Millennial Marketing

“I want to say one word to you, just one word. Are you listening?”
“Yes, I am”
“Plastics.”

In just :58 this scene summarized the angst of a generation.  But what if Ben had actually used this insight? Plastics indeed were the future, and it didn’t take a crystal ball to see it.

By now, we all know the rationale:

• Millennials are a bigger cohort than the Boomers. They have massive aggregated spending power  that will grow and grow over time.
• Millennials have disproportionate cultural influence, what they like, we all like sooner or later.
• Millennials think differently. They want different things and that means they will spend differently.

My question is, how do we take advantage of these insights right now?

• What are the future needs your business can be planning for today?
• What businesses are worth investing in now?
• What skills will your company need tomorrow?
• If you are a Millennial yourself, which industries will offer the greatest growth opportunities?

I am concerned that many companies are not doing enough to answer these questions.  Seeing the future is difficult. Extrapolating current trends is not.

One company that decided to embrace the Millennial future 6 years ago is Chicago caterer, Tom Walter of Tasty Catering.  According to Walter, ‘fighting fire with fire’ was one of the wisest decisions he’s made. Here is how he described the situation and results to BNET (“Handing Over My Company to Millennials Helped It Grow” 8.31.10).

Six years ago we did something radical (for us): We decided to skip a generation and hand the reins over to the youngest employees in the office, the Millennials. And we’ve never looked back. Last year, at a time when much of the catering industry was struggling, we turned a profit from annual revenue of $5.3 million. We have better name recognition, better internal communication and we’ve developed a much stronger corporate culture — all because we looked to the next generation.

Boomers don’t make corporate catering decisions anymore — their administrative assistants do, who are more often than not Millennials. Once we figured out that the demographics of our core customers had changed, we did what any self-respecting business owners would do — we went out and found the expertise that we were lacking.

This course may not be for everyone, but Walters is clearly on to something. If the future belongs to Millennials,  including them in decisions now can provide a competitive edge. Another, more direct approach, is to invest directly in Millennial talent that’s already in the family.  According to this article, “Investing in the Family”, many parents are providing their Gen Y offspring with the backing required to start their own businesses.

If you haven’t taken time to answer these questions, I urge you not to wait. The future has a way of coming faster than we expect.

It’s not even a contest….Sales results through July 2010 show that, of the three cars priced and marketed to attract first-time Millennial car buyers, the Kia Soul wins over Toyota’s Scion and Ford’s Fiesta by a wide margin.

So far this year, Kia reports selling 36,657 Souls compared to just 25,660 Toyota Scions (all models). This represents a whopping 229% gain over last year for Kia, but a 22% decline for Toyota’s Scion.

Past month sales tell a similar story. In July 2010, Kia Soul sold 8,020 vehicles (a 66% gain) compared to just 5,753 for Scion’s comparable XD model (a 45% decline).

Nissan’s entry in subcompacts, the Cube, was also down significantly. In fact, the only other subcompact to show gains in July was Kia’s Rio. The  newly introduced Ford Fiesta sold just 3349 vehicles in July.

All three cars are sold at a comparable starting price of just over $13,000 and base price of about $15,000 so the difference can’t be explained by price.

What’s the difference? Marketing. According to the Daily Brand Index provided by  Civic Science, the Kia Soul has  won the hearts of Millennials.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the unique Daily Brand Indexes created by Civic Science, each and every day Civic Science asks basic brand questions to hundreds of thousands of young adults about over 700 brands. The questions range from simple awareness to questions about popularity and impact. The indexes provide a real time picture of changes in brand perception.

The data for Fiesta, Soul and Scion XD was gathered during the ten-day period August 11 – August 21.  According to the research, Kia and Fiesta have both eclipsed the more established Scion in terms of awareness/visibility. Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed  are aware of Kia Soul compared to 78% of those who have heard of the Ford Fiesta. In contrast, only 50% have heard of the more established Scion XD.

What makes this even more remarkable is that many Gen Y’ers are not really into buying a car in the first place. (See earlier post, “Millennials Not Romantic About Their Wheels”)

How did Kia do it? By portraying a quirky personality designed to appeal to first-time car buyers.

“Designed to offer consumers a ‘new way to roll’ with a distinct style and a number of personalization options, Soul is aimed at the young and young-at-heart looking for a vehicle perfectly suited to their personalities,” said Michael Sprague, vice president, marketing, Kia Motors America. “The hamsters’ immediate popularity helped position Soul as Kia’s halo vehicle and showcased the brand’s emerging signature design direction, which, along with quality, safety and value, has propelled Kia to tier-one status.” –The Street

Kia’s  launch commercial, featuring the unforgettable hipster hamsters, was named Nielsen’s “Automotive Ad of the Year.,” It also won a Silver Effie for advertising effectiveness. In my opinion this spot rivals the Apple Guy vs. PC Guy ads in suggesting this is a brand for people who are smart and non-conforming.

