gen Z, which is different than the Gen Z group. Yeah.

I mean if millennials are the generation of oversharing Gen Z, I would characterize them as the generation of painstaking curation.

Painstaking curation. And when you men helicopter parenting, I look at Gen Z and this is me as a parent, as submarine parenting that were under the surface. But then when there's a warning, you'll see the periscope, you know, come up and the ping. The ping. So that's an interesting distinction. So millennials, we talk about those millennials are the ones, I call that like they're the call out generation. They have no problem putting their name and attach it to feedback, whether it's good or scathing, feedback or reviews. So what you're saying now about Gen Z, they're less likely to do that, Correct?

Yeah, they're much more curated in terms of what they post online. They make different accounts for different angles or different sides of their personality. We're seeing 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Instagram accounts just to produce very tailored specific niche accounts for different sides of their personality.

Okay. So I want to settle on the parenting aspect before I move on to the business aspect. So again, this idea of Gen Z, I find it so fascinating that you bring the parental aspect to it and how they use technology and how they perceive it. Yeah. Now you mentioned a number of Personas. A number of years ago when I, when my teenagers were starting to get into Instagram. No way do they touch Facebook. They are not on Facebook. They're the Instagram snap generation. They had accounts called Finsta accounts or fake Instagram. And I looked at it as they had one real one that they could show people and show their parents friends, but then they had a fake one that was just for their friends. But are now, are you telling me that it's less about hiding their behavior, but more about creating a different Persona? Yeah.

So you know, you hear the terms Finsta and Rinsta, the fake Instagram account and the real Instagram account, but that's really a misnomer. They more often than not, we're Seeing them just put different sides of their personality. So for example, if We've got a 13 year old girl who is into photography and a, you know, she really likes a YouTuber named Cody Ko and she also likes eye makeup. Let's say she's got a few different interests. She'll make a separate account for each one. So she'll make one for a photography account. She might actually make it a business account because maybe someday she'll want to start a business in photography. So she'll want to start building her following. She'll also create a account for, you know, all things having to do with this YouTuber that she likes, all, you know, him and all his friends and, and people who talk about him. So everything on that account will be people who talk about this youtuber and she may post, she may not, but she definitely follows it. And then she might have a third account for makeup where she's following makeup influencers like James Charles and Jeffree Star and all these people who, who do makeup and that she loves. So she might have three separate accounts for different interests. She'll also have a separate account for probably just for anybody at her school. We're pretty tailored. She puts on a Persona about what she wants to project to those people and then she'll have what they call a spam account. It's actually not spam, it's for their very close friends, Spam.

Do they, do they call it spam?

Yeah, they call it spam. They'll label it spam.

Hold on, hold on. Let me ask, let me ask this. As a parent, does spam mean that if a parent were to uncover this account, it looks just like spam and they won't look at it? Am I being the alarmist parent?

I don't know. I don't think so. I've never thought of that.

Okay, but is there an acronym to it or. That's just the name that they labeled it.

That's just the name that they tend to use for their account that they share with just their close friends. So that might be like 10 people. 10, 15 people max. So it'll be a very small account where they can give a more realistic picture of themselves where they're not hiding as much or filtering as much to be curated. So they still, when we talk to them, they're like, oh yeah, this is where I post the good parts. And so you're like, even on the spam account, even on that account for only 10 people, you're still only posting the good parts. Like you're Still. You're still filtering. You're still cultivating what you post online.

Okay, that's. That's so interesting. So let me. Then let's move back and backpedal a bit. Yeah.

There's a number of other generational things that happened in their background. So in addition to this shift in parenting styles, they were also raised in a time of war and recession. So Gen Z has witnessed hardship. They were born after 9, 11. They've never known a time without war. They were raised in a recession. They've seen parents lose jobs and take pay cuts and clip coupons and start budgeting. They are hungry for work as a result.

