How Generation V Will Impact Your Business

©Sabistar Pty Ltd – All rights reserved – www.sabistar.com
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I. Sabistar Pty Ltd Background

The quot;Sabi Starquot;, also known as the quot;Desert Rose” is a flower that is shaped like a five pointed star.
The tree on which it grows is found in the Sabi Valley in Africa and across the world where climates
are harsh and overbearing.

This amazing tree has flowers that bloom throughout the year despite the tough conditions that
surround its environment. The tree survives and maintains itself by creating a network with desert
insects and animals which offer sustenance and secure its continuance with each visit.  The Sabistar
seasonally offers scents that attract various species thus ensuring a continuous stream of traffic all
year round.

The Sabistar is primarly a highly skilled networker that realises the value of partnerships and joint
ventures.  The flower is red and white and saturates a bright contrasting picture on a normally arid
and dull landscape.

At Sabi Star Pty Ltd we identify with this flower’s strength and aim to provide each project with the
best service we have to offer.  Our creative team offers visually enhanced graphics and cutting edge
concepts integrating into new media and internet based websites, advertisements and online
campaigns are flawless.

We have expanded our network through outsourcing our jobs globally leveraging our abilities within
an extensive global network of talent, resources, and highly skilled artists and contractors.  This has
provided our clients with resources that build empires.

A fusion of our creative strategies with this network provides the ideal platform for the success of
any project.  We value our relationships most and are comitted to creative solutions.
Our network combines talents bringing together with highly sort after conceptsn that give our
projects drama with results.

Our skills in online social networking combined with our marketing and public relations activities
make us highlyskilled for online and new media. We understand social trends of Generation V and
aim to participate on a global level.  We combine these with neurologigally designed creative
messages guranteed to address your market and clients.

What if you could do anything...What would you do?

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II. Short Author’s biography

Azhar Khan

Known for his creative communications, his work as a visionarian has led
him to becoming the first commercial producer of Virtual Exhibitions and
Conferences in South Pacific Asia.  Azhar’s concepts are cutting edge and
always in touch with the market that it is being aimed at.   His career spans
a range of publishing titles and advertising campaigns from electronic to
press, both above the line and below.
“I enjoy the feeling I get when I interpret the vision
of my clients. I almost feel what they want to
portray to the public about their product or service.  It really gives me
a thrill when I see productions that often take months to plan and
execute come alive” says Azhar.

Born in 1971, in Zimbabwe, Africa.  Azhar received accreditation with the Advertising and Media
Association in 1997.  He was accepted into he Creative Directors forum and held the first solo digital
art exhibition at the National Gallery in 2001.   Azhar has worked with a myrid of global corporates
over a period of 15 years gaining experience in traditional and online marketing and advertising.

“I place the succes of my projects on making key alliances with the best in the industry, that’s
because in my industry your value is only as good as your last act. Everything you do has to play at
the maximum... 100% all the time. You can’t be half pregnant, you either are or you aren’t”  He said
when refering to previous events that he has put together.

Azhar has produced exhibitions and events on two continents both for trade and consumers and still
maintains client’s in the UK, Dubai, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Australia.
Contact Azhar Khan:

Sabistar Pty Ltd
111-26 Cadigal Ave
Pyrmont Sydney
NSW2009
Australia

+61 2 9660 2605
+61 2 9660 2605
+61 4 21 73 88 77
azhar@sabistar.com
  www.sabistar.com

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Contents

I. Sabistar Pty Ltd Background 3
II. Short Author’s biography 4
III. Overview 6
IV. Introduction to Generation V 7
V. Generation V is unlike any other generations. 7
VI. Them virtual environments demand a new strategy. 8
VII. Where does the customer fit? 9
VIII. We live in an age of self empowerment. 10
IX. The four stage generation model 11
X. Satisfy the needs multiple roles. 12
XI. The 10 personas of Joe Bloggs 13
XII. Up sell added experiences 14

Notice ‐ This message contains privileged and confidential information intended only for the exclusive use of Sabistar clients. If you
are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in
reliance on it. If you have received this message in error please notify us immediately. Opinions, conclusions and other information in
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strictly forbidden, as is the disclosure of the information therein. If you have received this message in error please notify the sender
immediately and delete the message.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Garntner Research
To Loral Langemeier, for kickstarting a dream.
Maria Cuci‐Panetta, Andrew Elam & Rob Dean for being awesome and being there.
Jeff Casey, Nicholas Gates & David Kaz and team at INXPO for everything Virtual.
Faith Saunders, Troy Netreba and Howie Chang for all your support.

