Millennials define themselves more by their interests and passions than their careers or even technology. The desire to connect with brands that share their passions is a key motivation, both online and offline.
Consequently, identifying and understanding Millennial passions is an important first step in designing effective marketing programs.
Last week the Kansas City-based agency, Barkley, shared new research that shows Millennials have a greater range of activities they are passionate about than those over 35. Significantly, Milennials are more likely to define success in personal terms and to put greater importance on it than older generations. “Seventy-nine percent* define success as “doing what you are passionate about“. Today’s youth are not influenced by money or the image of success. In fact, even in their online communities, only 6% feel that “having lots of friends on Facebook” is an influential quality. The vast majority believe “Being True To Yourself” is inherently more influential in life (62%).” *
Millennials want to be defined by their passions, not their careers.
Last week I moderated a panel at the conference Barkley sponsored to reflect on the findings of their research and its implications for marketers, “Share.Like.Buy” in San Francisco. The panel was titled “Tapping Millennial Passions,” and the panelists were noted Millennial researchers: Barbara Bylenga, CEO, Outlaw Consulting, Alex Smith of Mintel, and Tracy Panko, CEO, Spiral16.
The session focused on how Millennial passions are expressed and how they differ from those other generations. The panelists also discussed the potentially disruptive implications of these differences for marketing products and services across a number of categories.
Alex Smith began by noting that while Millennials’ passions may be similar in some ways to those of older cohorts – the environment, causes, music – the way they express and pursue those passions is very different. They have more tools to express their passions, which are used to curate their personal identities and gain attention. Their overall goal is to express themselves in a way that is true to who they really are.
Barbara Bylenga added that Millennials are especially passionate about things that impact others: the planet, the environment, social justice, poverty. They see their passions as a way to define themselves as ‘changemakers’. What other generations might consider an ‘interest’, Millennials see as central to who they are. They define success in terms of their ability to turn these interests into accomplishments or even a career. Hence their passions are especially motivating.
Use a lifestage lense to predict and plan for Millennial impact
Bylenga says lifestage is a good lense for thinking about how Millennials will change categories. The latest Census data confirms Millennials are putting off childrearing, staying single longer. Currently they are in the ‘explorer’ lifestage, but as they mature, many are entering the ‘spinner’ stage, forming households and settling down, and in some cases readjusting but not necessarily abandoning their passions. They still want to make a difference, but will realize (rationalize?) that making a differences lies in the cumulative effect of small decisions, little actions, not necessarily a big career accomplishment. Every little decision is going to take on added significance. Marketers can leverage this insight by helping them feel like their consumer choices are helping make a difference.
Bylenga went on to say Millennials will increasingly see it as a stepping stone to independence, with many aspiring to be entrepreneurs rather than bind themselves to a sure paycheck. (In fact, this prediction may be already coming true. There was a 250% increase in the past two years in the number of Millennials who choose freelance work over a job.)
Characteristics of brands that generate passion among Millennials
When asked the characteristics of brands that generate the greatest amount of passion among Millennials, panelists repeated mentioned the importance of authenticity. According to Barkely’s research, Livestrong is the number four most recognized charity among this age group, a position it achieved by being authentic according to research by Spiral16, said CEO, Tracy Panko.
Despite dramatic and controversial events surrounding Livestrong founder Lance Armstrong, the Spiral16 data shows that Livestrong has continued to successfully engage their community and turn them into passionate evangelists. Besides amassing a huge following on Twitter, Livestrong has also spread its influence and message across other social media platforms with a clear and concise message. Eight out of the Top 10 most influential web pages in the study are components of the Livestrong organization, while the remaining two pages were created by passionate Livestrong fans. (The RSS feed for the Livestrong blog ranked even higher — number two — than blog URL itself.)
Panko points out that this kind of community and presence is impressive. As much as brands would like to, they cannot just control online attitudes at will. A digital presence this dominating, nonprofit or not, can only be built up from years of consistent hard work and clear strategizing. She also cited Patagonia as another brand with a strong authentic brand with special appeal to Millennials. Patagonia’s willingness to willingness to show the less desirable parts of their brand suggests an honesty that allows them to win with consumers. Other brands cited for their authenticity were Trader Joe’s and In ‘N Out Burger.
