The advertising industry has long operated on the assumption that adults make the purchasing decisions in American households, which is a comforting thought if you happen to be selling luxury sedans or retirement planning services but perhaps less useful if you are trying to understand who actually controls the remote.
New research from 7Stars, the London-based media agency, suggests that Generation Alpha — the cohort aged 11 to 15, for those keeping track of the generational nomenclature — wields considerable influence over family spending. Nearly four in five of these young people, the study found, have what the researchers describe as "a high level of influence" on household purchases, with roughly half helping to research family holidays and choose technology acquisitions.
(One imagines the research phase for a family vacation now involves a teenager, a parent, and a shared screen, which is either heartwarming or exhausting, depending on the household.)
The findings arrive alongside a separate survey, this one from OnDevice, that offers a rather different portrait of marketing sophistication: some 80 percent of marketers acknowledge they do not fully understand why their campaigns succeed or fail. Nearly two-thirds say they rely on educated guesses. A fifth admit they simply move on to the next brief without ever solving the mystery of the previous one.
This would seem to create something of a paradox. On one hand, brands are being told to account for the purchasing influence of middle-schoolers, a demographic whose preferences can shift between breakfast and lunch. On the other, the same brands concede they cannot reliably explain what worked last quarter.
Elsewhere in the week's data: travel planning now takes an average of 76 days, according to The Trade Desk, which is roughly the length of a European vacation in a Hemingway novel. And Sprout Social reports that 44 percent of consumers believe influencers should be long-term users of a product before endorsing it — a standard that would disqualify most of the influencer economy as currently constituted.
The children, at least, seem confident in their choices.
Original story published in Marketing Week: "Measurement gaps, Generation Alpha, B2B content: 5 interesting stats to start your week"