Not Your Generation.
NEW BOOK · AVAILABLE NOW
The case for marketing to moments, not generations.
$15
Free shipping. Signed copy on request.
For three decades, marketing has sorted people by when they were born. The research in this book says that assumption is wrong.
When asked what drives their daily purchasing behavior more, their generation or their current life situation, 66% of consumers choose life situation. Only 9% choose generation. Nearly four in five would trust advice from someone in the same life stage over someone in the same age group. Nearly nine in ten say their shopping is defined more by where they are in life than when they were born.
These findings come from original primary research across all four major generational cohorts. And they raise an uncomfortable question for an industry that has built campaigns, agency practices, and entire research departments around generational segmentation:
What if birth year was never the right variable?
In Not Your Generation, marketing consultant, researcher, and professor Caleb Roche makes the case that life stage, whether someone just bought a home, became a parent, changed careers, or retired, is a far more accurate predictor of purchasing behavior than the generational labels the industry has relied on since the 1990s. Drawing on a 500-respondent survey and case studies from Apple, Pepsi, Glossier, Patagonia, and Bud Light, the book offers a research-backed argument and a practical replacement framework for marketers who have quietly sensed that something about generational targeting wasn't working.
Inside this book, you'll learn:
Why the trust hierarchy that actually drives purchases looks nothing like the one most influencer budgets assume
The two rules of advertising that consistently outperform demographic targeting, regardless of audience age
The 8-cluster life-stage model that cuts across all four generations and reveals the customers your current targeting is missing
How to audit your existing campaigns, rebuild personas around life stage instead of birth year, and measure whether the shift produces better results
Why Apple's "Shot on iPhone" campaign works for everyone while Pepsi's Kendall Jenner campaign collapsed in 48 hours, and what the difference says about how to brief your next campaign
Written for marketing professionals, agency strategists, brand managers, and anyone who has ever looked at a generational targeting brief and wondered whether something about it didn't quite add up.
The argument isn't that generational differences don't exist. The argument is that they explain far less of purchasing behavior than the industry has assumed, and that the customers being missed because of that assumption are real people with real buying power who have simply stopped expecting brands to understand them.
This book is the case for going back for them.
Original research across all four generational cohorts reveals what most marketing strategy gets wrong: 66% of consumers say their life situation impacts buying more than their generation does. Only 9% say the opposite. Not Your Generation is the practitioner's guide to rebuilding segmentation around the variable that actually predicts behavior — backed by survey research, sharpened by ten years of agency work, and written for operators who want frameworks they can use Monday morning.
*Ships within 48 hours from Edmond, OK.
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING
“Finally — research that actually changes how I segment customers.”
“The framework I wish I had when I started my career.”
“This is the book the industry needed.”
Most marketing strategy is built on a variable that doesn't predict behavior.
THE PROBLEM
Open any modern marketing strategy document. You'll find the same structure repeated for three decades.
Boomers want X. Gen X wants Y. Millennials want Z. Gen Z wants something else entirely.
The frameworks differ. The underlying assumption is identical — that the year a person was born tells you something predictive about how they buy.
It doesn't.
Original survey research across all four major generational cohorts reveals the variance within any generation is substantially greater than the variance between generations. The 34-year-old first-time homebuyer has more in common — in actual buying behavior — with the 52-year-old first-time homebuyer than with the 34-year-old who is single and renting.
Generation tells you almost nothing useful about the consumer in front of you. Life stage tells you almost everything.
And nearly the entire marketing industry has been segmenting on the wrong variable.
Eight chapters. One framework. Built for operators.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
Why 66% of consumers say life stage matters more than generation — and what to do about it
The 79% finding that should change how you select testimonials and case studies
Why celebrity influencer trust scores 2.05/5 — and where influencer marketing still works
How to identify the highest-leverage life-stage moments for your specific category
The migration roadmap from cohort-based segmentation to moment-based segmentation
Why values-based buying now drives 40% of brand switching — and how to position credibly
The measurement framework that lets you prove life-stage segmentation works
A 12-month plan to rebuild your segmentation strategy from scratch
If any of these are true, this book will pay for itself.
WHO THIS IS FOR
You're a CMO or marketing leader who suspects your segmentation strategy is producing diminishing returns.
You run an agency and your clients keep asking you for "Gen Z strategy" when you suspect they need something different.
You're a founder or operator trying to allocate marketing budget without wasting it on the wrong segmentation.