By Guest Blogger, Judy Hopelain
Recently, I was in a conversation about student activism. Participants were mostly folks who remembered the ’60s fondly. The majority view seemed to be that student activism is dead…that most of today’s students don’t want to make waves, and are more concerned about paying off loans and getting a job than about the quality of life in the world around them.
I think they have it completely wrong.
As a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, I have the opportunity to get to know 40-50 juniors and seniors fairly well over the course of a semester. Students in my class come from a variety of majors including business, communications, engineering, design, and American studies. They do care about paying off loans and getting jobs. And their class participation and projects show clearly that they are also concerned about more than themselves.
Today’s college students are fluent in the language of social responsibility – not just the CSR type initiatives that are just a thin veneer.
They have little use for those, and can smell a “green washing” from a mile away. No, their passion is for brands that have built doing good into their business models. And they choose class projects that allow them to figure out ways for other brands to do good, too.
TOMs Shoes success on campuses across the country is a case in point. Students love this brand for its integrity and honesty, and they want to help it succeed in its mission to give away a pair of shoes to a shoeless Third World child for every pair sold. As part of a class assignment, my students came up with a number of ways to extend the brand’s meaning, broaden its reach and increase its impact like creating more of a connection between the giver and the recipient community – allowing givers to go work on community development projects in those communities, creating an app that would allow givers to ‘track’ the gifted shoes from factory to recipient like Domino’s allows customers to track their pizza from store to door.
American Apparel is better known for its provocative imagery and sexual harassment lawsuit-laden founder than for its idealism. Nonetheless, my students recommended ways to refocus the brand on worker rights and its made-in-America heritage to reengage consumers in American Apparel’s historical activism. Inspired by Chrysler’s highly successful Eminem commercials, they recommend that American Apparel, which has its only factory in LA, open a second factory in Detroit (as soon as it addresses its cash flow issues).
True, students are not protesting wars or throwing rocks at the police or other forms of the establishment. But this form of activism is no less heart-felt or legitimate, and it’s also likely to be more enduring.
Isn’t it about time boomers got over themselves? As Steven Colbert’s segment on Ted Nugent on June 27 illustrates, the ‘60s were a VERY long time ago.
This week, the events in Egypt and “Blizzard 2011″ have dominated the news. For most of us, the ‘snow day’ has been a nuisance. But for unemployed Millennials, everyday is a snow day.
What’s more, the events in Egypt and Tunisia are making it clear young adult unemployment can have major consequences for society.
A Generation is a Terrible Thing to Waste
I highly recommend checking out Business Week’s cover story, “The Youth Unemployment Bomb” (2.2.11). The article points out that what we call ‘boomerang kids’ are not just a U.S. concern, but a worldwide problem that could have long-term implications if not addressed:
“In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt, who on Feb. 1 forced President Hosni Mubarak to say he won’t seek reelection, are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths. The hittistes and shabab have brothers and sisters across the globe. In Britain, they are NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training.” In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month. In the U.S., they’re “boomerang” kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China, where labor shortages are more common than surpluses, has its “ant tribe“—recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work.
In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed—including growing numbers of recent college graduates for whom the post-crash economy has little to offer.
The article goes on to describe the “quiet desperation of a generation in “waithood,” suspended short of fully employed adulthood“. It challenges us to consider the consequences of failing to help young people find a place in society. Can we afford NOT to “harness the energy, intelligence, and enthusiasm of the next generation?”
Adulthood Delayed
Two recent books have both explored the difficulties of ‘emerging adults’ in the U.S. Both are based on extensive academic longitudinal research among what are now called Millennials. And both reach the same conclusion: Making the transition to adulthood has never been so challenging. What’s more, young adults who lack adequate guidance and support are increasingly losing their way along the path. Contributing factors include high job expectations, the high price of education, the Recession and a slowly dawning realization that the traditional ‘college prep’ approach is no longer a sure ticket to middle class prosperity.
“Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Something Are Choosing a Slower path to Adulthood, and Why It’s good for Everyone” by Richard Setterson and Barbara E. Ray
The authors draw on a variety of sources (many of the same ones I draw on for this blog) to describe a generation that is ‘lost without a compass’. “Given the importance of higher education tody to earning a living wage with benefits, it is surpresing how unprepared many young people are for college and how unformed their plans really are.” The authorsclaim many enroll because they don’t know what else to do. Others who should enroll don’t because they fear debt. The authors are especially concerned for what they dub ‘the treaders’ (as opposed to the ‘swimmers’). The final chapter urges the realization that we are all ‘responsible for the welfare of young people’, but there is a special burden on parents. While the dangers of hyper parenting are real, the dangers of leaving young adults on their own too soon is greater.
“Souls in Transition: The Religious & Spiritual Lies of Emerging Adults” by Christian Smith & Patricia Snell
This book is about much more than religion and spirituality, it encompasses the entire scope and culture of young adulthood. The book is based on research on the same set of young adults that began when they were 13-17 years old nearly 10 years ago. The authors conclude that the experience of young adulthood is changing rapidly. The fundamental driving goal is getting to the point where they can ‘stand on their own two feet’, but many are learning it is even harder than they expected. Many are overwhelmed with all of the skills, tasks, responsibilties, systems and procedures they must learn. Most feel ‘broke’, and live paycheck to paycheck whether they ‘objectively actually are out of money or not’. Money is a constant source of anxiety.
Getting on With It
As these books illustrate, we know what the problem is, but what are the solutions? A few prescriptions seem to be emerging:
1. Greater emphasis on career training, mentoring and vocational ed.
2. Incentives for older adults to retire or step back to create opportunities for young adults.
3. Greater understanding that a slow start is not ‘failure to launch’.
4. Greater voice for young adults in the civic process.
5. More alternatives like gap years, stipends for public service and other ways to put non-productive time to good use (without going into deeper debt).
Yet more seems to be called for. As the Business Week article suggests, youth unemployment, leading to estrangement between generations, may be the ‘epidemic’ of our age.
“In short, the fissure between young and old is deepening. “The older generations have eaten the future of the younger ones,” former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato told Corriere della Sera. In Britain, Employment Minister Chris Grayling has called chronic unemployment a “ticking time bomb.” Jeffrey A. Joerres, chief executive officer of Manpower (MAN), a temporary-services firm with offices in 82 countries and territories, adds, “Youth unemployment will clearly be the epidemic of this next decade unless we get on it right away. You can’t throw in the towel on this.”
How we communicate is one of the most obvious manifestations of the generational divide. Email is now the Internet’s equivalent of training wheels, while texting is the communications mode of choice for the digitally dextrous.
But the differences go beyond just the mode of communications. Different generations also have different ideas of what is polite e-behavior.
Act Your Age
Comscore data for 2010 shows a dramatic one year drop in time spent using email among 13-17 year olds (-48%). At the same time, there was a modest increase in email use among those 54 and over. Comscore says this is because some of those 55+ are online newbies for whom e-mail is often a starting point. This makes email the Internet equivalent of training wheels. For young adults, email is associated with formal communications, such as disputing a bank error or asking your parents for money. It carries little sense of urgency.
Texting shows a similar pattern in reverse. According to Nielsen, the average teenager now sends 3,339 texts per month, up 8% in 2Q 2010 vs. 2Q 2009. Although text use in other age groups is also up, Other age groups don’t even come close; the average 18- to 24-year-old sends “only” 1,630 texts per month. My 17-year old son informs me that texts are great for when you don’t want to actually talk to someone, which is most of the time. Given the brevity of most of his texts (“K”, “Ya”, “IDK” and “?”), I am not sure we can really consider texts a replacement for talking, either. I have been told that if you see a comma in a text, you can be sure it was penned (tapped?) by someone over 30.
The communications habits of young adults can seem rude to those of us accustomed to greetings, punctuation, and multi-syllabic words. But the process works the other way as well. Young adults are sometimes offended by older adults’ indifference to their preferences and codes of etiquette. A president of a digital ad agency I met recently, says she has come to appreciate the nuances of Millennial communications, particularly the importance of speedy replies and letting go of paper-back up documentation. “Their ways really are better sometimes”.
When You Absolutely, Positively Have to, Talk
When is the last time you just picked up the phone and called anyone other than a close friend? I thought so. Phone calls now have the gravitas that used to be reserved for face-to-face meetings. My phone rarely rings unexpectedly these days. Texts and emails asking, “When can you talk?”generally precede phone calls.