Oh, so this would be similar. There could be similar characteristics to the silent generation that grew up in a time and they were familiar with, with the, the economy downfall and when the stock market crashed, you know, they will have memories of that. Okay, so when. Let's go back a bit now to the millennials. And then I want to move down to Gen Z. If an organization is trying to motivate millennials, so I will hear this almost every single workshop I give or a talk or if someone comes up and asks me a question, it will always lead to this road. How do we motivate a Millennial to come to our meeting? How do we motivate them to come to this event that we're having? And because you are laying out such a description and a difference between millennials, I first want you to answer, like, what motivates a millennial, and how is that different than motivating a Gen Z? Because these organizations now have to plan for Gen Z. They have to work on Millennials now, but then plan for Gen Z. Could you explain that, Sarah?

Yeah. So before we talk about motivating them, I want to talk about something that's related, and that's the sort of a shrinking attention span that's happening for Millennials. They could juggle three screens at a time. So that means they could be watching a video game, reading a Reddit thread, and texting a group of friends at a time. They were having three different conversations and keeping it all straight. Right. Or Gen Z, they can do this with five screens at a time. So they could be playing that video game, reading a Reddit thread, having one conversation on text message with one group of friends, having a different conversation in the headset of the video game with another group of friends, and FaceTiming their mom on the iPad all at the same time.

I see it happen every day.

We are consummate. I mean, people Call them the multitaskers. There's no such thing as multitasking. It's sort of like flexing your attention between one thing and another. But the thing that's really amazing is they can switch context so quickly. But every time you switch context and you're bouncing between all these things, you're storing more things in your short term memory, you're losing attention. So as a result, their attention spans have decreased from about 12 seconds with millennials to 7 or 8 seconds with gen Z.

So millennial is. They have, Millennials have on average 12 seconds, and you're saying Gen Z is now down to 7, 7 to 8 seconds.

When you think about, they're only a few years apart. So that's actually a major, a really drastic drop. Their brains have actually, since they have been inundated with visual inputs 24, 7, since the time they were very young, their brains have actually rewired themselves. Their brains have physically evolved to process more information quicker. And they're doing a lot of what we call outsourcing, cognitive outsourcing to their phones. So they would never say know what date it is without looking at their phone, or they would never know what's on their calendar today without looking at their phone. They've basically taken a lot of things that they, that we in the past memorized and they put it to their phone, and they rely on their phones to get that information at a later time.

And a perfect example of this, even nowadays with baby boomers or Gen X, Gen Xers out there, is 20 years ago. Like, I can rattle off the phone number I had when I was five years old, as could many people. But right now, I couldn't rattle the phone number of my kid's cell phone. I don't have to commit it to memory.

Right, so you do it too. Yeah, you do it too. But they just do it at a much higher degree and naturally.

Naturally, yeah.

And this is just an example of how this generation too, is influencing all other generations really, to do things differently.

Okay.

I mean, I went over to my mom's house recently, and she was, she was sitting and she was on the couch and she was scrolling on her phone. And usually she pays attention and we actually have conversations. And she's in her 70s, and so she's scrolling on the phone and I was, I was looking at her and she was completely engrossed in her phone. And I'd never seen her like this. And she's scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And I was like, mom, are you on Facebook? And she goes, oh, no, that face place thing, that, that's not secure with all their fake news. She goes, I'm in the Weight Watchers community. It's my online tribe.

Well, certainly I know for all generations, it's, it's driving to that community.

The fact that a 70 year old would call something an online tribe, like a community online and online tribe was just blew my mind. And it is more evidence that this Gen Z generation is really, everything they're doing is trickling up, rippling up the other generations and affecting all other generations and causing people to do things differently.

Yeah. And also that Weight Watchers, obviously, that's probably a term in vernacular that she picked up from their community, that you're now a part of a tribe. And it does show that it works. So that it is trickle up. Yes. To the generations. And it may take a little bit longer, but eventually you get there. But I do think that there is a distinct difference. And again, about this idea of how do you motivate? And I want to go back to the distinction between now millennial, Gen Z. I hear it so often, the struggle of trying to get a millennial and Gen Z to be interested in any event that someone has. And I don't care if it's someone talking about an annual meeting, if it's a credit union and we have to have our annual meeting, we have to get our members here. How do we get a millennial here? Or even if it's, if it's a group of people, like we're planning a fundraiser for a daughter's trip and we all struggle with how are we going to get a kid here? Like, what is it going take? So, Sarah, how do you motivate these groups?

