Marketing companies have been competing for the minds of millennials fiercely over the last few years – and for good reason.

Millennials represent about a quarter of the entire US population, and have over $200 billion in annual buying power. Though they have less discretionary income than Baby Boomers and older generations, they have a lot of influence – and are hard to reach with traditional marketing methods.

But are millennials still the hottest consumers out there? Or should we be focusing our efforts on a new generation of consumers? Here’s the scoop.

Millennials Are Still The Most Important Consumer Generation – For Now

Millennials are defined as individuals who were between 18-34 in 2015 by the Pew Research Center. They are just now entering the prime of their lives as consumers.

As millennials age, their income continues to grow as a generation. Most millennials are now out of college and working in professional careers, and millennials are the most educated generation to date.

This means that the buying power of millennials is only going to grow in future years, as they begin to start families and earn more discretionary income.

However, millennials will not stay at the top of the heap forever. As time goes on, Generation Z continues to grow – and a new generation of consumer is born.

Gen Z – The Largest Consumer Generation In History

Generation Z is defined as the “post-millennial” generation. While most definitions vary, it’s agreed that most Gen Z individuals were born around the year 2000 or later. This generation already makes up 25% of the population, and is forecasted to continue to grow.

As Gen Z becomes older, and younger people begin to enter the consumer market, they are likely to become the most highly sought-after consumer generation, just as millennials were before them.

Focus On Millennials In Marketing Efforts – But Don’t Forget About Gen Z!

How should brands market their products? Luckily, millennials and Gen Z both share a few common attributes. Consumers from both generations are tech-savvy and have quite a bit of influence on the market – and both Gen Z and millennial consumers do not respond well to traditional advertising methods.

While millennials should be the focus on most marketing efforts, Gen Z should not be overlooked. Brands should be using social media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter to reach a younger audience, and should always be on the lookout for hot trends that could appeal to Gen Z consumers.

Conclusion

As time goes on, millennials will become less important as a consumer audience, and the importance of Gen Z will grow. So focus on millennials for now, but don’t forget about the younger generation.

If you live in a major metro market, then you know what it’s like to walk down the street and see 90% of the people with their heads down buried in their phone. I was one of those people, until I found myself standing in the middle of the street in Manhattan writing a text and nearly getting hit by a taxi. From that point on, I made sure that I was always looking up. But I am definitely in the minority. And this post is not about the safety, or lack thereof, when it comes to texting. It’s about how marketers can capitalize on this Head Down Revolution.

According to Statista, the U.S. mobile phone penetration has reached 81%, representing 223 million consumers. And those consumers spend an average of 4.7 hours per day glued to their smartphones. More importantly, is the role that texting now plays in our everyday lives, especially when it comes to marketing. For an eye-opening example, texts have a 99% open rate compared to 20% for email*. Pretty amazing, huh? Now I imagine that smartphones are currently in the midst of fine tuning their hardware to introduce features that can block such correspondence. But who knows when that will come?

So until that day, marketers have a humongous opportunity to take advantage and focus their outbound efforts on the behaviors of the smartphone user. A behavior that is now second nature, and while receiving a text from a brand may seem like a nuisance at first, it is certainly less of one than an email. Also, if you’re sending info or content that isn’t selling, but more serving them something of value, then you’re more likely to be able to maintain that dialogue.

And isn’t a dialogue what we want? It opens the door, and leads to traffic. And when you have enough traffic, ultimately it will lead to transactions. It’s this approach to marketing, partnered with the aforementioned tactics, that can build the awareness and engagement you’re looking for.

Now how about a little “social experiment”: The next time you’re walking down the street, take note of how many people’s’ heads are down. It truly is a sight to see. Just think, those eyes could be engaged in your brands message. And if the message is “timed” to when your customer is in the market for a new product, it becomes relevant and timely — a very powerful combination.

*Credits: Jack Loechner — Editor of The Center for Media Research; SinglePoint; Statista

We spend around one-third of our life sleeping. Sleep plays a crucial role in good health and well-being. Getting enough quality sleep helps protect our mental health, physical health, and quality of life. The damage from sleep deficiency can harm you over time. For example, ongoing bad sleep can raise your risk for some chronic health problems. It also can affect how well you think, react, learn, and get along with others.  But, as our lives become faster and our stress levels increase, it is becoming increasingly difficult to sleep peacefully at night. There’s a new product which could change all that. It’s called the Beddit, and you sleep on it.

Beddit is an innovative ultra-thin film sensor that measures how you sleep. The device uses ‘ballistocardiography’, with a sensor that is sensitive enough to measure the mechanical forces that come from your heart beat, your pattern of breathing, and the way you move in bed. Simply place Beddit  under the sheet and it will connect wirelessly to your smartphone. In the morning, the accompanying app will draw a full report on your personal sleep habits and will and suggest how to improve the quality of your sleep.

Learn more about Beddit here.

What Sparks Our Fire: An innovative monitor that can help us reach good health and general well-being.

Would you try Beddit?

The app took over 10 years to develop and uses an exclusive RT Track 64 facial-tracking-algorism to deliver the most precise facial recognition through a live mirror camera. It allows you to see what you really look like with certain shades of makeup on in real-time as you turn your face, change your facial expression and take various angles.

So, if you ever found yourself trapped in the makeup aisle at a drugstore for hours trying to figure out the perfect shade of lipstick, blush, eye shadow or eyeliner and end up covering every square inch of the back of your hand with different colors, you will love this app. Simply put, you can now test out the colors virtually and make your purchase without having to go to the store and make your hands look like a palette.