According to a study by Forrester for Citrix Online, 90% of Americans meet in person to communicate and build relationships, which is higher than any other nationality. 75% of American believe it’s very important to pay attention in meetings. However, the younger you are, the less you value meetings, and the less you pay attention. “Only 29% of Gen Y workers think meetings that are to decide on a course of action are very efficient, compared to 45% of Older Boomers. Gen Y is least likely to pay attention in meetings and only 51% believe it’s very important to do so in meetings to decide a course of action.”
How Casual is Too Casual?
Millennials and older generations both struggle with what is the right tone or level of informality. Millennial, Anne Mahoney, posted a question in our Gen Y community recently: “In a grad school class, we are doing a “millennial mentoring” project where we are paired up with an undergrad. My partner will respond to emails with no greeting, no capitals, no punctuation…nothing. I also had a PR intern who called me “dude” the first week he was hired. This seems to be a trend, and an off-putting one at that. Anyone else seeing this?”
Communicating Politely with a Ten Foot Pole?
We seem to be in a period of transition where one person’s idea of efficiency is another’s idea of a brush off – or worse. Over time, I believe a clearer set of standards will emerge, but in the absence of an E-mily Post to tell us what is rude and what is acceptable, here are my personal rules of thumb:
- Text message: For arranging schedules and asking factual questions requiring short bursty answers, not conversations. Answer immediately.
- Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter message: Use sparingly, a way to say you care. Answer within an hour.
- Voice mail: Use sparingly, no one wants to listen to much less respond to a lengthy voice message. If the voice mail is just to say ‘call me’, don’t leave any message at all.
- IM/Skype/GoogleTalk: Great for conversations when multi-tasking.
- Email: Reserve for when conversations need to be documented – it’s a ‘paper trail’. Answer within a day.
- Phone Call/Skype Call: Use sparingly. No one likes to be interrupted.
- Web Conference: use for sharing information. Most presentations and reports don’t require meeting in person.
- Face to Face Meeting: Use for relationship building, ideating and getting different points of view.
What are your rules of etiquette?
If you had an extra $100 what would you do with it? It’s an interesting question that can reveal a lot about a person’s spending priorities.
A few years ago we conducted a series of studies for JC Penney to understand the ‘cross channel shopper’. One of the tasks assigned respondents was to spend $100 any way they liked. We required them to bring in the receipts and the merchandise to share with us what they bought where and why. It was a blast. The women had a great time sharing their bargains and experiences, and we couldn’t believe how much they got for the money. Likewise in some work for Wal-Mart we asked people to recount their greatest ‘bargain’ of the last year. Some think of bargains in terms of full shopping carts, others in terms of deep discounts on big ticket items. It’s the differences that made the exercises interesting.
Over the last few weeks, The Next Great Generation Blog has profiled members through the device of ‘Ten Questions’. Amid questions about products you can’t live without, favorite books and scandalous escapades, the blog asks participants, “ If you unexpectedly received $100 today, what would you spend it on?
As you would expect, the responses vary widely based on employment status and age. Nevertheless, the commonality is the desire to spend it on travel, dining out and social experiences. No one mentions an iPad or more gadgets.
If you unexpectedly received $100 today, what would you spend it on?
Angela Stefano: Rent? Food? My heating bill, so I don’t freeze in cold, snowy Buffalo? Sorry, I’m boring. Or I’d go spend it on a concert ticket (two, if I’m lucky and buy from the box office to avoid Ticketmaster’s stupid fees!). Or a plane ticket to Boston. Depends what bills are stuck to my fridge, what shows I’m debating going to and how badly I miss Boston when you hand me that hundo.
Evan Roberts: I haven’t bought shoes in at least a year, so a pair of black Johnston & Murphy Ainsworths (now on sale).
Caitlin Tremblay: Right now? Well I have a Pinkberry craving and that shit’s expensive. I get the chocolate with Cap’n Crunch on it if you’re delivering. Considering grad school is stressing me out (more than I’ve ever been in my life) I’d probably drag some of my friends to Lion’s Head Tavern and grab some Shock Tops and nachos…because that’s just the kind of gal I am. And their nachos are TO DIE FOR. Not kidding. Book a flight to NYC and take the 1 train to 110th. See you there.
