Guest Post bv Martin Predd
On the eve of the 47th day of the Gulf oil spill fiasco, I have to wonder how much longer my generation, a generation known for its optimism and belief that individuals truly can make a difference, will remain resilient in the face of the near perfect storm of bad news that has dominated our nation’s collective psyche in the last two, five – even ten – years.
Ten years ago I was a college freshman, full of irrational optimism about the world and my place in it.
For me, the “American Dream” – the notion that with hard work and perseverance, anything was within reach for me – was a very real thing, and a big reason to be hopeful about the future.
It’s worth noting some of the major events that have occurred since that time:
- Bush v Gore, one of the more divisive elections in recent memory (2000)
- 9/11 (2001)
- Anthrax Attacks (2001)
- Enron (2001)
- United Airlines bankruptcy (2002)
- Shuttle explosion (2003)
- War in Iraq (2003, on-going)
- War in Afghanistan (2003, on-going)
- Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath (2005)
- Economic meltdown/housing bubble/Great Recession (2009)
- GM bankruptcy (2009)
It’s hard to recall a decade filled with more reasons not to be hopeful and optimistic about our future. These were trying events for any time, any generation, and yet for Gen Y, they have occurred during key transitional years that are likely to have lasting effects on the way we view ourselves and what is possible in our lives.
These are supposed to be years in which you graduate from college, land your first and second jobs, rent your first apartment, assume responsibility for your own health care, become first-time home owners, and start saving for retirement.
And yet for many Millennials, these have been years in which the traditional milestones of adulthood have been postponed, adapted, or even foregone entirely. We’ve seen record numbers of Millennials move back in with their parents. There are signs the worst is over, but the job market remains grim. For too many, it’s hard to imagine getting any job, never mind one you find purposeful or rewarding.
Buying a home and investing in the stock market seem less and less like the obvious, prudent things to do…and more and more like potentially wild gambles, actions subject to arbitrary forces much bigger than any individual. Health care seems less about choosing doctors or treatment options, and more about choosing which type of bureaucracy (public or private) you want to make these decisions for you.
Through all of this, most of the Millennials I know have remained resilient and optimistic.
Maybe moving back in with Mom and Dad is actually for the best…Maybe not having a job is actually an opportunity to travel, or do more rewarding work as a volunteer. Maybe saving for retirement is less important than enjoying life each day. Maybe this mountain of student loan debt will be worth it in the long run.
Regardless of your politics, it’s been easy for an optimistic generation to chalk these events up to an untimely confluence of natural and manmade cycles. Recessions happen from time to time. Housing markets ebb and flow. Catastrophic hurricanes, tragically, do occur.
And yet as we approach the seventh week of unmitigated oil gushing into the Gulf, a man-made disaster that appears to have been entirely preventable, I fear that my generation’s faith in its ability to overcome events like these is wearing dangerously thin.
For unlike hurricanes or recessions, this event, much like the economic meltdown before it, can’t easily be attributed to historical ‘cycles’ of nature or man. To the contrary, it seems these events have been the result of remarkably shortsighted, selfish decisions made by an alarmingly small number of people.
These events cause even the most optimistic and resilient among us to wonder: How did we arrive at this place where so few private interests have been entrusted with a public responsibility so great, and with consequences so grave?
In the months and years ahead, I firmly believe that Gen Y’s optimism can overcome a lot. It can clean up oil spills, rebuild hurricane-ravaged cities, even revitalize a severely wounded economy. What I fear it cannot overcome, however, is the growing sense that the ‘game’ is rigged…that our biggest challenge isn’t an untimely confluence of natural and man-made cycles, but a political and social climate dominated by fewer and fewer selfish interests.
For Gen Y or any generation, I suspect it’s these moments of disillusionment that turn optimism to apathy and resilience to resignation.
