Move over, millennials: There’s a new “it” generation on the block. It’s Gen Z – a sizeable, tech-savvy group whose influence and buying power is skyrocketing.

As this generation starts to come of age, marketers and sales professionals are in an ever-intensifying race to discover how to win them over. It’s an effort well worth making. By some counts, Gen Z is 83 million strong, representing about a quarter of the U.S. population. Plus, a recent report from Google indicates these digital natives have $44 billion in spending muscle – a massive tally that could balloon to near $200 billion when factoring in the influence they have on parental/household purchases.

“While young kids may not bring home the bacon, they’re spending more than kids of the past and their parents care more about their kids’ opinions than parents of the past,” says Deep Patel, a 19-year-old Gen Z entrepreneur and best-selling author of A Paperboy’s Fable: The 11 Principles of Success. “Brands can tap into new market segments by branding themselves toward youth.”

Defining a Generation
Generation Z is the demographic group just younger than millennials. While defining where Gen Z starts and ends is a bit tricky, demographers typically use the mid 1990s to early 2000s as beginning birth years. Using this range, many in Gen Z are high schoolers, college students or starting to enter the workforce.

Regardless of how you slice it, Gen Zers are here in a big way. They’re a sizable population of end-users that brands want to win over, and they are, or will soon be, prospects for promotional products firms.

“To succeed as an industry, we have to directly address the needs of this generation,” says 29-year-old Sterling Wilson, president of Pop! Promos (asi/45657), a supplier whose workforce has an average age of about 26.

“To succeed as an industry, we have to directly address the needs of this generation.”Sterling Wilson, Pop! Promos

Power of Personalization
Cookie-cutter sales, marketing and promotional initiatives aren’t going to resonate with Gen Z.

This is a generation that’s grown up as the stars of their personal social media accounts. It’s a group that’s had targeted web ads aimed at them since their earliest days. It’s a demographic that can go online and find information they want in a few clicks. Such formative conditioning has implications for brands trying to connect with Gen Z – and promo professionals eager to leverage its members for sales.

“This group will expect personalized experiences that truly speak to them and feel relevant,” says Tiffany Price, VP of marketing at Top 40 distributor Boundless (asi/143717).

The generational penchant for personalization means sales professionals must be ready with extensive product/branding knowledge, client-first focus and communication skills that help spotlight the need for consultative service. Marketers must develop content that’s on-brand, while satisfying the tastes and value-needs of very specific audiences. “Personal and emotional connections will go a long way,” says Price.

As some promo professionals see it, Gen Z’s personalization preference will also compel an increase in demand for customized product presentations during prospecting, and result in many more end-buyers desiring cost-effective, built-from-scratch branded merchandise.

Indeed, forward-looking Pop! Promos has constructed its business model on this belief, being able to deliver on orders for fully custom products from overseas in 30 days or less. “We think ‘rapid import’ is the future, and we aim to be the leader,” says Wilson.

Doing Good
Social justice, corporate responsibility, protecting the environment – these issues matter to Gen Z. Because of that, brands that give back in meaningful ways and operate ethically in regard to workers, society and the environment will carry strong appeal. Pivotally, marketers will have to honestly and consistently convey brands’ emphasis on do-gooding through social media, blogs, video, company websites and other channels – all in a tasteful way that doesn’t come off as exploitative.

“This generation wants to purchase from and partner with companies that are contributing positively to the world,” says Nina Shatz, brand development director at Top 40 distributor HALO Branded Solutions (asi/356000).

Shatz would know. Her teenage daughter is part of Gen Z, and has of late become a client, being in charge of buying swag for a regional chapter of a Jewish youth group. “When discussing apparel options, she’s asking me questions like, ‘Where is this manufactured?’ ‘Is this organic cotton?’ ‘Is this made from recycled material?’” says Shatz.

In a similar vein, Shatz’s Gen Z customers and end-users have favored products that help minimize waste and human impact. “Wide-mouth water bottles have been a hit because they’re reusable,” says Shatz. Adds Price: “Products with a social purpose will come into play more and more with this generation.”

Communication Modes
With the internet and smartphones at their fingertips from early ages, it’s little surprise that Gen Z often prefers to communicate digitally. “They don’t want to pick up the phone to discuss a product, they’d rather text or email,” says Tony Poston, president of College Hill Custom Threads (asi/164578), which conducts extensive business with young buyers in the fraternity and sorority market.

Sales pros will have to adapt, learning to convey value and relationship-build in Gen Z’s communication comfort zone. Distributors and suppliers eager to work with Gen Z must also avoid spammy marketing and hard-sell pressing. These communication tactics could turn you into a pariah.

“Gen Z has plenty of available options for where to give their attention, so if a sales professional jumps the gun at any point and comes off as abrasive, they’ll lose the lead,” says Patel.

Digital Branding
As Patel points out, Gen Z spends an average of 10 hours a day in front of screens, with a large portion of this on social media sites and mobile devices. Naturally, then, companies wishing to influence Gen Z must court them in the digisphere. “You need to create digital and new-age brands,” says Patel.

But how best to do that? “Influencer and social media marketing are the top strategies for building engagement with a Gen Z audience,” says Patel. “Strong influencer and social media approaches will focus on quality content generation, be innovative, fit with your brand story and appeal to the interests of your market demographic. More specifically, this means your brand should offer valuable tailored content, not just advertisements.”

Interestingly, Patel calls fast-food chain Wendy’s Twitter account a “Gen Z branding masterpiece.” With its irreverent tone and use of humorous memes, gifs and short videos, Wendy’s Twitter is entertaining in a language Gen Z can relate to, which helps keep its brand top-of-mind.

