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Generation Z fuels the digital marketing explosion

Good-bye baby boomers--even millennials are somewhat easier to target than the true digital natives, Generation Z. Marketers struggle to build brand loyalty, but digital printing helps deliver the message.

Diet Coke employed HP’s SmartStream Designer Mosaic software to produce two million bottle designs.
Diet Coke employed HP’s SmartStream Designer Mosaic software to produce two million bottle designs.

“Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2012 are not brats,” says Doris Brown-McNally, HP Global Brand Innovations Manager. “They were simply raised with a different aesthetic. They are, in fact, the most sophisticated generation ever.”

These remarks came in Chicago, June 4-5 at Smithers Pira’s “Digital Print for Packaging US 2018.” “Even millennials (born between 1980 and 1994) grew into using technology,” says Brown-McNally. “Generation Z is the first generation of true digital natives."

“They are engaged by what I would call philanthropic marketing,” says Brown-McNally. “Marketing connected to causes and events. For these consumers, the purchase of a brand is a reflection of their values and interests.”

Gen Z may take it to the extreme, but philanthropic marketing is not new. Back in 2010, the Cone LLC Cause Evolution Study found an astonishing 85 percent of consumers have a more positive image of a product or company when it supports a cause they care about. The report also says 80 percent of Americans "are likely to switch brands, about equal in price and quality, to one that supports a cause."

Consumers even weighed in on causes that win their brand loyalty including: economic development, health and disease, hunger, education, clean water, disaster relief, environment, homeless & housing, crime and violence prevention, equal rights/diversity.

Amarula cream liqueur from Cape Town, South Africa, launched a “Name Them/Save Them campaign for African Elephants. Label producer SA Litho, produced randomly-generated digitally printed labels for a limited edition of 400,000 bottles, representing the 400,000 African elephants that experts now estimate remain in the wild. Consumers got to design their own elephant on-line and each elephant label had a unique name.

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