Millennial Marketing

Lindsey Shaw as Kat on ABC Family's '10 Things I Hate About You'

With a year left until I graduate from college, I feel a little silly watching ABC Family’s new television series, 10 Things I Hate About You, but I must coyly admit I do love watching it. Whether it is because I remember the hype of the 1999 classic movie which started Heath Ledger’s career or because of the quality time I spend with my 16-year-old sister while watching it together, the show charms for 30 minutes every Tuesday evening.  Although the plot uses formulaic high school stereotypes of jocks, cheerleaders and goody-two shoes, it injects a dose of technology (i.e. – text messages and web shows) with a serving of witty, dare I say, intellect.

Viewers are immediately drawn to the dynamic Stratford sister duo. The pair consists of older sister Kat, a strong-willed and opinionated feminist, and Bianca, a happy-go-lucky girl at the verge of leaving her naivety behind. The two tackle their way through starting a new high school, Padua High with different game plans.

Bianca will do nearly anything to become popular, but it’s Kat who draws all the attention, well of the viewers at least. Kat embodies the term ‘rebel.’ She doesn’t fit any particular slot in the Padua High social hierarchy.  She revels in her unconventional role as a rebel with a cause. That is, any cause she deems worthy of her time whether it is proving a girl can do anything a guy can do, finding a cure for our sick Mother Nature through environmentalism, or taking a stance against grade inflation and retaliation. Kat is distinctively competitive and passionately stubborn. With her aura of confidence, she is not afraid to stand up for what she thinks is right.  Kat possesses the archetypal persona anyone struggling to go against the grain of standard stereotypes wishes to be; that includes basically everyone. Nowadays no one wants to be just like everyone else even if they are.

My sister and I, while we don’t exactly mimic the Kat-Bianca roles, both are drawn to Kat’s charisma. She manages to juggle her relationship with her family, deny her budding interest in a boy even she is surprised to be attracted to, while staying focused on her goal to get good grades and attend a premiere university. However, Kat’s best attribute is her ability to mix biting sarcasm with witty remarks right on queue.  I wish I too could always have the perfect response waiting on the tip of my tongue!

While struggling with her chance encounters with mysterious and attractive Patrick Verona, she continuously tries to prove to him she is not vulnerable like other girls. Their tension quickly turns into an attraction that neither wants to admit to, at least not yet. She stays un-intimidated by Patrick’s intensity. While picking up trash after-school together in one episode as a punishment, Patrick proclaims that he knows Kat likes him, but she quickly rebuttals “Cause who wouldn’t love to spend time with the sweet scent of garbage?”

Although Kat can be perceived as overbearing at times, she has good intentions when it comes to the people she cares most about. In a moment of compassion, she uses her power as yearbook staff to threaten the head cheerleader into playing nice with her sister Bianca.

But Kat isn’t superwoman; she too, like the rest of us, has insecurities. Only, they’re not shallow concerns like Bianca’s efforts to achieve popularity. Although Kat refuses to be seen as a damsel in distress, she asks her father in one episode if she is self-centered and when he promptly says yes Kat goes into denial. As her father preaches that it’s a common attribute of teenagers, Kat complains she doesn’t want to be common. Kat lets the viewers know, in reference to her father’s analogy, it’s hard always being a cactus. Sometimes we all want to be a rose, cared for, admired and common, but being a strong cactus gets you further.

Mariam Shahab is a 21 year-old from Dallas TX  and a college senior at Boston University’s College of Communication. Marriam is interested in all things marketing, media and mass communication-related. We met on Twitter.

Sacre Bleu Wine Home page

If you are looking for a model for marketing wine to Millennials, I recommend taking a look at what Galen Struwe is doing at Sacre Bleu Wine. A glance at the web site tells you this is no ordinary wine site. A rotating display of lifestyle articles, constantly updated, are front and center. Social media links are prominent. The wines? Oh they are there, but discreetly tucked away in the upper right corner.

