Here’s an obvious idea anyone concerned about getting Millennials to engage with their brand should check out: Let them tell you how!
Apparently, that’s what NASA did, and the result is well worth reading. This 90-page PowerPoint slide show (don’t let it scare you, lots of pictures) was created by Kristen, Aaron, Garrett and Nick, NASA employees, to tell NASA management who they are and how to make NASA relevant to them. Entitled “Gen Y Perspectives”, it is full of insights about their generation and how they recommend going about connecting what should be an inherently cool brand to their generation. What makes this especially cool is that it is in the voice of the Millennials themselves, so it provides some great direction on how Millennials like to communicate about themselves.
Some highlights:
- Gen Y is a completely NEW generation of over 70 million people.
- Gen Y will be 47% of the workforce by 2014, although only 25 % now (and less at NASA)
- Gen Y is defined as “mobile, interdependent, quickly bored, instant information, instant gratification, likes mentors, global, empowered, wired, multi-tasking, impatient if delayed, expecting NOW, (not 5 minutes from now), but highly adaptable.”
- Gen Y were shaped by different experiences which makes them “extremely independent,empowered and optimistic, with no clear boundary between work and life, and a willingness to sacrifice economic rewards for worklife balance”.
- Gen Y is not engaged with NASA because we “don’t see the point, don’t understand the facts and can’t participate”.
- NASA needs to facilitate a discussion with Gen Y that allows them to participate in the mission.
They go on to explain just how to do it. In fact, they do more than that, they talk about what they have already done! Who knew that you could follow NASA on Twitter? Cool stuff.
The impact of the iPhone on the way Millennials communicate with each other and with commercial media is hard to overstate. Yet advertisers appear to be slow to catch on.
Here is some data for perspective:
- iPhone users represent just 1% of the world’s 2.7 Billion mobile devices, but iPhone users completely eclipse those using any other mobile device in their data use — 95% of those who own an iphone regularly surf the Internet, and 65% of those browsing on mobile devices are using iphones.
- Google sees 50 times the number of searches from iPhones than from any other mobile device!
- iPhone owners are young. According to a March 2008 Rubicon study, half are under 30 and 15% are students.
- iPhones account for up to 75 percent of the video impressions in recent advertising campaigns.
- According to Simmons New Media Study, many consumers say they are ready for mobile advertising. Over a third of consumers who are online for at least one hour a week rate themselves as being interested in receiving ads via their mobile, provided there is a tangible incentive.
With such a young, video-enabled, advertising-tolerant target, one would think advertisers would be clamoring to develop campaigns just for Millennials and their iPhones, if not for the entire mobile market. This is in fact the opinion of Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO. He believes the iPhone will be responsible for exponential growth in the mobile advertising market:
“The iPhone was the first mobile device with a good Web browser, and more
such devices will follow. Advertising will then become very personal. In a few
years, mobile advertising will generate more revenue than advertising on the
normal Web.”Yet from the cases available, it doesn’t appear that more than a handful of advertisers — Zagat and the Weather Channel come to mind — share Schmidt’s enthusiasm. Why aren’t advertisers viewing the web-enabled mobile phone as a separate category of advertising, along with the PC, Radio and TV? I really have no idea.
In April, I wrote about my experience listening to three Millennials discuss their use of media at an ANA conference on “Innovations in Marketing”. I noted a collective ‘chill wind’ went through the room as the audience realized these best and brightest marketers don’t watch TV, block online advertising, and prefer not to get ads on their mobile devices, Facebook or IM.
A new firm, Free Hand, has cleverly answered the question of how to reach Millennials with messages they will want to read or listen to: with media that is inherently useable! Free Hand distributes note paper on college campuses, 4 sheets plus an ad. It’s literally a ‘hand out’, something free that is useful. As one student in the testimonial video explains, “It’s free paper so you can’t really say no to it”.
This is an idea on a par in cleverness with the refrigerator magnet, and well-suited to the Millennial market. Who wouldn’t use free paper on the way to class, even if only to doodle? The idea of branding useful items is stock in trade for promotions, but the clever twist here is that the ad itself is useful, and inexpensive enough to be practical. Now, let’ just hope the paper is recycled!
For a great case history on how to target Millennials, check this out.
