With one, successful year in the books, the introduction of dedicated NERF Combat Zones at Gulliver’s Theme Parks in Europe might be proof that a new entertainment trend is on the horizon.

“The huge visitor numbers are testament to the strong relationship between children and big brands such as NERF,” says Julie Dalton, managing director of Gulliver’s Theme Parks. “Parents continue to tell our arena teams that ‘NERF Zone’ are the easiest words to use in order to detach their children from personal game consoles.” (from Blooloop)

Licensing and distribution are handled by Paragon Entertainment, which shared the following highlights in a recent update:

• each arena is 3,875 sq. ft. divided into two areas
• average age range is 6-15 years old
• the three current arenas (at different parks) host an average of 65 birthday parties each weekend
• 2016 goals include doubling the portfolio of arenas in the U.K.

If you’re up for finding stray NERF darts under seats and in forgotten corners for years to come, maybe giant dart battles are the next big thing to bring into your facility?

The IAVM marketing team is ready and waiting to tilt the average age a bit higher.

You might be tired of hearing Millennial this, Millennial that. Good, because we’re going to talk about Generation Z, the follow-up to the hit Generation Y (Millennials).

According to a survey this summer conducted by Robert Half and Enactus, in five years Generation Z will make up more than 20 percent of the workforce.

“Gen Z employees bring unique values, expectations, and perspectives to their jobs,” said Paul McDonald, senior executive director of Robert Half. “They’ve grown up in economically turbulent times, and many of their characteristics and motivations reflect that.”

Examples from the survey of those characteristics include 77 percent anticipating that they’ll have to work harder than previous generations to have a satisfying and fulfilling career, US$46,799 is the mean salary expectation for their first job after college, and 30 percent say they would take a 10 percent to 20 percent pay cut to work for a cause they deeply care about.

“This group of professionals has grown up with technology available to them around the clock and is accustomed to constant learning,” said Bev Graham, PhD, vice president of Enactus USA programs. “Companies with a solid understanding of this generation’s values and preferences will be well prepared to create work environments that attract a new generation of employees and maximize their potential.”

Check out the infographic below (click to enlarge it) to learn more about this generation just now coming of age in the workforce.

(Image: Robert Half)

Steve Robinson is the executive vice president and former chief marketing officer of Chick-fil-A, and he is one of this year’s keynote speakers at the International Convention Center Conference, October 1-3, in Atlanta, Georgia. At the conference, he’ll talk about leadership and marketing, so we asked him a few questions about these subjects.

You’ve been with Chick-fil-A for more than 30 years. What have you learned from your successes and mistakes in marketing?

1. Take cues from customers and be their champion.
2. Build a great brand only in the context of a great culture.
3. Attract great people who are better than you are at what they do, help them plan, resource them, and get out of the way.
4. Great brand building and marketing are seldom a function of fact based only decision making…informed intuition is required…particularly if you are trying to emotionally connect with people.
5. Great ideas are more important than size of the budget.

What are some challenges in marketing that you foresee in the next five years?

1. Pressure on short-term results…counter to the long-term view needed to invest in major trans-formational brand and experience building.
2. Related, data proof before any major new marketing or brand initiative…counter to building relational experiences and brands. Build your case from the customers’ perspective, not internal or financial only.
3. Temptation to think there is no role for traditional media…wrong!
4. Assumption that people will not pay a premium for genuine service.

What are some best-practice strategies for handling controversy?

1. Don’t engage in the “soap box” of social or news media…cannot win because you cannot control context or really connect with people.
2. Speak the truth ASAP to those you trust.
3. Related, is there a friendly advocate?

How has marketing changed since you began your career?

1. Marketeers now have the opportunity to shape the entire experience and messaging for a brand…and they should. Every touch point should be influenced or be lead by marketing.
2. Marketing should champion for customer-centered innovation, and thus, growth in the enterprise. Too many forces can stymy both.

What advice can you offer to students and young professional who want a career in marketing?

