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?”
Guest Post bv Martin Predd
On the eve of the 47th day of the Gulf oil spill fiasco, I have to wonder how much longer my generation, a generation known for its optimism and belief that individuals truly can make a difference, will remain resilient in the face of the near perfect storm of bad news that has dominated our nation’s collective psyche in the last two, five – even ten – years.
Ten years ago I was a college freshman, full of irrational optimism about the world and my place in it.
For me, the “American Dream” – the notion that with hard work and perseverance, anything was within reach for me – was a very real thing, and a big reason to be hopeful about the future.
It’s worth noting some of the major events that have occurred since that time:
- Bush v Gore, one of the more divisive elections in recent memory (2000)
- 9/11 (2001)
- Anthrax Attacks (2001)
- Enron (2001)
- United Airlines bankruptcy (2002)
- Shuttle explosion (2003)
- War in Iraq (2003, on-going)
- War in Afghanistan (2003, on-going)
- Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath (2005)
- Economic meltdown/housing bubble/Great Recession (2009)
- GM bankruptcy (2009)
It’s hard to recall a decade filled with more reasons not to be hopeful and optimistic about our future. These were trying events for any time, any generation, and yet for Gen Y, they have occurred during key transitional years that are likely to have lasting effects on the way we view ourselves and what is possible in our lives.
These are supposed to be years in which you graduate from college, land your first and second jobs, rent your first apartment, assume responsibility for your own health care, become first-time home owners, and start saving for retirement.
And yet for many Millennials, these have been years in which the traditional milestones of adulthood have been postponed, adapted, or even foregone entirely. We’ve seen record numbers of Millennials move back in with their parents. There are signs the worst is over, but the job market remains grim. For too many, it’s hard to imagine getting any job, never mind one you find purposeful or rewarding.
Buying a home and investing in the stock market seem less and less like the obvious, prudent things to do…and more and more like potentially wild gambles, actions subject to arbitrary forces much bigger than any individual. Health care seems less about choosing doctors or treatment options, and more about choosing which type of bureaucracy (public or private) you want to make these decisions for you.
Through all of this, most of the Millennials I know have remained resilient and optimistic.
Maybe moving back in with Mom and Dad is actually for the best…Maybe not having a job is actually an opportunity to travel, or do more rewarding work as a volunteer. Maybe saving for retirement is less important than enjoying life each day. Maybe this mountain of student loan debt will be worth it in the long run.
Regardless of your politics, it’s been easy for an optimistic generation to chalk these events up to an untimely confluence of natural and manmade cycles. Recessions happen from time to time. Housing markets ebb and flow. Catastrophic hurricanes, tragically, do occur.
And yet as we approach the seventh week of unmitigated oil gushing into the Gulf, a man-made disaster that appears to have been entirely preventable, I fear that my generation’s faith in its ability to overcome events like these is wearing dangerously thin.
For unlike hurricanes or recessions, this event, much like the economic meltdown before it, can’t easily be attributed to historical ‘cycles’ of nature or man. To the contrary, it seems these events have been the result of remarkably shortsighted, selfish decisions made by an alarmingly small number of people.
These events cause even the most optimistic and resilient among us to wonder: How did we arrive at this place where so few private interests have been entrusted with a public responsibility so great, and with consequences so grave?
In the months and years ahead, I firmly believe that Gen Y’s optimism can overcome a lot. It can clean up oil spills, rebuild hurricane-ravaged cities, even revitalize a severely wounded economy. What I fear it cannot overcome, however, is the growing sense that the ‘game’ is rigged…that our biggest challenge isn’t an untimely confluence of natural and man-made cycles, but a political and social climate dominated by fewer and fewer selfish interests.
For Gen Y or any generation, I suspect it’s these moments of disillusionment that turn optimism to apathy and resilience to resignation.
In April I attended a session at Ad:Tech SF on marketing to Millennial men. There were great presenters from EA Games, Red Bull, BreakMedia.com and Suzuki. The advice was sound – focus on meaningful experiences, complement their natural behavior, put content around your product and make it richer, don’t be afraid to interact, Facebook is not the epicenter. But what I was longing for was a more complete picture of who these young men are, and what they want.
Chip Walker, head of the agency Strawberry Frog, wrote a thoughtful article yesterday in AdWeek about the state of marketing to young men.
I have great respect for Walker and his insights. In two years of blogging have only reprinted one other article in this blog in its entirety and it was by Chip Walker, “GenY Core Value: Fight for What You Believe In“. That article was so insightful I didn’t feel it would be right to interrupt it with my own commentary. He wrote of the ‘rise of cultural movements’ and identified why causes matter so much to Gen Y:
“Gen-Yers have an activist bent. But their activism is different from the idealism and rebellion of their Boomer parents in the 1960s and ’70s. For today’s Gen-Yers, activism is not about rebelling against institutions — there’s simply not that much left to rebel against. Belief in institutions like government and big business crumbled long ago. Rather, in a world of almost infinite lifestyle choices, Gen-Y activism is about young people knowing their own inner priorities and making a vow to live by them — even in the face of adversity.Clearly, an independent spirit pervades this generation, and it’s fueled by a strong sense of their personal values and beliefs. Among GenYers’ most important personal values are authenticity, altruism and community. Yet, it is this generation’s consumer activism that makes them a unique challenge for marketers. Gen Y-ers don’t just want to buy brands, they want buy in to what a brand believes in.”
Wow, that is marketing to Millennials in a nutshell. This article on Millennial men merits the same un-editted treatment. Only the bold face is mine. I think you will find it very thought-provoking.
Whither Millennial Men? (AdWeek, June 2, 2010)
by Chip Walker, Strawberry Frog
“Recently I caught a TV ad that made me ask myself some serious questions about the future of marketing to men. The commercial shows a middle-aged man who decides to use a hair product (Just for Men) prior to a job interview with a 20something woman. The payoff: After using the product, he gets the job and the young female hiring manager is so impressed she tells him, “I’ve got big plans for you.”
