MxMIndia

Tag: Generation Z

  • As Metaverse technology matures, there will be a slew of Metaverses competing for market share, writes Ashoke Agarrwal

    From e-commerce to g-commerce in the Metaverse

    The Metaverse Gallery in Second Life. Picture by Dean Terry (Creative Commons Licence)

     

     

    By Ashoke Agarrwal

     

    Ashoke Agarrwal

    Technology forecasting has always fascinated me. I am an avid follower of the modern gurus of technology forecasting – Ray Kurzweil and Amy Webb, who focus on the near future. In addition, I lapped up Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Frank Herbert’s nuanced takes on the distant future.

     

    Lately, AI’s impact on the world at large and, in particular, in the areas of marketing and communication has fascinated me.

     

    My blog (hardraincafe. wordpress.com) stands testimony, with more than half of the posts dedicated to the subject over the past three years.

     

    I was delighted when literary giants like Kazuo Ishiguro with “Klara and The Sun” and Ian Mcewan with “Machines Like Us” wove brilliant, though somewhat disquieting, narratives around the emergence of sentient AI in day-to-day life.

     

    A couple of months ago, another technology area caught my attention – the Metaverse. Metaverse is a word coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”. Metaverses are rich virtual worlds driven by VR, AR and AI, in which a person as an avatar can spend hours doing all that she does in the real world – working, playing, socializing, travelling and shopping.

     

    “Second Life”, an online multimedia platform where one enters as an avatar, is a first-generation Multiverse. However, many purists dismiss it as a later generation multiplayer, multimedia game.

     

    Facebook’s entry into the area portends the possible emergence of Metaverse as a technology platform whose impact on the future can be immense.

     

    As a result, Metaverse has become a part of my musing on the future of commerce, marketing, and communication.

     

    Technology forecasting is the disciple of looking for nodes where socio-cultural, economic and technological trends converge.

     

    The Metaverse phenomenon is likely to take a decade or more to mature. Metaverses can come in many flavours. For example, some Metaverses can give their inhabitants the power to fly! Or even suspend the laws of physics as we know them! Others could locate themselves on a Mars-like planet or the universe as imagined by Star Trek! And many others could be replicas of the natural world with a twist or two mixed in.

     

    The upshot is that as Metaverse technology matures, there will be a slew of Metaverses competing for market share.

     

    And like any other brand, they will compete based on consumer insight.

     

    In the first phase, the bulk of consumers of Metaverses will come from today’s tweens and teens.

     

    Research across the world among today’s teens and tweens has indicated that a critical psychological trait of this segment is an inclination to experiment and explore a variety of identities. This need drives them to be open to the world, curious and positive of various modes and mores of sexual orientation, race and ethnicity.

     

    The Generation Z need to explore various identities is likely to be great news for the gaming industry.

     

    In his book, “Games. Agency As Art” C, Thi Nguyen, a professor of philosophy, offers a deep insight into the role of games in human life. He posits that playing games are a motivational inversion of life. In ordinary practical life, we usually take the means for the sake of the ends. But in games, we take up an end for the sake of the means.

     

    According to Nguyen, the characteristics of a game are:

    :: It tells us to take up a particular goal

    :: It designates abilities with which we can strive for achieving this goal

    :: It finally packages all that up with a set of obstacles crafted to fit these goals and abilities.

     

    In sum, we play games to sculpt an alternate form of “agency” – that is, identity! Thus games answer a critical need of today’s tweens and teens, provided they are inventive and varied enough to offer an array of widely different identities in the natural world and in the Metaverses to come.

     

    Further, the need for experimentation with identity also manifests itself in the consumption habits of Generation Z. They range widely in what they consume and actively seek new experiences while they shop. Consequently, they despise the sameness of the big-box shopping experience, whether offline or online.

     

    Metaverses, whatever their form, will all need to drive the consumption of goods and services for them to become viable businesses. Some of these goods and services will be unique to a given Metaverse. Beyond this, they will need to allow, within the Metaverse, the buying of brands of products and services from the real world.

     

    I forecast that every Metaverse will compete to provide a shopping experience that is unique to it and caters uniquely to the needs of its consumers. A happy synergy of the shopping and gaming experience will drive this uniqueness. In the Metaverse, world shopping will become a game that allows the consumer to take on a set of abilities and thus a new identity to purchase a particular brand of product or service. This identity (or agency) will be a layer atop the avatar’s identity the consumer has adapted within the Metaverse. The obstacles built into the game’s design will adhere to the overall environment of the Metaverse.

     

    I like to think of this version as g-commerce as in gamed-commerce. It will be a generational leap from the era of e-commerce and will be a crucial feature of Metaverses.

     

    The game’s sponsor could be a product or service category whereby the player decides among a set of participating brands. It could also be exclusive to a brand where the end is to achieve the best possible price.

     

    The creative possibilities are immense, and to guess them now would be akin to guessing the forms advertising has taken in the 21st century based on what it was, say, in the age of radio.