The Soul ad depicts city and suburban streets inhabited exclusively by hamsters who mindlessly run in place inside theirexercise wheels until a Molten Red Kia Soul pulls up to a stoplight and the passenger window rolls down to reveal a trio of paw-tapping, music-loving hamsters who have discovered “A New Way to Roll.”

Portraying Soul as a lounge on wheels with its highly specified audio system that includes speaker lights that pulse to the beat of the music, the hamsters bob their heads to four different music tracks that appear in slightly different versions of the spot to keep each viewing fresh. Viewers with a sharp eye can identify song and artist information on the hamsters’ iPod® screen, and the campaign extended online with each track available for download at www.kiasoul.com.– The Street

In follow up ads, called the “This or That” campaign, the hamsters are shown driving through city streets to the tune of the hip-hop song “The Choice is Yours” by The Black Sheep, highlighting the choice between “This,” the funky and unique Soul, or “That,” boring and mundane appliances on wheels, cardboard boxes or hamster wheels.  Of course it helps that the cars also deliver many ways to personalize the ride.

The data from Civic Science suggests the Kia should expect to face some fierce competition later this year as the Fiesta ramps up in the U.S.

In addition to its greater visibility, the Fiesta  enjoys greater popularity. When asked which car they would purchase if they could, consumers said they would prefer a Fiesta over either a Kia or a Scion xD by a factor of 2:1!

Fiesta has only been available in the U.S. for two months. With those kind of ratings, the subcompact category could get pretty interesting in the next few months as these skilled Millennial marketing firms go head to head.

It should also be noted that Kia Soul is being investigated for some serious safety complaints which could complicate its otherwise flawless marketing to date.

A big thank you to John Clifford at Civic Science for providing me access to the data. For more information on Civic Sciences, its Brand Index or Quick Response Survey see www.civicscience.com

Hogwarts at Universal Theme Park

I just returned from three days in Orlando with my Millennial age kids, 16 and 19 years old. We specifically went to see Universal’s new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park which just opened June 18. Our package included four nights in a hotel so we also visited Sea World and the Magic Kingdom.

The shocking news is that segmentation works – they LOVED Harry Potter land and were bored by Shamu and Disney World.   Both kids agreed that the Harry Potter park was by far the best and worthy of the better part of the day we spent there.

What made Harry Potter, which represents just one section of Universal’s Island’s of Adventure theme park, so riveting?

The answers provide some clues for marketers wishing to engage this demographic:

1. Technology is used subtly, as a means — not an end.

Unlike other rides and adventures we experienced, the technology at HP was nearly invisible, it served the magic rather than called attention to itself. In fact, the charm of the place was that state of the art technology enabled an ‘enchanted’ almost 19th century experience.  The SpiderMan ride, with its in your face 3-D effects, was more impressive to me.  They preferred the Journey in Hogwarts with the simulated flight which was probably more technologically advanced but less obtrusively so.

2. Authenticity and careful attention to details.

Universal deserves great admiration for carefully studying the JK Rowling playbooks (volumes 1-7). My kids noticed every detail from the taste of the Butter Beer ($9.99 each including souvenir mug) to the shrunken heads behind the bar which played a key role in one of the stories. Our ride on the enchanted bench at Hogwarts started with a puff of ‘floo powder‘.  The themed merchandise was especially well-considered. We actually purchased five ‘wands’ at $28 apiece as each reflected the personality of its fictional owner – Snape, Dumbledore, Hermione, etc.

3. Immersive and involving.

Visually the place captivates you from the moment you walk in. Music from the movie sound tracks enhanced the sense that we had been transported to another place and time. It should have been hard to believe there were pine trees and snow in the middle of Florida in August, yet the fiction that we were actually at Hogsmeade visiting the shops in an ‘enchanted’ winter was profound. Other than the crowds, it really felt like Hermione and Ron were going to appear any minute. At Ollivanders Wand shop, the salesperson (I’m sure my kids would know his name) actually helped a young man select his wand, or should I say, helped his wand select him. Eating  ’cauldron cakes‘ while watching the moon rise over Hogwarts is a memory we will carry for a long time.

4. Employees looked like they were having a good time.

Despite enduring oppressive heat and humidity while wearing costumes that featured capes and wool vests, the young workers — many who are actually from England — seemed to be enjoying the fun. There was a dignity to their jobs that was missing at the other parks. They didn’t look ridiculous, liked they’d checked their dignity at the door.  Many spoke of the place with pride.