In April I attended a session at Ad:Tech SF on marketing to Millennial men. There were great presenters from EA Games, Red Bull, BreakMedia.com and Suzuki. The advice was sound – focus on meaningful experiences, complement their natural behavior, put content around your product and make it richer, don’t be afraid to interact, Facebook is not the epicenter. But what I was longing for was a more complete picture of who these young men are, and what they want.
Chip Walker, head of the agency Strawberry Frog, wrote a thoughtful article yesterday in AdWeek about the state of marketing to young men.
I have great respect for Walker and his insights. In two years of blogging have only reprinted one other article in this blog in its entirety and it was by Chip Walker, “GenY Core Value: Fight for What You Believe In“. That article was so insightful I didn’t feel it would be right to interrupt it with my own commentary. He wrote of the ‘rise of cultural movements’ and identified why causes matter so much to Gen Y:
“Gen-Yers have an activist bent. But their activism is different from the idealism and rebellion of their Boomer parents in the 1960s and ’70s. For today’s Gen-Yers, activism is not about rebelling against institutions — there’s simply not that much left to rebel against. Belief in institutions like government and big business crumbled long ago. Rather, in a world of almost infinite lifestyle choices, Gen-Y activism is about young people knowing their own inner priorities and making a vow to live by them — even in the face of adversity.Clearly, an independent spirit pervades this generation, and it’s fueled by a strong sense of their personal values and beliefs. Among GenYers’ most important personal values are authenticity, altruism and community. Yet, it is this generation’s consumer activism that makes them a unique challenge for marketers. Gen Y-ers don’t just want to buy brands, they want buy in to what a brand believes in.”
Wow, that is marketing to Millennials in a nutshell. This article on Millennial men merits the same un-editted treatment. Only the bold face is mine. I think you will find it very thought-provoking.
Whither Millennial Men? (AdWeek, June 2, 2010)
by Chip Walker, Strawberry Frog
“Recently I caught a TV ad that made me ask myself some serious questions about the future of marketing to men. The commercial shows a middle-aged man who decides to use a hair product (Just for Men) prior to a job interview with a 20something woman. The payoff: After using the product, he gets the job and the young female hiring manager is so impressed she tells him, “I’ve got big plans for you.”
Wow — not the ending I expected. Sure, it’s common knowledge that the power and prestige of the male gender is in decline, and that men increasingly feel marginalized in a feminized workforce. But are men now officially the second sex? If so, how will we as marketers find a way to relate to them? What does the future of marketing to men hold?
A look at even the basic statistics on millennial men (males who are approximately 15-30) shows some patterns to be concerned about. According to a Washington Post analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, one-third of young men ages 22-34 still live at home with their parents, which is nearly a 100 percent increase versus 20 years ago. We haven’t seen this type of change among young women. According to the book Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax, young men today are less likely than their sisters to graduate from college, and much less likely than their sisters to care about earning good grades at any point from kindergarten through university. The National Center for Education Statistics tells us that for every 100 women who earn bachelors degrees, just 73 young men do.
One major cause of this situation: millennial men are coming of age in an environment of adversity they’re not prepared to cope with. They have little if any trust in institutions like government or organized religion. For them, peers are the new authorities. And the formal rites of passage that once guided them to manhood have mostly disappeared. They’re in essence navigating a DIY adulthood with no map and some are getting lost along the way. Whereas their boomer parents at a similar age had a formula for success in life (graduate from school, get a job, get married, buy a home, retire), millennials are making it up on the fly. And while young women feel a modicum of support from a “you go girl” culture, there’s no corollary for young men.
Some believe portrayals of men in culture are not terribly aspirational. As Stephen Seth, a semiotician (and frequent StrawberryFrog collaborator) with London-based Space Doctors put it, “We’ve chosen the name ‘big kid’ to characterize the way men are represented in U.S. media today.” According to Seth, for some years American men have been portrayed in a dim light that is, as he puts it, “slightly infantilized.” He feels U.S. marketers often speak to the same big kid, focusing primarily on entertainment and escape.
