Millennial Marketing

Nearly 20 years ago, William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book that theorized a 22 year generational cycle based on repeating generational archetypes called simply “Generations“.  They called these cycles ‘turnings’.  Children raised during a particular Turning share similar historical and cultural experiences, which results in their being like each other, and different from other generations. This was to my knowledge the first appearance of the word ‘Millennials’.

A chapter that begins on page 335 of 427 (paperback version not including Appendices and Sources), is titled “Millennial Generation”.

What makes this chapter on Millennials so fascinating twenty years after it was written is how uncannily it matches what we know to be true of how Gen Y is different from preceding generations.

Part of the reason for its accuracy is that the demographics of this generation were fairly predictable, even in 1991, and demographics are one of the forces that shapes generations. Strauss and Howe were able to accurately project the likely size (76 million) and make up (12% immigrant) based on fertility and immigration trends, even though only 33 million of them were alive when the book was published.

The authors were also tuned-in to the major shift in parenting and education as a cultural priority that was already underway by the early 90′s. This shift would prove to have  a remarkable impact on Millennial self-perceptions, aspirations and values. Nearly twenty years ago they noted that “this new generation of children is being treated as precious” and “Boom parents and teachers have also been slowing down the childhood development clock — unlike the Silent, who sped it up.”

“First-wave Millennials are riding a powerful crest of protective concern, dating back to he early 1980s, over the American childhood environment. In 1981, the year before the “Class of 2000″ was born, a volley of books assaulted adult mistreatment of children through the 13er (Gen X) birth years. Within the next couple of years, other authors began reconsidering the human consequences of divorce, latchkey households, and value neutral education.

In 1984, two kids as devils movies flopped at the box office, marketing the end of a dying genre and the start of a more positive film depiction of children.

From 1986 to 1988, polls reported a tripling in the popularity of ‘staying home with family’….In general, Boomer parents are determined to set an unerringly wholesome environment for their Millennial tots.

Where Silent parents had brought 13erkids along to see $-rated movies made about them, Boomers take the Millennials to see G-rated movies made for them.”"

“From 1976 through 1988 the proportion of students held back in elementary school jumped by one-third.”

One of the central tenets of the book is that the fourth generation in each cycle, the “Fourth Turning”, tends to be more civically minded and engaged.  They look for signs that yesterday’s fourth graders might be more evolved as citizens and found it in Anna Quindlen’s observations that kids seemed to be “assimiliating society’s ‘shalt nots’ about crime, drugs, polution and education with disquieting energy and unanimity.” (page 341) Twenty years later, we know from the research that today’s young adults are much more ‘upright’ than earlier generations in terms of their overall optimism, attitudes toward the environment and social action and behavior regarding drug and alcohol use, teen pregnancy, and crime.

What Howe and Strauss could not have known in 1991 was the remarkable impact that technology and the most severe economic recession in over 60 years would play in shaping this generation.

Beyond demographics, two of the forces that are shaping up to be the most influential are easy access to information of all kinds and a realization that America’s high flying lifestyle is most likely unsustainable.  They have already resulted in a more empowered, yet sobered, generation that is exhibiting very different consumer and media behavior as they move into their prime earning years.

BrandAmplitude‘s latest ebook (“How Millennials Are Different“) is focused on spotlighting the ways that Millennials are different from generations that came before at the same age. The book, which zeroes in specifically on longitudinal data from Pew Research and other sources, shows Gen Y is different in many significant ways, only some of which were predictable in 1991.

Nevertheless, what Strauss and Howe foresaw about how Millennials would be different from preceding generations based simply on cultural and demographic trends, they got remarkably right.

It’s practically a given truth that to build a brand that resonates with Millennials you must be active in social media. Whether this is true or simply a fad is something brand marketers are now wrestling with.

Many companies are still deciding whether to redirect marketing spending, and more fundamentally, whether it offers a new platform for brand differentiation.

There are three tests for determining whether a new idea is a fad (something people talk about) or a real change (something people actually do).

1. What is driving it? Real trends are more likely to be supported by underlying changes in demographics, values, lifestyle or technology, not just pop culture, fashion or media

2. How accessible is to the mainstream? How much of a change in habits is required?  How high are the barriers or costs in time and money?

3. How broadly based is it? Is it expressed across more than just a few categories or groups?

By these standards, social media is a fundamental change in how brands connect with customers. The underlying drivers are solid. Millennials, the first wave of adopters, represented a significant shift in demographics and values.  Accessibility requirements were met via rapid broadband penetration and low prices or even ‘free’ access. And the rapid spread from young adults to near ubiquity across geographies, generations and cultures suggest it has utility beyond a niche.

A new Razorfish Outlook report reveals that social media represents just 4% of their client’s average media spend (although they acknowledge this may underrepresent the investment since much of the cost is in labor).  A joint study by Facebook and Nielsen that covered over 800,000 users, 70 advertisers and 125 campaigns concluded that Facebook advertising provides measureable lift in such key brand measures as Ad Recall, Brand Awareness, and Purchase Intent. “Homepage ads increased awareness of the product or brand by 4% on average, but exposure to both homepage ads and organic ads increased awareness by a delta of 13% versus the control group.” With results like this, you would expect many brands to be rushing to take advantage of ‘earned media’ impressions to be gained through social media.

Whether marketers should be spending more is the question. The answer depends on whether you see social media as just another tactic or as a new strategic brand building tool.

The methods of brand building have always been dynamic.  Regis McKenna, an early pioneer in high tech marketing, writes “the discipline of marketing — if one can call it a discipline — change with new generations and eras of technology.”