Adam DiStefano: Nothing. I’d put it in my wallet and use it like pocket money (which probably means it would end up being used on food or drink).
Kayla Brown: Right now? Right this second? Let’s see… I’m out of conditioner… and my car insurance is due. I think I’d rather buy a sparkly dress and take a handful of over-worked, over-tired, over-caffeinated friends out for an epic adventure in the City of Dreams. Afterward, I’d buy them all omelettes with sides of delicious diner toast. This might sound like an oxymoron, but omelettes with buttery diner raisin-toast at ungodly hours of the morning is the closest thing to heaven. I think I’m over-budget. :o(
Colby Gergen, 21: Seriously? $100? I mean, I could buy a nice pair of jeans, but I already have 2 pairs and they do me just fine. I would probably buy something for my girlfriend, if I had a girlfriend (ladies…). What I’m trying to say is that if I received $100 today, right now at 1:00 am, I would buy more coffee.
Alex Pearlman, 23: Probably booze and cigarettes, which is where most of my money goes. But I might also treat myself and a friend to a fancy dinner, meaning it would be a fancy place, and we would also wear fancy clothes – one of my favorite activities.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditures data seems to support the qualitative insights from TNGG. In general, with the exception of apparel, young adult households seem to put a greater priority on services (other than health-related) than households in general.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2009 Expenditures Study, the “average” household headed by a person under 30 has these characteristics:
Age: 24.5 years old
Household Income: $40, 356
Renters: 73%
Amount spent on rent: $5,111
Household size: 2.3 (earners 1.4)
Amount spent on food: At home: $2,828 Away from home: $2,204
At least one vehicle: 80%
As an age cohort, these under 30 households have about 64% of the average after tax income for all households, and spend about 73% of what an average household spends. Categories where they spend proportionately less than average relative to their proportion of after tax income (64%) (i.e., underindex) include:
Cash contributions (34%)
Fees & admission (52%)
Postage and stationery (55%)
Floor coverings (27%)
Cars and trucks (new) (47%)
Health care / health insurance (36%)
Life insurance (34%)
Reading (46%)
Housekeeping supplies (59%)
Categories where they spend more than average relative to after tax income (overindex) include::
Food at home (75%)
Food away from home (84%)
Alcoholic beverages (96%)
Personal services (94%)
Men’s and women’s apparel (91%)
Education (138%)
As marketers think about how to bring products and services to the young adult market, they should try to think of how to cast those products more as ‘life enhancing experiences’ than as ’stuff’. Most products have at least some service component, or some opportunity to enhance the experience through additional services.
Note: For a fun way to explore differences in spending patterns or compare your own to average, check out Bundle.com
I love the Vanity Fair/ 60 Minutes poll because it asks questions I wouldn’t think to ask. This month, two questions caught my eye. Both questions are theoretical, and the results by age group surprised me. They underscore how differently Millennials often see the world.
1. Look Back or Look Ahead?
The Question: “If time travel existed, was readily available, and you were guaranteed to return to the present, would you prefer to travel to the past or to the future?”
The Answer: For Millennials (those under 30), the answer is resoundingly the past. Seventy-one percent said they would choose going back rather than into the future. This compares to just 59% for Boomers (45-64). Why the desire to return to another time? I have no idea, but can only guess that they will be around to see the future, while the rest of us will not? At any rate, it’s an interesting window into how they think.
2. Best Thing That Could Happen?
The Question: “If one of the following things could happen to you without any effort on your part, which one would you pick?” Receive $10,000 fax-free, Get a college or advanced degree, become fluent in a ntoher language, be one year younger, lose 10 pounds.
The Answer: Those under 30 elected education over money by a wide margin – 46% vs. 23%. Among Boomers and Gen X, the majority (43% and 45% respectively) would choose the $10,000. This makes a little more sense, but I still would have expected more to opt for the money.
My point? It’s dangerous to project your own preferences on another generation — and especially on Gen Y. They tend to surprise us. That’s why it’s essential to have a listening post.
Does your company make an effort to stay in touch with how under 30 consumers think? I am fortunate to be interacting with students and young marketers nearly every day. Without that connection, I would be in real trouble. If you are looking to plug in, here are some ideas for getting and staying connected with Millennial consumers:
1. Recruit Gen Y brand ambassadors and create an advisory council. Off Campus Media has extensive experience recruiting student brand ambassadors. Or look to your Facebook page for young influentials who have already indicated an affinity for your brand.