Wow — not the ending I expected. Sure, it’s common knowledge that the power and prestige of the male gender is in decline, and that men increasingly feel marginalized in a feminized workforce. But are men now officially the second sex? If so, how will we as marketers find a way to relate to them? What does the future of marketing to men hold?
A look at even the basic statistics on millennial men (males who are approximately 15-30) shows some patterns to be concerned about. According to a Washington Post analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, one-third of young men ages 22-34 still live at home with their parents, which is nearly a 100 percent increase versus 20 years ago. We haven’t seen this type of change among young women. According to the book Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax, young men today are less likely than their sisters to graduate from college, and much less likely than their sisters to care about earning good grades at any point from kindergarten through university. The National Center for Education Statistics tells us that for every 100 women who earn bachelors degrees, just 73 young men do.
One major cause of this situation: millennial men are coming of age in an environment of adversity they’re not prepared to cope with. They have little if any trust in institutions like government or organized religion. For them, peers are the new authorities. And the formal rites of passage that once guided them to manhood have mostly disappeared. They’re in essence navigating a DIY adulthood with no map and some are getting lost along the way. Whereas their boomer parents at a similar age had a formula for success in life (graduate from school, get a job, get married, buy a home, retire), millennials are making it up on the fly. And while young women feel a modicum of support from a “you go girl” culture, there’s no corollary for young men.
Some believe portrayals of men in culture are not terribly aspirational. As Stephen Seth, a semiotician (and frequent StrawberryFrog collaborator) with London-based Space Doctors put it, “We’ve chosen the name ‘big kid’ to characterize the way men are represented in U.S. media today.” According to Seth, for some years American men have been portrayed in a dim light that is, as he puts it, “slightly infantilized.” He feels U.S. marketers often speak to the same big kid, focusing primarily on entertainment and escape.
The good news is that some millennial men are taking matters into their own hands and inventing a new version of American male success. In recent research we’ve seen the emergence of a new male success archetype I call the “indie guy.” He’s neither the rebel archetype of his boomer dad’s generation nor the compliant organization man of his grandfather’s day; he’s more of a maverick and pioneer. If anything the indie guy archetype seems to harken back to the Horatio Alger “rags to riches” stories of the 1900s. He is the young man who starts with very little and makes it through courage, determination and ingenuity. His ideal: being a self-made man. The guys we encounter who embody this ethic today seem to be quite diverse ethnically, are not necessarily from wealth and often have entrepreneurial dreams.
This new archetype is emerging and by no means as prevalent as the more familiar “player” or even the “metrosexual.” But we begin to get a glimpse of it in HBO’s How to Make It In America, a show about three 20something guys, one black, one Latino and one Caucasian, struggling to start a jeans company in New York. Similarly, Johnny Walker’s brilliant “The Man Who Walked Around the World” tells the story of a young entrepreneurial man (Johnny Walker) with a different view of success. I, for one, hope we’ll see more of this guy in movies, TV and brand communications going forward.
After graduating from college, my bright 20something nephew ended up living at home and working as a waiter. I wondered why he didn’t get a traditional job and enter a profession. But that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He struggled for awhile, but has now started an unconventional business and seems to be making it his own way. His view of success is simply different from the one I was used to.
Maybe the future of marketing to these young men is about giving them hope that a new version of American male success is possible, in a world where the odds sometimes seem stacked against them.”
Chip Walker is head of strategy at StrawberryFrog. He can be reached at chip@strawberryfrog.com.
Talking about brands is not something Millennials are inclined to do without good reason. Marketers who want to engage Gen Y in social media need to be more creative than just running ads.
To activate influencers to talk about your brand, 9 times out of 10, the most effective means is through relevant content, not ads. According to a Pace University study, 81% of Millennials say social network advertising is ‘not relevant’. That’s why so many brands have found success by associating with worthy causes, or highlighting their support of environmental or humanitarian initiatives.
Tying social media marketing to a social event is also a smart way to ensure relevance.
After all, what could be more relevant than a party you are attending? It’s real, it’s in the moment and it represents the strongest form of social currency – first hand information. Little wonder Facebook pages are filled with news of upcoming parties and photos from past parties.
Three marketers who have recently proven to be particularly effective at integrating social media with events are Ford Fiesta and MTV.
Ford Fiesta: (Marketing Daily, June 1)
Ford is leveraging the connection between music lovers and its Fiesta with partnerships and activities that mirror the Fiesta Movement social media campaigns that have been running for a year. It placed the 2011 model in the 10th annual “Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival” last weekend in Detroit, and on June 10-13, Ford will highlight the Fiesta as part of its exclusive automotive partnership with the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Bonnaroo takes place on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, TN, is one of the two biggest (with Coachella) rock, jazz, folk and pop music festivals in the U.S., with some 100,000 attendees.
“The target consumers for Fiesta are huge music fans, and our goal is to connect with that community in a fun and meaningful way. We want Fiesta to be a natural part of the scene so that it can be understood. The Fiesta Movement enabled people to discover the car in a natural way while having fun with their friends. We [are doing] the same thing at these music festivals — give people an opportunity to interact with the new Fiesta and let them spread the word to their family and friends.” — Jeff Eggen, Ford Fiesta experiential marketing manager
At the Detroit event, Ford had a venue called “Fiesta Lounge” with music piped live from the main stage and local artists painting Fiestas. At Bonnaroo, Ford will have the “Fiesta Garage,” a ’70s-themed space where performers will hold forth about their processes. The Bonnaroo element is tied to Ford’s Fiesta Movement program. One of the bands that will be at the Garage is the winner of a second-phase Fiesta Movement program, where the “Fiesta Agents” had to choose a musician, DJ and/or band to host concerts in their local community. Ford will also have a fleet of Fiestas at Bonnaroo that will transport staff, VIPs and artists.