     

    Just think of the possibilities, say with the product category of sports shoes. Could it be a game in a low-gravity Mars-like Metaverse where our avatar can split into three and race a 10 km race wearing three competing brands? Or could it be a brand-sponsored event where our avatar races with other avatars and gets a discount commensurate with his achievement?

     

    In the age of g-commerce, Amazon will need to ramp up its inventiveness manifold if it wants to continue with its growing dominance of consumer commerce. So perhaps it should look to leverage its market value today to buy up gaming companies and drop its current austere Bania avatar for a freewheeling creative culture.

     

  • Is Unilever’s change of ‘Fair & Lovely’ to ‘Glow & Lovely’ merely cosmetic? And is the new name any good, asks Prabhakar Mundkur

    The Unfairness of It All

     

     

    By Prabhakar Mundkur

     

    When Hindustan Unilever announced its decision to rename its moneyspinner $500 million brand Fair & Lovely to Glow & Lovely, it was a classic case of doing too little too late.

     

    To imagine that the decision was perhaps based on the greatest upheaval of racist stereotyping of our time with the excruciating George Floyd pinned to the ground doesn’t say much for Hindustan Unilever’s decision. There is nothing to congratulate them about.  There can be no appeasement of public emotion. There can only be guilt and shame.

     

    Activists through the decades have objected to Unilever’s fairness cream but it needed a revolt as ugly as George Floyd’s death, for the great marketer to make this small move.  Not since Rosa Parks was denied a seat on a bus in Montgomery has the world been so affected by the colour bias of the human race.

     

    But how good is the new name Glow & Lovely? Decades of skin care research has shown that ‘Glow’ is a major benefit in for the skin care regimen. Just like ‘Shine’ is. a major benefit for hair. So, taking a benefit from research and planting it in a brand name is perhaps not the most creative way of configuring brand names. But then Unilever has not been particularly known for its creativity. That lesser brands like Emami had already pre-empted this thinking by naming their brands Glow & Handsome is a bit of a shame. After all, one expects leaders to show the way. Not follow in the footsteps of their smaller competitor in the FMCG business.

     

    But is Glow and Lovely a good name?

     

     There is a reason why Glow and Lovely doesn’t sound right given the vagaries of the English Language. The reason why it doesn’t roll of the tongue as easily as Fair and Lovely has to do with the English language. Both Fair and Lovely are adjectives. Glow on the other hand is either a verb or a noun depending on how you use it. Glowing & Beautiful would have sounded better in English. Because Glowing is an adjective. But it then lengthens the brand name. And Unilever might have decided they would stay close to the current syntax. Anyway to the large majority of Indians it would hardly matter. It’s just another name for Fair & Lovely. Fair and Glow are both four-letter words. But how the name changes the advertising need to be seen. Will the new ads have dark and glowing faces to make amends with the brand’s past? That is anybody’s guess.

     

    How Darkie changed its name

     

    It may interest people to know that the exact opposite of Fair & Lovely existed as a toothpaste in Asia many decades ago. A toothpaste called Darkie. Produced by Hawley and Hazel, the brand was very popular in Asia. The pack showed a smiling black performer. The brand was then acquired by Colgate Palmolive which faced a lot of racist flak on the brand. In 1989, Colgate Palmolive decided to change the brand name to Darlie.

     

    “It’s just plain wrong,” Reuben Mark, chairman and chief executive of Colgate-Palmolive, said about the toothpaste’s name and logotype. “It’s just offensive. The morally right thing dictated that we must change. What we have to do is find a way to change that is least damaging to the economic interests of our partners.”

     

    Seems like a shame that another global company had thought about this so deeply more than 30 years ago. So Unilever in many way is 30 years too late.

     

     What will posterity say about Fair & Lovely?

     

     But what this would mean for the generations to come is anybody’s guess.  Will Generation Alpha which may use the brand a few years from now warm up to the brand given its history? (Generation Alpha is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 2010s as the starting birth years and the mid-2020s as the ending birth years.)

     

    How will these young people see our racist past? One piece of research showed that Generation Z are as racist as their millennial parents. But will this continue on to Generation Alpha? Technology is likely to change a lot of mindsets in the future. And that may change the fortune of the brand called Glow & Lovely.

     

    Prabhakar Mundkur is an advertising veteran, a lateral thinker, storyteller and musician. He has spent several years in advertising – in India and elsewhere in the world – including at JWT China where he headed the Unilever business, amongst other functions. In fact he worked on Unilever brands for a good 17 years… though never on F&S ;-). A prolific writer now, he was LinkedIn’s #1 Top Voice for 2016 and YourStory’s 100 Emerging Voices 2018. He writes frequently on MxMIndia.

  • The study highlights how Generation Z is realistically ambitious,

    Isobar-Ipsos unveils #MeetTheZ Survey

    By A Correspondent

     

    Centennials or Generation Z have carved a niche for themselves and are inspiring the preceding generations in the process, as they strut forward juggling all areas with dexterity, according to the Isobar-Ipsos #MeetTheZ Survey.

     

    Said Vivek Gupta, Managing Director, Innovation, Ipsos India: “The new breed of youngsters (Generation Z) – born between 1995-2015 – is pragmatic in every possible way, true role models for older generations – they know what they want and know how to get it. Tech savvy, clear headed, confident, outgoing, valuing close bond with family, this generation embodies traits, which every parent has dreamt, for their kids to possess.”

