Case Study: Honoring History to Inspire Gen Z

We make a lot of assumptions when communicating to different audiences. When I proposed a historical campaign to motivate our predominately Gen Z workforce, I naturally got a lot of pushback.

But in getting to know our workforce, I realized they were more than the Tik-Tok generation. Our people were military spouses, military brats, young veterans or just plain idealists.

Against conventional wisdom, I opted to go deep with content instead of just a short, cute video. I scheduled an hour long show with our archivist and CEO…and it was arguably one of the most successful internal events we had done in years, with massive attendance, positive feedback and so much demand for more that we turned Honoring Our Legacy into a years-long theme that weaved throughout our messaging.

It worked because the guest was good, we had the audience join the discussion, it was informal and genuine and we related everything to their work today. Compelling content knows few barriers, whomever you are talking to.

Here are some other features and highlights to the approach:

• Rapid Prototype Approach: I tested my hypothesis that historical content would resonate with a relatively low effort production, gauging demand before investing resources into a campaign.

• Shaping Employee Behaviors: Our employees often commented afterwards that now that they know our history, they did not want to stain our legendary history.

• Building Empathy: We highlighted the challenges of operating in war zones that they shared with their colleagues from Iraq to World War II, showing employees we see them and understand them.

• Rewarding & Recognizing: Comparing our employees with past legends and exploits offered unique avenues to recognize people.

• Showing Progress and Leadership Humility: By providing different historical angles to challenging issues like technology implementation and equity, our leaders got a chance to talk candidly about progress and the journeys ahead.