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III.Overview

Generation Virtual will change the way you do business.  From social networking sites to
online exhibitions and conferences, webinars and digital rights media, the influence this
segment of engaged consumers will have on culture, society and business is profound.
Companies wanting to take advantage of this market segment must change their practices
to begin targeting this emerging segment of tech savy consumers.

The virtual world can no longer be ignored; companies must adapt their strategies to market
goods and services to the online environment. For some time now, if you did not have a
website in business you were considered not a serious player.  This level of interaction has
just got serious with mobile phones and PDA’s offering users interactive experiences.  Users
are now demanding content be provided at the touch of a button, virtually everywhere.

Traditional ways of selling to customers, based on demographic information, will become
irrelevant in the online world, which has been known to provide a myriad of merit based
systems using personas that conduct transactions and spread influence anonymously.  How
the flock interacts with your product will determine its success and social proofing your
product will be more relevant to your online marketing then any other form of marketing.
This systematically will change the relationships between companies and their customers
and systems will have to be developed by CRM practitioners and other IT leaders to use the
research we’ve prepared for their organisations to compete in the growing the virtual
environment.

Marketers will need to determine the company’s role in providing access to knowledge,
social status or reputation, and achievement of responsibility.  The customer’s journey
toward self‐actualization will need to be organized and targeted with online products and
services.

This Ebook discusses how companies must adapt to market goods and services to the online
environment, which is growing in prominence and changing some fundamental rules about
the relationships between companies and their customers.

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IV. Introduction to Generation V

Generation Virtual is transforming the way we have customer interactions.  The term
Generation V (for Virtual) is to describe the online culture in which relationships services
and communications are carried premier league and preferably through Electronic Media.
Generation virtual is made up of people from multiple demographic age groups who make a
social connections primarily online.

As the virtual experience continues there will be more money spent on marketing and
selling to multiple anonymous online personas, than what is currently spent on marketing
and selling off line.  In the next 10 years the key influence on all business to consumer
purchases will be in the online experiences associated with them.

V. Generation V is unlike any other generations.

As baby boomers and younger generations go online and participate or communicate in a
virtual environment, the generational distinctions will begin to break down.  Consumers will
cross segments at various times and for various reasons are likely to act as several
generations at any given time.  Generation V is the recognition that general behaviour,
attitudes and interests are starting to blend together in an online environment.

Previous generations focused on age.  Generation X and the latter Generation Y were
conceived as a way to understand new generations that didn’t seem to have connections to
the cultural icons of the baby boomers. Marketers called these categories baby boomers
Generation X and Generation Y, to segment the population for targeting products or
services to their respective age bracket.

Generation V and the virtual environment provide many aspects of a level playing field
rewarding competence, motivation and effort.  Age, gender, class and income of individuals
are less important.

This is what makes generation V exciting, for example.  Any teenager could be the leading
go to person for advice on how to upgrade or hack into digital video recorder for the
purposes of gaining more recording space.  A cleaner or un‐popular office worker can be a
highly revered accomplished Virtual environmentalist in an online role playing game.  The
opportunities for reputation, prestige, influence and personal growth create a powerful
social draw for masses of people to spend more time in a virtual world.

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To accomplish this, many people are creating anonymous personas in multiple online
communities, such as:

• Role playing games, such as second life or world of warcraft
• Social networking sites such as and twitter, facebook, myspace and Youtube.
• Ecommerce site such as Amazon .Com or gap.com.