You teach marketing and you're tired of textbooks built on generational frameworks that haven't aged well.
You're a researcher or strategist looking for a primary-source case study on life-stage segmentation.
This book is not for you if you're looking for a quick-tip social media playbook or a generic introduction to marketing. The book assumes you've been in or around the industry long enough to know what segmentation is and why it matters. If that's not you yet, save your $15 and come back in two years.
““Ask a consumer who they would trust more for product advice — someone exactly their age, or someone in exactly their life stage. 79% pick the life-stage peer. Generational segmentation has been operating on the opposite assumption for thirty years. The data has been hiding in plain sight.””
AN EXCERPT
Theory in the morning. Execution in the afternoon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caleb Roche is the founder and CEO of Club Creative, a marketing and consumer research agency whose clients include Slim Chickens, Capriotti's, Google, and other national brands. In 2025, Club Creative drove over $20M in client-attributed revenue and 400M+ campaign impressions.
He is also an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Oklahoma Baptist University, named the 2026 Faculty Mentor of the Year, with student evaluations above every university benchmark. He is a doctoral candidate at Liberty University, where his research focuses on whether life-stage variables predict consumer behavior more accurately than generational cohort labels.
This book is the result of that research — and the ten years of agency work that made him want to write it.
READY TO READ IT?
Get your copy.
$15
Paperback. Free U.S. shipping.
Signed copies available — leave a note at checkout.
For three decades, marketing has sorted people by when they were born. The research in this book says that assumption is wrong.
When asked what drives their daily purchasing behavior more, their generation or their current life situation, 66% of consumers choose life situation. Only 9% choose generation. Nearly four in five would trust advice from someone in the same life stage over someone in the same age group. Nearly nine in ten say their shopping is defined more by where they are in life than when they were born.
These findings come from original primary research across all four major generational cohorts. And they raise an uncomfortable question for an industry that has built campaigns, agency practices, and entire research departments around generational segmentation:
What if birth year was never the right variable?
In Not Your Generation, marketing consultant, researcher, and professor Caleb Roche makes the case that life stage, whether someone just bought a home, became a parent, changed careers, or retired, is a far more accurate predictor of purchasing behavior than the generational labels the industry has relied on since the 1990s. Drawing on a 500-respondent survey and case studies from Apple, Pepsi, Glossier, Patagonia, and Bud Light, the book offers a research-backed argument and a practical replacement framework for marketers who have quietly sensed that something about generational targeting wasn't working.
Inside this book, you'll learn:
Why the trust hierarchy that actually drives purchases looks nothing like the one most influencer budgets assume
The two rules of advertising that consistently outperform demographic targeting, regardless of audience age
The 8-cluster life-stage model that cuts across all four generations and reveals the customers your current targeting is missing
How to audit your existing campaigns, rebuild personas around life stage instead of birth year, and measure whether the shift produces better results
Why Apple's "Shot on iPhone" campaign works for everyone while Pepsi's Kendall Jenner campaign collapsed in 48 hours, and what the difference says about how to brief your next campaign
Written for marketing professionals, agency strategists, brand managers, and anyone who has ever looked at a generational targeting brief and wondered whether something about it didn't quite add up.
The argument isn't that generational differences don't exist. The argument is that they explain far less of purchasing behavior than the industry has assumed, and that the customers being missed because of that assumption are real people with real buying power who have simply stopped expecting brands to understand them.
This book is the case for going back for them.
$19.99
Paperback. Prime shipping if eligible
QUESTIONS
-
Amazon takes a cut of every sale, so brands typically have to price higher there to maintain margin. I'd rather pass the savings on to you. When you buy direct, more of the purchase price goes toward funding the next book.
-
eBook coming soon — sign up for The Syllabus and you'll be the first to know when it launches. Audiobook is in production for late 2027.
-
Yes. When you check out, leave a note in the order field and I'll personalize it before it ships. No additional charge.
-
Approximately 250 pages across 8 chapters. Designed to be read in a single weekend by a busy operator — not a doorstop that sits on your shelf unread.
-
If the book doesn't deliver value for you, email me within 30 days of receiving it and I'll refund the purchase price. Keep the book. The research is more important to me than the $15.
STILL THINKING?
Read a chapter before you decide.
Subscribe to The Syllabus — my weekly newsletter — and I'll send you a free PDF excerpt of Chapter 1 along with each week's marketing strategy lesson. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.