Alpha Bets: Marketing Music To A New Generation

Ignore them at your peril.

Demographers expect that by 2025, Gen Alpha — the cohort born after 2010 or so — will outnumber Baby Boomers worldwide. 

Meanwhile, Gen Z —  those born between 1997 and 2010 — will have its entire older half in adulthood.

In short, new economic giants are stirring and beginning to stretch their limbs as a buying force.

This can be a lot to swallow for cultural and commercial observers who have spent an enormous amount of time in the last two decades tut-tutting and deriding Millennials as hopelessly out-of-touch youths. They’ll soon realize the oldest Millennials are now in their early 40s and spend an enormous amount of time trying to decipher the inscrutable slang of their children (see page 42).

What unifies the generations is that they are largely digitally native. That is: they don’t really remember a time before the ubiquity of devices. The iPhone debuted in 2007, when even the oldest members of Gen Z were still in elementary school. By the time the first Alphas were born, devices were everything, everywhere, all at once.

Generational theory isn’t universally accepted science or sociology, but as a blunt instrument — particularly for marketing — it can be useful. Proponents emphasize that generations are often defined and driven by big moments that occur in childhood. For Gen Z, that’s the recession of 2008, when many have dealt with unemployed parents or the loss of a home. Thus, Gen Z is — paradoxically — willing to delay gratification while also being motivated by fear of missing out. They tend to put off spending on short-term, near-term enjoyment so that they don’t miss out on a bigger moment later on.

Their younger siblings in Gen Alpha are defined, of course, by the COVID-19 pandemic, which essentially forced them to adopt a raft of technology in short order at a young age. They are extremely, intensely online and society has yet to come to terms with what that’s going to mean.

Marketers have to figure it out — and fast — and are often flying by the seat of their pants when they do. After all, a culture that’s aggressively online moves at hyperspeed and by the time you’ve snagged one meteor, the next one might come flying at your behind to send you tuchus over teakettle.

Michele Bernstein of eponymous marketing consultancy Michi B, Inc., is one of the folks in the trenches fighting to figure it all out and reach the youngest consumers.

“An incredible bank of compelling content is key,” she says. “And putting the content in the right places like TikTok and Instagram Stories”.  

The decline of terrestrial radio as a force — particularly in pop and hip-hop; old-fashioned radio is still a major factor in country and, to a degree, rock — has altered both music discovery and marketing. The ability to access — or be fed algorithmically — almost any song from any time has stripped a lot of the baggage that saddled legacy acts as the exclusive domain of older generations. Stevie Nicks has remarkable purchase with Gen Z, for example, and a clip of TikTok creator Nathan Apodaca skating and lip-syncing to “Dreams” got more than 40 million views, bumped streams for the song (and Fleetwood Mac in general) and inspired a raft of copycats, reinforcing the virality. 

Gen Z in particular is seen as a notably nostalgic generation. And why shouldn’t they long for simpler times? They came of age during the worst recession in half a century, faced a decade of uncertainty and general societal malaise and got isolated and locked away just as they got into the fullness of their youth and young adulthood. They view the ’90s, especially, as a sort of halcyon time, no doubt abetted by the wistful re-telling of their Millennial and Gen X parents, who gloss over the difficulties much as their Boomer parents glorified the aquarian aspects of the late 1960s and ignored the uglier violence of the era.

Alphas, on the other hand, are forever seeking the new and next, though being so young, there’s a chance that constant need to refresh may temper with age.

What unites the two youngest generations, though, is strong bullshit detectors and a desire to be acknowledged as an emerging force, an impulse Bernstein attributes to the pandemic’s seclusion.

“[They value] connectivity and authenticity,” she says. “They went through the isolation of COVID and understand the importance of prioritizing mental health and wellness. They also want to be heard.”

For Bernstein, one of the biggest surprises is how Z-ers and Alphas take songs and make them “anthems that end up in unpredictable places.” And not just older tracks — like the aforementioned “Dreams” trend — but new songs.

“Childish Gambino’s song ‘Nobody Gives A F–k’  became a summer anthem and kids are showing up to his shows dressed as Bando Stone, a character he introduced in this new cycle,” she says. “It’s wild to see fans showing up to shows in Spam hats, Hawaiian shirts and shorts.”

What’s telling here is that Bernstein uses the title of the track as the name ascribed to it by online creators. On the album, the song widely known online as “Nobody Gives A F–k” is officially “Lithonia.” That it has a life of its own —and a name of its own — beyond what Childish Gambino created is demonstrative of the values of Z and Alpha.

Whether they are being nostalgic Z’s or futurist A’s — they see themselves as creators. Unlike earlier cohorts, they don’t want or expect to be marketed to; they want to be marketed for and are likely to undertake marketing themselves and their favorite artists on their own.

They probably wouldn’t call it “marketing” (Lord knows what they’ll call it; once again, we point you to page 42) but spreading the word about a song or an artist — new or just new to you — even if the medium is a silly little video you made over the weekend, is just straightforward marketing. What the capital-m Marketers have to do is figure out what’s going to resonate and ride the wave.

The unpredictability of what catches fire — “Dreams” or “Lithonia” or Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” — is as hard to understand as their slang (again, please see page 42), but the power of Alphas and Z’s is now impossible to disregard.