When I talked to Struwe earlier this week, he explained that is by design:

“We wanted to create a platform that wasn’t an overt marketing onslaught of brand recommendations. – Bottles, vines, prices. We wanted content that would integrate into lifestyle, let consumer make decision on value of the content – the way Apple did with the ipod.”

Struwe, was new to the wine industry, which may explain his decision to take a different approach.  When he decided to create the brand, he listened to his Millennial stepdaughter who suggested creating a viral approach that leveraged music and myspace to create interest and avoid the traditional approach of advertising in wine related magazines. Listening to the target proved to be the right decision, according to Struwe:

“As mature adults, we regard ourselves as much more clever than we are. Presumptuous to think you know what that demographic is like and what it wants. She nudged me back to reality simply by rolling her eyes. We leveraged her understanding of the target when deciding how to go to market. She influenced labels and visual representations, as well as viral content. Once we did that, understood we didn’t need full page ads in Wine Spectator, we could achieve a viral brand presence with more credibility.”

And it’s working. Now in its third year, Sacre Bleu Wine has distribution in Florida, Texas and Minnesota with plans for 13 more states.  He expects 2010 to be “our break out year”, with plans to promote with select retail partners at point of sale with incentives like “Register to win a trip”.  The unique Millennial-friendly approach appeals to buyers as well as the target: “When a brand goes into talk to buyers, they have heard so many pitches, you have to go in with completely different story, something unique that they can offer their consumers.”

For contrast, check out this interview between wine blogger, Steve Heimoff and David Bowman, Social Media strategist at Gallo. While Sacre Bleu Wine has embraced social media as the way to reach wine-hungry Millennials, Gallo is playing it safe.  Here’s an excerpt:

SH: Does Gallo have a social media strategy?

DB: It’s all starting to develop. We’re in the early stages of trying to understand what role it should play in our media mix. We’ve taken a watch and wait role. Is it disruptive to something we’re already doing? It defies some of the characterizations we generally apply as marketers. What is the intent? What is the net result? But because social media is very democratic, it appeals to a broader audience than a Wine Enthusiast reader.

That’s all very theoretical, but what are you actually doing?

DB: From a public relations perspective, Michael Heintz [Gallo’s PR director] is actively spending time with bloggers. He does outreach to certain bloggers. We send wines to certain bloggers.

Barefoot is among Gallo’s most overtly Millennial wine brands, and it is doing a nice job with its web page and Barefoot Republic community with over 12,000 fans on Facebook. Yet it has just 227 Twitter followers http://www.twitter.com/barefootwine) and no link to Twitter on its home page or fan pages.  It also lacks the cultural connection of Sacre Bleu.

Last month I had the pleasure of chatting with one of my favorite journalists, Joel Stein of Time magazine, who wanted to learn more about one of my favorite topics: .  Here’s what Joel wrote in the 8.24.09 issue of Time:

For more on Millennial and food, here’s the original March 25 blog post that caught Joel Stein’s attention. “Who Knew? Millennials Are Foodies“  Thanks Joel!!

Lindsey Roberts here, a recent MBA grad, who like hundreds of thousands of others is looking for a job. Since May of 2008, the start of my MBA program, I’ve been on the hunt for a job with the goal to have a job offer or two by the time graduation roles around. Unfortunately for the class of 2009, whether graduating from undergrad or grad school, the market is “the worst job market in US history, minus the Great Depression,” which left me in the approximately 50% of my class sans job at graduation.

As the realization of not having a job turned from a MBA nightmare into my reality, I looked at my options. 1) continue full-time job search 2) “settle” for a “less than job” 3) find an internship or 4) flee the country, travel, and return to the US by the fall when the hiring freezes have thawed. Remembering my Dad’s motto, “looking for a job is not a job,” #1 was out, #2 goes against my DNA and #4) cost too much. So #3 it was.

After three of the companies I had been in contact with for months told me that they aren’t looking to hire until 2010 or at the earliest, Q4 2009, an internship began to look like a better option. What was I going to do all summer anyway? I thought my days of being “the intern” were behind me, but guess not. When a friend-of-a-friend-of-my- Mom’s-friend reached out to me with an internship opportunity, I was all ears. After a phone and an in-person interview, I was offered an unpaid internship at a marketing research company in downtown Chicago.

