Thinking about millenials, or Gen Y as some call them, reminded me of marketers wonderful ways of coming up with new terms for consumer segments.
When I was growing up, it was yuppies – young, upwardly mobile, professionals. These were the new pin-striped generation of City styled workers, who went skiing every year and had plenty of disposable cash.
Then there were the dinkies – double income, no kids – couples. These working couples co-habited and enjoyed the spoils of their materialism in their kid-free, narcissistic world.
Add on the nimbys – not in my back yards – who resist any change, and you have an old world of folks who were delusionally rich, highly leveraged, selfish and self-interested.
Now we have a range of new categories of consumers for the new decade.
Boohoomers are the baby boomers who hoped to have retired at 50 and then found their net worth was about a tenth of what it would have been, as their pension pots got boomed.
Minjers are Middle-Income, No Job, Earning a Rest on the State. These formerly wealthy folks were the yuppies and dinkies who, having been made redundant, are now finding themselves living on savings and benefits.
Yolops are the Young, Living on Parents gang, who the boohoomers and minjers hoped to have got rid off by now but, at thirty something, they’re still living at home and practicing with their band in the garage.
Yotops are the other set of Young, Travelling on Parents group, who have been sent on a year or two of ‘global experience gathering’ by ma and pa, in order to get them out of the garage and off of their hands.
Mad Cows is a unique consumer clique of ex-Hedge Fund Manager’s wives who, as they realised that a subway pass was now their new modus operandi rather than the private limo, have given up on reality. Hence, we have another wave of mad cow disease.
Wotofs are their partners. This group just sit and ask: WTF? all day long. Most of them invested in Bernie Madoff or, if not, worked for an investment bank.
Finally, there are the Gotouts, a happy group as they got out of the investment markets and all other risky property markets before the collapse.
Mad cows, wotofs, minjers and boohoomers are all wishing they were in this group but hey, WTF?
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