It takes an interest and let me tell you what I mean by that. So this generation, they rely on. If there's one thing that has shifted in the minds of Gen Z and sort of just youth in general, there's one question that shifted in their minds. We used to think, what do I want to know? And then I go to Google and I search it and I find it. This generation says, what should I want to know? And then they go to Instagram or they go to another feed, they go to YouTube and look at related stuff and they scroll, they scroll and they scroll and they scroll. And they rely on those algorithms, those recommendations, engines to inspire them to spark some sort of inspiration in them. But once that inspiration is sparked, once they make these snap judgments about what they think they're going to be interested in. But once you get them Interested. Once you hook them, they have this superpower that they can hyper focus for hours. And that's what you need to tap into in terms of like motivating them. You have to somehow hook them and get them interested. And once they're interested, their interests quickly turn into obsessions. They become these mini stalkers and they will not stop until they find everything they want to know. And I can tell you a story. We were interviewing maybe a 15 or 16 year old in Tampa quite some time ago. And he was about a year ago, we were interviewing him and we went to his home and he had just listened to a song on the radio that he liked. He'd never heard it before, but he liked it and it hooked him. Like something in it hooked him. And for the next 90 minutes, as the researchers were there observing him, he proceeded to find out everything there was to know about this band. And he went to every single app there was to find information. He dug deep. He read. I mean, you talk about Gen Z not reading anymore. He read everything there was to know. He watched videos. He was just craving the behind the scenes story and wanted these like authentic and personal insights about this band. And he was seeing the same sort of information from place to place. But the moment he found something new, like a little nugget of something new, and it was the fact that I think he found some little fact about the band, like the band, one of the band members didn't like ranch dressing. He thought that was the best thing he had ever found. Like the delight on his found something new about this band that he didn't know before was incredible.

Yeah. What an interesting. A factoid about ranch dressing is something.

That hooked them, right? It doesn't matter what it is, just the fact that it was hard to find, right? And he dug it up and found it. He was able. He got intense satisfaction from that. And so these kids are, once you hook them, they can in fact dive into full scale research mode and spend hours and even days researching stuff. And we saw this again and again and again. There was one girl we interviewed, she was scrolling through Instagram one day and she came across a picture of a pet hedgehog. And she decided right then and there, snap judgment, that she wanted a pet hedgehog. So she goes to her mother and she says, hey mom, can I get a pet hedgehog? And her mother goes, absolutely not. First of all, they're wild animals, aren't they? Nocturnal, they'll sleep all day. They'll be terrible pets. And aren't they pokey, won't they poke you? And so she was like, okay. So her mother says, absolutely not. So she said, okay. But then she went back, and for days, she researched everything there was to know about owning a pet hedgehog, and she dove deep into it. And so when she went back to her mother a week later, her mother gave the same arguments, and she had a response to every single one of them. And finally her mother said, fine. How much does it cost to own a pet hedgehog? And she said, well, about $500, because you have to buy the pet hedgehog and the cage and the food and everything. So she said, I'll tell you what, if you can raise the money to buy that, you can get a pet hedgehog thinking that the kid never would. And so she again went back to her online research. She looked up everything there was to know about making money online and selling things online. And she was watching YouTube videos about how to make money, and she found how to make slime and how to sell slime online. So she starts making slime, and her mother has essential oils around the house. So she makes this specialty slime, like lavender scented slime and, you know, peppermint scented slime and stuff like that. Well, she packages it nicely. She takes it down to her local convenience store that's located right next to the high school, and she says, will you sell this for me? And they agree. She negotiates with them. They agree, and within a week, she's got enough money to buy the pet hedgehog. Well, she found out how much money she was making selling slime, so she starts selling slime online on. She makes an Instagram account for it, and she starts selling it. And she's selling a lot of. And on top of that, she gets the pet hedgehog, and she turns the pet hedgehog into. She starts taking pictures and videos of the pet hedgehog. And now the pet hedgehog is also on Instagram and paid and sponsored. So she's making money on the pet hedgehog, too.