1. Work in customer facing jobs at an early age…learn how to deal with and delight people.
2. Learn early that you have to earn new opportunity and advance; no one owes it to you. Go the extra mile.
3. Work on developing written and spoken communications skills…must be able to sell and inspire others. Followship is more important than title.
4. Be willing to take informed risk in your career and on the job.

How do you want to be remembered?

I attracted great talent, gave them what they needed to excel, role modeled the behavior that deserved their followship, and I loved them for who they were. Most of all, I served them.

I mentioned yesterday in a blog post that taking a walk at work is a good way to reduce stress. However, there are other—and better—ways to take breaks at work to help with your energy, concentration, and stress.

In “Give Me a Better Break: Choosing Workday Break Activities to Maximize Resource Recovery,” published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, two Baylor University researchers surveyed 95 employees over a five-day workweek about their workday break habits. Breaks were “any period of time, formal or informal, during the workday in which work-relevant tasks are not required or expected, including but not limited to a break for lunch, coffee, personal email, or socializing with coworkers, not including bathroom breaks.”

The researchers—Emily Hunter, PhD, and Cindy Wu, PhD, associate professors of management in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business—analyzed 959 break surveys, which accounted for an average of two breaks per person per day.

“We took some of our layperson hypotheses about what we believed were helpful in a break and tested those empirically in the best way possible,” Hunter said. “This is a strong study design with strong analyses to test those hypotheses. What we found was that a better workday break was not composed of many of the things we believed. ”

Here are some of the top discoveries from the study:

Mid-morning is the best time to take a workday break.
“We found that when more hours had elapsed since the beginning of the work shift, fewer resources and more symptoms of poor health were reported after a break,” the study says. “Therefore, breaks later in the day seem to be less effective.”

The best kind of breaks are the ones that involve activities that employees prefer.
“Finding something on your break that you prefer to do—something that’s not given to you or assigned to you—are the kinds of activities that are going to make your breaks much more restful, provide better recovery, and help you come back to work stronger,” Hunter said.

Taking “better breaks” offers increased job satisfaction and better health.
“Better breaks” are ones earlier in the day and doing things you prefer. When these types of breaks are taken, people experienced less eyestrain, lower back pain, and headaches after the breaks.

It’s more beneficial to take frequent, short breaks than long breaks.
“Unlike your cellphone, which popular wisdom tells us should be depleted to zero percent before you charge it fully to 100 percent, people instead need to charge more frequently throughout the day,” Hunter said.

(Image: Jonathan/Creative Commons)

There are several strategies to help avoid or mitigate stress at work, such as taking a walk, eating lunch somewhere other than your desk, or getting enough sleep. However, there’s another strategy that many fail to consider—focusing on the positive things that happen to you.

“If someone were to tell you to focus only on the positive experiences in your day, you might be annoyed,” Joyce E. Bono and Theresa M. Glomb wrote in the Harvard Business Review. “People tend to associate Pollyanna-type positivity with inexperienced managers trying to squeeze a little more work out of frontline employees, or with the ‘keep smiling’ wall posters in the call center.”

Bono is the Walter J. Matherly Professor of Management at the Warrington College of Business of the University of Florida, and Glomb is the Toro Company–David M. Lilly Chair of Organizational Behavior in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. They led a group of researchers who studied the association between daily events and stress and found that “naturally occurring positive work events and a positive reflection intervention are associated with reduced stress and improved health.”

The study asked participants to spend five to 10 minutes at the end of each day and write about events that had gone well that day and why those events had gone well. After three weeks, study participants’ stress levels and mental and physical complaints declined. Furthermore, when the participants focused on positive events, they had less stress job-related thoughts at home.

“This simple practice — writing about three good things that happened — creates a real shift in what people think about, and can change how they perceive their work lives,” Bono and Glomb wrote. “It can also create a feedback loop that enhances its impact: we believe that people who reflect on good things that happened during the day are more likely to share those things with family and friends. Sharing positive events with others creates connections between people and bonds them with one another, further reducing evening stress. Ultimately, this also improves sleep, which our ongoing research suggests leads to greater alertness and better mood — which in turn leads to more positive things happening the next day.”

(Image: mediamolecule / Creative Commons)