2. Start a Gen-Y specific market research community. This is the route Mercedes Benz took with its Gen Benz MROC.
3. Tap an existing Gen Y panel. There are several good panels available to marketers, such as Colangelo’s YTribes community.
Our Millennial Marketing Gen Y ‘Super Consumer’ community is available to any marketer who wants to connect with savvy young marketing professionals.
This group was hand-selected to represent the best of entry level marketers in PR, digital advertising and brand marketing. Josip Petrusa is one of the roughly 100 young marketers who belongs to the community. Josip blogs nearly daily about marketing to Gen Y. He suggests the best way to get to know this generation is to engage with them directly. Since he says it better than I can, here is a portion of his recent blog post, “Are You Crowdsourcing Gen Y? Maybe You Should Be”.
“What better way to understand the elusive, loyal but not loyal, always buying but can’t be reached through advertising, wanting everything, always connected Millennial generation. The combination of having the ability to get useful information quickly and reach has created a great movement towards Gen-Y Crowdsourcing communities.
Mercedes Benz has done it with Generation Benz, IBM has got into the action and as of late,Durex joined the game by creating it’s own Gen-Y initiatives. Crowdsourcing is definitely not a new idea. But at this moment in time, it’s becoming increasingly valuable just like stumbling onto a diamond in the rough. And though this example is only but a few companies that have gone the way of strategically using crowdsourcing, there is also the emergence of online research communities directed at fulfilling the needs of anyone. At a moments notice, you could quite literally receive powerful and profound information.
Gen-Y Crowdsourcing Communities, such as the Millennial Marketing Super Consumer Community, are fascinating areas companies, brands and corporations should be interested in, investigating and using. This is not just an assortment of random individuals. It is a delicate process of hand-picking the right minds for the subject matter. And I would know this, since I am a member of said community.
Crowdsourcing for Gen-Y thoughts is extremely powerful. Not only does it remove the company centric approach many companies painstakingly fail with, it allows the customer to say what they think, ultimately giving those who need the information the right direction to head in. You’d be surprised what Millennials have to say. After all many people are more than surprised and shocked once they realise I’m a twentysomething myself.
So why leave it to the old adage of “from the outside looking in.” Come join us Millennials on the inside. We’ll amaze you more than you think. We’re more capable and useful than you even know.”
For more information on Brand Amplitude’s Gen Y community contact Carol Phillips. http://twitter.com/carol_phillips
Yesterday the New York Times published an online article that will also appear in its Sunday magazine titled, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” The article has already provoked controversy for itemizing the ways that today’s ‘emerging adults’ are more immature than the generations that preceded them. (See “The 10 most infuriating quotes from the Times’ latest 20-something takedown” for a sample.)
While the facts speak for themselves, I believe the Times has it wrong on the interpretation.
Some young adults figure it out their identity and life path more quickly than others, but collectively it is taking longer than ever before.Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic shift in the onset of what have traditionally been regarded as the markers of adulthood –marriage, job, children:
One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation.
We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so.
While the facts are compelling, they don’t necessarily imply that Gen Y is any less well-equipped, lazier or incompetent, entitled or emotionally dependent. In fact, delayed adulthood may be a reasonable adaptation to increased complexity and risk.
Life may not be any more difficult for this generation, but there is little question that it presents more options, and greater ambiguity. The Recession has made matters even more difficult by making meaningful entry level jobs much more difficult to find. Why rush into decisions you may later regret? What does five years matter in the scheme of things if it reduces risk of divorce or an unhappy career choice?
These shifts are difficult for many Boomers and Gen X’ers to understand. We couldn’t wait to get away from home and get on with our lives. It would have been an admission of failure to return home at any point. Only losers did that. Today’s Gen Y’er sees moving home as a practical solution to their problems. Why not save money by living at home while to pursue your dreams rather than settle for less?
While it is difficult to prove, I tend to agree that young adulthood is emerging as a distinct lifestage with its own challenges, distinct from those of adolescents or older adults. I also think this may be a good thing.