     

    Added Gopa Kumar, Chief Operating Officer, Isobar India: “Interestingly, Generation Z does not portray the conventional stereotype – if they are digital natives, they also yearn for and prioritize offline connections. They are constantly on the lookout for authenticity and purpose when they are engaging with brands. In fact, they have an informed view of the transformative impact of technology at work and play.”

     

    The study highlights how Generation Z is realistically ambitious, and shows that at least 73 per cent of those polled are keen to pursue unconventional career paths while 80 per cent of them are willing to put their heart and soul into achieving their career goals.

     

    When digitally connected, this tech savvy generation, sometimes loosely called E-Generation, perceives technology as the means to information and empowerment. At least 55 per cent say their life runs on technology – 66 per cent believe tech helps them gain experience and acquire new skills. Interestingly, across various activities, this generation spends an average of at least 8 hours per day, online.

     

    This generation understands the dichotomy of social media – 64 per cent believe it aids in reconnecting with long lost friends; 43 per cent find it limiting in its scope for personal relationships.

     

    The study also highlights the paradox about Generation Z – on one hand they are home bodies, consciously spending time with parents, with at least 51 per cent of them consuming all meals with parents, at home, at the same time they are highly gregarious, like to hang out actively with friends (29 per cent) at least once a week, 50 per cent stay over with friends at least once a month. Parents are the anchor in their lives and at least 78 per cent of Gen Z polled claims their parents give them independence and personal space.

     

    Generation Z realizes that some relationships may not be for the long haul, 70 per cent reject a limiting relationship, while 66 per cent are accepting of relationships not moving to permanence. They are easy going when it comes to forging personal ties and don’t drain themselves emotionally. We found they are in different modes – 14 per cent of those in a relationship want it to culminate in marriage, 22 per cent of those in a relationship are not in the marriage mode just yet, 22 per cent singles are actively seeking out partners and 41 per cent are happily single and are in no rush to get into a relationship, just yet.

     

     

  • With the spending power of Millennials and Generation Z set to rise, brands need to prepare digital loyalty initiatives now or risk losing patronage from these digital native

    Majority of affluent middle class customers rely on banking and finance apps

    By A Correspondent

     

    Meeting expectations of the affluent middle class customers in India, in terms of digital experiences, is a very important ingredient of engagement for Financial Service brands to stay competitive, research released by Collison Group has revealed. It found that 93 percent of affluent middle class customers use banking and finance apps – up from 85 percent in 2014. It also revealed that 53 percent of customers prefer to do their banking online or via mobile app, while 27 percent prefer to go into a branch and 20 percent prefer telephone banking.

     

    Collinson Group polled 6,125 of the top 10-15 percent of earners from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the United Arab Emirates.

     

    Collinson Group recommends that financial services brands must act now to upgrade their loyalty infrastructure as the spending power of Millennials and Generation Z is set to soar in the next five years. Millennials are pushing companies to innovate faster and are defining new customer expectations. Born in the age of instant communication, smart technology, and a hyper-connected world, these young consumers are influencing digital transformation.

     

    “Digital will be the biggest battleground in financial services as digitally native Millennials and Generation Z become more lucrative target audiences for the sector. We can expect to see digital engagement continue to soar over the next three to five years. Brands need to act now in order to improve their digital offering, or risk missing the opportunity to build loyal relationships with lucrative audience segments,” said Anurag Saxena, India country manager, ICLP, owned by Collinson Group.

     

    The financial services opportunity

    “The way people shop and the way they interact with loyalty programmes has changed. Millennials and Generation Z for example, typically engaging across five screens simultaneously. Their relationship with brands is also completely different to other audience groups – they want instant gratification and claim not to want to save up loyalty points over a longer period to access a reward.”

     

    “But the traditional financial services firms actually have a clear opportunity to deliver highly engaging, digitally driven loyalty initiatives due to the wealth of data they collect. They need to go further in terms of using this data to improve targeting and segmentation to appeal to distinct audience groups. Banks really need to develop their own loyalty identities,” said Anurag Saxena, India country manager, ICLP, owned by Collinson Group.

     

    Recent research from the firm found that loyalty programme membership in the financial services sector had declined by 44 percent globally in the past two years. This decline was driven by brands not providing rewards programmes that customers value, and not engaging customers in their preferred channels. This research also found that brands getting it right are reaping the benefits –globally, banking loyalty programmes were found to encourage 82 percent of members to spend more, while credit card initiatives positively influenced 79 percent.

     

    “Digital loyalty initiatives can be far more cost effective than more traditional methods. By levering data and delivering highly personalised loyalty rewards at the appropriate time, brands can form emotional connections with customers and create additional sales opportunities across their organisation. Embracing digital tools will allow brands to communicate and engage their customers in more meaningful ways, and digital applications can be used to drive bank wide loyalty. Doing this will help create active digital footprints and take the next step beyond loyalty to fully fledged brand advocacy,” Saxena concluded.