Generation V are engaged in the creation of anonymous online personas.  The growing
influence in the development of this online environment means that companies need to
change their methods of acquisition and building relationships with their customers and
generally all consumers.  Traditional methods have focused on identifying target markets or
customer identification as the foundation for 1 to 1 marketing campaigns. This is no longer
the norm as CRM focused companies, starting with the marketing department must take
notice of the changes in the marketplace and engage persona’s or face the wrath of virtual
mobs and mass customer exodus.

Third party providers of customer data, business intelligence and analytical tools will shift in
the direction of consumer based applications, eventually using highly automated artificial
intelligence and self learning “persona bots” to seek customer’s needs and buying patterns,
by monitoring their desires through wishlists and spending habits, already seen on sites like
amazon.com.  Customers’ true identities will have less importance and eventually what will
be important is how your marketing will interact with their online personas.

VI. Virtual environments demand a new strategy.

Companies have opposed many IT innovations at first, only to embrace them later, these
include the use of the standard PC, mobile phones and even having Internet access at work.
The virtual environment is there for another lesson in the continuing history of the Internet.
As the Internet begins to grow with a control problem it is getting worse and company’s
desire to control the use of it has got to become more and more robust.  Many IT
professionals will be responsive to the demands from the leading edge employees.

However most IT professionals know that they’re better at long‐term or larger scale projects
and therefore are not structured for the innovations in web based activities and marketing.
In fact most CIO’s and programmers have very little to no graphic or web knowledge at all,
and rely on a different types of professional, normally graphic artists or designers and
architects, for this kind of knowledge.

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It is therefore in the interests of marketing departments NOT to leave this to the IT
department to solve.  Setup joint strategies that rely on top down control and management,
in addition to strategies that depend on bottom up, free market style selection.  This will
help organizations play to their strengths, while also affording maximum opportunity.

VII. Where does the customer fit?

The virtual environment will be a type of meritocracy.  Meritocracy is a system of
government organization based on demonstrated achievement, accomplishments and
talent rather than wealth of nepotism class privilege, cronyism or other determinants of
social power.  (see Michael Young’s book the rise of the meritocracy written in 1958).
The gender age and class or income of individuals has far less importance in the online
world than in the real world.  Motivation, effort and competence are more revered.  This is
directly impacted as a powerful draw for masses to spend more time in a virtual world.  The
average person will spend up to 4 ½ hours at a virtual conference or exhibition.  This is
because the opportunities for prestige and influence are more powerful in determining the
reputation they can generate for themselves online and the learning opportunities are
considered to be far more up to date than homestudy courses or printed literature.

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VIII. We live in an age of self empowerment.

It is therefore essential to satisfy customers’ online self actual actualization.  Elicit their
instinctive drive according to the hierarchy of ultimate performance.  In 1943, Abraham
Maslow proposed in “a theory of human motivation” that people seek to fulfill their
instinctive needs according to hierarchy in terms of their potency.
The lower the need is on the pyramid , the more powerful it is. The higher the need is on the
pyramid the more distinctly human it is.

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The virtual environment will be a tool to provide for all of these needs.  Beginning at the
bottom are the psychological needs; what one requires for sustenance i.e.  food, clothing,
and shelter.  Meeting these needs allows a person to move up the pyramid and concentrate
on safety needs that includes the need for personal security.  Networking and social needs
such as the belonging and love are followed by the need for admiration and high regard or
esteem.  Finally at the top of the pyramid is self actualization – the instinctive need for
personal growth and fulfillment.

