Is there anyone in the U.S. that hasn’t heard that Millennials are shaping the 2008 election? Books, magazines and blogs are abuzz with the news that 2008 is going to be the year of the Democrats due to the liberal attitudes of younger voters, many of whom are voting for the first time. According to Pew Research’s analysis of Super Tuesday voters, 58% self identify themselves as “liberal” in their political orientation. 57% voted for Obama, 41% for Clinton.
The more interesting question is whether this is any different than in past elections? Are today’s younger people actually more liberal than earlier generations? A quick glance at the chart indicates that he answer is ‘yes’ (don’t you love it when that happens?). According to a 2007 Pew Study, each generation tends to be less socially conservative than the generation before it. Generation Y is not only less socially conservative than older cohorts, they are less socially conservative than those cohorts were at a similar age. Social conservatism is measured by agreement with 6 statements. Gen Y on average agrees with only 2.5 of the statements, while twenty years ago, Boomers agreed with more than 3 (see chart). However, the biggest gap, now and then, is between Boomers and the Pre-Boomer generation, not between Boomers and Gen Y.
So the more correct answer is that Gen Y liberalism is actually both generational and age related.
Is ‘Multicultural Youth Marketing’ a redundancy? 38% of 18-24 year olds are non-white (see chart below).
This generation is famous for its tolerance — Pew Research reports 94% of the post 1977 born Gen Y approve of interracial dating compared to 84% of Boomers.
Just 17% of 18-29 year olds said that race was important to their vote in the primary compared to 22% of 30-44 year olds.
57% voted for Obama vs 48% for all age groups. (Pew Research Center, Young Voters in the 2008 Primaries).
Given this kind of evidence, I think there is a case that youth marketing and multicultural marketing are one in the same. Gen M not only desires diversity, they expect it. Recent focus groups we conducted on women and fashion found the appeal of celebrities like Tyra Banks easily cross ethnic boundaries, while Jennifer Anniston is ‘every girl’ for everyone. No college can afford to not have its multicultural images on display. Perhaps we are stating the obvious, but if so, why are we still talking about ‘multicultural marketing’? Perhaps we should just say ‘culture aware marketing’?
In an earlier posting, I noted French Millennials are forgoing wine, Mon Dieu! Now Nielsen is reporting U.S. Millennials are forgoing beer in favor of wine. Shocking but true, beer drinking among 21-30 year olds dropped 12 percentage points in the last 10 years. For comparison, over thirty’s beer consumption dropped just 6 percentage points. According to Nielsen, most of the ‘slack’ is being picked up, you guessed it, wine! (Before we get too carried away with this insight, Nielsen also points out that beer still accounts for 83% of Gen Y alcoholic beverage purchases.) Research by Gallup and another study by the industry group, Wine Market Council, confirm the trend. The Boston Globe speculates that “Millennials have the potential to become the next generation to embrace wine in numbers not seen since the baby boomers.”
What does this trend tell us about the tastes of U.S. Millennials? A lot, according to qualitative research by Liz Thach, Sonoma State University. First the research revealed that only 18% of Millennial wine drinkers see wine as “hip or cool”. Most in fact think it is too ‘elite’ to be hip or cool and wish that marketers would portray wine drinking as more ‘fun’. Instead, the Millennials who drink wine regularly drink it because they like the taste and think it goes well with food. Furthermore, (big hint here), half said that they were introduced to wine through a family member. This suggests Millennials tastes are influenced by their Boomer parents. The Boston Globe put it this way:
Thach’s (focus group) respondents seemed to have sophisticated culinary interests. She says they watch cooking and decorating shows, throw dinner parties, and eat interesting, diverse foods. ”They like wine with food,” she says. ”This is where I see a trend happening in this country, which also happened in Australia several years ago — what they call the cafe society. We are starting to be more interested in the good things in life: good wine, good food, friends, taking time out to relax and enjoy things. This is actually one of the values we identified of this generation…The generation who grew up with free-range chickens, organic vegetables, and working moms who stopped for take-out on the way home were exposed to all kinds of food from an early age. Add to that the array of imported foods and beverages available to them — this demographic moves from Swiss chocolates to Hershey’s bars with ease — and you have one possible explanation as to why the diversity of flavors in wine are appealing to this group.
