In an unexpected twist in US politics, the much vaunted red wave was stopped by aspiring democrats, much to the credit of the so called “Generation Z”.
GenZ also known as the ‘zoomers’ were born late 90’s into the 2010’s. This grouping have recently ascended into voting age in countries worldwide and have caused a bit of a stooshie.
This group have largely escaped the media and editorial control of their predecessors by the worldwide media organisations. As a grouping they don’t read newspapers, they don’t watch prime time news, and they don’t expose themselves to traditional media.
Instead the media that spreads among GenZ is much more organic, similar to communication within a beehive – messages that resonate are quickly spread among themselves. This may be a short TikTok, or a twitter post, it may be natural over Snapchat but it’s very rarely a long form entry on a news site.
It’s not something that can be easily manipulated as it either harmonises with the collective spirit that is within GenZ, or it fails and is dropped. No hashtags or promotions will solve that.
Traditionally they stay away from politics in their online communities – however when they join the political debate – they are dauntless in delivering a swift kick. Worldwide they’ve screwed up well founded plans for massive speeches by a certain former president against some of the highest paid campaign managers in the world.
But now they’ve started to vote.
It turns out, the electric and sudden outbursts, are able to be focussed. While the Republicans served up some rather extreme ideas – the GenZ voters responded in a sudden arrival at the voting booth.
It’s no secret within the Independence movement that the youth broke heavily for the Yes campaign. However since the vote – the youth disappeared but according to polling are entrenched in their views.
There is always an aspiring strategist asking the question – how do we motivate the youth to join our campaign, how do we involve them and get them re-energised. However this will never work. They are guided only by their collective sense of right.
The challenge should be instead for us to look to them, study the communication strategy and method. They’re already immune to national conventional media which is heavily biased against independence. They are motivated by values and an underlying sense of humanity and doing things ‘right’. They are not scared to return with trolling thunder if their opponents get bigger than their boots.
The voice in which they’ve spoken in America, is in the belief of the people that have appeared to represent them, almost every one a new face, usually from an unusual and unlikely political background.
Are our leaders still our best ticket? When someone says it has been a political generation already (including us) – did we forget to check that the faces presenting the case had changed? Because there are a lot of the same old voices, making the same old points.
It’s time to learn. Welcome Zoomers.
