PPB March 2019

shooting immediately took to the streets and addressed the media to advocate for gun law reform. Those who are 18 and older turned out and voted in the mid-term elections last fall. The majority are socially liberal, fiscally conservative and vote their beliefs not for a party. How To Communicate With Gen Z Fully embrace mobile communication—your website and emails should be designed for mobile first. Members of Gen Z are less likely to be reading, listening or communicating with you on a laptop or desktop. Reach them through social media and mobile. Whether you have Gen Z members on your team or they are your clients, be authentic. Just be yourself. They love real and hate put-on. Listen for understanding with respect for their point of view and that high-priced education they earned. Ask them for input and make them part of the process. Be a collaborator not a salesperson. Know your core values and share them. Be upfront about what you stand for. Give them lots of options to express themselves on the items they are co- creating with you. Take that mindset as their co-creator and let them have every customization option to make it their own expression of the brand. Keep in mind that most Gen Z’s watch YouTube on a daily basis. There are stars in that media that you may have never heard of who are making millions of dollars a year influencing this generation. If Gen Z is a big part of your audience, you need to start learning who those stars are and why they have appeal. Forty percent of Gen Z’s say they prefer to interact with their favorite brands on YouTube rather than on any other platform. Melanie Hojnowski, 25 Promotional Products Specialist, Second Step Advertising, Wyandotte, Michigan How important are a company’s values when choosing where to work or who to buy from? Extremely important. If a company has a history of breaking up employee attempts to unionize or has a history of mistreating their employees, I will not spend my money with them. Amazon and Walmart are both large retailers I don’t shop with anymore because of this. There’s also a number of local bars/restaurants I no longer patronize because of how their employees are treated. I somewhat dislike traditional corporate culture at large companies and avoid taking jobs at them in favor of smaller businesses with more flexible rules/dress code—even if it means having to work a second job waiting tables at night. How do you prefer to communicate with your clients? How do you prefer your vendors communicate with you? I prefer Facebook Messenger over everything for communicating with clients because it’s easy to send photos/ video. I don’t have to worry about if I have a correct phone number, it feels more personal and I can just log out of the app if I don’t want to be reachable for a little while for whatever reason. With vendors, phone calls with email follow-ups are best since I have a way to remember their name, contact information and what we talked about should I need to follow up about something. And we can get the important information quickly (and with less of a risk of miscommunication) over the phone. What gives you the most satisfaction in your work? Successfully completing an artwork job. I have no graphic design background and had to hit the ground running when I started working at Second Step. Everything I’ve learned has been through Google, YouTube and pressing buttons in the program randomly in different order until it does what I want it to do. Artwork is hands down the most difficult aspect of my job, and I will admit to doing a little happy dance in my chair when I’m able to get it right. "I somewhat dislike traditional corporate culture at large companies and avoid taking jobs at them in favor of smaller businesses with more flexible rules/dress code—even if it means having to work a second job waiting tables at night." Gen Z | FEATURE | MARCH 2019 | 73