5. Diverse, multi-generational appeal.

Unlike the other parks which were populated almost entirely with U.S. families with young children, Universal’s Harry Potter theme park was more demographically diverse.  There were more different ethnic groups represented and we heard more different languages. There were also more teens and unaccompanied adults at Harry Potter.

6. Connect with their childhoods.

Harry Potter was a big part of Millennials’ young lives (See earlier post, “Growing up with Harry Potter“. Being at the theme park allowed them to relive some of the fun. As we strolled the park, each detail seemed to unlock a pleasurable memory. I was stunned to learn that both kids insisted that when they were 11, they were convinced they’d be receiving an Owl Post informing them that they were really wizards and inviting them to Hogwarts. They each report experiencing crushing disappointment when it never arrived.  On the back to the hotel they sang songs from Harry Potter Puppet pals.

Our only complaint is that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter wasn’t a little bigger. Perhaps that will come in time? When it does, we’ll be sure to go back.

‘Conversation marketing’ (do we even have a name for it yet?) is enabling unprecedented levels of customer intimacy. It touches every marketing discipline from customer service to corporate PR. It is going beyond marketing to have impact in areas such as productivity, cost control and HR.  Social media has special resonance among young consumers, every brand’s future market.  Social media has brought a resurgence of creativity in integrated marketing that hasn’t been seen since Burger King featured a funky chicken, BMW offered free 7-minute feature films and Audi stole its own car.

It is an exciting time to be a brand marketer. But it’s also a challenging one.

The rate of change is dizzying. An article in Forbes.com by David Edelman of McKinsey suggests there’s more going on than just a shift in budgets from paid to earned media, it’s also a ‘massive shift in perspective’.

“The shift in mix from “paid media” to “owned” and “earned” media that occurs with digital marketing is more than a budgeting exercise. It is–or should be–the manifestation of a massive shift in perspective, from being a brand that pushes ads and promotions to one that publishes content and applications that help consumers buy and bond with the brand. This may sound like semantics, but the reality is substantive: This new perspective determines how we invest in content, how we manage that content, and finally, how we harvest the information that is generated when customers use our content.”

It’s time to rethink our tools and frameworks for planning brand and marketing strategies in light of social media.

Fundamentals, of course, don’t change. Brand strategies explain how the brand will support business and marketing objectives and are a critical step in managing brands as valuable assets. Marketing strategies explain how a firm will grow revenue and share by acquiring new customers and by increasing the value of the customers they already have. But consider for a moment the complexity social media introduces when answering these basic brand and marketing strategy questions:

1.  Who is the target?

With social media, the target may well extend far beyond typical category users. Many of those interested in Pepsi Refresh’s social action agenda are certainly not Pepsi drinkers and I would venture to say many of those who passed along Johnny Walker’s Man Who Walked Around the World video have little interest in Scotch.

Griffin Farley in its ‘brand propagation brief’ calls for planners to make a distinction between a brands’ “aspirational audience” and its “inspirational audience”. The aspirational audience is defined as those who will actually deliver your business objectives. The inspirational audience is defined as those who are more likely to engage with your creative assets or act on the creative to influence the aspirational audience.

2.  What are our points of difference?

With social media, points of difference range well beyond unique selling propositions and what Leo Burnett called the brand’s ‘inherent drama’. The point of difference increasingly lies in shared interests or passion points, not in a single-minded, consistent message. A conversation is pretty short if you can only talk about one thing.  A community that is all about products or services is pretty dull.

To stay relevant, brands need to develop a bigger cognitive ‘foot print’, identifying themes where the brand has credibility, and the consumer gives it permission to talk.  Quality of content is now the point of difference. Tide can talk about water quality, Van’s shoes can talk about music, Dove can talk about young women’s self-image, and Dawn can talk about saving wildlife — provided their motivation is authentic and they back up their commitment with action. Pampers went from having a value of $3.5 Billion to a brand worth $19 Billion in three years according to Millward Brown’s BrandZ study by changing its focus to ‘helping moms develop healthy, happy babies’ rather than a strict category focus on ‘dry bottoms’.

3.  What is the brand personality?

At a time when brands are people and people are brands, a well-defined and consistent personality is essential. Despite the excellent work of Jennifer Aaker in this area, defining brand personality has often been an afterthought, secondary to determining identity and positioning. It has sometimes been reduced to a set of adjectives meant to inform creative ‘voice’ or connect creative to consumer lifestyle.