We have come a long way from the days of Unique Selling Propositions and product performance-based brand strategies. In the 80′s, user lifestyle and brand personality became a recognized way to create differentiation for brands that offered no inherent product-based differences, such as apparel, luxury goods, soft drinks, cosmetics. Then companies like Apple, Dell, and Nike showed how a distinctive customer experience based on better design, user experience and customer service could also offer powerful ways to build a strong, differentiated brand.

As each new innovation was explored, brands learned how to borrow from these new ‘toolkits’ to strengthen their own position, even if the basis of their differentiation (product, lifestyle, etc.) remained the same. Social media may in fact represent the latest in the evolutionary line of brand building approaches.

The goal is still the same – a differentiated, strong brand. Social media offers a new toolkit for reaching that goal. The question facing many brands now is whether to adopt that toolkit. Social media has proven to be an especially powerful way to reach Gen Y due to their greater comfort with technology and passion for customized experiences. But is it the best way? Who benefits most? And when is it most appropriate?

The first step to answering these questions is to first define what we mean by ‘social media’.  David Teicher, Social Media Manager & Digital Strategist at McCann-Erickson, has suggested the term ‘social media‘ is not all that useful (“There’s no such thing as Social Media”, 1.5.10). He proposes “we stop using the term social media (though, we can still discuss social networks, platforms, or vehicles), and start referring to living, breathing, evolving dynamic media, because that’s what it is.” To Teicher, it is this dynamic aspect that makes social media so powerful:

“…every time I retweet an article or show a friend a funny video, or post a product review or campaign analysis on my blog, I’m not just restating existing content – I am reconstructing it, which is so much more impactful than simple reiteration. Furthering its spread, yes, but irrevocably altering it in the process, and thus making it my own.  And when I, or more importantly, when consumers can claim partial ownership of content – such materials become more influential over behaviors, both social and commercial. …The key is to provide users, consumers, with inherently moldable content, subject matter that can exist on its own – that has innate appeal – yet is receptive to reshaping and reinterpretation, along with the tools to do so, so that consumers can take branded content and create something personally meaningful from it.”

Dynamism is precisely what makes ‘social media’ a challenge for brand marketers. Strategists are accustomed to thinking in terms of key messages and themes, not content that can be adapted and molded. How can social media be considered a brand building tool, when you literally have no control over what is being said?

Social media is more about the time and place (context) and favorability (sentiment) of the message than than the content.  For brand marketers, this represents a fundamental challenge — how to build a brand by putting the focus on affinity as a means rather than an end. This is particularly challenging as ‘affinity’ is not even defined necessarily in terms of the brand as it is in CRM (think Harley clubs), but instead in terms of what the consumer wants to talk about. The focus is on ‘resonance’ not on the underpinnings of image, benefits or attributes.

This approach to brand building is not for the faint of heart. It requires a dedication to understanding users and potential users in a deep way. It means turning the focus away from the brand and onto customers and potential customers, giving them opportunities to take brand content and make it their own. As Teicher puts it, “consumers are producers too.”

“People don’t want to create content from scratch. We live in the heart of remix culture. Intrinsically valuable materials need to be provided to consumers, accompanied by both the means to impart a personal, individualized meaning – the added value, be it emotional, contextual, cultural, or otherwise – and the tools to easily share their product.”

The brands that seem to be experiencing the most success with this approach  put the tools for self-expression into the hands of their customers, rather than relying on viral videos or gimmicks. Here is a list of the top 10 brands on Facebook, according to number of fans, excluding Facebook itself which is the leader with over 9 million fans.

#2 Starbucks 7,266,488 Fans

#3 Coca-Cola 5,567,046 Fans

#4 YouTube 5,114,322 Fans

#5 Red Bull 3,727,372 Fans

#6 Disney 3,488,088 Fans

#7 Victoria’s Secret 3,470,724 Fans

#8 Converse 2,749,691 Fans

#9 McDonald’s 2,270,109 Fans

#10 H&M 2,062,377 Fans

#11 MTV 1,924,744 Fans

A visit to each of these pages reveals that each of these brands uses social media to give their customers a voice. The conversation is less about the brand than about shared interests or passion points. None of these brands is using social media as its only brand building strategy, but social media is providing an extra dimension of differentiation, above and beyond what they are able to do with a product, lifestyle or user experience approach alone.

My conclusion is that dynamic social media may in fact represent a new way to build a brand, but will not replace other methods as the primary means of differentiation for some time.

Instead it offers an additional layer of differentiation, particularly for brands that have already set themselves apart via a more classic brand strategy approach, it is a potent new tool and one that should not be ignored, particularly if the answer is ‘yes’ to any of these three questions:

1. Does your brand target Millennials?

2. Does your brand share significant passions with its target that are not directly related to the brand’s key performance characteristics or image such as a cause or environmental interest?

3. Does your brand connect with its customers primarily at the corporate rather than product level? (i.e., span multiple products or have an evolving product offering?)

Millennials are recalibrating what it means to have a successful life.  This shift in values was already underway before the Recession, and has accelerated as the new economic reality sets in.

Longitudinal research by CIRP has shown a shift in life aspirations. Relative to people of the same age in 1977, young adults in 2007 are more likely to agree they aspire to civic goals such as ‘helping people in difficulty’ and’ influencing social values’ in addition to the more traditional goals of ‘raising a family’ and ‘becoming financially successful’.

Millennials are making life choices based a broader definition of success and one that is more attuned to experiences than material goods.

