Gen Z may be the end of generational marketing

As marketers, we love categorizing people into demographic groups, especially by generation. Unfortunately, this tidy little way of targeting constituencies might be coming to an end with the group we call Gen Z. These 11- to 26-year-olds are less likely to share similarities based on events, activities and consumption habits than older generations.
So Many Paths, So Many Viewpoints
In my generation (Gen X—I know you forgot about us, right?) events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Watergate scandal, the Challenger disaster, the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots, and many other circumstances created a shared history for nearly everyone in my age group. We generally all received our news from the same few sources, so we had shared experiences surrounding both the accounts and interpretations of these big events. In addition, many of our cultural touchpoints were the same: We read the same books in high school, listened to Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 on the radio and watched MTV voraciously. John Hughes movies from the era (e.g., The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) resonated with us because the experiences of a Gen X high school student were practically universal.