Social media makes personality –  how the brand’s content is uniquely expressed and brought to life — nearly as important as the message itself.  Brands are becoming humanized at a rapid pace. If consumers are going to ‘talk’ to a brand or be part of a brand community, it’s only natural they would want to know who is behind the brand and what are the company’s values and motives.

4.  How are we defining success?

Traditional marketing metrics still matter. Revenue and market share as well as brand metrics such as the ability of the brand to contribute to the bottom line through customer acquisition, loyalty and ability to command price premiums are not going away anytime soon. But new measures are popping up every day it seems.

Number of “FFF’s” (friends, fans and followers), Edelman’s ‘Trust Index’ and new metrics for evaluating ‘Social Currency’are revealing new dimensions of brand equity. These aspects of brand value are likely to become more important over time. Starbucks and Apple have both been shown to have high Brand Social Currency scores, no doubt a result of their social media initiatives.

5.  What message is most relevant?

Agency planners and market researchers use to labor long and hard to discover a polished diamond or two of ‘insights’ which could be translated into a brand platform and compelling message. Insights about how consumers relate to the category or the brand are no longer enough. Relevance is now more about connecting consumers more solidly with their community or culture than a brand pyramid or onion.  Relevance comes from meaningful solutions to problems, access to information, branded utility, entertainment, gifts, thank you’s, well-timed help or connections to likeminded people.

Context also matters for relevance. What is the message of the Old Spice videos and does it even matter? These videos are fun and entertaining and gain relevance from interaction rather than content. Mobility will make context even more important in the future. Where you are when the message is received will matter as much as the message itself. I will care more about a reminder to use suntan lotion at the beach or drugstore than when watching TV.

Brand strategy needs to evolve to fit the times.

Does your brand strategy address these questions? If not it may be time for a second look. Social media is more than just a new medium, it may well represent an inflection point in the way we think about building and maintaining brands.

It’s no longer enough to articulate what the brand should stand for and who it should appeal to in broad terms. It’s not enough to define your niche and point of difference. We need to answer more than the question ‘what do we have to say?’

Now the question for brand strategists is ‘what can we create that will be of enough value that people will want to participate and talk about?’

Nielsen declared 2009 the “year of the coupon comeback” with coupon redemptions soaring 27% overall and as much as 71% in discount channels. That’s 3.3 BILLION coupons. With new online and mobile methods of accessing coupons, the pace is expected to continue in 2010.

While I don’t have data to back this assertion up, I suspect coupons are not as effective among Millennials as other demographic groups. Gen Y, sometimes referred to as ‘Gen Frugal’, is just as cost conscious — if not more — than other age groups. But they have a different way of looking at value and the art of the deal.

Millennials want to know they got a deal, not just a discount. This may sound like hairsplitting but bear with me, according to our Gen Y ‘super consumer’ panel, there is a difference.

First, Gen Y is into saving money. According to Fiserv, 75% of Gen Y consumers have a savings account, 5% higher than any other generation. Their overall credit card debt has gone down, despite the fact that many are either unemployed or under-employed. Fiserv says they are ‘fiscally responsible’ as well.

“Several of the consumers interviewed by Fiserv expressed the sentiment that, “if you don’t have the money to pay for something, you shouldn’t buy it.” Gen Y consumers are selective when making big ticket purchases, and spend a lot of time researching products on the Internet. Many said they were more interested in having fun experiences with friends than having a lot of material possessions.”

But Gen Y does spend on things that matter to them. They will spend less overall, and make many sacrifices in order to afford more expensive items that many would consider “luxuries”, like the latest technology, a great pair of shoes, or even jewelry. These are seen as ‘investments’ rather than consumption as they are carefully considered for their return, not just as items of instant gratification. When a luxury buy is needed and fulfills a Yer’s purpose, it is considered a smart buy. For example, a suit that is needed for interviewing for jobs can easily be rationalized. They also spend on experiences. Millennials account for 12% of all travel spending in the U.S.

When Gen Y buys, they want to know they got a deal. A deal means exceptional quality at an exceptional price, not just a sale on everyday wares.  National Jeweler (“Ready for the Gen Y Tsunami, Jewelers?”, July 2010), put it this way:

“Beware of putting items on “sale.” Gen Y consumers consider that word to be the radioactive kiss of death. They strongly prefer the word “deal” as a way to communicate bargains or price reductions. Getting a great deal sounds–to their ears, anyway–better than getting something on sale.”

In order to better understand the distinction, I asked Brand Amplitude’s Gen Y “Super Consumer” panel of marketing experts, “Is there a difference between a ‘sale and a deal’? Between a luxury and an investment?” Here’s what they said.