Businessweek just published a video interview with A.G. Lafley, describing how P&G updated Herbal Essence, “a stale mass-market shampoo” to appeal to younger Gen Y and Millennial women. After immersing themselves in the target, they concluded there was no brand addressing the needs of this age cohort, and that the targe ‘wanted a different haircare, hairstyling product”. They first redesigned the packaging to “fit” a more tailored market by curving the shampoo and conditioner bottles so that they literally fit together on the shelf. The nesting shape not only helped Herbal Essences stand out on the shelf, but also encouraged more young women to buy both products, driving up conditioner sales. According to Lafley, the makeover went well beyond packaging:
“To appeal to Millennials, the team also updated the language on the packaging. The ho-hum “dandruff” reference gave way to “no flaking away.” Names for different hair styles were changed to more youthful phrases such as “totally twisted” or “drama clean.” “We totally reframed the proposition,” says Lafley. While P&G doesn’t break out sales figures on specific products, the company reported in a conference call soon after the shampoo was relaunched that the brand was growing again, with sales growth rates in the high single digits.”
Looking at the Herbal Essence web site, the voice is young without being juvenile, fun while still providing useful information. Benefits include ‘polishing your look’ and ‘luscious hair’. Promotional tie-ins work nicely — pedicures and manicures. Videos provide specific direction on how to achieve that ‘casual sexy, just out of bed look’. Nothing Boomer or tweeny-bopper about that!
After three days spent observing and interacting with 500 Millennials and their parents at George Washington University’s “freshman orientation”, I now have a better understanding of the parenting relationship that resulted in such a self-confident, community-oriented, civic-minded cohort. The fact that there even is such a thing as ‘parent orientation’ speaks volumes about Millennial parenting.
As a Boomer parent who went to small liberal arts college in the dark ages of 1973, I don’t recall my parents even being interested in what challenges I might encounter at college, much less with the details of registering for the right classes, finding clubs that interest me, achieving a realistic balance of classes and outside activities, resolving issues with roommates or identifying the right career. Of course, my parents weren’t paying more than their mortgage for a college education either — but that is another story.
In the Millennial era, orientation is a 3-day affair with separate events for and parents and students. There were theatrically produced skits on the perils of college life (X-rated for students, PG for parents), speeches from the deans, tours, small group sessions and more. I admire the marketing insight behind the event: Reassure parents and their kids they great choice and address any lingering buyers’ remorse. I also admire the ‘target insight’: ‘Helicopter’ parents have a hard time letting go. The skit that evoked the most laughter among parents depicted a mom who arrived on day one with her son’s teddy bear, a super sharpie to mark his underwear and an extra phone so she could leave messages on his phone — to the mortification of her son and the amusement of his new roommates. Another skit “The Little College Student Who Could” modeled good parental behavior: refraining from helping kids register for classes, not offering to bring them home too often, sending too many packages, texts or voicemail messages. I began to wonder, do I (who me?) have issues I don’t even realize I have?
Clearly this is an issue. As the head of student services informed us, “it’s one thing to call a professor, it’s another to call a boss, so you may as well start letting go now”. (More laughter) How this situation came about is easy to comprehend. Boomer and Gen X parents ran a parenting gauntlet, what David Brooks refers to as the ‘Achievatron’, to get their kids into a top tier school. They certainly can’t be expected to stop now just as their kid encounters his/her biggest life challenge to date.
Millennials enjoy closer, more friendly relationships with their parents than previous generations. According to “Millennial Makeover” by Winograd and Hais:
“Half of all Millennials say they see their parents in person every day, and aided by widely available and relatively inexpensive cell phone service, nearly as many (45%) talk with their parents in the phone daily. Virtually all do so at least weekly. One in five communicates with them by email at least occasionally. These incidences of ongoing parent-child contact are well above those for all older generations of Americans (Pew Research Center 2007a).”
Many parents continue to support their Millennial kids well beyond the point when kids used to be expected to be self-sustaining. The traditional hallmarks of adulthood, marriage, children, home buying, are all being delayed. What this new extended ‘pre-adulthood’ means for marketers is anyone’s guess. At minimum it means extended spening power for Millennials as they continue to draw upon parental subsidies and housing. It also means Millennials have more opportunity to influence parental choices, particularly in the areas they know best, such as technology and entertainment. As one parent put it, “when it comes to college these days, it takes a family.”