Oh, what a fabulous story.

Good for her.

What great entrepreneurial spirit. But also evidence as to how they use technology.

If they have the idea on their own and they get inspired to do it, they will proactively go out, research stuff and do stuff. This is a generation of doers. So in, you know, in contrast to millennials who talked a lot about doing stuff, this generation really goes out and does it. You know, they're not just watching videos, they're watching videos and doing things while they watch videos, they're watching somebody do makeup and they're doing it, or they're watching somebody play a video game, they're pausing it and they're trying it, or they're watching somebody click, cook. And, you know, they don't watch cooking shows anymore. They'll watch somebody cook and they'll pause and they'll try it and they'll pop, play and they'll try it, you know?

Right. And your book, your book, I mean, reading it, it truly, I look at it as the Bible because I have so much evidence in my home, you know, with my teenagers and even yesterday in a car all day on a college visit and going down all these little rabbit holes on these subject matters based on I could tell the search history of one subject matter. And then you go deeper, deeper, deeper. And you're absolutely correct in terms of nailing that generation. Now, when you talk about the technology, I think it's interesting and pretty obvious. Now, when you want to get behind the mindset of Gen Z, look no further than the client. You're talking about Google, where if you write in something in a search box, an older generation, it brings up a news story, it brings up video, it brings up all of these options. A Wikipedia site for you to find that information. So where maybe an older generation has to work for it, Gen Z, it sounds like they can immediately default to find the resources immediately to get that information correct.

Right. And you bring up an interesting point like about, you know, Wikipedia and all these learning, you know, places where you can learn things. Learning is especially inspiring to Generation Z. And we're seeing this much more in Generation Z than we are in with Millennials. So when Generation Z feels good about learning, whether it, and it doesn't matter what they're learning about, whether it's how to do nail art or how to get past a certain level on a video game, when they watch YouTube videos and they feel like they're learning, they feel good about it. Like, let's say they, they watch three hours straight of YouTube videos, they feel like they've learned something and they feel good about it. If they spent that same time watching three hours, you know, binging on Netflix for three hours, they will feel guilty about wasting their time.

Oh, and they'll feel bad about it.

Oh, bad about it. Because they're like, oh, I could have spent my time more effectively. They know that they could have.

And.

But if, even if they are watching very similar things, you know, a reality show versus, you know, something about the same top beauty on, you know, a beauty, reality show on Netflix versus a beauty, how to video on YouTube, even if it's very similar content, one is framed as learning and they feel good about it. So this is like another thing with the motivation, right? How can we motivate them if we can have them learn something, especially learning it on their own and finding the research on their own? Because they are natural researchers, they will find things so much quicker than you could ever imagine online. Like, they've just been doing that forever. But if we can get them to, to do that and learn on their own, they're going to be much more motivated to do it, to do anything.

Okay, now, Sarah, so here's the million dollar question. So I want to end it on, on this question because I know that this is on the minds of so many people, organizers, anyone that is in a business right now, that may be senior leadership, they're in that C suite level. And every day they are sitting at a table or every meeting, every week they come to the same meeting. And the question is, how do we get people to show up to these events? How do we get them to care about us, really? So could you briefly tell me then, how can someone sitting at that table, they have an event, whatever it is, or they have a campaign, and it's beyond hashtags. Like, forget the hashtags, forget the social media aspect of it. What is going to trigger a millennial to go to an event or participate in a campaign? And what is going to trigger a member of Generation Z to go to an event or to participate in a campaign?

Okay, so first of all, I have to point out that you use the word trigger. That word specifically means something totally different to a Gen Zer.

What does it mean?

It means angry. You get angry. It doesn't mean what will drive somebody to do something. We would use the term trigger. So I was even ask them in my interviews, I would say, oh, what.

Triggered you to do this?

And they were like, I wasn't triggered.

