The human need to categorize, sort and group things together is amazing. One of the most visible signs of this collective obsession (especially, it seems, in the marketing world) is the almost annual emergence of yet another “generation” of people or some other, smaller group classificiation. One common thing about the new “generations” is that they are usually also classified as forgotten, lost or otherwise neglected.
We have the “baby-boomers” which is still a somehow understandable generation. Then later on came the Generation X. In the past years the list has exploded: we’ve got Generation Y, Generation Z, the Internet-generation and who knows what else. As you cannot launch a “generation” every quarter without coming across as more than a little dense, other smaller groups have had to be introduced. Thus was born, for example, the metrosexuals and the resulting backlash, the retrosexuals. Now it’s all about the MeWe-generation.
Oh – give – me – a – break. Curiously lot of these new generations and groups have been utilized mostly by the marketing world, with even the terms often coined by them. Can’t have a whole generation of consumers fall outside the great advertising machine, now can we? Oh the horror to be neglected from targeted advertising!
Poor whatever, that’s us!
Photo by freefoto.com