One word sums it up: the key to attracting top Millennial workers to your company is a ‘chill’ culture. A few weeks ago, we held two online focus groups among Millennials at marketing companies around the country. Most participants have MBA’s and several years of work experience. The conversation, moderated by Carolyn Torres, a Millennial herself, centered on their lives at work, their frustrations and what makes them happy.
It will not come as a surprise that what matters most to Millennials is their work team. However, a great team is not enough. Nearly as important as the team to their satisfaction was the culture. Here’s a sample of how the happy ones talk about their jobs:
I love the culture at XXX, which has become very chill and youthful. Plus, people are quite laid back and not overly competitive. …For example, we have Nintendo Wii in the office and have tournaments among the business unit. – Brand Manager, Major CPG firm
I’ve been at my new job for three days now. Up until this point, I’ve bounced from job to job a lot. Well, it’s brand new… but so far I really like the people, the energy and the culture.– Account Exec, major ad agency
I’m still new; however, like I said, I like the people I work with (my co-workers, manager, sales team) and therefore am motivated to do my best. — Manager, Major Commercial Realty Firm
Their biggest complaints? Micro managers and not enough challenge.
I totally agree… I have some managers that are totally hands off and then disagree with what you do and then i have the opposite that micro manage and don’t do any work. I wish i could find some managers in the middle.
I don’t feel my employer makes use of my skills. And that’s pretty much the stem of my discontent with my current job. I did recently approach the SVP of the area in which I’d excel and explained to her my situation, thoughts, hopes to grow my career. It’s hard to approach an exec, but I’ve learned that it often pays to go straight to the top.
When asked if they could tell their boss one thing, what would it be, most indicated a desire to tell them they need more challenge…. and more balance. Of course, a raise and a promotion, wouldn’t hurt either!
Keep me challenged because as soon as i get bored I start to move on… I might not actually make a move but I will start thinking about it. Manager, Consumer Durables Company
I would tell my Boss that they need to place more responsibility in the hands of younger employees so they grow into the roles.
I didn’t realize how much time was spent on process and meeting where nothing gets accomplished. I think they are making the most of my abilities but could get a bit more if my manager didn’t micro-manage. – Market Research Manager, Major Pharmaceuticals Company
More antomomy and simplifed decision processes would help. In a multifunctional team dynamic, it takes ages to get a decision made. — Brand Manager, multinational CPG firm
As a general marketer, I have the sense we will be learning a lot from political marketers this year about how to use social media to influence brands. Social media played a key role in several of the 2006 midterm elections. (See Millennial Makeover for an interesting description of the early use of newsfeeds and groups in campaigning). Social networks are expected to play an even bigger role in the 2008 Presidential campaign, especially given the importance of the Millennial vote to the election outcome. Will social media be just another channel, like radio or TV? Or will its interactivity transform the dialog into something never seen before?
As a first step to nabbing an invitation to the ‘netroots’ marketing party, I set out to see what Obama is doing with Facebook. I checked out his profile, joined a group and downloaded the Barack Obama Facebook app.
Obama’s profile shows 992,564 ‘supporters’. Reading the profile and seeing photos of his ‘supporters’ isn’t that involving, as I am sure he doesn’t update it himself.
There are many Obama specialty groups, such as ‘Notre Dame Students for Barack Obama’. The biggest group, ‘Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Obama)’, has 564M members. This seems like a lot of members, as the largest corporate sponsored group,’Apple Students’ has just 432M members, more than even the PINK Victoria’s Secret group’s 348M members. However, it pales when compared to the group, ’1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert’, which really is one million strong with 1,249M members.
The Obama group site at first glance is more like a portal than an interactive experience, displaying links to events, videos, t-shirts, the official donation site, sites explaining Obama’s stand on issues, etc. While useful to have aggregated in one place, they aren’t anything I couldn’t have found with a Google search. More interesting were the 32,322 discussion threads. Tonight’s rally in Detroit appears to have many posts, the excitement the difficulty of getting tickets, the prospects of actually posting a video. Before we leave the group, I should note that there seem to be nearly as many anti-Obama groups as there are pro-Obama groups. Stop Barack Obama (One million strong and growing), has 65M members.