Yeah, well, I can say as a member of Generation Z, I, I use the word trigger negatively a lot myself. So I, I have two very distinct definitions for it. So I understand the Gen Z because I have it in my house.

They don't know the traditional definition for it, which is really funny to me.

Yeah, good point. Yeah.

But I can. Sorry for that tangent. I heard that word and I was like, I have to say something about that. But yeah, let's talk about the experience. So millennials were all about the experience. They wanted to go out and explore and have experiences in their lives. And it was all about The FOMO and the fear of missing out. And they had to have these experiences for themselves. Now, Gen Z wants the experience, but they want the T shirt too. They want things to go with the experience. So as we plan events, like, they want to know that they're a part of it. They want to know that they're a part of a movement. They want to know that they're involved in an experience, but they also want something tangible to take away. So I think we're going to see more, like, in the future, we're going to be seeing more successful businesses who are. Who are having an experience and a thing too. So if you take an example, like custom jewelry, for example, I think we're going to see a surge in custom jewelry companies who are letting people design their own jewelry. And then you take that away with you and you have that story to tell. When somebody says, oh, wow, your ring is beautiful, you can say, I designed it myself. This was the story behind it. I had this experience, and we can talk about it. So there's this distinction between experiences and things, where millennials were all about the experiences. And Gen Z is too, to a degree, but they're about the things, too.

About the things. So if I were planning. If I were at the head of the table and I'm planning an event or an organization, an events organization or some type of campaign, and I want to capture both groups because I know I need millennials now, but I need to be mindful of Gen Z. You need to create some type of experimental moment, like they need to experience some event, but you need to have some merch involved. Correct. So that you know that a Gen Z person's interested.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be merch necessarily. So let's say you've got an event where you're planning a conference. Let's say you have some sort of really interesting, unique experience, like somebody can go into. At the conference. Somebody can go into a TV studio type of atmosphere and get interviewed for five minutes by a real news anchor or something like that. Okay, so that's experience. That's unique. They'll talk about it, but then you can take home the video of you actually be having that interview. And they can use it. And they can. Like that's a thing. They can hold it in their hands. Like they can. It's a file. I mean, they can't literally hold it, but it's. It's a file that they can have and they can share it if they want to, or they can just keep it but it's something you're giving them in addition to, to the experience. It's something they're taking away.

So Sarah, would it be accurate if you created. If, if they created some type of experience that would compel someone to film it and put it on Insta. Is that what you're saying? Like this is what they are experiencing and they want to share. Show it to everyone in return on their accounts?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

That would be.

It's all about the collab, as they say. It's all about different. That's how you get more followers on Instagram, according to this generation. It's all about the connections and collabing.

Collabing. Oh, I love that. Oh, so what? So Sarah, this is. Sarah, this is such a big, big topic and I think it would. I think the older you get, the more overwhelming because you just. It's like herding cats. Like, how on earth can we capture this? But by the end of this interview, it really came down to that one micro moment of how you can capture someone who's, who's younger. That they live their lives in person, obviously, but it's also just an extension of their hand and what they can film.

Yeah, they live their lives in these micro moments. It's not about the story anymore. It's about the individual scenes. And so in order to. They need to have little, tiny, tiny stories. Small moments.

Okay, you've distilled it even further. It's no longer a Facebook post, it's an Instagram story. Right. Like they need more things. It's not one photo, it's not just one five second clip. It's the story. And anyone that's on Instagram or if they post a story, I guess you can understand that they want a beginning and an end. So it's a generation of storytellers and curated storytellers.

It is, it is a generation of storytellers. And I think if you are telling a story about your brand too, I think a lot of the mistakes that businesses make is that they're like, I'm the hero, look at me, I'm so great. If you're the hero of a story, then your customers aren't going to care because they're the hero of their own story and that's what they're caring about. They're not going to care about somebody else's story. So you have to be find a way to get yourself into their story. And the hero role is not how you do it, it's the guide role. It's that you're the Obi Wan to the Skywalker. You have to figure out how to become a guide in their own story because they are little narcissists. Right. They are self absorbed and technology has made them this way. They do every moment of the day, try to find these little micro moments to post, to project a certain Persona on their different accounts. So if you are somehow providing clarity in that or providing a way to get those stories, they're going to. They're going to be more interested.