1. A ‘deal’ suggests exclusivity

“It’s not even so much about about the “sale” vs. “deal”. Although I admit “deal” does sound better to us, its about the exclusivity of the offer and product. Ultimately depending on the situation, I would beware of both the use of “sale” and “deal”. When it comes to luxury vs. investment, I would say their close. But still not close enough. They hit it dead on when by stating we expect exceptional quality. But we also except longevity and again, exclusivity. What’s the point of paying the dollars for “luxury” when everyone else is wearing the same thing?.”- Josip Petrusa

2. A ‘deal’ is more emotionally satisfying

“I’ve always associated deal with some sort of extra value added into it. Sale to me is just a reduction in price. Don’t get me wrong, I love both but deals are a better “experience” for the simple fact I am getting some personal satisfaction in the value I am getting. I think “deal” has much more of an emotional connection (for me at least) than a sale.” – Joshua Opinion

3. A ‘deal’ is less gimmicky

“I do think they hit it on the head with the appeal of Deals to Gen Y instead of Sales. How many of us are members of sites like GroupOn, Woot, even Rue-La-La in the closely comparable high end clothing industry where we are able to see special Deals. These one-off, limited time offers certainly attract more attention that the standard Sale at your local car dealership, jewelry stores, etc. Frankly, I just assume that Sales are a gimmick and the prices have been so vastly marked up ahead of time in order for the “Sale” to seem like a bargain. I’m not biting.” – Kyle Judah

So there you have it. A deal is special while a sale is business as usual. ‘This week only!!’ feels gimmicky because it’s simply not believable.  To these insights I would add one more, a ‘sale’ seems less impulsive, while a deal is more considered. Clipping a coupon may encourage a purchase that otherwise wouldn’t have been made at all. And that is the heart of frugality.

Josip Petrusa offers the last word, a caution against a wholesale rush on the word ‘deal’. If deal starts to replace the word ‘sale’, it too might lose its punch:

“Deal” does sound better than “sale” however in the minds of many people it implies being cheaper. I would say that if “deal” started to replace “sale” in use both would ultimately receive the same meaning. In my opinion “deal” should be used less often to keeps its value and attraction.” — Josip Petrusa

Contact me to learn more about Brand Amplitude’s Gen Y Marketers “Super Consumer” Panel. Why talk to a general sample when you can talk to the experts?

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.

Millennials are different from other age groups and from other generations at the same age in three ways.

More diverse demographically

More at ease with digital and communications technology

More optimistic outlook

The third difference, ‘optimism’, may be their most defining characteristic Why?  Bcause values ultimately guide and predict behavior.

Pre-recession, study after study in the U.S. and globally, reported that Millennials may be the most optimistic generation to date. And why not? Born into a period of unprecedented prosperity, into child-centric families who regarded children as minor royals, and into a period of exploding technology, Millennials are endowed with an unprecedented sense of empowerment. For these children of the new Millennium, anything is possible.

A fascinating book by Clotaire Rapaille, The Culture Code, describes the power of the American Dream this way: “We’ve built our [American] culture on dreamlike stories that, amazingly, are true.” It is this faith in the possibility of dreams that makes America so influential in the world. Who wouldn’t want to believe that anything is possible, that mistakes are simply ways we learn and precursors to eventual success?

For Millennials, the American Dream is very much alive, even in the midst of the Recession.

Pew Research has been tracking attitudes of Gen X’ers and Gen Y’ers for many years. They recently reported that “Today’s employed young people are actually somewhat more optimistic about their economic future than Gen Xers were when they were young.” (“Millennials Confident. Connected. Open to Change”, February 2010) Even more startling, Pew found the overall level of optimism among Millennials about their personal economic future today is higher than it was in 2006!

“Even though the recession has been hard on young people, it has not dimmed their optimism. About two-thirds of Millennials (68%) say they are not earning enough money to live the kind of life they want. However, within that group the vast majority (88%) say they expect to earn enough in the future to live the good life. That is significantly higher than the percentage of Gen Xers (76%) or Baby Boomers (46%) who share this hopeful view.”

The same pattern holds for their optimism about the overall state of the nation. While their opinion has held steady, dissatisfaction among older consumers means the gap between generations is wider than it’s been in 20 years due, at least in part, to widespread dissatisfaction among those 65 and older.

What does the American dream mean to a Millennial?

This question was asked last week in a fascinating Twitter Chat hosted by a member of our Gen Y Marketers “Super Community”, Chanelle Schneider (aka @writerchanelle and  @genYchat) and co-hosted by J. Maureen Henderson (aka @generationmeh). The discussion evoked 436 tweets from 45 contributors. The responses suggests the concept of ‘dream’ is one that Millennials strongly relate to.

@GenYChat: What ideas or associations does the term “American Dream” conjure up for you?