IX. The four stage generation model

Gartner has developed a four stage generation model to help companies determine where
their value propositions are positioned to satisfy one or more of Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs.  See below

Generation Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Virtual
Goals Commerce Personal voice Social voice Self‐
actualization
Strategy Buying/Selling Self‐expression   Belonging Introspective
exploration
• Wikis
Technology • Order • Blogs • Virtual
• Reputation
• Tagging
management   environments
engines
• RSS distribution
• catalogue • Community WOM • Life
• Podcasts
• Community
enter simulation
• P2P File Sharing
portals
• XML
• Ad serving tools
• Location aware

• E‐mail • Persona
services
• Wireless
• A web browser management

• HTML • Persona bots
• Company
bots
1995 to 2005 2005 to 2015 2015 to 2025

Sources: Gartner (December 2007)
Customer relationship managers can use this model to help template online investments in
a virtual environment.  The generations and their goals are:

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Generation 1 — Web 1.0. Goal: These types of sites enable customers to engage in
transactions. Technologies such as order management and a catalog are commonplace.

Generation 2 — Web 2.0. Goal: These types of sites facilitate the expression of one's ideas
and sharing. Companies (or users) provide technologies such as tagging, blogging tools or
person-to-person (P2P) applications. These sites give users a personal voice to share their
ideas.

Generation 3 — Community. Goal: These types of sites facilitate socialization and
community, and create an influential group voice. Technologies such as wikis and regulation
engines are common devices used to pull together group information and assist in the
structuring of social groups. Location-aware services help bring people together.

Generation 4 — Virtual. Goal: These environments enable introspection and exploration.
They're geared toward multiple virtual experiences, combining goals from Generations 1, 2
and 3. Technologies include virtual world creation, personas, persona bots and quot;company
bots,quot; which are artificial intelligence, self-learning automated personas that companies will
be using to interact with other personas.

Things to consider

• Use the four generation model for benchmarking and planning online investments.
• Expect online technologies to facilitate more than half of the customer’s buying process as
companies move past generation two.

X. Satisfy the needs multiple roles.

Generally people have multiple roles based on the inner representation.  For example,
employees, volunteer, child, parent and spouse. All prompt different behaviours and
attitudes.  Your customers are playing to these personas at any given time and it is
important for you to understand how best to provide for them.
For example Joe Bloggs, is a parent who enjoys cooking, photography and stock trading.  He
has 10 online personas dedicated to these interests, as shown below:

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XI. The 10 personas of Joe Bloggs

The collection of behavioral data is going to be very important and analysts will play a major
role in the virtual environment.  Companies will need to detect behaviour such as segment
hopping if there are able to address the needs of multiple personas.  This will be one way to
monitor customers that switch over certain segments.
We recommend that:

Companies should start collecting persona data for product development, customer
feedback, loyalty management, customer segmentation, campaign targeting and persona or
group customer satisfaction management.  This wealth of data can be used for marketing
and selling them will provide insight on how customers would like to to be treated.

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XII. Up sell added experiences

Users need the flexibility to be able to express their desires.  The freedom and ability to
choose their environment, or create multiple environments is a way to orchastrate
customer exploration towards purchases.  Successful companies will be able to create a
balance that will give customers and prospects the appearance of flexibility and free will
allowing them to navigate and explore their own values on their own terms, whilst at the
same time providing dangling the carrot that leads visitors to a company’s products and
services.  This means that companies will have the opportunity to sell to people at various
stages of their lives, ensuring psychological safety and social goals are being met.  At the
same time companies will obtain a deeper understanding of how and what people are
exploring, and even identifying those that are not in the norm and why.

We recommend that:

As more and more research is being conducted by consumer’s online, virtual environments
will be a way to engineer customer exploration of your business goals.   Customers are more
likely to make a purchase as the information they receive will be considered the most
current.  Homestudy environments will eventually be phased out as realtime virtual
experiences are already a consumer demand.

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Coming in Edition 2 of How Generation V will change your business,

• How to collect data for relationships
• Recommendations for CRM Managers
• Change how customers are segmented
• How to achieve customer loyalty through relevance
• Developing new skills
• Sell to the Persona Bot – with a bot of your own.
• E Learning benefits and the ROI comparision compared to traditional learning.
• Virtual trade show marketing compared to traditional marketing
• Secrets to inspiring presentations.

To reserve your copy now send an email to talktous@sabistar.com

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How Generation V Will Impact Your Business

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