That’s right, I had just invested approximately $75,000 in a top business school education and I was going to work for free. “Was I making the right decision?,” I wondered. The concept of not being paid to work after 4 years of great experience as a Divisional Sales Manager, on top of b school education was definitely a “tough pill to swallow.” But who was I to turn down an opportunity to learn and gain experience? I could either sit at home all day and drive myself nuts going from company websites, to indeed.com and back to Gmail and Facebook, or I could get out there, put my education and experience to work while I continued my job search. I decided to have faith in the age old adage, “it’s easier to find a job when you have a job.”

As a one-year MBA student, I did not do an internship between my first and second years of business school. In fact, I never had a second year of business school. From orientation to graduation was just under 365 days. Would a few months of “volunteering” post graduation kill me? What would people say? As some of my friends were starting work for Fortune 100 companies, some getting paid over six figures, I was going to be an intern! What did I do to deserve this? I began to question myself and my accomplishments, at school and during my work experience; but what did I really have to lose? I made the decision to accept the internship and make the most of the opportunity.

Financially I am no worse off with an internship than without. True I am no better, but what is the price of “June 2009 – the present” on a resume? I’d argue it is more than a few dollars per hour. If I am more likely to get the job offer I want, thanks to this opportunity then I would put a price tag on my recent experience at between $10,000 and $15,000. Plus I now have an answer for, “What have you been doing since graduation?”

As a 27-year old Millennial, I am looking for the next step in my career. Not unlike Sugarland’s song, “There’s Gotta Be Something More,” I want “more” in my next opportunity. “More,” to me personally, is defined by a passion for my work, a sense of work/life balance, a respect for the products I market, and an understanding of the global impact of the company. I am not looking to sit in a cubicle, wait for the clock to turn five o’clock so I can cash my paycheck twice per month and count daily the time until my 10 days vacation. What would be the point in accepting a job that would not only set me back pre-MBA, but would also lead to my next job search sooner than later. Accepting an internship allows me to remain focused on what I am looking for and not “settle” for a job that does not fit what I am looking for.

Upon my starting my internship, I didn’t anticipate the questions people asked. More specifically, I didn’t think people would ask if I was getting paid, and if so, how much? Last time I checked, it is not socially acceptable to ask how much you weigh or how much money you make. Why when you say the word “intern” do people think it’s okay to ask? I know MBA interns making between $1,400 and up to $3,500+ per month. What was it anyone else’s business how much money I make? Honestly, in most cases I lie or divert the question. If the person is a self-respecting business person, successful in their career, and/or sees the value of hard work, I will divulge. If I think the response is going to be, “Why on earth would you, a smart MBA grad from a top school, do that?” I change the subject, as I don’t wanting to explain myself.

‘What will break through?’ is a question I am often asked. My very first post on this blog in (“A Collective Chill”, 4.28.08) reported about the comments of a Millennial panel at a marketing conference I attended in New York last Spring:

The audience was ANA members gather to discuss “Innovations in Marketing”. The panel was impressive, brand managers from Mercedes, Unilever and Lincoln Financial. But their answers to questions about their media use sent a collective chill through the room. They don’t watch TV other than NCAA Finals. They don’t see online advertising thanks to blocking software. They don’t want ads on their mobile devices, facebook pages or IM. They don’t even like ads. This should not be news to anyone. However, it was shocking coming from Millennial Marketers. They seemed as stumped as the moderator as to how marketers could reach them most effectively. Ah…..with relevant content? Reaching Millennials with messages they want to hear, in the format they want to hear it is going to be a challenge!