MTV 2010 Movie Awards (MMA): (Adweek, May 31)
The 2010 MMA Awards promises to get a little “Raaaaaaaandy.” [Orbit will be] reprising its role as the official sponsor of the Best WTF Moment — the award honors the most jaw-dropping scene from a recent theatrical — the Wrigley gum brand will be incorporated into banter between presenters Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick. In keeping with Orbit’s tag (“Dirty mouth? Clean it up!”), the actresses will present the WTF hardware with a requisite smattering of bleeped-out profanities. As the bit plays out, both network and sponsor hope viewers will take it to the tweets, providing a real-time metacommentary on the event, the brand and the WTF honoree.
“Social media is the telephone and we’re the conversation. Not only do we translate the conversation for our clients, but we’re also finding new ways to leverage these social media tools to further engage with our viewers.”– Dan Lovinger, svp, MTV sales and integrated marketing
The smart money’s on Ken Jeong for his naked crowbar assault in The Hangover. Hosted by Aziz Ansari (the comedian stole Judd Apatow’s 2009 flick Funny People with his portrayal of potty-mouth standup Raaaaaaaandy), this year’s MMAs are pumping up the volume on social media. First rolled out for last September’s Video Music Awards, version 2.0 of MTV’s Twitter Visualization platform will allow viewers to monitor tweet activity related to the telecast and the individual performers. For example, should singing pinup girl Katy Perry choose to engage in some particularly outrageous on-screen behavior with her oversexed Brit BF Russell Brand, the site’s graphic interface would reflect the concomitant surge in Perry/Brand-targeted discourse.
While memorable moments aren’t always planned (see Kanye West’s ill-advised cameo during last year’s VMAs), fans generally don’t have to wait long for the first OMFG moment. “A quick strike is critical,” said Stephen Friedman, gm, MTV. “Last year we saw an immediate uptick in Twitter activity after the Brüno moment, and that informed the rest of the night. Our audience is always looking for that galvanizing moment.” As viewers LOL’d over the seemingly unrehearsed meeting between Sacha Baron Cohen’s unswaddled rump and Eminem’s scowling mug, ratings soared. Viewers 12-34 were up 92 percent versus the 2008 show and total viewers improved 78 percent to 5.28 million.
Take for instance the long reach of Coca-Cola’s MMAs commitment. In the spring, Coke partnered with MTV to find an on-air correspondent to act as a liaison between the stars and the audience. The Coca-Cola Movie Awards Insider will prowl the red carpet in search of celeb scoops and posing queries culled from viewer tweets. “This partnership allows us to integrate ‘big event’ TV with social media and event marketing to provide young people access to compelling content,” said Linda Cronin, director, media and interactive, Coca-Cola North America. “Social media helps shape the experience.”
What makes these event meets social media examples so smart is how well they integrate into the event experience, enhancing the moment by making it easy to share it. In a previous post, “The Benefits of Social Friction” I observed that “social media is not just a way to communicate — communication is only the beginning. Social media is a form of entertainment that offers consumers new ways to literally be together online and even to enhance their analog experiences.” The reason enhancing social friction is important was pointed out in an even earlier post, “Reconciling Our Digital and Analog Lives“, Gen Y understands that their online personality is just an extension and reflection of their authentic, ‘real’, lives.
Of course, just adding a social media component to an event is no guarantee of positive word of mouth.
The ability to have a discussion during a shared viewing event enhances the viewing, for better and for worse… An attempt by Fox last Fall to integrate tweets into a recast of the pilot episode of Glee was a failure. Likewise, TIME reported with more than a little irony, that an interview with Twitter founder Evan Williams at South By Southwest was wrecked by criticism on Twitter.
“Festival goers were unimpressed with the questions posed to Williams by moderator Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review and tweeted their displeasure before leaving the interview en masse. In a blog post later, Haque said he wished he had been monitoring the Twitter conversation from on stage.”
Nearly 20 years ago, William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book that theorized a 22 year generational cycle based on repeating generational archetypes called simply “Generations“. They called these cycles ‘turnings’. Children raised during a particular Turning share similar historical and cultural experiences, which results in their being like each other, and different from other generations. This was to my knowledge the first appearance of the word ‘Millennials’.
A chapter that begins on page 335 of 427 (paperback version not including Appendices and Sources), is titled “Millennial Generation”.
What makes this chapter on Millennials so fascinating twenty years after it was written is how uncannily it matches what we know to be true of how Gen Y is different from preceding generations.
Part of the reason for its accuracy is that the demographics of this generation were fairly predictable, even in 1991, and demographics are one of the forces that shapes generations. Strauss and Howe were able to accurately project the likely size (76 million) and make up (12% immigrant) based on fertility and immigration trends, even though only 33 million of them were alive when the book was published.
The authors were also tuned-in to the major shift in parenting and education as a cultural priority that was already underway by the early 90′s. This shift would prove to have a remarkable impact on Millennial self-perceptions, aspirations and values. Nearly twenty years ago they noted that “this new generation of children is being treated as precious” and “Boom parents and teachers have also been slowing down the childhood development clock — unlike the Silent, who sped it up.”
“First-wave Millennials are riding a powerful crest of protective concern, dating back to he early 1980s, over the American childhood environment. In 1981, the year before the “Class of 2000″ was born, a volley of books assaulted adult mistreatment of children through the 13er (Gen X) birth years. Within the next couple of years, other authors began reconsidering the human consequences of divorce, latchkey households, and value neutral education.
In 1984, two kids as devils movies flopped at the box office, marketing the end of a dying genre and the start of a more positive film depiction of children.