This insight confirms my earlier assertion that Millennials, with their above average earnings and sophisticated tastes, are an untapped market for what many consider ‘luxury’ goods. You just can’t call them luxuries.
I am losing patience with the pronouncements that this is the first generation that expects to be downwardly mobile. The reality is that 18-24 year olds are among the wealthiest people in America. Just don’t tell them that, they won’t believe it.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 87.4.3% of 18-24 year old males had wages and salary in 2005. In 2006, households headed by persons 18-24 had earnings before taxes of nearly $29,057, up from just $20,120 in 2003 and up 7.5% 2005-2006 alone. For comparison, U.S. income grew just 1.1% in the same period. What makes these figures even more astonishing is that 18-24 year olds by and large do not have families to support. 43% of 18-24 year olds are college students (National Center for Education Statistics). Less than 10% of 18-24 year old males are married. 50% of 18-24 year men live with their parents, 33% of women live with the parents.
If you think starting salaries are down, you’d be wrong. According to Businessweek (5.19.08), the expected starting salaries of new MBA’s exceeds $85K, up steadily every year but one since 2002. Starting salaries offered to undergrad business administration majors increased 7.5% 2006 to 2007.
So why the angst? Why do most 18-24 year olds consider themselves poor now and their prospects even poorer?
My personal theory is that Millennials have a different idea of what constitutes a ‘necessity’ and what constitutes a ‘luxury’. My college students consider themselves ‘poor’, yet nearly all sport ipods with thousands of songs, the latest laptops, expensive footwear, cell phones with $100+ plans. The data bears this out. According to the BLS, 18-24 year olds spend a disproportionate amount of money on virtually every category of spending other than food and housing (see table). Within these categories,they have luxury tastes. For example, Millennials are almost twice as likely as older consumers to purchase imported beers and almost three times as likely to pick up a craft beer.
Marketers are on to this insight, even if the Millennials themselves are not. 18-24 year olds represent a vast market for ‘luxury’ goods — we just don’t call them luxuries.
Although it happened last November, thanks to disgruntled Gen X’ers, the story of Kevin Colvin and the story of how he was Busted by Facebook is still making the the rounds on the Internet. In case you missed it, Kevin, a senior at Holy Cross in Massachusetts, wrote a polite email saying he would be gone a few days from his internship at Anglo Bank in Boston. A little investigation by his boss revealed his true location, a Halloween party in Worcester. He was busted when his boss wrote to inquire if everything was okay at home, adding as an afterthought, ‘(cool wand)’.
An instructive story on the dangers of the illusion of privacy in the Internet era, certainly. But Kevin is far from the first person to make this mistake. (In fact, I was also fired from a bank summer job at 17 for calling in sick on my birthday, a good early life lesson.) So why has this become a prime example in the indictment of the Millennial mindset? Something in this story has touched a nerve with Generation X. Here is an example from Radaronline, posted May 15.
My lack of empathy for Kevin comes from my sense of loyalty to the generation born between the years of 1961 and 1981. Generation X. Kevin is part of the generation born between 1982 and 2002—a Millennial, formerly known as Generation Y. (They got renamed after whining too much.) They’re younger. They’re healthier. They got to do anal in high school. They think updating a spreadsheet while simultaneously posting to a Twitter account about the latest gossip on perezhilton.com is an essential corporate skill. And, like Kevin, they’re always doing stupid shit, but rarely getting called on it. What’s more, Millennials pose a vital threat to my generation’s cultural legitimacy, not to mention our position in the workplace.
