Who is Gen Z? Exclusive New Data Reveals 7 Personas & How To Connect

Years ago, you read an article that showed up in your email inbox that told you that it’s time to stop worrying so much about millennials.

“Gen Z is the new millennials!” it exclaimed.

Since then, you and your team have been trying -- often unsuccessfully -- to dig in and understand the growing segment of new audiences who have already made a massive impact on purchasing across all markets.

The problem is, when analyzing Gen Z, you cannot rely on assumptions or perceptions. That will lead you to a Pepsi-Kendall Jenner kind of situation (remember that?).

What you need is real, actionable, contextual data on Gen Z.

That data you’ve been looking for has arrived.

The Ultimate Guide to Gen Z Personas is your go-to guide on Generation Z (who they are, what they care about, and the brands they love). It features advanced audience segmentation to uncover new details about Gen Z that every brand or agency team is going to want to read, ASAP.

Inside, you'll get an in-depth look at Generation Z personas, helping answer questions like:

• Who are the members of Generation Z?
• What are some of the most prominent audience segments among them?
• What causes do they care about, and what are their interests and passions?
• What brands are most important to each segment of Gen Z?

Before you dive into the report, let’s take a look at what the research reveals about Gen Z personas, what drives their behavior, what they value, and how brands can connect with them.

Social Listening Data Reveals Key Gen Z Personas

Gen Z is unlike any other group before them.

They’ve grown up in a highly connected world. They’ve been raised by parents who were deeply impacted by the 2008 financial crisis. Their formative years were then bookended by a pandemic and another financial crisis.

They’ve also lived much of their teen and young adult lives in a more progressive and accepting society. They have a front row seat for the fight to curb climate change. And an internet- and technology-driven world is the only world they’ve ever known.

As news and information travels rapidly, members of Gen Z have been more exposed to the challenges and struggles the world faces from an early age. Because of this, many Gen Zers have developed an instinctive aspiration to help the world. To be difference makers.

It’s also hardened them to be more conscious of their own futures, from financial responsibility to carving out a career path.

When combined, these key elements reveal themselves when we develop personas from the accurate data in our social insights research.

Using advanced audience segmentation within our social listening tool, Infegy Atlas, we’ve developed 7 Gen Z personas. Here's a preview of the personas in the report:

Insights about demographics, top interests, discussion topics, emotions and themes help us dig into the DNA of a typical Gen Zer. Here’s the high level overview of who these audiences are:

To see a more specific breakdown of the various Gen Z personas, download the report.

Now, we’ll look at why it’s so important that we use data to research Gen Z audiences.

Gen Z Research Debunks Assumptions

Too many assumptions have been made about this generation. Like millennials before them, brands often struggle to understand these consumers because their analysis involves too much guesswork.

At best, organizations have relied on surveys or other research with small sample sizes that don’t tell the whole truth about Gen Z.

For example, you might not think that those still in the twilight of their youth would be interested in business or be financially savvy. But our data reveals that the long-term economic and life goals of these youngsters is top-of-mind.

One persona featured in the report, Entrepreneurs, describes how a growing number of Gen Z members view college as optional.

Many are planning their career paths with the idea that they’ll start their own business rather than go through formal training. Meanwhile, the generation as a whole appears to have financial responsibility as a top focus more so than the generations before them.

Additionally, social data research shows how these teens and young adults are investing in and leveraging technology for their futures.

The Youtubers persona is another fascinating example of how Gen Zers aren’t just using these channels to consume, create or communicate. They’re thinking about the potential career paths that these technologies can take them down.

Here’s a quote from the report:

People in this segment are creators and consumers. They connect with and follow like-minded members and express themselves to a targeted following. Like entrepreneurs, they've intuitively pinpointed an area of opportunity to leverage technology and new media as an ongoing and fulfilling venture.

Without the actual data, unsolicited from Gen Z consumer voices across the web, you’d be lost in a sea of assumptions and guesses. Using this audience segmentation technology, you can get to the heart of what Gen Z wants and values and be better prepared to reach them in impactful ways.

To find a further analysis of these surprising aspects of Gen Z members, download the full report here.

Social Listening Provides Key Insights For Gen Z Analysis

While we’re still waiting on Gen Z to become financially bootstrapped enough to build up sales data and context for their buying behaviors, what Gen Z does, like the rest of the world, is talk online.

By participating in the huge community of online conversations, Gen Z has created a massive documentation of information about who they are and what they want from brands.

These conversations reflect who they are as people. They reveal what Gen Z audiences care about, what topics of interest they have, and what resonates with them.

Using advanced audience segmentation provided by social listening, we can narrow down specific age groups and cut through the noise to see what matters most to Gen Z. This allows for understanding how companies can better reach them and deliver experiences that resonate with them.

For example, in the Gen Z Personas report, we used custom audience segments, pre-built using previous query research, to quickly asses specific segments of Gen Z audiences. 

Here's what that might look like, looking at Airbnb budget travel, and selecting the custom-built Travelers audience segment of those in Generation Z:

Using these custom-built audience segments, which users can build on their own and save for later, you can effectively and precisely research specific audiences and analyze Gen Z trends.

Instead of relying on assumptions, listening allows researchers to make precise observations and predictions about specific segments of people, including Gen Z.

Download the full Gen Z Personas report here!

Brand teams can take the guesswork out of the equation by implementing the powerful, far-reaching, a.i.-driven research capabilities provided by social listening tools. But choosing the right software for your needs can be overwhelming. Understand how to evaluate a social listening tool and what questions to ask.