In a recent blog post, Mullen strategic planner, Stephen Hahn Griffiths, describes this as a shift toward a ‘we’ orientation. Hahn-Griffiths calls this striving for life enrichment increasing ‘personal currency’.

“Millennials are looking to make their mark on the world and work towards enhancing their net-worth and self-worth. To them, money is more likely to be the means than the end. They recognize financial security yields opportunity, and thus, take an active interest in financial strategy. They’re looking to take control of their finances, and meet their financial goals – so they can become “enriched” in a broader sense. …

In contrast to the dog-eat-dog Gen X’ers that came before, Millennials are more “we-driven” and collective in their definition of success. For them, “making it” doesn’t simply equate to the tangible rewards of a luxury car, or owning a McMansion. Success is more likely to be defined by sampling a rich array of life experiences – including culture, travel, innovation, sustainability and the environment.”

Gen Y’er  Andreana Drencheva asked her peers what was on their ‘bucket list’ and learned that travel and travel related activities are at the very top.

“Have you ever wondered what the ultimate Gen Y’s bucket list would look like? What do millennials want to do? I wondered, so I asked other millennials to share their bucket lists and here is what we want to do before we kick the bucket. We want to travel A LOT: To certain cities like Chicago and countries like Cambodia, Greece, India, England, Italy, Ireland, Japan, and many others. Or just visit every state in the USA, at least half of the countries on Earth*, all seven continents**, travel for a year, or simply travel around the world**”

According to research by TIG Global, a hospitality marketing firm, Millennials born 1977-1995, account for 12% of the U.S. Leisure Travel market.

Brian Fitzgerald, TIG Global’s Director of SEO and Social Media, says Gen Y ‘stays longer and travels deeper‘ than other age groups.  He strongly advocates that hotels andothers in the travel industry market actively to Gen Y using ‘authentic, digital communications’ that are ‘edgy and unique’.  He specifically recommends a Facebook presence ‘where you don’t just talk about yourself’ and leveraging location based services such as Four Square and Gowalla.

Beyond travel, I expect that Millennials will become active ‘lifetime learners’, with interests that go well beyond their work or primary field. After all, this is a generation that is fond of describing itself using the ‘slash’ mark!  Adreanna Drencheva’s list gives us a good idea as to the breadth of their interests. Here’s just a sampling:

Attend a Jewish wedding
Audition for American Idol
Be an extra in a film or a TV show
Cook a five-course meal
Drive a race car
Get a professional massage at a spa
Get into a fight and preferably win
Go skinny dipping in a large body of water
Go snowboarding*, scuba diving*, bungee jumping**, skydiving**, canoeing, kayaking, target shooting
Have a lucid dream
Have a threesome
Hold a trained falcon
Kiss someone in the ocean like the scene in The Beach
Paint on an easel and canvas
Ride a helicopter
Ride an elephant
See So You Think You Can Dance live tour
Sing at a karaoke bar
Snuggle with a giant cat and not have it kill me
Stomp grape for wine making
Take a pole dancing class
Watch a movie in a drive-in theater
Be a part of a flash mob

Be in a musical

Be on TV in a main role
Become a teacher/professor
Become a trained chef
Break 250 in bowling
Build a house (with secret passages) and live in it*
Build something bigger than a birdhouse
Climb the ten highest mountains and drink milk on the top of each one
Create an award-winning ad campaign
Design a fashion line for United Colors of Benetton
Design a handbag
Do a century ride (100 mile bicycle ride)
Do a stand-up routine in front of a live audience, although a dead audience might be easier
Do what Baby Boomers have never been able to do: retire in style
Fly a plane
Get a tattoo*
Grow up my own vegetables and then live through ingesting them
Have a blog and post at least once a week for a year
Have a herd of corgis, ala Queen Elizabeth
Have a movie based on my life
Have a photo on the cover of National Geographic
Have a piece published in Rolling Stones
Have a radio talk show
Have my own page in Encyclopedia Dramatica
Live and work on a horse ranch for a year
Maintain a garden
Make liquor
Move abroad
Open a restaurant
Perform on stage
Play guitar in a band
Prove the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth
Run a marathon** or a half marathon for some of us
Speak at TED
Teach a yoga class
Write and publish a story, a novel or a book** in general
Grow my hair to my butt and then chop it all off to donate it

Spend 1-3 months volunteering in a developing country

Volunteer in Africa for a year
Teach someone to read and write
Volunteer for UNICEF
Start a scholarship fund
Work for a nonprofit organization
Save a life**
Fight teen suicide
Use my natural talents to do good in the world
Make a difference with my writing

For marketers, it is important to understand that Millennials are looking for brands that align with their values and help them increase their ‘personal currency’.

Brand are increasingly becoming symbols of ‘beliefs’ not just status, lifestyle, or cool design. They want brands that exhibit higher purpose, such as American Express and Pepsi are showing with their cause-driven marketing efforts. This approach is not appropriate for all brands, but is something to consider when marketing to Gen ‘We’.

Not long ago, marketers were obsessed with identifying the right message. Communications strategy really meant ‘what do we want to convey about our brand or product’? Many hours were spent studying the consumer and the competition to come up with something relevant and unique to say.

The brief answered the question, ‘what is the most motivating thing we can say about this brand’?  The answer was  expressed in words, the fewer words the better.  A one or two word brief was considered the pinnacle of achievement.

Today, the idea of a singular, focused message is under pressure — from media fragmentation, from shorter attention spans and the pressing need for a constant stream of relevant ‘content’. With social media, the idea of a singular message has given way to culturally relevant brand ‘themes.’