There is a strong argument (and much longitudinal data to support it) that young adults are actually more responsible than earlier generations, not less. More are opting for higher education. They are frugal spenders and careful money managers. They value relationships, family and giving back. They want to make sure that what they are spending their money and their time on is worthwhile, not just part of a plan. And if they like their parents well enough to live with them into their twenties, is that such a terrible thing?
Furthermore, as the article points out, society has sent mixed signals as to what we expect of someone 18, 21 or 26.
People can vote at 18, but in some states they don’t age out of foster care until 21.
They can join the military at 18, but they can’t drink until 21.
They can drive at 16, but they can’t rent a car until 25 without some hefty surcharges.
If they are full-time students, the Internal Revenue Service considers them dependents until 24; those without health insurance will soon be able to stay on their parents’ plans even if they’re not in school until age 26, or up to 30 in some states.
Parents have no access to their child’s college records if the child is over 18, but parents’ income is taken into account when the child applies for financial aid up to age 24.
In the end, I think the challenge is for the culture to catch up with Millennials, not for Gen Y to conform to cultural expectations.
Articles like this one in the New York Times suggest the culture has a ways to go if they continue to equate delaying ‘markers of adulthood‘ with ‘ immaturity‘. In fact, it may be just the opposite, a sign of extra-maturity.
1971 Chrysler Simca = Freedom
I got my driver’s license on my 16th birthday. I promptly purchased a 1971 Chrysler Simca (yes orange although not as dirty as the one in the picture).
That tiny, tinny car was the biggest milestone in my life up to that point. It symbolized adult freedom and adult responsibility. It wasn’t long before I had a real job and more money than I could make babysitting.
Most of my friends made a similar jump about the same time. In fact, 4 million cars were sold in 1971 and 1972, a record at the time that reflected the demographic bulge of the baby boom.
Today the coming age rite is more likely to be a cell phone than a car. In 1978, over half of all 16 year olds had a driver’s license. By 2008 that figure had dropped to 31%.
Over half of all 12 year-olds had a cell phone in 2009. In fact, one study of 17,000 school children revealed more pupils age 7-16 own a cell phone (85.5%) than own a book (72.6%)!
It would seem a mobile phone now symbolizes a major adolescent milestone much as a car did for me. The Internet liberates them from being bored, and gives them new vistas. For me, mobility liberated me from hanging out with my family. I had things to do! Places to go! A car connected me with a wider world, and became the center of my social life.
Tim Stock of scenarioDNA observed in his excellent lecture on how different generations were shaped ( “Culture Networks“), that for Boomers, ‘The Road’ was our network, our ‘information superhighway’. The open road symbolized rebellion, and spawned countless archetypes. A long, independent car trip was a rite of passage. I shudder now to think that I drove ALONE from Florida to Michigan at age 18. Times have definitely changed, and Millennials do not have the same relationship with cars that we did. Mobility has a different meaning. They don’t need to ‘get out and go somewhere’. They can shop online, download a movie, and connect with their friends without ever leaving their room.
As Stock observes, Gen Y is less concerned about where you go and more concerned with ‘how you transform what is there‘. ZipCar and its competitors seem to be perfectly in tune with this refocus on doing things. My Saturday afternoons were spent cleaning and waxing my car, then driving to the beach to see who else was there. For Gen Y, it’s not about owning and caring for an incredible car, it’s about getting somewhere so you can experience something incredible.
Many Gen Y’ers actively reject the car-centric culture I grew up with.
Cars are seen as wasteful, status-oriented and ecologically unsound. Riding the bus does not have the same stigma it once did. Hummers have become a symbol of what’s wrong with consumer cultureThe money saved by not owning and operating a car frees up money for other things — like education, technology and travel. These expderiences are higher priorities for Millennials and are perceived as offering greater return for the money.
Millennials don’t hunger for the latest model or edition. In fact as a nation, we all appear to be satisfied with driving cars longer and longer. The media age of vehicles in operation was 9.2 years in 2007. This figure is up from 6.5 years in 1990 and from 5.1 years in 1969. Perhaps we’re moving toward a model where we only buy a new one when the old one costs more to fix than it’s worth, as we do with refrigerators and most other ‘appliances’. The thrill of that new car smell is gone.