The good news is that some millennial men are taking matters into their own hands and inventing a new version of American male success. In recent research we’ve seen the emergence of a new male success archetype I call the “indie guy.” He’s neither the rebel archetype of his boomer dad’s generation nor the compliant organization man of his grandfather’s day; he’s more of a maverick and pioneer. If anything the indie guy archetype seems to harken back to the Horatio Alger “rags to riches” stories of the 1900s. He is the young man who starts with very little and makes it through courage, determination and ingenuity. His ideal: being a self-made man. The guys we encounter who embody this ethic today seem to be quite diverse ethnically, are not necessarily from wealth and often have entrepreneurial dreams.
This new archetype is emerging and by no means as prevalent as the more familiar “player” or even the “metrosexual.” But we begin to get a glimpse of it in HBO’s How to Make It In America, a show about three 20something guys, one black, one Latino and one Caucasian, struggling to start a jeans company in New York. Similarly, Johnny Walker’s brilliant “The Man Who Walked Around the World” tells the story of a young entrepreneurial man (Johnny Walker) with a different view of success. I, for one, hope we’ll see more of this guy in movies, TV and brand communications going forward.
After graduating from college, my bright 20something nephew ended up living at home and working as a waiter. I wondered why he didn’t get a traditional job and enter a profession. But that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He struggled for awhile, but has now started an unconventional business and seems to be making it his own way. His view of success is simply different from the one I was used to.
Maybe the future of marketing to these young men is about giving them hope that a new version of American male success is possible, in a world where the odds sometimes seem stacked against them.”
Chip Walker is head of strategy at StrawberryFrog. He can be reached at chip@strawberryfrog.com.
Talking about brands is not something Millennials are inclined to do without good reason. Marketers who want to engage Gen Y in social media need to be more creative than just running ads.
To activate influencers to talk about your brand, 9 times out of 10, the most effective means is through relevant content, not ads. According to a Pace University study, 81% of Millennials say social network advertising is ‘not relevant’. That’s why so many brands have found success by associating with worthy causes, or highlighting their support of environmental or humanitarian initiatives.
Tying social media marketing to a social event is also a smart way to ensure relevance.
After all, what could be more relevant than a party you are attending? It’s real, it’s in the moment and it represents the strongest form of social currency – first hand information. Little wonder Facebook pages are filled with news of upcoming parties and photos from past parties.
Three marketers who have recently proven to be particularly effective at integrating social media with events are Ford Fiesta and MTV.
Ford Fiesta: (Marketing Daily, June 1)
Ford is leveraging the connection between music lovers and its Fiesta with partnerships and activities that mirror the Fiesta Movement social media campaigns that have been running for a year. It placed the 2011 model in the 10th annual “Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival” last weekend in Detroit, and on June 10-13, Ford will highlight the Fiesta as part of its exclusive automotive partnership with the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Bonnaroo takes place on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, TN, is one of the two biggest (with Coachella) rock, jazz, folk and pop music festivals in the U.S., with some 100,000 attendees.
“The target consumers for Fiesta are huge music fans, and our goal is to connect with that community in a fun and meaningful way. We want Fiesta to be a natural part of the scene so that it can be understood. The Fiesta Movement enabled people to discover the car in a natural way while having fun with their friends. We [are doing] the same thing at these music festivals — give people an opportunity to interact with the new Fiesta and let them spread the word to their family and friends.” — Jeff Eggen, Ford Fiesta experiential marketing manager
At the Detroit event, Ford had a venue called “Fiesta Lounge” with music piped live from the main stage and local artists painting Fiestas. At Bonnaroo, Ford will have the “Fiesta Garage,” a ’70s-themed space where performers will hold forth about their processes. The Bonnaroo element is tied to Ford’s Fiesta Movement program. One of the bands that will be at the Garage is the winner of a second-phase Fiesta Movement program, where the “Fiesta Agents” had to choose a musician, DJ and/or band to host concerts in their local community. Ford will also have a fleet of Fiestas at Bonnaroo that will transport staff, VIPs and artists.