After all, saying the same thing over and over, even if you find new ways to say it, makes for a boring conversation.  Marketers are recognizing that they are not in control of the conversation, much less the message.

Now the question for those preparing a brief becomes, “where can the brand make a contribution to the conversations consumers are having or want to have?”  Dove’s Eveolutionwas an early pioneer in this themed approach to branding. By identifying that women don’t think of themselves as attractive and wanted to have a conversation about the meaning of beauty, Unilever’s marketers were able to make Dove more culturally relevant. The message is hard to summarize in words, but is more along the lines of “Dove ‘gets’ you”.

Little wonder taglines are falling into disuse!  Here is Millennial marketer and “super consumer” panel member, Derek Yegan, on the demise of the “Big Idea”:

“As a millennial, I’d say diversity is key. Perhaps marketers need to present several ideas all related to “The Big Idea”. This may require multiple tag lines for multiple demographics and people (doable but difficult to cover all aspects) or maybe a broader “Big Idea” with broader tag lines to target more people. In the end, i think a lot of what will define the successful companies from those that fail are the ideas and values the advertisers have, the tactics the agency employ, the response(s) to the feedback given, and the relevancy of the product.”

Brand themes may or may not have much to do with the brand; they are more likely to reflect consumer interests and areas the brand has permission to talk about. Rather than narrowing the scope (to one word), the idea now is to make the brand platform as broad as possible. The goal is increasing brand ‘ubiquity’. The bigger a brand’s authority (the more subjects it can speak to) the better. Perhaps the ‘ubiquitous’ Virgin brand is not an anomaly after all, but the way of the future in branding?

Not only are messages broadening, they are also becoming subordinate to things like context, placement, and timing. Here’s Millennial panel members, Brian Sweet and Desiree Asena Dundar on how the message is so much more than the words.

“This question becomes even more interesting when you realize the time/place your message is conveyed is also part of the message itself. Does a brand hang out in the environments with which its target consumers identify? If it does, and if it “fits” that environment without seeming out of place, that unspoken message is very possibly more powerful than the overt message. Authenticity is a vital brand attribute that is communicated most effectively through unspoken means.” – Brian Sweet

“Creating a difference in a world full of names is an essential step to be taken by the brands, especially if you are referring to Gen Y. I believe this is why the emphasis that was on brand message has been shifted towards the right time, right place and the right communication tools. As we can see Viral and Guerrilla Marketing tools are widely adopted by many brands in order to create that difference so they can attract more “audiences” or “viewers”. Yet this does not mean that the message sent through these channels will result in higher number of customers. The aim is still to influence purchase decision and generate a link to the brand. I, therefore, think that the brands and marketers should establish a well-balanced relation between the message and the tool, the time and the place that is used to deliver that message.” – Desiree Asena Dunda

Briefs today must move beyond target definition, current belief, key message, and desired belief to identify broader areas of brand interest.

Marketers, especially those who want to reach Gen Y, now have  a better appreciation of the importance of reference groups in creating brand affinity and shaping attitudes. They have to deal with the challenge of moving away from a broadcast to an engagement model of brand communications. And with the advent of mobile phones and geolocation, they know they need to  incorporate a ‘temporal’ and ‘locational’ component to their strategies.

What does your brief look like these days? To keep up with the new communications realities, I recommend a communications brief address these four components:

1.  Audience = deep understanding of not just who they are and how they relate to the category and brand but what they like - cultural interests, important social causes,  key influencers, activities, what they think is funny, what they worry about. You get the idea. More is better.  LISTENING IS CRITICAL.

2. Attention = what can we say that is memorable and will get the brand noticed and talked about?  What can we make, invent or built that will be of value?

3. Action = How can we get people to participate? To share their experience with their friends? Will this deepen their active involvement with the brand, even if it doesn’t lead to purchase?

4. Affinity = It’s not a ‘target’, it’s a potential friend. What can I say or do that suggests I ‘get’ this audience as individuals and I want to know them better?

There has been a lot of debate lately on the issue of online privacy, and with good reason. The debate is a healthy one, and very enlightening (I have revised my Facebook privacy settings and was shocked to see how open it was).

Just as this beach sign doesn’t really do the job, do we really mean it when we say ‘keep out’? Is insisting on privacy just a formality? Or is privacy something we’re willing to trade off for other benefits — provided the price doesn’t become too high?

I have been listening to what Internet savvy Gen Y marketers and bloggers think about the issue. It’s been a little surprising to hear many say they consider some sacrifice of privacy as the price to pay for free online services and more targeted communications.

Although many express misgivings about just how safe it really is to trade transparency for free services and relevant communications, I also sense a bit of  resignation – what choice do we really have? They also seem to believe that the burden is on them to put up the fences, not the marketers.  If this attitude is representative of other Millennials, we may see a more relaxed attitude toward social privacy before long.

Here’s a sampling:

McKenzie Lawton: (TheNextGreatGeneration.com) “Personally, I feel as though I’m pretty comfortable putting a lot of things on the Internet. I use Facebook everyday, post pictures, comments and share personal information. My Twitter is public, and I even have a copy of my resume on my website. However, I make it a point not to include my address or phone number. I really don’t mind having my contact information on the Internet, as long as it’s no more personal than my e-mail address. As I’ve told many friends before, “I live my life on the Internet”….I know that I probably put too much information on the Internet, but it isn’t something I constantly worry about. Even something as simple as my name and birthday can be used to steal my identity. And yet, I barely bat an eyelash when it comes to sharing information via social networks.“

Daniel Lyons: (Newsweek) “Maybe it’s a generational thing. People my age (nearly 50, a.k.a. “the olds” in blogosphere parlance) would probably rather part with a few bucks than with our personal information. Younger people don’t have as much money, and don’t care as much about privacy. So they’re happy to go along with the deal being offered to them by Google and Facebook. What’s happening is that our privacy has become a kind of currency. The genius of Google, Facebook, and others is that they’ve created services that are so useful or entertaining that people will give up some privacy in order to use them. Now the trick is to get people to give up more—in effect, to keep raising the price of the service.