Paper & Plastic, Compost or EBay/Craiglist
This is a big adjustment for the automobile companies. But it is also an issue for any marketer of ’durables,’ ’real estate’ or other big ticket items. According to Mike Doherty, President Cole Weber United, Millennials can be thought of as ‘generation prototype’. ”For Gen Y, hard goods have soft lifespans. Durability is relevant but mostly in relation to different products.” Gen Y thinks less about the ‘thing’ and more about the utility of the thing relative to other purchases. He writes in MediaPost last month….
“If you are in the “consumer durables” market, you already know that it’s a label that doesn’t make much sense to Gen Y. For Gen Yers, the consumer durables equation seems to look like this:
Product Lifespan = Adopted + Adapted + Left Behind for the Next Version
To a Gen Yer, durability is often acknowledged as being relevant, but its importance is relative to different products. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that there are really three recycling bins in Gen Y homes: Paper ‘n’ Plastic, Compost, and eBay/Craigslist. If Gen Yers are fortunate enough to get their hands on a v1.0 iPad, they will love being one of the first to have one, but they also know that there are more versions to come in a few months, making their hot item quickly feel outdated.”
This may look like ‘fickleness’ but I think it’s more of an indication of their tendency to not become romantically attached to ‘things’. Gen Y is first and foremost looking for utility and performance. They will switch for a better alternative, without much hesitation.
This practicality and lack of romanticism poses a challenge to durable goods marketers – the lifestyle approaches of the past most likely won’t work. Young adults are more likely to ask the hard questions: “How does it perform relative to alternatives?” and “Why should I buy it at all?”
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.
One of the questions I hear a lot is ‘What exactly is a Millennial‘?
I have addressed this a few times, before in this blog (see “What’s a Millennial? Why Do Marketers Need a Label?”). Just like the question ‘what is a brand‘ there is no easy agreed upon answer, although I generally answer that I subscribe to the definition used by Pew Research that a Millennial is someone currently age 18-29, born after 1980.
Just for fun, I decided to answer the question as definitively as I know how. Using Census data and Pew Research definitions, I created a chart that shows the number of people there are of each age, from 0-100 years, based on 2008 projections for 2010. (I also laid the actual birth years below so you can double check your identity.) No doubt this data will be updated when the new Census data becomes available, but for now, this may be as good as it gets.
Here are a few observations:
First it confirms that the big three are Millennials (including teens), Gen X’ers and Boomers. Millennials are 73 million strong. Boomers are still the largest cohort by a 3 million person margin and Gen X the smallest. The bars become shorter and shorter past age 63 (yikes that’s a steep decline!) so we can reasonably project Boomers will shrink each year while Millennials and Gen X will be large for some years to come.
Another observation is that the Millennial population currently peaks at age 19-20. This explains the ultra competitiveness of college admissions the last few years with record applications, selectivity and enrollment. This peak is good news for the age groups that follow, those currently 18 or under, but bad news for those ahead them who are already struggling to find good jobs without the added stress of a peak number of new college grads hitting the market.
A final observation is that while teens are currently separated out, they should probably be considered part of the Millennial generation once they turn 18. Most generations span a period of more than 12 years, and this one will most likely be no exception.
My biggest take away from this chart is a caution. A group of 73 million people (current teens and Millennials) should not be thought of as a single ‘market’ any more than Boomers can be thought of as a ‘market’.
The concept of the ‘Millennial market’ for marketers should probably represent more of a psychographic or starting point for segmentation. Millennial, like Boomer, will most likely come to represent a set of values and way of looking at the world. I have long maintained that when marketing to Gen Y, values and behaviors are most defining and useful than age.
Pew seems to agree with me. For the last month or so, Pew has offered a How Millennial Are You? online quiz. If you haven’t taken it, I urge you to try it. The questions are scored 1-100 with anyone scoring 73 or higher rated a “millennial”. The scoring mechanism seems to be pretty accurate based on the results of the quiz. Most Millennials in fact do score pretty high. I scored an 81, well into Millennial territory, a fact I am proud of.
The actual answers from the 2010 Pew Millennials survey on which the quiz is based can be seen here. Even among true age-defined Millennials, the answers are a matter of degree, not black and white.
Sorry for all the numbers, but I think they provide a useful caution for marketers: It’s less about your age, than about young you feel and act.