MTV 2010 Movie Awards (MMA): (Adweek, May 31)
The 2010 MMA Awards promises to get a little “Raaaaaaaandy.” [Orbit will be] reprising its role as the official sponsor of the Best WTF Moment — the award honors the most jaw-dropping scene from a recent theatrical — the Wrigley gum brand will be incorporated into banter between presenters Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick. In keeping with Orbit’s tag (“Dirty mouth? Clean it up!”), the actresses will present the WTF hardware with a requisite smattering of bleeped-out profanities. As the bit plays out, both network and sponsor hope viewers will take it to the tweets, providing a real-time metacommentary on the event, the brand and the WTF honoree.
“Social media is the telephone and we’re the conversation. Not only do we translate the conversation for our clients, but we’re also finding new ways to leverage these social media tools to further engage with our viewers.”– Dan Lovinger, svp, MTV sales and integrated marketing
The smart money’s on Ken Jeong for his naked crowbar assault in The Hangover. Hosted by Aziz Ansari (the comedian stole Judd Apatow’s 2009 flick Funny People with his portrayal of potty-mouth standup Raaaaaaaandy), this year’s MMAs are pumping up the volume on social media. First rolled out for last September’s Video Music Awards, version 2.0 of MTV’s Twitter Visualization platform will allow viewers to monitor tweet activity related to the telecast and the individual performers. For example, should singing pinup girl Katy Perry choose to engage in some particularly outrageous on-screen behavior with her oversexed Brit BF Russell Brand, the site’s graphic interface would reflect the concomitant surge in Perry/Brand-targeted discourse.
While memorable moments aren’t always planned (see Kanye West’s ill-advised cameo during last year’s VMAs), fans generally don’t have to wait long for the first OMFG moment. “A quick strike is critical,” said Stephen Friedman, gm, MTV. “Last year we saw an immediate uptick in Twitter activity after the Brüno moment, and that informed the rest of the night. Our audience is always looking for that galvanizing moment.” As viewers LOL’d over the seemingly unrehearsed meeting between Sacha Baron Cohen’s unswaddled rump and Eminem’s scowling mug, ratings soared. Viewers 12-34 were up 92 percent versus the 2008 show and total viewers improved 78 percent to 5.28 million.
Take for instance the long reach of Coca-Cola’s MMAs commitment. In the spring, Coke partnered with MTV to find an on-air correspondent to act as a liaison between the stars and the audience. The Coca-Cola Movie Awards Insider will prowl the red carpet in search of celeb scoops and posing queries culled from viewer tweets. “This partnership allows us to integrate ‘big event’ TV with social media and event marketing to provide young people access to compelling content,” said Linda Cronin, director, media and interactive, Coca-Cola North America. “Social media helps shape the experience.”
What makes these event meets social media examples so smart is how well they integrate into the event experience, enhancing the moment by making it easy to share it. In a previous post, “The Benefits of Social Friction” I observed that “social media is not just a way to communicate — communication is only the beginning. Social media is a form of entertainment that offers consumers new ways to literally be together online and even to enhance their analog experiences.” The reason enhancing social friction is important was pointed out in an even earlier post, “Reconciling Our Digital and Analog Lives“, Gen Y understands that their online personality is just an extension and reflection of their authentic, ‘real’, lives.
Of course, just adding a social media component to an event is no guarantee of positive word of mouth.
The ability to have a discussion during a shared viewing event enhances the viewing, for better and for worse… An attempt by Fox last Fall to integrate tweets into a recast of the pilot episode of Glee was a failure. Likewise, TIME reported with more than a little irony, that an interview with Twitter founder Evan Williams at South By Southwest was wrecked by criticism on Twitter.
“Festival goers were unimpressed with the questions posed to Williams by moderator Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review and tweeted their displeasure before leaving the interview en masse. In a blog post later, Haque said he wished he had been monitoring the Twitter conversation from on stage.”