Baillie Buchanan: “To some extent I believe it is up to the user to be careful about how much information they share on Facebook, or really any other online site. Privacy policies are important certainly and should be strictly adhered to, but I think the first step is the user only posting or sharing information that they are comfortable with anyone knowing – and assuming that not just your “friends” are able to see it.”

Sam Davidson: “I think most millennials don’t care and won’t do much differently. We’re used to being marketing to (our diapers even have brands on them – brands other than the manufacturer), so we’re fine with people having our information and personalizing ads. Bring it on. It may actually make my life simpler. I’ve said for a while now that I’ll be the first to use thumbprint scanners at the supermarket checkout (that link to my CC) if I don’t have to carry my wallet anymore.”

Anne Mahoney: “In some respects I’ve drank the Kool-Aid about Americans being overly-sensitive re: privacy and have adopted an attitude of, “handing over my info will get me the best service.” In the UK, apparently privacy isn’t such a big deal. Stephen Baker (author of the BusinessWeek’s “Math Will Rock Your World”) made this point during a speech recently while defending the positive uses of data. I agree with Sam (Davidson) - I frequently sacrifice privacy for convenience - but it takes just one mishap by hackers or data misuse to feel exposed, vulnerable and taken-advantage of. Handlers of data need more proof of reassurance than a “we do not share” label on their website.”

Derek Yegan: “Yes privacy and convenience go hand in hand. Yes, everything becomes easier the more we allow for transparency. What is a public domain and what is private on the internet is difficult to say.  A bit of caution in the wind to those unwilling to accept that fact.”

“I don’t read a lot, I never have. I was happy when the movie ‘Where the Wild things Are’ came out, ’cause that’s the first movie I’ve ever been qualified to say that the book was better than the movie.” — Tony Grayson, High School Senior, Oak Park, IL

As a professor, I am obsessed with reading and constantly writing.  So I am concerned by two recent blog posts on The Next Great Generation that suggest indifference toward traditional texts and library books at the college level.

Jeannie: “Getting Gen Y’s Attention: 101″ “Even if I had the money to buy every textbook I ever needed in college, most of them would have collected dust on my shelves all semester. One could chalk it up to having a typical Millenial attention span –one that understands thoughts in 140 characters or less – but just like my textbooks, I don’t buy that. Part of my complete disinterest in textbooks comes from the fact that the second a book is published today, it is pretty much obsolete. Since I was in fifth grade, I have been able to access almost any information on the Internet more quickly and accurately than I ever could in a textbook. Furthermore, this online information is free (or if it’s not free, I’ll go look on another site until I find it for free). With a limited budget and unlimited free resources, is there any kind of textbook that could ever capture my interest?

Katie Wall: “I Graduated From College Without Ever Checking Out A Book” “That’s right – in May of 2009 I graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a school consistently ranked as one of the best public universities in the country, and never checked out a single book. I’m not saying that UNC-Chapel Hill wasn’t a challenging school – quite the opposite, actually, but for all of the time I spent reading and studying, I never once needed to check out a book from the library. When it came to writing research papers I was able to find everything I needed online…. because of various internet platforms, there were multitudes of valuable resources at my finger tips that once required digging through books and microfiches. The UNC library system had an incredible online database that housed an endless supply of books and scholarly journals, and I suspect that most universities are moving toward making more of their resources available online.”

Although I understand these young women’s point about online alternatives to books, it distresses me to hear them say they don’t value reading books.

I work hard to ensure my students read their assignments. I have tried different approaches over the years — daily quizzes, weekly case essays, frequent tests on text material.  This year I tried a new, Millennial-friendly text, MKTG3, by 4LTR Press. Students really liked the book, so they read it.

What made this book so much more readable? First it was highly visual. Text was often treated as a graphic element. There were big colorful pictures. Second, the writing style was approachable, not dumbed down but meant to be interesting.  Finally, the text provided just what was required, with the ‘extras’ provided through integrated online content.  Based on my just released class evaluations,  students loved the online quizzes, cases and extra material.

There is much evidence that Millennials do read.

First, as I pointed out in an earlier post, Millennials are ‘news junkies‘.  An April study by McKinsey in the U.K. reports that the average person consumed 72 minutes of news a day, compared with just 60 minutes in 2006. They further report that the increase was driven almost entirely by people under the age of 35.

Second, reading may not be a priority, but Millennials do spend more time reading than older generations.  According to fascinating interactive graphic by the New York Times, those over 64 spent by far the most time reading per day: 1 hour and 24 minutes. But 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 just 32 minutes.

However, Millennials read differently.

They are reading for information, so they read with purpose and are very good ‘scanners‘. My 16-year old son reads very little fiction other than what is required for his Brit Lit course, but he does read Sports Illustrated and looks up stories of interest to him – like volcano eruptions and oil spills, new movies, and travel destinations.  But this also means that they may not be giving their reading their full attention.