@tylerdurbin The American Dream is having the freedom to explore any and all opportunities we desire. ‘Nuff said. Chat over.

@josippetrusa: Gen-Y is reinventing it. Gen Y is a generation based on dreams.

@WriterChanelle; American dream is freedom and opportunities

@nahumg: GenY wants to live dream lifestyle now rather workin a lifetime to get it

@tylerdurbin: If we work now can we not have things we want?

@daniellewriter: American dream is meritocracy-if you work hard enough, you cam have it all

@GenerationMeh: Great summation!

@kelly_ashworth: I think we have to fight harder and have more of a plan… opportunity is not there waiting & won’t just fall into place

@GenerationMeh: But what constitutes a “dream lifestyle”?

@josippetrusa: Depends, but gen-y would like a managerial job, a bmw and all the gimmicks of success.

@josippetrusa: The american dream has been changed to exemplify quick success that some have achieved from advances in technology. We are limitless.

@GenerationMeh: Idea of opp, potential & self-sufficiency as the ingredients for success is ingrained in American identity. Source of pride.

Tomorrow: How Gen Y is redefining the meaning of success.

The foundation of brand equity is familiarity, and that starts with ‘hello’.  Awareness is a critical first step in any brand relationship — unless you happen to subscribe to the power of subliminal advertising. It’s impossible to deliver any kind of message, let alone create engagement, interest or desire, without first gaining attention.

Are Millennials Attention Deficient?

With Millennials, earning attentions can also be the most challenging step in the communications model. Millennials spend their attention the way the rest of us doing money – very carefully. They are accused of having Attention Deficit Disorder. I disagree. They simply have superior Attention Deserving Detectors.

One of the characteristics that separates young adults from less digitally savvy older consumers is their remarkable filters for tuning out information they don’t want to hear.

This category of information includes alarm clocks, due dates, nagging parents, and negative feedback. It also includes advertisements. According to a study by the Participatory Network and Pace’s Lubin school, 81% say ads are not relevant and 36% say they never look at them. The reason is that they perceive advertising to be irrelevant at best, and manipulative at worst. Rebecca Denison, a 20-something social media analyst at Edelman and member of our Super Consumer Gen Y community puts it this way:

“The big thing for me and my friends is that we don’t want to know we’re being marketed to, if that makes sense. We’re smarter than that (or so we think), and we don’t like to be advertised to. It feels like manipulation, so I think a big aspect marketing to Gen Y has to be a lack of manipulation. You have to be really careful that you don’t make it too much like old school marketing because I think that really does turn Gen Y off.”

Information My Way: Customized, Personalized, Contextualized

Millennials don’t attend to banner ads, commercials or radio ads because they prefer to discover or search for information than have it foisted upon them. They are masters at finding the information they want. They also know how to ensure that the information they want is pushed to them. A year ago, I was introduced to NetVibes by a Gen Y’er who assumed I was already using it. They are masters of RSS feeds and bookmarks, Google alerts and customized home pages. As Kristin Dziadul, another Gen Y marketing community member put it, “In the attention economy today, we don’t find information, it finds us”.

This is not to say that ads never work. Of course they do. But with Millennials context and credibility may matter more than message in enabling an ad to breakthrough. A message from a friend or trusted source is far more likely to be attended than a randomly placed ad.

A new joint study by Facebook and Nielsen demonstrated the lift a campaign receives in effectiveness simply by being in a social context. An ad on a homepage enjoys a 10% lift in recall relative to a control group. Put the same ad on a Facebook page with some social context and it enjoys a 16% lift. But the same ad in an organic feed enjoys a 30% lift.

The key to getting attention is to stop waving your hand in the air and start thinking about how to get your brand discovered. Creative brilliance and heavy rotation is no longer enough. With the Millennial audience, attention is less about intrusion than it is hiding in plain sight. Millennials want to believe that they have discovered information for themselves. It’s no accident that the hottest bars, like El Secreto in Sao Paulo, are usually well-kept secrets. What’s the point of knowing about it if everyone else does too?

Fishing Where the Fish Are

‘Being found’ is not easy. It requires a shift in thinking away from message broadcasting to extreme narrowcasting. It also requires more imaginative ways to embed messages into places where they will be welcome.  Ironically though, it may be easier to be ‘found’ on a more obscure digital site or special interest community than on Yahoo.

