There are no in-between generations any more
But why is this a problem? In itself it would not be, were it not that for decades segmenting by generation was a legitimate shortcut in marketing. Millennials = digital natives who value experiences over things. Boomers = brand-loyal individuals who buy on quality alone. Gen Z = values-driven, suspicious of the corporate world. In short, knowing someone’s year of birth was enough to know how to speak to them. Well, this idea no longer holds, because (for a number of reasons we will explore) the boundaries have dissolved. All within a few years, under the pressure of three converging forces that have made year of birth an ever less reliable predictor of behaviour.The three forces that have dissolved generational boundaries
First force: the algorithm
Before social media, each generation built its cultural references within relatively homogeneous channels. Television, radio, newspapers: media that tended to separate audiences by age. TikTok and YouTube do not work that way: they can expose a 60-year-old to the same trends as a 20-year-old, and vice versa. The result is that Gen Z knits, Boomers discover functional fitness, and the over-55s take up extreme sports. This is not eccentricity, mind you. It is simply the result of algorithms that have broken down generational cultural barriers. And now it is open season for everyone.Second: middle age has grown longer
Longer life expectancy, access to preventive care and a marked shift in how leisure time is understood have produced a 50-70 age group that no longer recognises itself in traditional portrayals of that age. This group is active and curious, has more spending power than any other generation, and is deeply irritated by the way most brands portray it: retired, sentimental, slow. The same mechanism that convinced brands to stop ignoring women in advertising is now repeating itself with the over-50s.Third: wellbeing as a shared value across ages
The culture of wellness, mindful eating and physical activity as a lifestyle has swept through every age group with the same intensity. A 65-year-old who goes mountain biking therefore no longer behaves like the 65-year-old consumer of 2000. They behave like a wellness-oriented consumer of any age. Their purchasing decisions follow the logic of the identity they have chosen, not of their age. And this changes everything.The triumph of behavioural archetypes
All of this has an upside. If demographic archetypes no longer exist, their place has simply been taken by new forms of segmentation: passions, shared values. Age has been demoted to a contextual variable. Today everything revolves around what people do, seek and value. An outdoor products brand that segments by age will miss the 60-year-old who goes trail running and the 22-year-old who chooses slow trekking as a response to digital stress. Only a brand that segments by identity (exploration as a value, nature as a space for recovery) will be able to reach both with the same communication logic. For a brand, behaving this way means making age cohorts more precise. Because “people who value autonomy in their financial choices” is a more coherent cluster than “Millennials”, and “people seeking intense physical experiences” is a more coherent cluster than “under-35s”.Domande frequenti
Does age-based segmentation still have some use, or should it be abandoned altogether?
It is useful as a contextual variable, not as a primary one. Age still shapes living conditions: available time, family structure, access to platforms, cultural references. But it no longer determines values, purchasing behaviour or expectations of brands with the reliability it had twenty years ago. Using it as a contextual variable (adapting the channel, the moment, the format) still makes sense. Using it as a proxy for what a person wants, or how to speak to them effectively, increasingly produces the wrong answer.
How do you build a system of behavioural archetypes in practice?
You start from observable behaviour, not from declarations of identity. Who buys, when, how often, in which related categories, through which channels: these data produce far more precise clusters than any answer to “which generation do you identify with?”. The second level is understanding the underlying motivations: not what someone buys, but why. This calls for qualitative research (interviews, ethnography, analysis of real conversations) rather than large-scale surveys. The result is archetypes that cut across age cohorts and allow far more relevant communication.
Is it better to segment audiences by generation or by behaviour?
It depends on the decision to be made. Age remains useful when it has a concrete bearing on channels, spending power, life stage or patterns of consumption. It becomes weak, however, when used to infer values, interests and motivations automatically: two people of the same generation can behave far more differently than two consumers thirty years apart. In Bliss’s strategic research, segmentation can therefore start from behaviours, needs, consumption occasions and value systems, with demographic variables used afterwards to enrich the clusters. The aim is not to know how old the audience is, but to identify which characteristic truly explains why they choose.