From 1986 to 1988, polls reported a tripling in the popularity of ‘staying home with family’….In general, Boomer parents are determined to set an unerringly wholesome environment for their Millennial tots.
Where Silent parents had brought 13erkids along to see $-rated movies made about them, Boomers take the Millennials to see G-rated movies made for them.”"
“From 1976 through 1988 the proportion of students held back in elementary school jumped by one-third.”
One of the central tenets of the book is that the fourth generation in each cycle, the “Fourth Turning”, tends to be more civically minded and engaged. They look for signs that yesterday’s fourth graders might be more evolved as citizens and found it in Anna Quindlen’s observations that kids seemed to be “assimiliating society’s ‘shalt nots’ about crime, drugs, polution and education with disquieting energy and unanimity.” (page 341) Twenty years later, we know from the research that today’s young adults are much more ‘upright’ than earlier generations in terms of their overall optimism, attitudes toward the environment and social action and behavior regarding drug and alcohol use, teen pregnancy, and crime.
What Howe and Strauss could not have known in 1991 was the remarkable impact that technology and the most severe economic recession in over 60 years would play in shaping this generation.
Beyond demographics, two of the forces that are shaping up to be the most influential are easy access to information of all kinds and a realization that America’s high flying lifestyle is most likely unsustainable. They have already resulted in a more empowered, yet sobered, generation that is exhibiting very different consumer and media behavior as they move into their prime earning years.
BrandAmplitude‘s latest ebook (“How Millennials Are Different“) is focused on spotlighting the ways that Millennials are different from generations that came before at the same age. The book, which zeroes in specifically on longitudinal data from Pew Research and other sources, shows Gen Y is different in many significant ways, only some of which were predictable in 1991.
Nevertheless, what Strauss and Howe foresaw about how Millennials would be different from preceding generations based simply on cultural and demographic trends, they got remarkably right.
It’s practically a given truth that to build a brand that resonates with Millennials you must be active in social media. Whether this is true or simply a fad is something brand marketers are now wrestling with.
Many companies are still deciding whether to redirect marketing spending, and more fundamentally, whether it offers a new platform for brand differentiation.
There are three tests for determining whether a new idea is a fad (something people talk about) or a real change (something people actually do).
1. What is driving it? Real trends are more likely to be supported by underlying changes in demographics, values, lifestyle or technology, not just pop culture, fashion or media
2. How accessible is to the mainstream? How much of a change in habits is required? How high are the barriers or costs in time and money?
3. How broadly based is it? Is it expressed across more than just a few categories or groups?
By these standards, social media is a fundamental change in how brands connect with customers. The underlying drivers are solid. Millennials, the first wave of adopters, represented a significant shift in demographics and values. Accessibility requirements were met via rapid broadband penetration and low prices or even ‘free’ access. And the rapid spread from young adults to near ubiquity across geographies, generations and cultures suggest it has utility beyond a niche.
A new Razorfish Outlook report reveals that social media represents just 4% of their client’s average media spend (although they acknowledge this may underrepresent the investment since much of the cost is in labor). A joint study by Facebook and Nielsen that covered over 800,000 users, 70 advertisers and 125 campaigns concluded that Facebook advertising provides measureable lift in such key brand measures as Ad Recall, Brand Awareness, and Purchase Intent. “Homepage ads increased awareness of the product or brand by 4% on average, but exposure to both homepage ads and organic ads increased awareness by a delta of 13% versus the control group.” With results like this, you would expect many brands to be rushing to take advantage of ‘earned media’ impressions to be gained through social media.
Whether marketers should be spending more is the question. The answer depends on whether you see social media as just another tactic or as a new strategic brand building tool.
The methods of brand building have always been dynamic. Regis McKenna, an early pioneer in high tech marketing, writes “the discipline of marketing — if one can call it a discipline — change with new generations and eras of technology.”
We have come a long way from the days of Unique Selling Propositions and product performance-based brand strategies. In the 80′s, user lifestyle and brand personality became a recognized way to create differentiation for brands that offered no inherent product-based differences, such as apparel, luxury goods, soft drinks, cosmetics. Then companies like Apple, Dell, and Nike showed how a distinctive customer experience based on better design, user experience and customer service could also offer powerful ways to build a strong, differentiated brand.
As each new innovation was explored, brands learned how to borrow from these new ‘toolkits’ to strengthen their own position, even if the basis of their differentiation (product, lifestyle, etc.) remained the same. Social media may in fact represent the latest in the evolutionary line of brand building approaches.
The goal is still the same – a differentiated, strong brand. Social media offers a new toolkit for reaching that goal. The question facing many brands now is whether to adopt that toolkit. Social media has proven to be an especially powerful way to reach Gen Y due to their greater comfort with technology and passion for customized experiences. But is it the best way? Who benefits most? And when is it most appropriate?
The first step to answering these questions is to first define what we mean by ‘social media’. David Teicher, Social Media Manager & Digital Strategist at McCann-Erickson, has suggested the term ‘social media‘ is not all that useful (“There’s no such thing as Social Media”, 1.5.10). He proposes “we stop using the term social media (though, we can still discuss social networks, platforms, or vehicles), and start referring to living, breathing, evolving dynamic media, because that’s what it is.” To Teicher, it is this dynamic aspect that makes social media so powerful:
“…every time I retweet an article or show a friend a funny video, or post a product review or campaign analysis on my blog, I’m not just restating existing content – I am reconstructing it, which is so much more impactful than simple reiteration. Furthering its spread, yes, but irrevocably altering it in the process, and thus making it my own. And when I, or more importantly, when consumers can claim partial ownership of content – such materials become more influential over behaviors, both social and commercial. …The key is to provide users, consumers, with inherently moldable content, subject matter that can exist on its own – that has innate appeal – yet is receptive to reshaping and reinterpretation, along with the tools to do so, so that consumers can take branded content and create something personally meaningful from it.”