In his book, Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott describes Joe O’Shea, a 22-year old student leader from Florida State who was on his way to study at Oxford. O’Shea had this to say about reading books:

“I don’t read books per se, I go to Google and I can absorb relevant information quickly. some of this comes from books. But sitting down and going through a book from cover to cover doesn’t make sense. It’s not a good use of my time as I an get all the information I need faster through the web. You need to know how to do it — to be a skilled hunter.”

Earlier in his book, Tapscott spends several pages describing how and why Millennials developed such terrific scanning skills and explains how this ability may provide them with the broader frame of reference needed to be more sophisticated readers:

“I believe the challenges of the Internet can actually provide the Net Gener to do the hard thinking to make sense of a broader scope of information than the one that would have been available to the boomer. … The Net Gen brain may be able to execute certain perceptual tasks more rapidly, and may maintain more items in working memory.  In order to deal with all that incoming infomration you have to be a great scanner. Digital immerision has given the Net Generationa the visual skills that make them superior scanners. They’ve learned to develop the filters they need to sort out what’s important from what’s not.”

Millennial’s habit of scanning, and of reading with purpose, can be good news for marketers.

By understanding the kinds of information Millennials are seeking, it may be possible for marketers to engage them more deeply in content. What’s more, finding out what kinds of information they seek has never been easier. Key words, twitter trending topics and other tools provide gateways into relevant content.

Perhaps the biggest take away however, is that Millennials are capable of taking in a lot of visual information at once, probably more than older generations, provided it is presented in an attractive and easily digestible way. This makes good design as important, if not more important, than good writing.  In studies where we have had an opportunity to compare age groups, it is striking how much more attuned younger consumers are to the way information appears on the page. Older consumers tend to overlook poor design and focus on the meaning. Millennials have a hard time getting past the way it looks.

We are approaching an inflection point in the way that brands and communications are created and implemented.  Consider these shifts:

These are radical shifts. Not that long ago, the process of creating brand communications started with deep research into the consumer’s attitudes and the way they made decisions about the category and the brand.  Agency planners and market researchers labored long and hard to discover a polished diamond or two of ‘insights’ which could be translated into a brand platform and compelling message.

Now, the speed of deploying digital marketing ‘campaigns’ has made research and the strategic development process, if not less important, at least less prominent.

• Mega brands are being built online without THE BIG IDEA or catchy taglines.
• Google, Amazon, and Facebook succeeded by being remarkably useful, not by remarkable advertising.
• Indeed, those that try the old ways are finding they don’t even work that well. (Witness Yahoo’s recent $100 million attempt to resuscitate its brand).

Deep research and immersion are giving way to an iterative process of digital experimentation.

Experimentation makes sense when it costs less to ‘just do it’ than invest in upfront research. Direct mail, in-store programs and commercials are expensive, even before the cost of media placement is factored in.  In contrast, digital media provides a vast experimental laboratory for marketers. Failed ideas are not an embarassment, they are just ignored. The “Your Father’s Oldsmobile” campaign, an epic fail of the early 90’s, wouldn’t have lasted a day in today’s social media environment – it would have been laughed off the social graph and fallen into oblivion.

Who needs a traditional planning process when it costs only a few thousand dollars to create a viral video, embed a tweet or launch a Facebook application that could become the next Coke Open Happiness or Dove Evolution? With so little at stake, at least financially, the potential ROI on new efforts doesn’t justify the upfront investment in exploration. When Office Max developed its ELF Yourself Christmas promotion, it was just one of ten ideas that were deployed. Any one of them could have won.

Research isn’t going away, but it needs to adapt. The future communications planning model will be immersive and concerned with broader themes and contexts, not ‘messsages’.

Although digital campaigns may be less costly, they are not free, especially when one factors in the human capital required to create and execute them.  So there is still a need to reduce risk through research. In a digital model, research will no longer be a protracted upfront process focused on understanding ‘brand perceptions and decision drivers’.  It will no longer be searching for the one, true magical golden insight.

Here is the BBH planner, Heidi Hackemer, from her blog, @uberblond arguing against the idea of a ‘frickin’ insight on a frickin’ pedestal’.

“The traditional brief should die. traditional way: planners go off into their magic black box of thought and perception, ponder the philosophies of society and our world, and then emerge triumphant with the golden insight and magical one true thing. and i get the allure of that, both from the planner feeling like a hero and the creative having the assurance of the safety buoy of a brief. but as i do more immersive brand planning that’s geared for today’s realities, digital and not (which is different than being a “digital strategist”), my role is radically changing.”

Edward Boches, echoes the idea that the brief as we knew it is no longer relevant from the perspective of a creative director in a post on his blog, Creativity Unbound.

“The brief has remained unchanged for years, almost always answering the question, “What do we have to say?” Better to answer questions like, “How will we get this brand talked about?” “What can we create of value?” “How will we get people to participate?” “What can we make, invent, build that’s worthy of being advertised?”Ask those kinds of questions and see what you get back.

Understanding of the user, their interests and lifestyle, will be more important than understanding of their brand perceptions and motivations. As Boches puts it, what matters now is “understanding a customer’s relationship to content, technology and community — not just to a category or even the brand – and finding a way to add something of value.”

In the future, research will also be more embedded in the actual communications development process, with faster turnaround times and iterative experimentation to weed out losers and identify potential wins becoming the norm.

Mike Doherty, President of Cole Weber United, dubs Millennials and its affinity for the latest, greatest idea, “Generation Prototype”. Doherty believes that the best way to ensure products get Millennials attention is to include them in the development process.

“Because Gen Yers personalize everything, they are very comfortable pulling apart (both literally and figuratively) what isn’t working for them, refashioning a different version and presenting it to their comrades in experimentation to see if it flies. This makes Gen Yers great partners for innovation.