How it Works
1. Download the app (works on iPhone or iPad)
2. Take a selfie
3. Let the app scan your face
4. Apply virtual makeup (you can choose up to 300 color cosmetics plus it also works on all ethnicities and allows for 400 lighting situations)
5. Purchase your perfect match instantly

What Sparks Our Fire:  A free makeup app using the latest augmented reality technology to help save time in your search for the perfect makeup shade.

Have you tried Makeup Genius? Share your thoughts!

Over the past few years there have been countless messaging apps that enable users to reach out to friends over new mediums in fun and useful ways. Facebook Messenger and Snapchat are the most successful, but they aren’t even relatively fun compared to this new app.

Traces is an app where you send messages that can only be retrieved by your friends when they get to a specific location. So, when you are sending a message you pick a place where the receiver has to go within a time limit that you set in order to open it. It’s like a scavenger hunt, but with messages. Traces lets you share messages, videos, and even songs. The only downside is that the app is currently only available in the UK where it is in beta – but they are planning on bringing it to the US soon, so for now we just have to hang in there.

What Sparks our Fire: A fun new way to message our friends

Where would you place a Trace?

It’s no secret that most of Apple’s native apps are lacking in features and there are third party apps that function much better. The one app that I previously saw no need to improve was my Contacts app. It simply does a great job of saving my contact’s phone numbers and email addresses in a simple format. Well, after downloading Humin I now can see how much I’ve been missing out on.

Humin does much more than keep track of how to contact the people you know, it reminds you how you know people, helps you remember them, and can even help you contact them. When adding a new contact into the app, by just entering a phone number or email address, it will automatically add a photo, where and when you added the contact, and where they work. While these features may appear intrusive, Humin guarantees that they are only taking the minimum amount of data onto their servers, so majority of it they will never have access to. Swiping over a contacts picture allows you to call them right from the app, or it can take you to your text message conversation with them, allowing you to use this app to fully replace the green phone app.

This app redefines what a contacts app can do by bringing your contacts into the 21st century, far away from the days of keeping a rolodex on your desk.

What Sparks our Fire: Apps that help us out.

Are you ready to improve your contacts app?

Yo. What seemed like something that was just too simple to actually be practical, the Yo app has grown to over 1 million users and tons of press. The app lets you send a message to your friends who use it. All you do is tap their name and they get the message “Yo.” It seems useless considering this is just slightly easier than sending a text with the same content, right? Well, today’s update to Yo adds a few updated features that makes it even more useful.

There is a new feature called Yo Index, which allows you to receive automatic Yo updates in conjunction with other services. For example, you can sign up to receive a Yo message when your package arrives from FedEx or when your Citi Bike rack runs out of bikes (as well as when one is returned there). Anyone is able to submit a feature for index meaning the possibilities are endless. It looks like a way to streamline notifications and receive them for just about anything via one single app. This feature seems to hold a lot more possibilities and usefulness than just being able to say, “Yo” to your friends.

What Sparks our Fire: An app evolving to become both useful and impressively effective.

What would you like Yo notifications for?

Just last week we shared a post on a new portable phone charger that can charge your device quickly and easily. The Ultra-X is a great look into where we are today with charging. Meredith Perry and her company, uBeam, are looking past today and into the future of charing technology.

uBeam will allow you to charge any device completely wirelessly – no plug, no pad, just a receiver attached to your laptop or phone. The device is capable of transforming electricity into sound waves, that are then distributed and turned back into electricity by the receiver. The only catch, the technology is not capable of charging through walls. But, the ease and accessibility of being able to fully interact with a laptop or phone while in the same room as the wireless charging station is a huge improvement. No more holding your head down towards the outlet in order to be able to talk on a dying phone. uBeam announced today their prototype is fully functionally and plans to be ready to hit the market in 2016.

What Sparks our Fire: An entrepreneur pushing the limits of wireless technology.

Do you think uBeam is the future of charging devices?

We use our phones all day long and the truth of the matter is the battery doesn’t last as long as we need it to. With each iPhone, or other smartphone release, the makers tout better battery life, but this still isn’t cutting it. Charging cases are heavy and bulky and while sometimes helpful, can be cumbersome.

UNU is here with the ULTRA-X, which claims to be the world’s fastest charging technology and can provide a full charge in just 15 minutes. The device can also be charged ahead of time and carried with you to power on-the-go. Now this isn’t as fast as StoreDot’s 30-second charger, we wrote about in April, but that device isn’t reaching markets until late 2016. ULTRA-X on the other hand is ready to ship August 24, 2014. There are two models, the larger one goes for $99.99 and comes with two ports so it can charge multiple devices simultaneously.

What Sparks our Fire: Fueling our phones as quickly as possible.

How many times have you been frustrated because you didn’t have time to wait for your phone to charge?

Getting a parking ticket can easily ruin a day. They are frustrating to receive – especially when wrongly accused. The price of a parking ticket is just marginal enough that for many people it isn’t worth the time to fight it, causing them to simply pay the fine.

Fixed is here is help you out. The app, currently only available in San Francisco, coming soon to Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, will fight your parking ticket for you. All you need to do is upload a picture of the ticket into the app and a representative will file the complaint and handle the rest. Fixed will only charge you if they win the case (According to VentureBeat they’ve won 20-30 percent of their cases so far). So if you lose you pay the ticket, but if you win you pay just 25% of what the fine would’ve cost you, to Fixed – a bargain considering it’s a 75% savings with no time spent.

The company has just completed $1.2 million dollar round of funding which will help them expand to more cities across the country. Keep Fixed in mind next time you get a parking ticket and don’t have the time to fight it.

What Sparks our Fire: An app that helps save both time and money.

Have you ever gotten an undeserving ticket you just paid instead of fighting?