The top sites for Millennials might surprise you in their degree of specialization. Facebook of course is the number one site for 18-24 year olds, yet it is really is not one site but a Balkanized nation of groups, subgroups and special interests. Bill Tancer of Hitwise provided drill down data on top sites for 18-24 year olds by income, geography and ethnicity. The top sites for 18-24 year olds on an index basis might surprise you. Those with family incomes $150,000 are actually most likely to be found concentrated on sites like DeviantArt, Fanfiction, UrbanChat, OVGuide, ProjectPlaylist,and MathXL.com. Those under $30,000 are most likely to be found on some of those sites but also badoo, zShare.net, mocospace and IMVU.

A New Idea – Search Enabled Discovery

Another way to ensure your ad is ‘welcome’ and ‘hiding in plain sight’ is offered by a company I learned about this week at iMedia, Vibrant Media. Vibrant Media offers a way to provide greater context for brand messages by embedding ads within relevant content. Think of it as search meets social media. Here is how it works. As an online user is reading an article, certain words or terms are highlighted by hypertext links, similar to how they appear in a blog or wiki. When the reader, who is presumably reading this article because it is relevant to them, passes their mouse over these words, an advertisement appears (and disappears as the mouse passes on). The content can be tailored to be relevant to the key word and can offer more than a standard banner; it can be an API, video or demo. For example, BING used Vibrant to demo its search engine. (To see how it works check out my bylined article on iMediaconnection today. Near the bottom of the first page, the word ‘social media’ is hyperlinked to a dynamic search app from imediaconnection that features what else, ‘social media’!).

(This post is the first in a series about digital marketing to Millennials based on a speech given at iMedia Summit, Miami on June 15. Tomorrow: “Who Cares? I is for Interest”)

Getting the right people to fan your brand on Facebook isn’t easy. In fact it may be the modern day equivalent of populating a salon with influential guests. Just two brands, Coca-Cola and Starbucks have more than 5 million fans, which is not that many considering Facebook’s user base and the the size of those brands’ customer bases.

However, difficult it is, new research from Syncapse suggests that recruiting customers to a Facebook fan page may be a goal worth pursuing. The research shows fans are much more valuable than other users and put a dollar and cents value on the difference.

They concluded,  ”A fan base is a self-segmented group of highly valuable customers“.

Syncapse used a combination of a 4000 member survey  and “in-depth proprietary research and data analyses of two-years available data across millions of interactions, Syncapse was able to compare the worth of a fan relative to non-fans for the top 20 brands on Facebook –Nokia, BlackBerry, Motorola, Secret, Gillette, Axe, Dove, Victoria’s Secret, Adidas, Nike, Coca-Cola, Oreo, Skittles, Nutella, Red Bull, Pringles, Playstation, Xbox, Starbucks, and McDonald’s. Results are broken out by brand and results vary a lot across and even within brands. Yet the overall pattern is clear. They conclude Fans were found to spend more on products, be more loyal, are more likely to recommend the brand to a friend:

Syncapse has observed that an average fan may participate with a brand ten times a year and will make one recommendation. But, an active fan may participate thirty times and make ten recommendations. The impact this has on fan value is quite dramatic. In the case of Coca-Cola, the best case for fan value reaches $316.78 but is $137.84 for an average fan. In the worse case scenario, a fan is worth $0. This degree of variability in the value of a fan must be a major consideration in determining how brands address different types of fans in efforts to move them up the value ladder. In short, the goal must be to reduce fan variability while moving the average fan value to the active end of the range.

Before you can ‘move customers up the ladder’, you have to encourage them to join in the first place.

Research shows that fanning a brand is all about content. 67% join to get news or product updates, 64% to get promotions and 41% to view or download music or videos. This is consistent with research I heard presented yesterday at iMedia Brand Summit by the Online Publisher’s Association (OPA) which indicates online users spend 40% of their time on content.

The second most important reason for friending a brand is to interact with the company or other users.  36% say they friend a brand to ‘submit opinions’ and another 33% say they want to connect with other cusotmers. Again the OPA study confirms this insight – 28% of online users’ time is spent on ‘community’ activities.

While this data is about fans and brands in general, it is especially true of Millennials. Gen Y joins brands to gain social currency (content and offers) and to interact with the company and other fans. Paul Parkin of SALT branding in San Francisco was interviewed recently by MediaPost on the subject of Gen Y and their ‘trust’ for brands. The article was widely tweeted for its insight that Millennials trust ‘channels’ over brands (“Fickle Gen Y Trusts Channels over Brands“). Farther down in the article, he commented on the need for Gen Y to interact.

Q: How important are demographics?

A: In some ways, very. Baby Boomers have one set of expectations of brands, and an idea of what it means to trust them. Gen X is quite different. In many ways, they are the brand generation. They latched onto powerful brands that emerged in the 1980s and ’90s, and if you asked most people in that group to name 10 brands that define them, they could probably do it. Gen Y is completely different — they want to multitask, and are much more into “we,” in the sense of collaboration. They want to interact with companies, and with each other.