One way to engage them is through tools that provide Market Research Online Communities (MROCs). These communities enable consumers to stick their toes into the primordial soup of new products by trying out the latest and greatest and then providing feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

In terms of mobile, we’ve also found surprising success by throwing down the gauntlet of time. Rather than focusing on time, money and whether the idea is worthwhile, consider developing mobile phone applications using a simple “App in a Day” rule. A time constraint can often push teams to develop quickly and cleverly. Risky methodology? Perhaps. Surprising rewards? Absolutely. And at worst you’ve invested two or three days in a great learning experience.”

Introducing ‘Flash Reads’

The approach Doherty advocates for product development is easily adapted for feedback on digital communications.  Access to a standing customer group or database makes it possible to leverage feedback tools in the form of polls, surveys, forums, online focus groups or co-creation groups.  Many companies have these ‘MROC’s’ available.

Brand Amplitude’s Millennial marketing unit is experimenting with a proprietary, standing Market Research community (MROC) (millennialmarketing.org) of our own. Rather than gather a unique random sample for each project, the idea is to have an on-call community composed of Gen  ‘super consumers’ ready to respond to your latest initiative. Each participant is active in social media and either works in or is studying digital marketing, communications or PR. The hand-selected participants were chosen from hundreds of Gen Y bloggers and tweeters for the quality of their ideas and thinking. They have already started actively sharing ideas about brand marketing. Soon, we hope to open up to allow brand marketers to access the community and to introduce focused topics of conversation or concepts for feedback or ‘pre-testing’.

For now the community is private, but if you are interested in joining or engaging the community on behalf of your brand, we’d love to hear from you.  Otherwise, stay tuned, you’ll be hearing more about this fabulous group in future posts.

I’m glad to finally see social media starting to show up in television shows in a big way.  While smart phones have long been a staple feature of sitcoms and dramas, few plots until now anyway, appear to have actually turned on social media or mobile technology.

But last week, I spotted not one but two major shows with social media-related plot developments.

Glee: On Tuesday’s episode of Glee, the most nerdy of the Gleek students enjoyed a hilarious pilfered video of their nemesis, Sue Sylvester, the intense and intensely funny cheerleading coach dancing in her office to Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical”. They quickly upload it to YouTube where it quickly reaches 3 million hits. Sue has the last laugh however, when Olivia Newton John contacts her about remaking the 80′s video together.

The Office: Then on Thursday in The Office, Pam Halpert searched out information incriminating Michael Scott’s new girlfriend of being unfaithful by leveraging access to her Facebook page through a friend. He later learns she is actually married, a development that would not have occurred but for Pam’s Facebook stalking.

The use of social media in these shows feels completely natural and plausible. One takes place in an office and another in a high school where social media is a routine part of daily life.  One wonders why we don’t see more?

This leads to me to speculate how technology and social media may have played a role in 90’s television shows and movies had it been as integrated into daily life then as it is now. Imagine the way things would have gone if…

Bonfire of the Vanities: Gordon Gecko accidentally ends up in the Bronx when he fails to make a fast enough turn in response to commands from his Garmin.  “Re—- calculating!”

Cosby:  Cliff Huxtable uses simulated reality game to instruct Cleo on the true cost of life on his own.

Sex in the City:  All the single ladies use the new Facebook social graph to prequalify dates, making it faster and easier to identify the ‘likes’ of potential dates, weed out creepers, identify keepers and generally ‘put a ring on it’.

Home Alone: Kevin McAllister uploads photo shopped pictures of himself in France to make his family believe he is actually already there. Meanwhile he projects Youtube videos of his family onto the walls to create the illusion of people being home for the benefit of the burglars.

Fresh Prince of Bel Air: Will Smith challenges Carlton to see who can get to 10,000 Twitter followers first.

Okay, you get the idea. Now consider how different the shows of the 70′s and 80′s might have been! What if there had been social media when they made Back to the Future, Golden Girls, Gilligan’s Island, Family Ties…

Last Saturday night while waiting in the car with my husband for some friends to emerge from their home so we could go out to dinner, I naturally pulled out my iPhone and proceeded to check my email and Twitter. When those revealed nothing special, I started to play a game.  We had only been there a few minutes.

My husband objected – he thought I was being rude. Needless to say I put the phone away, but I it occurred to me that if I had been with my Millennial-age son or daughter instead of my husband, there would have been no objection.

In honor of Mother’s Day, Retrevo provided some interesting insights about the shifting mores of cell phone use.

Retrovo’s research asked 1000 Twitter and Facebook users when they thought it appropriate to allow an electronic interruption. They found that mobile communications have become a persistent factor of everyday life. “Over 40% of respondents saying they didn’t mind being interrupted for a message. In fact, 32% said a meal was not off limits while 7% said they’d even check out a message during an intimate moment. ”  The study concluded:

“Social media is embedded in our lives. It’s why people go to a restaurant and check Foursquare before they sit down with their friends, then take a picture of their food before they eat and upload it to Facebook,” — Manish Rathi, co-founder and VP-marketing, Retrev0.

Even with this widespread tolerance, the study revealed striking generational differences in tolerance. (See chart) Almost half of mobile phone users under the age of 25 allow social media updates to interrupt meals compared to just 27% of older users.  As far as interruptions for more intimate moments, 24% of users under 25 allow “electronic message” to interrupt them while they’re in the bathroom vs. just 12% for those over 25.  And in a widely reported statistic, 11% of those under 25 would even allow social media updates to interrupt them while having sex, vs. just 7% of those over 25 (ponder that one for a minute and I guarantee you will have even more questions!).