Dynamism is precisely what makes ‘social media’ a challenge for brand marketers. Strategists are accustomed to thinking in terms of key messages and themes, not content that can be adapted and molded. How can social media be considered a brand building tool, when you literally have no control over what is being said?
Social media is more about the time and place (context) and favorability (sentiment) of the message than than the content. For brand marketers, this represents a fundamental challenge — how to build a brand by putting the focus on affinity as a means rather than an end. This is particularly challenging as ‘affinity’ is not even defined necessarily in terms of the brand as it is in CRM (think Harley clubs), but instead in terms of what the consumer wants to talk about. The focus is on ‘resonance’ not on the underpinnings of image, benefits or attributes.
This approach to brand building is not for the faint of heart. It requires a dedication to understanding users and potential users in a deep way. It means turning the focus away from the brand and onto customers and potential customers, giving them opportunities to take brand content and make it their own. As Teicher puts it, “consumers are producers too.”
“People don’t want to create content from scratch. We live in the heart of remix culture. Intrinsically valuable materials need to be provided to consumers, accompanied by both the means to impart a personal, individualized meaning – the added value, be it emotional, contextual, cultural, or otherwise – and the tools to easily share their product.”
The brands that seem to be experiencing the most success with this approach put the tools for self-expression into the hands of their customers, rather than relying on viral videos or gimmicks. Here is a list of the top 10 brands on Facebook, according to number of fans, excluding Facebook itself which is the leader with over 9 million fans.
#2 Starbucks 7,266,488 Fans
#3 Coca-Cola 5,567,046 Fans
#4 YouTube 5,114,322 Fans
#5 Red Bull 3,727,372 Fans
#6 Disney 3,488,088 Fans
#7 Victoria’s Secret 3,470,724 Fans
#8 Converse 2,749,691 Fans
#9 McDonald’s 2,270,109 Fans
#10 H&M 2,062,377 Fans
#11 MTV 1,924,744 Fans
A visit to each of these pages reveals that each of these brands uses social media to give their customers a voice. The conversation is less about the brand than about shared interests or passion points. None of these brands is using social media as its only brand building strategy, but social media is providing an extra dimension of differentiation, above and beyond what they are able to do with a product, lifestyle or user experience approach alone.
My conclusion is that dynamic social media may in fact represent a new way to build a brand, but will not replace other methods as the primary means of differentiation for some time.
Instead it offers an additional layer of differentiation, particularly for brands that have already set themselves apart via a more classic brand strategy approach, it is a potent new tool and one that should not be ignored, particularly if the answer is ‘yes’ to any of these three questions:
1. Does your brand target Millennials?
2. Does your brand share significant passions with its target that are not directly related to the brand’s key performance characteristics or image such as a cause or environmental interest?
3. Does your brand connect with its customers primarily at the corporate rather than product level? (i.e., span multiple products or have an evolving product offering?)
Millennials are recalibrating what it means to have a successful life. This shift in values was already underway before the Recession, and has accelerated as the new economic reality sets in.
Longitudinal research by CIRP has shown a shift in life aspirations. Relative to people of the same age in 1977, young adults in 2007 are more likely to agree they aspire to civic goals such as ‘helping people in difficulty’ and’ influencing social values’ in addition to the more traditional goals of ‘raising a family’ and ‘becoming financially successful’.
Millennials are making life choices based a broader definition of success and one that is more attuned to experiences than material goods.
In a recent blog post, Mullen strategic planner, Stephen Hahn Griffiths, describes this as a shift toward a ‘we’ orientation. Hahn-Griffiths calls this striving for life enrichment increasing ‘personal currency’.
“Millennials are looking to make their mark on the world and work towards enhancing their net-worth and self-worth. To them, money is more likely to be the means than the end. They recognize financial security yields opportunity, and thus, take an active interest in financial strategy. They’re looking to take control of their finances, and meet their financial goals – so they can become “enriched” in a broader sense. …
In contrast to the dog-eat-dog Gen X’ers that came before, Millennials are more “we-driven” and collective in their definition of success. For them, “making it” doesn’t simply equate to the tangible rewards of a luxury car, or owning a McMansion. Success is more likely to be defined by sampling a rich array of life experiences – including culture, travel, innovation, sustainability and the environment.”
Gen Y’er Andreana Drencheva asked her peers what was on their ‘bucket list’ and learned that travel and travel related activities are at the very top.
“Have you ever wondered what the ultimate Gen Y’s bucket list would look like? What do millennials want to do? I wondered, so I asked other millennials to share their bucket lists and here is what we want to do before we kick the bucket. We want to travel A LOT: To certain cities like Chicago and countries like Cambodia, Greece, India, England, Italy, Ireland, Japan, and many others. Or just visit every state in the USA, at least half of the countries on Earth*, all seven continents**, travel for a year, or simply travel around the world**”
According to research by TIG Global, a hospitality marketing firm, Millennials born 1977-1995, account for 12% of the U.S. Leisure Travel market.
Brian Fitzgerald, TIG Global’s Director of SEO and Social Media, says Gen Y ‘stays longer and travels deeper‘ than other age groups. He strongly advocates that hotels andothers in the travel industry market actively to Gen Y using ‘authentic, digital communications’ that are ‘edgy and unique’. He specifically recommends a Facebook presence ‘where you don’t just talk about yourself’ and leveraging location based services such as Four Square and Gowalla.