Promo firms eager for Gen Z business can take a cue from Wendy’s and interweave similar elements into their social marketing. Perhaps even more importantly, distributors can extend the value they deliver by advising clients on social media initiatives that target Gen Z – programs that can include branded merchandise, such as giveaways of client T-shirts.

Influencer marketing can potentially come into play with clients’ social and promo product campaigns too. Influencers are social media personalities that have established credibility in particular niches and can sway their audiences’ opinions because of their reach and perceived authenticity. Say your client is a tech company with a new product geared toward Gen Z. Maybe there’s a popular Instagrammer or YouTuber in the category who can help the client promote the offering while sporting a shirt, hat and/or jacket branded with the product and company.

“With Gen Z, you’re going to have to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. It’s about going above and beyond.”Tiffany Price, Boundless

Entrepreneurial Ambitions
Rid yourself of the prejudice that Gen Zers are lazy. They’re not. To the contrary, they’re driven and entrepreneurial.

A study from Harvard Business Review found about 70% of teens are self-employed, earning money from “side hustles” that range from teaching piano to making a couple bucks off a YouTube Channel. Meanwhile, a 2015 study from consultancy Millennial Branding found that 72% of high school students want to start their own business someday, with 61% saying they aim to engage in entrepreneurship directly out of college.

“Their idols are people like Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Spiegel, and they have dreams of pursuing entrepreneurial and nontraditional ambitions,” says Patel.

That’s good news for promo distributors, who can provide logoed merch to help the budding business owners build their brands. Still, to do so, distributors must act as partners – honest consultants who provide insights and truthful direction based on the individual needs of each young entrepreneur.

It’s an approach Shatz already takes with her Gen Z clients. For a teen-run dance-a-thon raising money for charity, the Gen Zer in charge – a friend of Shatz’s daughter – texted her about providing T-shirts for the event. The conversation soon moved to email, where Shatz learned the teen and his co-organizers wanted a shirt with a spectrum of different colors in the print on the front and back.

“I told them honestly that this would cost them a fortune,” says Shatz. “They got back to me with a quote from a competitor that sounded extremely low. I told them if they could get the shirts at those prices, then to do so. It was an unbelievable deal. But I advised them to first ask a number of questions that I felt would uncover what they were really going to be charged.”

The teens asked the questions to Shatz’s competitor. The true price – eye-poppingly huge – then emerged. “They thanked me profusely for my help,” says Shatz, who noted the teens ended up not ordering shirts – at least for the dance-a-thon. However, when they soon after needed senior class shirts, they immediately turned to Shatz, who easily landed the large order. “Honesty and authenticity – really being a partner – go a long way with this generation,” Shatz says.

Video Value
A plethora of data on Gen Z’s online video viewing exists, some of it differing, but what it all boils down to is that this generation consumes videos with a voracious appetite.

One study by entertainment company AwesomenessTV found that members of Gen Z watch as many as 68 videos per day. Getting more particular, teens in the study said that Snapchat is the ideal platform for staying connected and informed, while 71% think YouTube is the best place for viewing long-form videos – defined as those over 10 minutes in length. The point seems to be that this generation sees video as the best medium for communicating and learning. As such, marketers keen to reach Gen Z need to utilize video, and they have to shape the content to the platforms Gen Z is using.

Broader Marketing Experiences
To help make promotional products relevant to Gen Z, some industry pros believe it’ll be important for distributors to weave products into unique brand experiences.

Price gives an example. For SXSW 2017, Boundless partnered with Carvana on a promotion that saw the web-based used car dealer place a branded “vending machine” at the festival. The machine dispensed replica toy cars of a Mustang, F-150 or Land Rover.

Fun and interactive, the initiative allowed festival-goers to select a vehicle type and to then shake the machine to have it dispensed. Boundless provided the vehicle replicas, custom packaging, and supported in-booth giveaways. Carvana recorded the booth-shaking, which allowed participants to post and share videos on social media – a powerful symbiosis between real-world experience, branded product and digital promotion. “By providing the Gen Z audience with this personalized and memorable experience early on, they became familiar with the brand,” says Price.

As Gen Z increasingly shakes up the marketplace, Price offers this final insight: “With Gen Z, you’re going to have to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. It’s about going above and beyond with customized packaging, variable print, interactive-digital products, AI and VR kits, and products with a social purpose.”

Facts & Stats

About half of Gen Z in the U.S. belongs to what’s traditionally been referred to as minority groups, making the generation the most ethnically diverse in American history. Takeaway: Emphasizing diversity and inclusion will be essential internally and in marketing/sales outreach.

8 Seconds – Average attention span of a Gen Zer. Takeaway: Your marketing content better grab their attention immediately or they’ll keep scrolling.

96% of 16- to 20-year-olds in North America own a smartphone, with 52% saying it’s their most important internet device. Takeaway: A mobile-focused marketing strategy will be essential to success.

4 in 10 Gen Z shoppers say they provide feedback often or very often. This includes giving their opinions on social channels, like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. Takeaway: Social listening strategies could help brands obtain valuable information about Gen Z. Also, it’s pivotal for brands to keep members of this generation happy, as they won’t be shy about publicly airing complaints if you fall short.

41% of Gen Zers have positive reactions to mobile ads that offer rewards. Takeaway: Sometimes those rewards can be promotional products. Sources: Census Data, Mediakix, GlobalWebIndex, Accenture, Hootsuite