A funny blog post today by Boomer is titled “Do You Find People Annoyed by Cell Phone Users Annoying?”. The post is meant to be satirical, but my guess is that it may actually sound reasonable those under 25. Here’s a sample:

“Are people who get irritated about public cell-phone use actually the selfish ones? I think so. I love using my cell phone in public. I come from Texas so I talk loud. I especially like talking to my doctor about sensitive medical information, spots where I have rashes and that sort of thing. We all have rashes. We all have to talk to our doctors on our cell phones. And sometimes those conversations happen inside of crowded elevators. We are human beings, for crying out loud. But I keep hearing about these people who are irritated with people like me. They think it’s rude. But here are some things I’d like these people to remember: The person I am talking to on the phone is a person, too. It’s not like I’m talking into a Dictaphone.  And people matter.”

‘Annoying cell phone use’ may be become a bigger issue in the future.  I even found an article by ‘Wedding Planner’ that lays down some rules of etiquette for cell phone use in social situations.

Why is it that  the need to stay connected with the ambient social network often overwhelms what’s happening in the immediate surroundings?

I think I know. First, the virtual world feels just as ‘real’ to a heavy social network user as the virtual one. Second, there is a sense that something important may happen and we don’t want to miss it.  Combined, these two factors give social media an urgency that is missing from other kinds of  ’media’. While this urgency may be a bad thing for proponents of etiquette and for society at large, it is infact a very good thing for marketers – provided we respect the ‘media‘.

I deliberately put ‘media’ in quotes because marketers’ presence on social media is an uneasy one.  Social media is more social than media, even if it has a ‘public’ aspect to it. This is especially true of Twitter and LinkedIn, but with it’s announcement about opening the social graph, even the content on Facebook pages are increasingly acknowledged to be not truly our own. Likewise, I have heard few objections to Twitter’s recent announcement that it would allow embedded commercial tweets. These are quasi public spaces, and marketers are, if not welcome, at least acknowledged to have a role.

At the extreme end, Foursquare and Gowalla are decidedly public, that is even the point – to tell marketers and others where you are. Perhaps that is why they are causing such a stir in the marketing community at the moment.

At the opposite extreme, text messages are still deemed private. We grant few marketers have permission to provide SMS text messages.

Engaging consumers, and especially Millennial consumers, via social media requires thinking like a friend, not an advertiser. A friend would not interrupt unless it was important or worth sharing.

Developing this kind of urgent, relevant communication requires a new approach to strategic planning. Yes, a brand strategy is essential for guiding consistent brand personality and behavior (i.e., the essential ‘authenticity’ we hear so much about). But forget about crafting a ‘communications strategy’ or ‘key message’.  It simply doesn’t matter what ‘message’ we want to get across. What matters is what ‘content’ will the friend find interesting enough or compelling enough to interupt what they are doing to read it or respond?

In an excellent post on his blog, Creativity Unbound, Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen discusses, in addition to other changes, the way that the agencies must evolve to meet the demands of digital and social media. Indeed he even argues we are living in a ‘post digital’ age. Here are two of his most powerful recommendations:

Start with the user
Read Tim Brown’s Change by Design and you realize that anything you want to create – product, experience, environment, and process – starts with the user. From a marketer’s perspective that means understanding a customer’s relationship to content, technology and community — not just to a category or even the brand – and finding a way to add something of value.

Re-write the brief
The brief has remained unchanged for years, almost always answering the question, “What do we have to say?” Better to answer questions like, “How will we get this brand talked about?” “What can we create of value?” “How will we get people to participate?” “What can we make, invent, build that’s worthy of being advertised?” Ask those kinds of questions and see what you get back.

Today, L2ThinkTank released the results of its global survey, “Gen Y Prestige Brands Ranking“. As there are so few brand studies specific to Gen Y, it’s worth taking a closer look at the findings.

First, a word about the methodology. One hundred five iconic brands were rated by a panel of 448 people, with an average age of 28.5 and . The sample included individuals from 45 countries including the U.S. (68%) and was limited to respondents who are on a ‘trajectory to earn more than $100,000 in the short-term and double their income within the next five years.” The questions used to determine rank included awareness and ‘sentiment’ (unspecified).

The survey  revealed that Gen Y men and women both admit to being “brand conscious” (65% of women and 61% of men). However they only consider a few brands to be ‘epic’ — although it’s not clear what this means exactly. Many more fall into the classifications ‘whatever‘, ‘tired‘ or ‘off the grid‘.

The top ten ‘epic’ brands for women are heavily weighted toward high end fashion and hotels:

1 Chanel (Fashion)

2 Ritz-Carlton (Hotels)

3 Four Seasons (Hotels)

4 Marc Jacobs (Fashion)

5 Cartier (Watches & Jewelry)

6 BMW (Auto)

7 Mercedes-Benz (Auto)

8 W Hotels (Hotels)

9 Prada (Fashion)

10 Audi (Auto)

The list for men is focused on Auto and Hotel brands:

1 BMW (Auto)

2 Ferrari (Auto)

3 Porsche (Auto)

4 Lamborghini (Auto)

5 Audi (Auto)

6 Aston Martin (Auto)

7 Four Seasons (Hotels)

8 Mercedes-Benz (Auto)

9 Ralph Lauren (Fashion)

10 Ritz-Carlton ( Hotels)

The report gives special kudo’s to Fashion brand, Marc Jacobs, and Audi for their efforts to engage Millennials with its brand through Foursquare and other social media.