Beyond travel, I expect that Millennials will become active ‘lifetime learners’, with interests that go well beyond their work or primary field. After all, this is a generation that is fond of describing itself using the ‘slash’ mark! Adreanna Drencheva’s list gives us a good idea as to the breadth of their interests. Here’s just a sampling:
Attend a Jewish wedding
Audition for American Idol
Be an extra in a film or a TV show
Cook a five-course meal
Drive a race car
Get a professional massage at a spa
Get into a fight and preferably win
Go skinny dipping in a large body of water
Go snowboarding*, scuba diving*, bungee jumping**, skydiving**, canoeing, kayaking, target shooting
Have a lucid dream
Have a threesome
Hold a trained falcon
Kiss someone in the ocean like the scene in The Beach
Paint on an easel and canvas
Ride a helicopter
Ride an elephant
See So You Think You Can Dance live tour
Sing at a karaoke bar
Snuggle with a giant cat and not have it kill me
Stomp grape for wine making
Take a pole dancing class
Watch a movie in a drive-in theater
Be a part of a flash mobBe in a musical
Be on TV in a main role
Become a teacher/professor
Become a trained chef
Break 250 in bowling
Build a house (with secret passages) and live in it*
Build something bigger than a birdhouse
Climb the ten highest mountains and drink milk on the top of each one
Create an award-winning ad campaign
Design a fashion line for United Colors of Benetton
Design a handbag
Do a century ride (100 mile bicycle ride)
Do a stand-up routine in front of a live audience, although a dead audience might be easier
Do what Baby Boomers have never been able to do: retire in style
Fly a plane
Get a tattoo*
Grow up my own vegetables and then live through ingesting them
Have a blog and post at least once a week for a year
Have a herd of corgis, ala Queen Elizabeth
Have a movie based on my life
Have a photo on the cover of National Geographic
Have a piece published in Rolling Stones
Have a radio talk show
Have my own page in Encyclopedia Dramatica
Live and work on a horse ranch for a year
Maintain a garden
Make liquor
Move abroad
Open a restaurant
Perform on stage
Play guitar in a band
Prove the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth
Run a marathon** or a half marathon for some of us
Speak at TED
Teach a yoga class
Write and publish a story, a novel or a book** in general
Grow my hair to my butt and then chop it all off to donate itSpend 1-3 months volunteering in a developing country
Volunteer in Africa for a year
Teach someone to read and write
Volunteer for UNICEF
Start a scholarship fund
Work for a nonprofit organization
Save a life**
Fight teen suicide
Use my natural talents to do good in the world
Make a difference with my writing
For marketers, it is important to understand that Millennials are looking for brands that align with their values and help them increase their ‘personal currency’.
Brand are increasingly becoming symbols of ‘beliefs’ not just status, lifestyle, or cool design. They want brands that exhibit higher purpose, such as American Express and Pepsi are showing with their cause-driven marketing efforts. This approach is not appropriate for all brands, but is something to consider when marketing to Gen ‘We’.
There has been a lot of debate lately on the issue of online privacy, and with good reason. The debate is a healthy one, and very enlightening (I have revised my Facebook privacy settings and was shocked to see how open it was).
Just as this beach sign doesn’t really do the job, do we really mean it when we say ‘keep out’? Is insisting on privacy just a formality? Or is privacy something we’re willing to trade off for other benefits — provided the price doesn’t become too high?
I have been listening to what Internet savvy Gen Y marketers and bloggers think about the issue. It’s been a little surprising to hear many say they consider some sacrifice of privacy as the price to pay for free online services and more targeted communications.
Although many express misgivings about just how safe it really is to trade transparency for free services and relevant communications, I also sense a bit of resignation – what choice do we really have? They also seem to believe that the burden is on them to put up the fences, not the marketers. If this attitude is representative of other Millennials, we may see a more relaxed attitude toward social privacy before long.
Here’s a sampling:
McKenzie Lawton: (TheNextGreatGeneration.com) “Personally, I feel as though I’m pretty comfortable putting a lot of things on the Internet. I use Facebook everyday, post pictures, comments and share personal information. My Twitter is public, and I even have a copy of my resume on my website. However, I make it a point not to include my address or phone number. I really don’t mind having my contact information on the Internet, as long as it’s no more personal than my e-mail address. As I’ve told many friends before, “I live my life on the Internet”….I know that I probably put too much information on the Internet, but it isn’t something I constantly worry about. Even something as simple as my name and birthday can be used to steal my identity. And yet, I barely bat an eyelash when it comes to sharing information via social networks.“
Daniel Lyons: (Newsweek) “Maybe it’s a generational thing. People my age (nearly 50, a.k.a. “the olds” in blogosphere parlance) would probably rather part with a few bucks than with our personal information. Younger people don’t have as much money, and don’t care as much about privacy. So they’re happy to go along with the deal being offered to them by Google and Facebook. What’s happening is that our privacy has become a kind of currency. The genius of Google, Facebook, and others is that they’ve created services that are so useful or entertaining that people will give up some privacy in order to use them. Now the trick is to get people to give up more—in effect, to keep raising the price of the service.
Baillie Buchanan: “To some extent I believe it is up to the user to be careful about how much information they share on Facebook, or really any other online site. Privacy policies are important certainly and should be strictly adhered to, but I think the first step is the user only posting or sharing information that they are comfortable with anyone knowing – and assuming that not just your “friends” are able to see it.”
Sam Davidson: “I think most millennials don’t care and won’t do much differently. We’re used to being marketing to (our diapers even have brands on them – brands other than the manufacturer), so we’re fine with people having our information and personalizing ads. Bring it on. It may actually make my life simpler. I’ve said for a while now that I’ll be the first to use thumbprint scanners at the supermarket checkout (that link to my CC) if I don’t have to carry my wallet anymore.”
