No doubt about it the value system of my GenX significantly differs from that of the Baby Boomers before us. The GenX cohort tends to be more independent, self-sufficient and self-motivated, as opposed to the Boomers who display a more diligent work ethic and favor stability and loyalty to their employers.

GenXers have also broken from the sequential order of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that the Boomers followed so diligently, along the lines of education, career, marriage and promotion in sequence. In contrast, GenX has a need for self-achievement, yes, but endeavors not to let job responsibilities compromise general quality of life, whereas the Boomers would follow the path of work hard, play later (albeit after you get that Big Promotion).

That is not to say that GenX doesn’t have “Boomer Envy,” which Douglas Coupland defined as an envy of material wealth and long-range material security accrued by the older set of the boomer generation. But they also demonstrate an unwillingness to seriously ‘work’ for any of that. Mainly, my generational cohort focuses less on the ‘job’ itself and more on job satisfaction and life outside the job in terms of leisure activities, family, lifestyles and other interests.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Though there isn’t one single way to divide people into age cohorts for the purpose of citing behavioral and attitudinal commonalities among consumers within a defined time period, the most commonly referenced are the major categories of Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y.

I was born in 1967 – ah, yes, 40 years ago today – which puts me in the Generation X cohort of people born between 1965 and 1980. Many people point to author Douglas Coupland as having coined the moniker “GenX” in his book of the same title, but it was also the name of musician Billy Idol’s punk band in the early ‘80s. This is important to note because ours was a generation profoundly shaped by the launch of MTV and the proliferation of music videos.

Never before had there been such a powerful combination of sight and sound to tell us what to wear and do – even who to ‘be’ to be cool. The ‘beautiful people’ cluttered the screen on MTV, riding subways, dancing in the twilight, dressed in tuxedoes shooting (poison) arrows. It was all about fashion, and took our consumerism to the next level as, arguably for the first time, product placement took center stage.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Los Angeles based diet and fitness program design company engages Daily to develop go-to-market plan, brand positioning, company and product names, brand identity and retail packaging.