Algorithms, Advertising, and Marketing to Generation Me
The year was 2009 and I had just started my first year at a small liberal arts college. It was also during this time that the entire first year class was forced to read Jean Twenge’s Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before and to say that it was a campus wide disaster would be an understatement.
You see, Generation Me premiered before we had become desensitized to clickbait critiques of Millennials, so most of the students in my class were shocked by the insights that came from the text. At one point it was anticipated that Twenge would be invited to campus, and while I don’t remember if she ever was, I do remember that we all had some very pointed questions in response to some of the arguments in her book.
However, now that some years have passed, I have been thinking a lot about Twenge’s assessments less in terms of the reality of being a Millenial and more so as a reflection of how the generation is viewed from an analytical perspective. In particular, the psychological insights presented in the book have been useful in giving both context and credence to some things that I have been noticing about the way that advertisements are targeted to the younger generations.
Through a more tailored and algorithmic approach to social media marketing, advertisers have moved from the time period of telling the consumer what they want into a time period where brands are giving the consumer what they want based on big data driven audience insights. Therefore, I have begun to wonder whether this more targeted approach to advertising and marketing has the potential to shift the role of consumers and companies within and outside of the online marketplace i.e. What does a more Me-centered approach to marketing look like and is it better than the more manipulative approaches to marketing that we are used to?
From the Me Generation to Generation Me
Despite the fact that there is a huge divide between Baby Boomers and Millennials within the cultural zeitgeist, I have always felt that there was a strong similarity between present day Millenials and Baby Boomers when they were the age that Millennials are now. One way that I see this similarity is through the designation of Baby Boomers as the “Me Generation” and Millenials as “Generation Me”.
Specifically, Twenge’s book describes Baby Boomers as the parents of Millenials, which is not a truth universally acknowledged but amenable to the argument that I choose to make in this post. According to Jean Twenge’s research, Generation Me is highly individualistic and ranked as more narcissistic than previous generations. However, Baby Boomers, who came decades before Millennials, were also described as the Me Generation in their day due to this same assessment. Therefore, I would argue that we commonly attribute narcissistic personality traits to any generation that is invested in divesting from the collective and focusing on the improvement of the self.
However, what is interesting to me about this assessment of Boomers and Millennials as highly individualistic to the point of overly egoic self absorption or selfishness, is that both of these generational classifications are also reflected in the development and dissemination of advertising during their formative years. In the article “Advertising in 1970 vs. Advertising in 2020”, Jose Angelo Gallegos notes that both of these time periods marked a shift in advertising that not only relied on new media and technology, but also a “consumer-centric” understanding of advertisements. Instead of advertising focusing on audience members as undefined masses, a consumer-centric model of advertising is more focused on market niches or an in-depth understanding of the individual.
And while there is always the chicken or egg argument i.e. What came first, consumer-centric marketing or the me-centric generations? I find it fascinating that this style of marketing was prevalent for both Boomers and Millennials. Supported by technology, such as the internet and television, which made it easier to target advertisements to a specific audience, this consumer-centric marketing has become even more sophisticated over time.
Making Sense of Marketing Niches
Especially with the rise of social media technology, this understanding of advertising is even more defined for younger generations. Online shopping and user engagement means that most companies have large stores of consumer data that can be used to influence our buying habits. And, a big part of this influence is an in-depth understanding of even more niche consumer markets. No longer relying on the understanding of the “average” American, or anybody else for that matter, brands and businesses have learned to embrace and target hyper specific cross-sections of every general market.
But, what is even more interesting is that brands and businesses are not the only entities with knowledge of these market niches. Consumers have also become hyper-aware of how they are seen by companies because of the increasing specificity of advertisements and the availability of consumer data. For example, I remember that several years ago the public was introduced to Google Analytics and it became a pastime to look up how the search engine viewed you demographically i.e. age, location, gender, political leaning, etc. More recently, I even had a video come across my For You Page of a woman that had requested her Amazon Data to see what the company knew about her.
And, even if you don’t go through the process of finding out exactly what data that a company has on you, it has also become common for individuals to reverse engineer their market niche by the type of content and commercials that are seen. Especially on platforms which generate a newsfeed based on recommendations, like TikTok, YouTube, and even Hulu, it is easy to discover how the algorithm sees you simply by analyzing the interpellation that is implied in the content. Whether it’s constantly receiving videos with a liberal leaning viewpoint, or seeing more content creators of a certain race or gender, the tailoring of our social media feeds is also reflected in the ads and brands that we are shown.