Anne Mahoney: “In some respects I’ve drank the Kool-Aid about Americans being overly-sensitive re: privacy and have adopted an attitude of, “handing over my info will get me the best service.” In the UK, apparently privacy isn’t such a big deal. Stephen Baker (author of the BusinessWeek’s “Math Will Rock Your World”) made this point during a speech recently while defending the positive uses of data. I agree with Sam (Davidson) - I frequently sacrifice privacy for convenience - but it takes just one mishap by hackers or data misuse to feel exposed, vulnerable and taken-advantage of. Handlers of data need more proof of reassurance than a “we do not share” label on their website.”
Derek Yegan: “Yes privacy and convenience go hand in hand. Yes, everything becomes easier the more we allow for transparency. What is a public domain and what is private on the internet is difficult to say. A bit of caution in the wind to those unwilling to accept that fact.”
We are approaching an inflection point in the way that brands and communications are created and implemented. Consider these shifts:
These are radical shifts. Not that long ago, the process of creating brand communications started with deep research into the consumer’s attitudes and the way they made decisions about the category and the brand. Agency planners and market researchers labored long and hard to discover a polished diamond or two of ‘insights’ which could be translated into a brand platform and compelling message.
Now, the speed of deploying digital marketing ‘campaigns’ has made research and the strategic development process, if not less important, at least less prominent.
- Mega brands are being built online without THE BIG IDEA or catchy taglines.
- Google, Amazon, and Facebook succeeded by being remarkably useful, not by remarkable advertising.
- Indeed, those that try the old ways are finding they don’t even work that well. (Witness Yahoo’s recent $100 million attempt to resuscitate its brand).
Deep research and immersion are giving way to an iterative process of digital experimentation.
Experimentation makes sense when it costs less to ‘just do it’ than invest in upfront research. Direct mail, in-store programs and commercials are expensive, even before the cost of media placement is factored in. In contrast, digital media provides a vast experimental laboratory for marketers. Failed ideas are not an embarassment, they are just ignored. The “Your Father’s Oldsmobile” campaign, an epic fail of the early 90’s, wouldn’t have lasted a day in today’s social media environment – it would have been laughed off the social graph and fallen into oblivion.
Who needs a traditional planning process when it costs only a few thousand dollars to create a viral video, embed a tweet or launch a Facebook application that could become the next Coke Open Happiness or Dove Evolution? With so little at stake, at least financially, the potential ROI on new efforts doesn’t justify the upfront investment in exploration. When Office Max developed its ELF Yourself Christmas promotion, it was just one of ten ideas that were deployed. Any one of them could have won.
Research isn’t going away, but it needs to adapt. The future communications planning model will be immersive and concerned with broader themes and contexts, not ‘messsages’.
Although digital campaigns may be less costly, they are not free, especially when one factors in the human capital required to create and execute them. So there is still a need to reduce risk through research. In a digital model, research will no longer be a protracted upfront process focused on understanding ‘brand perceptions and decision drivers’. It will no longer be searching for the one, true magical golden insight.
Here is the BBH planner, Heidi Hackemer, from her blog, @uberblond arguing against the idea of a ‘frickin’ insight on a frickin’ pedestal’.
“The traditional brief should die. traditional way: planners go off into their magic black box of thought and perception, ponder the philosophies of society and our world, and then emerge triumphant with the golden insight and magical one true thing. and i get the allure of that, both from the planner feeling like a hero and the creative having the assurance of the safety buoy of a brief. but as i do more immersive brand planning that’s geared for today’s realities, digital and not (which is different than being a “digital strategist”), my role is radically changing.”
Edward Boches, echoes the idea that the brief as we knew it is no longer relevant from the perspective of a creative director in a post on his blog, Creativity Unbound.
“The brief has remained unchanged for years, almost always answering the question, “What do we have to say?” Better to answer questions like, “How will we get this brand talked about?” “What can we create of value?” “How will we get people to participate?” “What can we make, invent, build that’s worthy of being advertised?”Ask those kinds of questions and see what you get back.
Understanding of the user, their interests and lifestyle, will be more important than understanding of their brand perceptions and motivations. As Boches puts it, what matters now is “understanding a customer’s relationship to content, technology and community — not just to a category or even the brand – and finding a way to add something of value.”
In the future, research will also be more embedded in the actual communications development process, with faster turnaround times and iterative experimentation to weed out losers and identify potential wins becoming the norm.
Mike Doherty, President of Cole Weber United, dubs Millennials and its affinity for the latest, greatest idea, “Generation Prototype”. Doherty believes that the best way to ensure products get Millennials attention is to include them in the development process.
“Because Gen Yers personalize everything, they are very comfortable pulling apart (both literally and figuratively) what isn’t working for them, refashioning a different version and presenting it to their comrades in experimentation to see if it flies. This makes Gen Yers great partners for innovation.
One way to engage them is through tools that provide Market Research Online Communities (MROCs). These communities enable consumers to stick their toes into the primordial soup of new products by trying out the latest and greatest and then providing feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
In terms of mobile, we’ve also found surprising success by throwing down the gauntlet of time. Rather than focusing on time, money and whether the idea is worthwhile, consider developing mobile phone applications using a simple “App in a Day” rule. A time constraint can often push teams to develop quickly and cleverly. Risky methodology? Perhaps. Surprising rewards? Absolutely. And at worst you’ve invested two or three days in a great learning experience.”
Introducing ‘Flash Reads’
The approach Doherty advocates for product development is easily adapted for feedback on digital communications. Access to a standing customer group or database makes it possible to leverage feedback tools in the form of polls, surveys, forums, online focus groups or co-creation groups. Many companies have these ‘MROC’s’ available.