Intergenerational conflict is nothing new, but it will be interesting to see if this squabbling over the positive or negative character of an entire generation will affect brands. Will Gen X’ers unite to distance themselves from the music, entertainments, products and services enjoyed by its younger cohort? Will Millennials even notice the slurs, or will they decide to fight back, and which brands will help them do it?
I recently ran a campaign on Facebook to recruit Millennials to some focus groups. The ‘headline’ seemed sure to capture attention: Earn $50 in 75 minutes. Thanks to the pay per click ad model the ad received lots of exposure – 932,917 impressions to be exact. But the clicks didn’t happen; just 160 responded for an appallingly low .02% click through rate. Too bad Millennials don’t need market research because it would have been a very cheap branding campaign. My 17 year old Facebook addicted daughter explained: “Mom, no one clicks on Facebook ads”. Silly me. I should have reread my own Ad Age article, where Notre Dame students’ view of social media was explained this way: “Students do not think Facebook was invented for any other purpose that to facilitate their social lives.”
According to new articles by Adweek and Fortune, my experience is not unique. Adweek today, “Social Ad Lessons”, points out that eMarketer lowered its forecast for social-media ad spending by 12 percent due to “tempered enthusiasm for meshing ads with social environments”. MySpace will miss its $1 billion U.S. sales goal by 11 percent and Facebook will take in 13 percent less than the $305 million forecast. In last week’s article, Finding Cracks on Facebook, Fortune explains the shortfall as due to the “blase attitude” media buyers have toward the company. The code on leveraging social media as a medium is not broken, but some are getting closer to the key by thinking of social media as a new form of product placement. Adweek describes successful efforts this way:
… Slide and RockYou are developing a new-era form of product placement that brings brands directly into the application experience, rather than relegate them to a banner on the periphery. One of Slide’s most popular Facebook applications is SuperPoke, which lets users to give each other virtual nudges. Slide has begun working in branded SuperPokes, like spraying a spritz of perfume for Estee Lauder and rolling a set of dice as part of a Vegas-themed Palm campaign. Coke brand VitaminWater ran a SuperPoke campaign in April that resulted in 9.7 million virtual versions of the brand being sent out.
Meanwhile, save your money on banner ads. They are simply wallpaper.
Millennials, of course, are not all alike, and one of the main differences is sex. This isn’t as blindingly obvious as you might think. Lifestyle and purchase behavior differences between Millennial men and Millennial women are so great, it almost makes sense to think of them as two different cohort groups. Of course, there are many ways that they are the same, but vive la difference when it comes to marketing. On the whole, Millennial men appear to be more like their teen counterparts, while Millennial women are more like, well, young adults. According to Mintel’s 2008 report on 18-24 year males, here are a few of the gaps:
18-24 year old men are more likely than women to…
Live with a parent: M: 50% W: 33%
Watch more than 11 hours of TV per week: M: 48% W: 32%
Be saving money to buy a car: M: 36% W: 25%
Be saving money to buy a video game console: M: 22% W: 8%
Visit online chat rooms weekly: M: 42% W: 31%
Read weblogs or watch podcasts weekly: M: 32% W: 15%
Watch online video: M: 77% W: 59%
Agree I don’t need a stereo if I have a computer: M: 36% W: 25%
Agree I don’t need a DVR because I have a computer: M: 28% W: 10%
Watch TV broadcasts on a computer: M: 37% W: 20%
Record TV broadcastson a computer: M: 30% W: 13%
Have a $100+ monthly cell phone bill: 35% W: 23%
18-24 year old women are more likely than men to…
Think it’s cool if a company uses a social network profile to promote its products: M: 64% W: 72%
Own a laptop: M: 48% W: 59%
Own a car stereo: M: 49% W: 64%
Purchased clothing online: M: 32% W: 48%
Live with a wife/husband: M: 4% W: 23%
In college: M: 33% W: 36%
Gender differences often yield productive marketing insights. For example, several years ago we explored purchases of flat screen televisions among young adults. To our surprise, young women thought of a flat screen purchase as a piece of art, something that would make a statement about them in their living room. Young men were focused on the viewing experience, expecially the sound and theatre-like picture.
