Stages, not ages
Showing how Gen-Z insight helps inform product marketing decisions
The brief
Build foundational insight into 21- to 29-year-old drinkers and turn it into a plan for winning with them.
The reframe
A 21-year-old moving out and a 29-year-old new parent share a birth window, not a mindset. Strategy built on the generational label would miss them.
My role
Associate Strategist, The Mix Global & AKQA
I led the digital ethnography analysis and the New York and Phoenix field workshops.
Figures
- 40
- 4,000
- 2
- Existing knowledge synthesis
- Cultural expert interviews
- Seven-day digital ethnography
- 4,000-person quantitative survey
- Immersive workshops in New York and Phoenix
The full case
- Diageo needed to future-proof its business with the next generation of drinkers — 21- to 29-year-olds — but the industry was working from stereotypes, not understanding. Marketing was built on generational labels that much of the audience actively rejects, and on assumptions about young drinkers that didn’t survive contact with real life. The brief: build foundational insight into who these drinkers actually are, and land it in a clear action plan for how to win with them.
- The headline finding flipped the brief’s premise. These aren’t a generation to be decoded — they’re people at wildly different life stages who happen to share a birth window. A 21-year-old moving out for the first time and a 29-year-old new parent have almost nothing in common except the label, and many reject the label outright. Attitudinally they look a lot like Millennials; behaviorally, especially around alcohol, they’re different: more apathetic toward the category, less engaged with brands, drawn to mid-tempo third spaces over traditional nightlife. And they operate like characters, not consumers — curating identity through the brands they choose, changing as their character evolves. Strategy built on the label would miss them entirely. Strategy built on their voice wouldn’t.
- A five-phase research architecture built to move from observation to action: existing knowledge synthesis, cultural expert interviews, seven-day digital ethnography with 40 young drinkers across the US, a 4,000-person quantitative survey, and live immersive workshops in New York and Phoenix. Findings were organized into four chapters — People, Culture, Category, Brands — each answering a specific question, and run through an OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act. The structure forced every insight to earn its way into the playbook.
- Led the digital ethnography analysis — hundreds of photos, videos, and social diary posts from young drinkers living their actual lives — alongside the New York and Phoenix field workshops. The method was deliberate: start with real behavior before forming hypotheses, then test what emerged at scale. That’s where the stereotype-busting findings came from — regional differences that defied assumptions, the ‘stages not ages’ pattern, the discovery that authenticity for this audience means intent (walk the talk), not a word they use themselves. Asked to name favorite brands, almost nobody said ‘authentic.’
- A playbook for building brands for the next generation: how to win on mental availability, how moderation actually works, what the proliferating mid-tempo occasion landscape means for where brands show up, and myth-busting guidance on established versus new brands, purpose versus intent. Delivered as a workshop, a digital debrief, and a visual insight summary with a bank of photo and video evidence — tools the team could actually use, not a report that sits on a shelf.