Brand Amplitude’s Millennial marketing unit is experimenting with a proprietary, standing Market Research community (MROC) (millennialmarketing.org) of our own. Rather than gather a unique random sample for each project, the idea is to have an on-call community composed of Gen ‘super consumers’ ready to respond to your latest initiative. Each participant is active in social media and either works in or is studying digital marketing, communications or PR. The hand-selected participants were chosen from hundreds of Gen Y bloggers and tweeters for the quality of their ideas and thinking. They have already started actively sharing ideas about brand marketing. Soon, we hope to open up to allow brand marketers to access the community and to introduce focused topics of conversation or concepts for feedback or ‘pre-testing’.
For now the community is private, but if you are interested in joining or engaging the community on behalf of your brand, we’d love to hear from you. Otherwise, stay tuned, you’ll be hearing more about this fabulous group in future posts.
Last Saturday night while waiting in the car with my husband for some friends to emerge from their home so we could go out to dinner, I naturally pulled out my iPhone and proceeded to check my email and Twitter. When those revealed nothing special, I started to play a game. We had only been there a few minutes.
My husband objected – he thought I was being rude. Needless to say I put the phone away, but I it occurred to me that if I had been with my Millennial-age son or daughter instead of my husband, there would have been no objection.
In honor of Mother’s Day, Retrevo provided some interesting insights about the shifting mores of cell phone use.
Retrovo’s research asked 1000 Twitter and Facebook users when they thought it appropriate to allow an electronic interruption. They found that mobile communications have become a persistent factor of everyday life. “Over 40% of respondents saying they didn’t mind being interrupted for a message. In fact, 32% said a meal was not off limits while 7% said they’d even check out a message during an intimate moment. ” The study concluded:
“Social media is embedded in our lives. It’s why people go to a restaurant and check Foursquare before they sit down with their friends, then take a picture of their food before they eat and upload it to Facebook,” — Manish Rathi, co-founder and VP-marketing, Retrev0.
Even with this widespread tolerance, the study revealed striking generational differences in tolerance. (See chart) Almost half of mobile phone users under the age of 25 allow social media updates to interrupt meals compared to just 27% of older users. As far as interruptions for more intimate moments, 24% of users under 25 allow “electronic message” to interrupt them while they’re in the bathroom vs. just 12% for those over 25. And in a widely reported statistic, 11% of those under 25 would even allow social media updates to interrupt them while having sex, vs. just 7% of those over 25 (ponder that one for a minute and I guarantee you will have even more questions!).
A funny blog post today by Boomer is titled “Do You Find People Annoyed by Cell Phone Users Annoying?”. The post is meant to be satirical, but my guess is that it may actually sound reasonable those under 25. Here’s a sample:
“Are people who get irritated about public cell-phone use actually the selfish ones? I think so. I love using my cell phone in public. I come from Texas so I talk loud. I especially like talking to my doctor about sensitive medical information, spots where I have rashes and that sort of thing. We all have rashes. We all have to talk to our doctors on our cell phones. And sometimes those conversations happen inside of crowded elevators. We are human beings, for crying out loud. But I keep hearing about these people who are irritated with people like me. They think it’s rude. But here are some things I’d like these people to remember: The person I am talking to on the phone is a person, too. It’s not like I’m talking into a Dictaphone. And people matter.”
‘Annoying cell phone use’ may be become a bigger issue in the future. I even found an article by ‘Wedding Planner’ that lays down some rules of etiquette for cell phone use in social situations.
Why is it that the need to stay connected with the ambient social network often overwhelms what’s happening in the immediate surroundings?
I think I know. First, the virtual world feels just as ‘real’ to a heavy social network user as the virtual one. Second, there is a sense that something important may happen and we don’t want to miss it. Combined, these two factors give social media an urgency that is missing from other kinds of ’media’. While this urgency may be a bad thing for proponents of etiquette and for society at large, it is infact a very good thing for marketers – provided we respect the ‘media‘.
I deliberately put ‘media’ in quotes because marketers’ presence on social media is an uneasy one. Social media is more social than media, even if it has a ‘public’ aspect to it. This is especially true of Twitter and LinkedIn, but with it’s announcement about opening the social graph, even the content on Facebook pages are increasingly acknowledged to be not truly our own. Likewise, I have heard few objections to Twitter’s recent announcement that it would allow embedded commercial tweets. These are quasi public spaces, and marketers are, if not welcome, at least acknowledged to have a role.
At the extreme end, Foursquare and Gowalla are decidedly public, that is even the point – to tell marketers and others where you are. Perhaps that is why they are causing such a stir in the marketing community at the moment.
At the opposite extreme, text messages are still deemed private. We grant few marketers have permission to provide SMS text messages.
Engaging consumers, and especially Millennial consumers, via social media requires thinking like a friend, not an advertiser. A friend would not interrupt unless it was important or worth sharing.
Developing this kind of urgent, relevant communication requires a new approach to strategic planning. Yes, a brand strategy is essential for guiding consistent brand personality and behavior (i.e., the essential ‘authenticity’ we hear so much about). But forget about crafting a ‘communications strategy’ or ‘key message’. It simply doesn’t matter what ‘message’ we want to get across. What matters is what ‘content’ will the friend find interesting enough or compelling enough to interupt what they are doing to read it or respond?
In an excellent post on his blog, Creativity Unbound, Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen discusses, in addition to other changes, the way that the agencies must evolve to meet the demands of digital and social media. Indeed he even argues we are living in a ‘post digital’ age. Here are two of his most powerful recommendations:
Start with the user
Read Tim Brown’s Change by Design and you realize that anything you want to create – product, experience, environment, and process – starts with the user. From a marketer’s perspective that means understanding a customer’s relationship to content, technology and community — not just to a category or even the brand – and finding a way to add something of value.
Re-write the brief
The brief has remained unchanged for years, almost always answering the question, “What do we have to say?” Better to answer questions like, “How will we get this brand talked about?” “What can we create of value?” “How will we get people to participate?” “What can we make, invent, build that’s worthy of being advertised?” Ask those kinds of questions and see what you get back.
