The Future of Credit-Building Product for GEN ZERO

"No one will give you credit because your credit score is low; and your credit score is too low because no one will give you credit."

It is really the chicken-and-egg problem for first time workers and borrowers, mainly those who just recently graduated or entered into the freelance-based workforce of this gig economy.

This new generation flux of first timers, also known as Gen Z (or literally second wave of the Millennials) tend to rent things rather than buying them. Gen Z might have another nickname called Gen Zero because of their zero savings, low to no credit score, and zero assets owned.

Looking back at the Google Trends data since the last recession in 2008 for worldwide and particularly for Thailand, it reconfirmed the rationale behind the nickname I gave them. Renting an apartment, applying for credit card, buying a car are on the rise while repayment and installment for credit card are to follow. Buying a house interest has been stable since recession, it shows a clear intent about it but unfortunately they either they have priorities issues of where they should spend their money, or they have been influenced by leading retailers fantasy and the credit card market BNPL (buy-now-pay-later)?

To put mindful branding (https://www.datamoon.io/mindful-branding) into practice and implications for the future of credit-building spending behavior, there are many ways brands can participate in shaping a better ecosystem and a more sustainable economy. Some initial thought starters are per below;

Meaningful Purpose: Credit-Builder as the Purpose

- Make credit-builder behavioral design as part of the brand and product purpose, moving away from purely profit-builder of capitalism to show the customers that you really care. Good examples can be seen from Afterpay (https://www.afterpay.com/index) to Cred.ai (https://cred.ai/) where values are designed to help the customers spend mindfully and responsibly.

Interbeing: Impact from a good financial discipline is a win-win for everyone

- Being part of customers ecosystem and understand their motivations and problems beyond the spending spree of convenient and promotions. Insurtech Disruptor, Lemonade (https://www.lemonade.com/) is one of mindful branding favorite that not just disrupted the market by building it from scratch, but also incorporated the impact everyone could make for one another into the business model.

Nowness over newness: Invest NOW, Spend LATER

- Reflection of customers current situation, influencing them to be honest with themselves about what they can or cannot afford; this may sound naive for marketers, but better safe than sorry may be best for your customers. NerdWallet (https://www.nerdwallet.com) is a great example of a mindful brands with a mission to help customers outwit the overload of financial products and services through their simple and friendly money tools.

Differentiation by (REALLY) doing: Small Amount, Small Businesses, Big Impact

- No more old banks new tricks or cosmetic changes when it comes to marketing products and services to Gen Z. Stop the corporate bogus of repackaging the old plastic with new mobile look but the same irrelevant value, especially for the new tribe of customers, the Gen Z. Gen Z seems to be a debit king as most of them do not yet have the plastic or credit per se; to really differentiating your products and services, think small amount, reach out to small businesses and online DTC retailers, that's where the real impact and untapped opportunities are. Current banks and brands may have established trust with the parents of Gen Z, but not with Gen Z themselves.

At the end of the day, the future of spending will be in the hands of this Gen Z, period. The fact that we know how struggle they are or will be facing when it comes to money, isn't it our responsibility to mindfully create value of brands, products, and services that help them succeed? I want to turn this Gen Z from Gen Zero of low-to-no savings and credit scores to Gen Zealous where they can really thrive into the promising yet unknown future.

Generation NOW: Ageless, Boundary-less, Cookie-less, Clueless?

Forget about the old ways of generation definition where you define groups of people by the obvious and certainty of information such as demographic, psychographic, etc. The pandemic has really accelerated a real change to that definition.

Welcome to the Generation N, the generation of now knowing what's happening next. It is the first time in the history that we, and I mean literally everyone, are in the same generation for the first time in history of mankind.

All of the sudden, we all became the early adopters of the unknown pandemic and adopted the behavioral change by force, and literally by design by the mother of nature.

What we as the Generation N know for sure are below;

The Uncertainty is Certain

The only thing we really shared as the generation is the uncertainty. Pantone Color of the Year for 2021 which for the first time in its history to have two complementary colors for its annual colors of the year; ultimate grey and illuminating yellow reflecting the juxtaposition of our unknown human needs during this soon-to-be-normal life.

Implication for marketers; normalize the uncertainty, play it to an advantage by creating values at both side of the needs. It is time for double on double. Parallel marketing strategy for long-term and short-term together while normalizing the juxtaposition of needs into the strategy.

The Privacy is Protected (Finally)

Cookie-less world of data privacy is finally here. For the first time since the internet economy that we, can really and hopefully control our own privacy. No more interrupted ads and meaningless attention stealing for the sake of eyeballs or top funnel conversion. Cookie-less world obviously benefits consumers, not so much on advertisers and their fancy programmatic ads.

Implication for marketers; utilize data with real meaning, for real people and not for google's SEO. It is time to really make data meaningful for consumers in order to earn their trust before asking for their data.

The Empathy is Real

According to Google's 2020 Year in Search, it shows a clear intent from all of us that we demand for a change to survive in the NOW. We still search for certain answers during this uncertainty. We asked why certain things happened to certain people. We asked why certain disaster happened to certain part of the world. We asked why because we care as the generation cohort, we do care about each others. We asked why because we wanted to be able to do what we can to help where we can, despite our own struggles during this pandemic, we still ask why not just for ourselves but also for others.

Implication for marketers; humanism couldn't be any more real. Humanize the brand to really gives meaningful value to your audiences, no BS on PR buzz or bogus attention, be human, be real.

Although Generation NOW seems to be clueless about what is going to happen, I think being clueless is not entirely a bad thing. Being clueless gives us the ability to reset and discover our unknown potential in order to survive this uncertainty. It gives brands and businesses to revisit their values for consumers, employees, and communities. Cluelessness can be really meaningful if we, marketers, really care to make value out of it.

Reference:

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-apac/consumer-insights/consumer-trends/2020-year-in-search/

https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2021

Humanism: A Marketing Takeover

What value are we creating? Who are we creating it for? As long as we still create our products and services for human being, there are really three important values we all crave for; health, wealth, love. We make choices in life around these three values whether we realized it or not, it always goes back to these three. According to the Meaningful Brands by Havas, people would not care if 77% of brands disappear, it probably because 77% of those brands don't have these fundamental values. Or probably they have not realized that humanism is about to take over the capitalism?

Marketing is about creating value and making products and services better in a meaningful way. There are more than 500,000 brands listed worldwide, according to my knowledge, yet only a few resonates with me personally. To name a few out of my mindful branding collection, Amazon, Airbnb, SweeGreen, Headspace, Lemonade. These brands thrive on humanism in a meaningful way. They share meaningful purpose beyond today's capitalism of more of short-term greedy green. They strive for a long-term meaningful humanism green that everyone can have some, lose some but the at the end of the day, still have some to continue creating value of own's own.

Be honest with yourself and ask if we were to create anything today, are we really in it for the traditional money-driven capitalism or we are ready to shift and take over the meaningful business opportunities with the approach of humanism. You are what you create so be meaningful, because what is meaningful, will always stay meaningful.

Reference:

https://www.meaningful-brands.com/en