Specifically, I was scrolling through my TikTok feed last night and I came across a commercial video for YSL’s latest fragrance update Black Opium Extreme. Now, what was fascinating, and creepy, about seeing this advertisement is not only the fact that I have been wearing YSL Black Opium for several years (so the ad was quite on brand), but the ad itself featured Zoë Kravitz (who is on many of my Pinterest boards) as well as the song “The Hills” by The Weeknd (which I regularly listen to).
In this sense, the algorithms that run social media are no longer just influencing the content that we see, but the advertisements as well. And this understanding of one’s market niche now extends beyond simple demographics to a reflection of both actual and advertising aesthetics. While our actual aesthetics can be understood as how we present ourselves, many of us (whether consciously or subconsciously) have been developing unique advertising aesthetics which correspond to our market niche.
As a reflection of both of these understandings of aesthetics, the Black Opium Extreme ad was creepy to me not only because it represented my personal aesthetic but it was a perfect representation of my advertising aesthetic i.e. what types of ads I like and/or what an ad would look like if I was on the marketing team. Therefore, I would argue that we have entered into an era where many consumers have such a level of awareness and advertising acumen, that even the advertisements we see are becoming reflections of ourselves.
How Advertisers Wink, Wink, and Nudge, Nudge the More Conscious Consumer
With all of this knowledge that we have about our own market niches and the purpose of marketing, this awareness of the conventions of advertising is also a reflection of our greater awareness of how algorithms and social media platforms work. As consumers of digital media, there is now an almost universal understanding that the content we see is a reflection of a complex system picking what it thinks that we would like based on machine learning.
And while this is similar to the way that market niches and advertisements work, these new online ads have demonstrated to me that the data is getting more accurate and also more concerning. Something that I have noted when it comes to the collection of data by various corporations and institutions is the fact that our own oversharing online means that it is easy to “sell us to us” in multiple avenues. Whether this be a political party collecting data about popular ideologies in the country and then creating a platform for a new candidate which reflects those leanings, or simply a company analyzing how they can beat out their competition by addressing all of the concerns that a particular niche might have with a popular product, there are many new and nefarious ways that we can see consumer data being used.
As consumers become more conscious of the way that they are seen by companies, marketers have also begun to respond to greater consumer awareness and understanding of the manipulative nature of advertisements through winks and nudges. Wink advertisements assume that consumers have a knowledge of the conventions of advertising and the psychology behind them. Dropping the fourth wall, and allowing a peek behind the curtain, these ads do not hide their true nature and instead tend to make fun of themselves as a form of audience entertainment.
Within the realm of social media, we also see the rise of nudges which act as little hints that you should stop scrolling, or purchase a product, or engage with a page, and both winks and nudges act as these more subtle forms of advertising which focus on engaging with consumers as intelligent members of an active audience instead of passive consumers waiting to be duped by the next media or marketing machine.
Yet, even with these subtle and consumer-centered changes I still wonder how consumers can also begin to use this knowledge get what they want i.e. What would it mean if we took this awareness and used it to manipulate our market demographic and online behaviour to reflect the type of products and services that we want and need?
Platform Consciousness and the 21st Century Consumer
In past posts, research, and writing I have talked a lot about what it looks like to manipulate algorithms to get the experience that you want online. But, recently, I have also started to wonder if consumers can also manipulate algorithms to shift the definition of a market niche and/or to get the types of products and services that they need?
While companies have been doing market research for years by asking consumers and focus groups what it is that they want from a brand or company, what does it look like to show a company what your niche wants through purposeful engagement with advertising, branded content, and other online media? Similar to popular techniques or organizing for a cause, it would be fascinating to see if consumers could mobilize together and strategize how to get a company to view a market niche in a particular way, therefore working to serve that niche based on the updated understanding.
And to some extent, we see a little bit of this consumer organizing in the realms of film and television when audience members work towards greater representation in a particular genre of franchise, as well as in fashion and beauty when it comes to creating more products for underrepresented groups.
But, what I have not seen, and what I think is on the horizon, is an even more individualized understanding of products and services that reflects the wants and needs of the more me-centered generations. Specifically, this could mean more brands and businesses which offer customization and creativity in the products and services offered, ensuring that the items you select are algorithmically tailored to the unique needs of the consumer.