This conclusion fits with everything we know about Millennials.  The key to attracting brand friends may be primarily promotions and content, but to retain Gen Y fans, its essential to let them speak out to the company and to each other. A brand fan page is really a platform for a conversation, a modern day ‘salon’. The brand hosts the salon, but if it is wise, will ensure that it’s really more about the guests than about the host.

Readers of this blog may be surprised to hear me advocate for non-age specific branding! Yet the most successful brands are in fact ‘for the ages’.

Study after study of the strongest brands among Gen Y reveal very few that are specifically designed for them — I can think of only a few: Van’s, Herbal Essence. Even Facebook is for everyone now.  Favorite Millennial brands like Apple, Nike, Jet Blue, Trader Joe’s, Coach, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola, to name a few, have multi-generational appeal.

Millennials don’t particularly like brands that overtly go after their specific demographic.  (See earlier blog posts: “Gen Y discusses the iconic brands of their generation” and “Why Aren’t there more iconic Gen Y brands?“) When brands try to act cool, they end up looking like an uninvited guest — out of place and uncomfortable.

We know that reaching a Gen Y target requires a different approach than traditional media and messaging as usual. They are hard to reach, connected, have high expectations of personalization and interactivity and are highly suspicious of any claim to superiority. In contrast, they consider ‘iconic brands’ that have withstood the ‘test of time’ to be uncontrived and authentic. They are more trustworthy.

Marketing to ‘everyone’ is, as every marketing student knows, a recipe for disaster. Gen Y is a special and different target audience. But in a remarkable turnabout, they may in fact be the new mainstream.  There is a remarkable convergence happening, and marketing to Gen Y actually has more resonance with other demos than vice versa. It was not always this way. The youth target traditionally was the ‘niche’, and 25-49 was the mainstream. Now, with Gen Y trends rapidly migrating across demographic lines, what works for youth is  likely to work for older age groups, as well.

Gregg Lipman makes this point quite eloquently in his recent Ad Age article, “What Generation Gap?” (June 4, 2010).

“We see this not only in the video-game world, but also in other brands: moms and daughters with matching Ugg boots, Juicy Couture sweatsuits, Abercrombie hoodies and Coach handbags. Fathers and sons comparing fantasy football rankings on matching iPhones or killing precious productivity hours on YouTube. Teachers and students sipping from matching Starbucks latte cups or ordering the same items from Pinkberry. Moms and daughters rooting feverishly for their favorite “American Idol” contestants or shaking their heads in utter disgust at the shameless and hygienically dubious conduct of the latest batch of “The Real World” participants. Moms and their adults friends, with or without their daughters, attending Jonas Brothers concerts, or standing in line for midnight premiere showings of the brow-furrowing fest that is the “Twilight” franchise. Aunts and nieces perusing the same Kiehl’s or MAC products. Uncles and nephews cracking open cans of Red Bull. Grandparents, parents and their children conversing freely on Facebook or Skype.”

Jonas Brothers? Really? Yet I agree with Lipman’s central argument that brands should aim to transcend age categories, by going after Gen E (Everyone). I also agree with his conclusion about how it should be done –  by focusing on the ever narrowing cultural gap between Millennials and their Gen X and Boomer counterparts.

“These companies [iconic brands] have successfully created branding stories that resonate across a spectrum of ages because they have largely ignored age-based demographic “insights” as they were, and instead focused on harnessing societal (the blurring of the generation/cultural gap) and technological (the desire to be ever more connected) trends to their benefit….Appealing to Generation E requires a massive shift away from the standard “What are they looking for in a product?” to “What does this brand say about me as a person?”"

The key sentence here is the importance of is basing a brand’s appeal on something greater than the product attributes that have traditionaly formed the foundation of brand strategy. Successful brands are becoming more culturally-driven than attribute driven.

Marketing to Gen Y today — and Gen E tomorrow– is more about organizing content and conversations around common interests and passion points than about message points.

This trend has important implications for research and brand strategy.  While traditional research still has a place, there is a greater need for understanding customer interests beyond the category or even ‘lifestyle’.  Social media offers a new way to strategically differentiate a brand and build customer relationships by shifting the focus of the conversation on shared purpose and common cause.  And isn’t that the definition of community, anyway?

Lipman concludes his article by saying “We don’t think that the generation gap will ever totally disappear, and that’s probably a good thing, but in this age of hard-core partisanship, perhaps we as marketers can soften the rhetoric between the generations and create stronger brands at the same time.”

Or said another way, perhaps ‘purpose‘ provides a clue as to how to make a brand ‘ageless‘?