Sarah, this information is gold to anyone who needs to plan an event or even just reach that market. You. You're offering such valuable advice. And another area that I could go down that I won't. That has. Again, I'll use the word trigger in my brain. Is that because the younger generations are the curated generations. It's the idea of where is their original thought? Does it come from them or does it come from their phones? And, and, and we could go into a whole different area in terms of politics. Yeah, Politics. And news stories. And because it's curated by news stations and news stories and tweets and, and posts that maybe this is the generation where they're very much swayed by what they read online as opposed to what they see in life. Yeah.

I mean, it is that. That is a whole nother rabbit hole we could.

So, Sarah, that is a rabbit hole that I, that I'm definitely going to spend time learning about. And now, thank you so much for taking the time. Honestly, I'm sure anyone listening to this point can tell that they're. This is a huge segment of the population. Like literally it's the largest living one right now. And there's just so many nooks and crannies to this generation. But really, at the end of the day, you really can capture them if you just let them write and create their own stories. But you just want to be a key role in that story. You want to cast yourself as a character in their play. Correct?

Right. Just a, just a supporting character.

But a supporting character.

Right.

Yeah. The Emmy award does not go to you as the lead actor. He has.

No, you're not. You're the mentor. You're the guide. You're the.

You're the Obi Wan, as you said. Oh, my gosh. Well, Sarah Weiss, I mean, it's, it's so fascinating. And, and you and I are very similar in the sense that we get up on stages, we talk about our knowledge and subject matters, and yours is, is Generation Z. So I'm sure in people's travels they may see you pop up at a conference and if you're there, I would highly recommend that they hear you speak. If not to check out your book, Instagram or Instagram. Oh, like Insta Brain. I immediately went to Instagram. But Insta Brain, great title, by the way. The new rules for Marketing to Generation Z. And of course you're all over social media as well. And I'll include that in the show notes.

I am including Instagram, of course.

I mean, naturally you would be. But Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time.

I'm actually going to be starting a TikTok soon, I gotta tell you.

Are you?

Yeah, I am. I'm gonna be trying it out.

Oh my gosh. My kids laugh at me because, just because I, I talk about Tic Tac with the, the whole Matt Lauer story, it's like I, I put my toes into the tick tock waters and now people are starting to ask me more about it and, and talk about it like I'm a knowledge source on this, which I'm not. But I'm just like you, I'm going deeper on it. But that is another social media channel that this generation is driving to correct.

They are, but I think they're driving to it because their parents don't get it. It's kind of like what Snapchat was five years ago. I think a lot of it has to do with, with a rebellion, like, like my mom doesn't get it. So this is where I'm gonna go.

Oh, you are so right. So my kids, they tease me all the time. I know they're not listening this far in this podcast, but I tell them, because I work in social media, that I'm a whiz on media, social, Snapchat, and, and I'm a whiz on TikTok. And they know that I track them. I still have no idea how to use either one. Snapchat is still foreign to me.

I know. I feel like I'm just swiping up, down, right, left, like, just trying to figure out, like how to get to a different screen.

Exactly, exactly. And it's just, it's just danger to me. It's just all dangerous. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I mean, this information, as I said in the beginning, I could go on for days because it is so fascinating. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom on Generation Z. Yeah, well.

And thanks for having me.

I want to thank today's guest, Sarah Weiss for joining me on the Confident Communications Podcast to discuss Generation Z. I've included a link to her book, the New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z on the show notes. You can find it on your phone, or you can find it on the computer, or you can follow her on social media as well. If you have any questions, reach out to me on Twitter Molly McPherson, or reach out to me on Instagram Molly McPherson and ask me any questions that you may have about Generation Z. They are all over my brain right now because I want to know how that group thinks, how their Insta brains are working. That's all for today's episode of the Confident Communications Podcast. Thank you for joining me. Until next week. That's all for now.

Sam.