If you are casting around (as I have been) for alternatives to Andy Sachs, Hannah Montana, and Harry Potter to epitomize the Millennial Persona, look no further. Joshua Glenn of the Boston Globe provides a comprehensive list of candidates by birth year from 1984-1993.
His fresh takes on the subject include the observation that many of the icons of Gen M are actually throw backs to the fifties – think Nancy Drew, Lion Witch and the Wardrobe, High School Musical (a less edgy Grease). He also wonders at the sheer number of Millennial actresses called upon to play the role of ‘princess’:
I’m thinking of Lindsay Lohan (“Lifesize,” in which a princess doll comes to life), Kiera Knightley (“Princess of Thieves,” “King Arthur,” plus every other role), Mandy Moore (supporting role in “The Princess Diaries”), Hilary Duff (“A Cinderella Story,” plus she’s sort of a princess in “Material Girls” and “The Lizzie McGuire Movie”), Amanda Bynes (“What A Girl Wants,” also sort of a princess), Scarlett Johansson (“The Other Boleyn Girl”), and Michelle Trachtenberg (“Ice Princess”). Plus India Oxenberg on the reality show “I Married a Princess.
Glenn points out that many of the most successful TV shows aimed at young girls suggest princess-dom without the crown: Nickelodeon’s “iCarly” is about a schoolgirl with a globally popular website, “Hannah Montana,” Miley Cyrus plays an average kid by day who’s a rock ‘n’ roll superstar by night.
Are Millennials as insipid as these fictional princesses and fifties personas suggest? Until real life achiever Millennials emerge, we may have to live with these fictional personas.
Is Andy Sachs, heroine of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ the ultimate Millennial? Michael D. Hais and Morley Winograd say she is in their new book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics’. This book has received a lot of attention for its assertion that Millennials are going to determine the 2008 election (Obama for sure) and go on to change just about everything else in politics.
Politics aside, is Andy Sachs truly the ‘Graduate’ of her generation? According to the book (Sachs is) “a true Millennial, different from the lead character of previous coming of age movies about other generations”.
Personally, I say no. True she is practical, behaves like her own person (at least for most of the movie), cares about those around her and uses technology as a weapon in her fight to impress the imperial editor. Yet, where is the team work, the social conscious, the ambition that marks Millennial values as unique?
I don’t have a better candidate right now, but I am not ready to concede that Andy Sachs is the face of this generation.
One of the biggest challenges of Millennial watching is discerning what differences between younger and older age cohorts are likely to be truly generational differences and which are simply due to age? Only time will tell of course. But it doesn’t stop us from speculating which of the categories and decisions they are making now will carry over later in life.
Case in point: Wine drinking. WineSpiritDaily.com reported earlier this week that young adults (21-31) in France are drinking less wine than ever before, but drinking more beer and spirits.
- Many French millennials consider wine to be a drink for older people.
- Some French millennials simply do not like the taste of wine. In fact, when they did drink it, most said they preferred sweet white wines such as muscat, moelleux, or Sauternes.
- Also, good wine tends to be too expensive while beer is cheaper.
- (Surprisingly), many of the young French adults said wine is confusing.
Only one of the top five reasons appears to be potentially generational: a strong anti-alcohol movement in effect in France since 1991 has impacted wine consumption disproportionately and led some young consumers to steer clear of wine altogether. The study’s recommendations to help boost France’s domestic wine industry (enhancing wine education and culture in schools and universities offering smaller bottles on-premise and making labels more colorful) are unlikely to impact this trend.
As you look at consumption or usage differences among younger people, it is a good idea to ask whether any observable changes are truly generational, or something they may ‘grow out of’.