Meanwhile, the Obama Facebook app makes content more accessible than the group. Recent videos, news articles, speeches are rated in terms of number of member reader ‘thumbs ups’. There are also links to other users’ via the Facebook
network and the ability to leave a comment, blogger-style. The content can all be sorted by recency, popularity, and friend’s favorites. There are clear links for donating, volunteering and getting involved. This feels more user friendly than the groups.
How these applications, groups and profiles influence the campaign remains to be seen. I plan to keep an eye on things.
I highly recommend Millennial Makeover by Winograd and Hais (Rutgers Press, 2008). While the focus is political, there is plenty of useful data for marketers, much of it from familiar sources like Pew (see previous blog post). My reason for recommending it, however, is their use of the data to address the question, ‘Are Millennials just younger versions of previous generations or are they really different’? The arguments they put forth are compelling.
According to the authors
“… media moguls, authors and even politicians make the fundamental error of thinking that today’s young people think and act just like they did when they were young. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
They ask us to think of Millennials as a generational cohort made up solely of Harry Potter and his plucky friends, and to contrast them with the adults at Hogwarts, the scowling, often clueless faculty and ministry of magic administrators. While Harry and his team (key word) work hard to save the world, applying special ingenuity and talents, the grown ups they must contend with are “individualistic, judgmental egotists who talk more than they act.”
Millennial professionals who participated in two online focus groups, to our surprise, expressed a similar view of Boomers. When asked who they prefer to work with, all said they preferred to work with other Millennials (no surprise there), and they MUCH prefer to work for Gen X’ers over Boomers. This was indeed a big surprise to us, after all that has been written about the supposed natural affinity between Millennials and Boomers. Boomers are considered to be like their parents, pretty old fashioned and out of touch. One young brand manager at Unilever even shared with us that there is a ‘reverse mentoring’ program in place at his company, where Millennials share their technology wizardry insights with older, less adept Boomers. In contrast, they feel as if they have more to learn from Gen X’ers and that X’ers are more willing to take the time to teach them what they need to know.
Winograd and Hais would find this no surprise, contending that indeed X’ers and M’ers have more in common with each other than they do with the ‘idealist’ Boomers who bear responsibility for years of political gridlock and ultimately pointless culture wars.
According to a 2007 Pew Research report, Millennials are markedly less cynical than older generations — at least as far as putting faith in government and business institutions. A full 82% of 18-29 year olds agree with the statement, “the strength of this country is mostly based on the success of American business”. Agreement with this statement among Millennials actually increased 5 percentage points over the past four years. In contrast, agreement among other age groups is much lower and has decreased. 
The gap is even more pronounced when it comes to perception of government. Just 42% of people under 30 agree with the statement, “When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful”, compared to 62% overall (see chart).
These statistics are not that surprising, and help explain the success of Obama’s ‘change’ message among Millennials. They do believe that all of us can do better, that government can be the solution not the problem and that business is a place to make a difference in the world. The College Board has been tracking the most popular majors for over 30 years. While the popularity of business as a major has declined from its eighties peak, it is still the most popular major, beating the runner ups of health, biology, engineering and education by a wide margin.
The paradox here is that Millennials are entirely cynical and suspicious when it comes to marketing. My marketing students at University of Notre Dame uniformly believe that advertisers lie, that there is a catch to every offer and are willing to believe the worst customer service and product horror stories. Last November, I published an article in Ad Age entitled, “Clued in or Clueless, What Marketing Students don’t know about Marketing.” I asserted that students routinely dismiss claims made in advertisements, without considering that it might be illegal or that there are natural checks and balances against lying in ads. The response from Millennials was denial. Here’s a sampleof what Millennials had to say:
They also know that ads aren’t allowed to lie, but they do know that lying ads and false claims slip by and have to be brought to court to be disputed or distort the truth just enough to be factually accurate yet coming off with a different claim. This is why they’re skeptical. They don’t put much stock in enforcement and compliance, while well aware of the laws.
So my quesiton is, if Millennials are truly are less cynical, why doesn’t their lack of cynicism extend to marketing messages?