After nearly two years of thinking about this question, I have distilled my advice to one not-so-easy-to-accomplish formula:

Engaging Millennials = Enabling Discovery + Energizing Experience + Encouraging Advocacy

Of course, this formula presumes you have a relevant product and positioning. If not, you have more problems than simply breaking through. But assuming for a moment you have cleared the Product, Placement and Pricing hurdles, how should you go about Promoting your brand to Millennials? Let’s unpack this formula a bit:

Enabling Discovery

No one wants to be told what to do, what to like and what to think. That is especially true of Millennials, who have an instant aversion to anything that smacks of ‘marketing’. They want to believe that they have uniquely discovered the things they like. That’s not to say that mass brands are not appealing, as Obama can tell you. But mass brands don’t start with any advantage. The ideal way for a Millennial to first experience a product or service is to discover it for themselves. Think of ‘Stumbleupon’ as the model.

This feeling of ‘discovery’ underlies the success of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog and Tom’s Shoes. Discovery is social currency, you can spend it with friends (or wider) and increase your personal brand. Discovery is the dynamic that drives marketing for restaurants, music, wine and microbrews. (For more on the social dynamic behind wine’s growing popularity, see my earlier post, “A Perfect Pairing”).

Achieving a sense of ‘discovery’ is no accident. It means creating events where Millennials can meet the brand, as Red Bull has done so successfully. Or creating a smash viral video. Social media, social media, product placement, and sampling are all good ‘discovery’ media.

Energizing the Experience

This is literally having a brand experience worth writing home about, one that not only meets the minimums for efficiency, personalization and value, but that goes over and above expectations. Success with Millennials requires being distinctive; they love ‘shiny‘ things.

Marketers at Apple, Nike, Zappos, Jamba Juice, Red Bull, Zipcar, Vogue magazine and other beloved, ‘iconic’ Millennial brands understand that to be remarked upon, you must literally be remarkable for something inherent in the user or customer experience. This can be accomplished through customization, design, ease of access, or price (free works especially well). However it is accomplished, it must be both authentic and fresh to overcome the impressive filters Millennials have perfected. The experience must be fun, compelling or unique or you will never get to the third and final step of the formula: advocacy.

Encouraging Advocacy

If this was a real formula, ‘advocacy’ is the variable that would have an exponent after it. Advocacy is the thing that makes Millennial marketing unique today, and is likely to be the biggest change to mainstream marketing in the future.

Yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with Sarah Newton, a radio celebrity, Twitter friend, and author of the blog, GenYGuide.com. Sarah lives in Northampton, England. Despite the being oceans apart, we agreed on many things, above all that Gen Y is unique. We also speculated the thing that makes them unique, perhaps in all history, is access to platforms to broadly communicate and share their ideas. This ability alone may make the gap between Gen Y and earlier generations more striking than any previous gap, or possibly any to come (profound thought isn’t it?). A new global study of 9000 -27 year olds by YouGovStone reached a similar conclusion: “The digital revolution has not only given this generation of young people access to knowledge and information on an unprecedented scale, but it has also given them massive influence.”

Mobilizing that influence requires making it easy to access and share information with peers. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, topic-specific blogs, and opinion sites like Yelp are all ways to encourage Millennials to talk to each other about your brand. Of course, talking about brands is not something Millennials are inclined to do without good reason. That’s why so many brands have found success by associating with worthy causes, or highlighting their support of environmental or humanitarian initiatives. Advocacy efforts take many forms, both long term and short term promotions (Starbucks Project Red, Taco Bell Feed the Beat). For more immediate sharing, brands are experimenting with mobile applications and widgets, like DryncWine.com. However it’s done, advocacy via social media is now a critical part of any youth marketing effort.

My final words of advice on reaching Millennials is much simpler: take time to get to know them. If you are over 30, the worst mistake you can make is thinking they think like you do. Listen to Millennials, at home and in the office. They will give you the best advice about how to reach others like them.

How people spend their time says a lot about them. A fascinating interactive graphic by the New York Times breaks out how different groups spend their time based on data from The American Survey of Time Use. By clicking different groups, you can literally see how the proportion of time spent working, sleeping, eating, on housework, education, TV watching, etc. changes at every minute of the day.

