Millennial Marketing

Was the Featherbone Parlor a forerunner of NikeTown and the Apple Store?

There’s a myth that Millennials don’t like marketing and are indifferent to brands.

The reality is, as my friend Rishad Tobaccowala reminded me last week, that Millennials are ‘besotted with brands‘.  While that may seem like a strong choice of words, he isn’t far off the mark. It’s easy to engage a Millennial in a conversation about brands.  They love to talk about what their favorite brands are doing, as the buzz about Old Spice Guy and Nike’s World Cup marketing attests.  They understand the ‘language’ of brands and the role they play in communicating about culture. And many choose to friend or follow their favorite brands in social media so they can stay up to date on the latest news or provide their feedback. Insider information about brands is strong social currency.

What Millennials actually dislike is interruptive advertising.

This is traditional advertising that is designed to appear everywhere and anywhere, irregardless of context, without personalization, with the single goal of gaining awareness and conveying an idea that may or may not have any relevance to the person seeing it at the moment.  This type of advertising is becoming less and less effective because Gen Y (and others) don’t see any reason why they should put up with it and — and don’t.

As marketers look for new ways to engage empowered consumers, ironically they are returning to the origins of marketing.  Marketers are finding ways to add value that may have nothing to do with purchase, but everything to do with making consumer’s lives more informed, more interesting, or more convenient. This is marketing that aims to get noticed, even engaged with, by promising that the marketing itself will improve consumers’ lives.

The book having the greatest impact on my thinking at present is Bob Gilbreath’s, The Next Evolution of Marketing: Marketing with Meaning. Gilbreath points out that there’s nothing new about thinking about brands as offering real service and real value independent of purchase. He points out that David Ogilvy’s first ad for Guinness was a reference guide to selecting oysters. The 100-year-old Michelin guide was originally a travel guide for car owners in France ‘complete with information about auto maintenance, lodging, restrooms, and restaurants’ that created awareness for its tires and emboldened consumers to take to the roads.  Betty Crocker cook books helped consumers try new recipes and gave them confidence in the kitchen.

Gilbreath believes that the answer to today’s challenge of consumer avoidance of ‘interruptive’ marketing tactics is to return to meaningful approaches like these  that connect brands more directly to their target audiences.

I think he’s right. We could learn from these old school marketers. Here’s another example, dating back to the 1880’s. Warren Featherstone was the inventor of the ‘featherbone stay’, a replacement for whalebone stays in corsets created from by-products from the manufacture of feather dusters. Featherstone knew a thing or two about branded utility and community building.

“Featherbone Parlors were established in major cities and fashion shows were held to demonstrate the latest uses of featherbone to customers. With changing fashion styles, Warren kept adding new products and promotional campaigns. Featherbone bustles, bust extenders, featherbone-stiffened fabric, different weights and widths of feather bones, collar and belt foundations were among the new features offered. Promotions included instruction booklets and in 1893 Warren began publishing the Featherbone Magazinette for distribution to dressmakers and retailers plus advertisements in Ladies Home Journal and other women’s magazines. To further reach the home market and dressmaker, Warren patented and market a featherboning attachment for the home sewing machine in 1895. This 3-1/8″ long attachment mounted on the bed of the sewing machine and aided in the insertion of featherbone or stay.” – http://www.fabrics.net/joan905.asp

Think of the ‘featherboning attachment’ as an app and the ‘Featherbone Parlor’ as a 19th Century Apple Store, you can see just how far, or little, we’ve come from those early days.  But there’s more. Warren Featherbone also understood the power of philanthropy. In 1917 he “acted on his vision to help create a better world for future generations by establishing the Warren Featherbone Foundation.” The foundation was intended to establish new methods for everyday people to engage in philanthropy. and led directly to the donation of properties for parklands and wilderness areas in the State of Michigan, known as Warren Dunes State Park and Warren Woods.

As we move from an interruptive model to an engagement model for marketing and brand building, brand strategies will also need to evolve, and perhaps what was old will be new again.

Marketers are investigating the power of  ’branded utility’, ‘community building’, ‘user generated content’ and new forms of ’cause marketing’ as means for adding value and meaning to their brands.

We may look back and see the ‘Mad Men’ era of mass media as the exception, not the rule in the evolution of marketing.

For some great examples of campaigns that made participation the goal, see “Five Fantastic  Campaigns that Put Digital First” by Jim Nichols of Catalyst.