“We are going to target Gen Z.” So said the leader of a challenger sportswear brand. It’s a problem that some senior marketing leaders still say things like this and isn’t without considerable risk.

You cannot seriously target an age effectively. This is because age is not an accurate segment in terms of describing difference and behaviour. It’s a false idea that a 19-year-old from a village in Romania is similar to a 19-year-old at art college in London or a finance student in Tokyo, but not similar to a 30-year-old from the same village in meaningful ways.

Location, social and economic environment, your hobbies and mindset are all much more relevant. It’s why businesses that focus on actual behaviour of people (Amazon) have been successful.

So why do so many marketers seem to revert to the date of birth cliché?

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Learn from experience

I have a guilty past as much as the next marketing leader of getting sucked into demographic marketing and living to regret it.

Beer as a category has been seduced by demographic demons warning, “the new generation don’t drink beer” or “women don’t drink beer”. This led to campaigns – and worse still innovations – that tried to target an age group or a gender.

The risk is you depict a lifestyle cliché and say nothing about yourself as a product or brand. Pink and fashion beer for the ladies (true but not personally guilty) and funky stuff for young people (guilty). It’s hard to overstate how bad some of this stuff was.

In a previous role, when craft beer was booming, we went to launch a wheat beer that was eventually supposed to be a range of craft beers. My team of 20-somethings and the agencies told me we should target millenials and to engage with these young adults we had to show them and their life. The results were excruciating.

The risk then is you think the strategy is right but the execution is the problem and get lost trying to fix it. That’s what we thought for a while and lost time and energy.

If the brands keep talking about beer-drinking millennials and Gen Zs then I estimate they reduce market potential by 80%.

The brand – Fenix – was unsurprisingly not a success and was withdrawn. Once we gave up the idea of age as an effective positioning and targeting tool we got back to – wait for it – the idea of having an idea.

Recently there has been some talk that having a functional point of differentiation is not important and I am not one to argue with data but my experience in FMCG is that this is still the easiest and most reliably effective way to position and communicate.

With the brand Radegast we did things right. We went back through the history of the brand and its foundations. Working in beer where brands are frequently hundreds of years old, it always pays to do so. Brands in beer went wrong when the past was washed away with fancy packaging and bland tastes.

Radegast beer in Czechia was modern by beer standards – founded 1970. Radegast is the pagan god of war and victory but also abundance and hospitality. There was a famous statue of the patron of the region and people chose the name Radegast by ballot (unusual in Communist times). The beer was brewed more bitter than others as the locals worked in heavy industry – steelworkers and miners. After an intense day at work, they wanted something “with bite”.

We used this to build a foundation or a positioning which we then used to reformulate the product to make sure it delivered on the promise (most bitter beer). We ensured we did not target men but people – a frequent misleading comment I heard was that women didn’t like bitter things, but they did drink espresso and eat dark chocolate. So came the famous slogan “Life is bitter, thank god”. This is not for a gender or an age, like the beer it will appeal to you as a person – or not. If bitter beer is not for you, best stay away. Over a decade, Radegast grew from number five to the number one beer in volume sales.

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Limiting potential

The second obvious risk with demographic targeting is that even if you do it well and get it right, you limit your potential market size.

The UK market is waking up to the phenomenon that is non-alcoholic beer. On the continent, over the past two decades, alcohol-free beer has grown in many places to more than 10% of the total beer market, whereas in the UK it hovers around 1%. As the commercial opportunity becomes more obvious I’m starting to see familiar comments… “Gen Z are driving this”, “We need to appeal to a new sober generation”.

The reason non-alcoholic beer is big business and an everyday product in Germany, Spain or Poland is that every adult is engaged with the category. The targeting is by behaviour and taste, so those searching for the (bitter) taste of beer, typically alcoholic beer drinkers, and those who are searching for sweet alternatives to classic soft drinks, many of whom never drink beer.

Sometimes it’s just easier to target a demographic than come up with a big idea… but it doesn’t make it right.

If the brands keep talking about beer-drinking millennials and Gen Zs then I estimate they reduce market potential by 80%.

Going back to the challenger sportwear brand, if you want to take on the leaders and win share then develop a simple but relevant idea that leads to distinctive products, and communication that articulates that compellingly. Hint – young people bouncing around is not that.

As marketers, we should make our brand as desirable to as many people as possible, not single out who we prefer and who we would like to hang out with. I guess sometimes it’s just easier to target a demographic than come up with a big idea… but it doesn’t make it right.