This graphic is very engrossing and reveals interesting generational differences. Comparing 15-24 year olds to 25-64 year olds shows the younger group spends a higher proportion of their on education, and lower proportion on housework and work. No great surprise there. Here are some less obvious observations:

Time Shift: I have observed before that Millennials appear to be ‘nocturnal’, here’s the evidence. They go to bed later and sleep later than any other age group. At 11:11AM, 11% are still sleeping; at 11:10 PM 53% are still awake with 14% watching TV or movies, 6% socializing, and 3% talking on the phone. Interestingly, just 2% are doing homework. My daughter has arranged her college schedule to ensure no class starts before 11:00 AM. She regularly goes to bed at 2:00 or 3:00 AM. @bengarbe twittered today: “Frankly, this 26 year old would give up thousands in salary to be able to sleep until noon, work 12-8pm from home, etc.”

Sports: Sports and fitness are a big part of Gen Y’s lives. At any point between 10:00 AM and 10:00 PM between 3% and 6% of 15-24 year olds are participating in ‘sports’. The comparable figure for 25-64 year olds is 1-2%. On average, 15-24 year olds spend 36 minutes a day on sports, about twice the time spent by 25-64 year olds.

Reading & Other Interest: 15-24 year olds spend on average :50 minutes a day reading and pursuing other interests. This is much higher than 25-64 year olds who spend 32 minutes. The research points out that half of that time is spent ‘reading’. Those over 64 spent by far the most time reading per day: 1 hour and 24 minutes. This presumably does not include computer time, as that is accounted for separately.

This cleverly designed chart is remiss in only one respect: it doesn’t account for multi-tasking, and assumes that people are doing one thing at a time. Of course, we know that Millennials are master jugglers, who eke more hours than the rest of us from a 24 hour day, if we are to take their word for it.

Generational differences exist in values, media usage, career goals, entertainment choices. Now there is evidence that what you like to eat may say a lot about what generation you belong to. (Mediapost 7.31.09)

* Boomers prefer “classic” comfort foods such as braised meats, casseroles and ice cream, but many also enjoy gourmet choices such as high-quality dark chocolate and fancy cheeses. They crave foods from their childhoods such as peanut butter, popcorn, foods made with canned tuna fish, chicken noodle soup and hot oatmeal.

* Gen Xers are more accustomed to commercial fare, and crave fast food (especially hamburgers) and burritos. They cite branded foods more often than the other generations, including favorite packaged cookies, ice creams, candies and snacks.

* Gen Yers are also partial to burritos and ramen noodles — but in contrast to other cohorts, many also include healthier foods, including sushi and fruits, among their favorite comfort foods. They are less inclined than Gen X to associate specific brands with comfort foods.

The research also identified top trends in “comfort foods”. Gen Y pastry chefs and a desire to start the day with a “protein burst” are driving a trend toward ‘breakfast for dessert’. “Boxed cereals, already found in snack bars and frozen yogurt shops, are now turning up in desserts, along with desserts such as “glamorized” versions of French toast, waffles and doughnuts.”

Other humble foods such as meat loaf, meat pies, and macaroni and cheese are making a comeback, with ‘fuller flavors and natural or leander meat blends’. Even the lowly casserole appears to be due for a Millennial makeover as one-dish meals come back into favor and receive ‘artisan’ spin with natural and organic ingredients and updated flavors: “”New” casseroles replacing processed ingredients with fresh ingredients, including vegetables and “contemporary” proteins such as turkey, crab and shrimp.” .

This new research contributes to growing evidence that Gen Y is made up of a high proportion of food sophisticates who are willing to put in the effort to create healthier, more flavorful dishes at home and demand better fare from restaurants. According to Mintel, young parents are among the most enthusiastic shoppers at Farmer’s markets and food co-ops. (Mintel, “Local Procurement” Feb 2009). Just six percent of those without kids buy local goods at farmers markets, compared to 9% of those with kids.

So if you attend a family reunion or potluck this summer, pay attention to who brings what. Chances are, the Boomer will be the one with the potato salad and chocolate chip cookies, the Gen Y’er will be the one with the organic fruit and Asian curry.