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?
Four members of "My Generation" cast
I have been looking forward to the premiere of ABC’s new primetime ‘mockumentary’, “My Generation” for months. It promises to be a great platform for exploring the joys and anxieties of today’s 28 year-olds.
Here’s the basic premise: Friends from the high school class of 2000 (the year for which Millennials are named) are tracked down and filmed to see what’s happened to their lives over the past, event-filled decade. Director, Noah Hawley, has been tweeting all summer about the production.
The first hour-long episode aired last Thursday night. The good news is that the ensemble acting is superb, the characters are earnest and believable. However, the bad news is that the characters are almost too earnest. The show lacks a sense of fun.
I know its risky to judge an entire season by the pilot, but I found myself feeling like I was watching a real documentary rather than a mock one.
The characters each have their issues, mostly involving romantic mismatches which threaten to rival the Forsyte Saga for poignant plotline potential.
Here’s a brief synopsis:
The Nerd, now earnest schoolteacher, is living with the wacky and pregnant ex-Punker who is happily married to the former Jock who is now deployed in Afghanistan.
The aggressive and Smart young female Capitol Hill staffer is pining after her Rich Kid high school beau who is also also pining after her via old Facebook videos. Alas Rich Kid guy is married to the ex-Prom Queen.
Ex-Prom Queen is aggressively pursuing the beach bum drop-out who has just learned he fathered a child with the Wallflower on prom night 10 years ago.
And to bring it full circle, the earnest school teacher (who used to be best buds with the beach-bum-new-dad) is in love with single-mom-ex-Wallflower.
Back stories are begging to be filled in.
Why did the Rich Boy not marry the Smart Girl when he had the chance? Allusions here to some tragic star crossing involving parents and inheritances.
Why did the beach bum, everyone’s choice including his own for most likely to succeed, drop out? Why is the prom queen so unhappily married?
The hour-long “My Generation” was so busy establishing these entanglements that it forgot something crucial: To be fun to watch.
One of the reasons I treasure Glee and the Office are that while serious stories unfold, there are many over the top, outrageously ridiculous moments to hold my interest. There are more reason to watch than to just find out what happens. On the Office, we knew from the beginning that Pam and Jim would eventually marry. Yet our attention was sustained for four seasons by the crazy antics of Dwight, Ryan (my favorite Millennial character ever), and above all Michael. All the adults in Glee are ridiculous and fun to watch.
My favorite characters are Rolly in Afghanistan and his loopy ex-punker wife, Dawn. Their scenes were memorable, both funny and real. I especially liked the segment ‘filmed’ in Afghanistan and their video-Skype telephone call. I can only hope Rolly isn’t a casualty, I’d like to see more of him.
My other complaint about the show, which is minor compared to taking itself too seriously, is that the Millennial characters don’t really seem to represent their generation as well as they could.
True, the cast is a rainbow of diversity. But It seems more like the Breakfast Club all grown up than Gen Y. All of the characters who seem to want jobs have them. Their careers are fairly standard like the military, politics, the family business, schoolteacher. Most still live in the town they went to high school in. Missing are the grand ambitions, the striving for something more. After all this is Austin, the home of SXSWi. Surely there should be someone who is involved in a tech start up, a philanthropy or start-up?
The lofty idealism and hip-to-be-happy attitude is missing as well. Other than the army couple, there is a joylessness about their lives that doesn’t ring true to me. Who is giving back? Again, this feels more like the “Breakfast Club” ten years after than Millennials.
Also on the plus side is the amazing iPad integration. If you watch with your iPad, it will sense where you are in the show (even if watching on DVR) and provide extra content.
Noah Hawley says there are surprises coming. I have great confidence that new ABC President, Paul Lee, (who I have had the real pleasure of meeting), deeply understand Millennials, having two teen sons of his own and having engineered a remarkable Millennial-focused turnaround at ABC Family with shows like “Secret Life of the American Teenager” and “Ten Things I Hate About You”.
Tweets about #MyGeneration suggest I am not the only one feeling ambivalent.
“I don’t really know what to make of #MyGeneration… It was OK… maybe give it another go next week.”
That sums up my feeling as well. The ratings are low – just 5.1 million viewers vs. 14.0 for Big Bang Theory. I want to like this show and can only hope it gives me some reasons to check back in on how Rolly and Dawn are doing. But to succeed, a show titled “My Generation” had better live up to its title or we may decide to just rewatch the Forsyte Saga again instead.
Who is Jaci and why does she want to be my friend?
I started using Twitter because I was curious to see what it was all about. With Twitter, it took a few months to realize how it could be useful to me, so I expected to have to use some patience with Foursquare. Like Twitter, it was easy to sign up and in the early stages it felt a bit ‘game-like’ - who else do I know who uses it? How do I find followers? With Twitter, it wasn’t that long before I recognized its value and could bore my friends, colleagues and students at Notre Dame with reasons why they should join. Today I am proud to say even my husband tweets.
I signed up for Foursquare earlier this year out of the same sense of curiousity that led me to Twitter. However, I am still baffled as to why I should continue or draft others to start.
To date, I have over 60 Foursquare check-ins, 8 badges and one lame mayorship (my apartment building). I am pretty good about remembering to check in when I am at a conference, travelling or spending a day out and about. But I will admit that I often fail to check in at the places I go regularly (like home, the fitness club, Trader Joe’s). I keep thinking if I just stay with it, all will be revealed. But I am about ready to give up. Here’s why:
1. My network lacks critical mass
I have 255 ‘friends’ but I don’t really care where they are, unless they are somewhere near me. Most of them are not the people I really care about anyway and many are total strangers. It’s a little more exciting when I am at a conference like Ad:Tech because I can find the handful of Foursquare users, but what do I have in common with them other than Foursquare? I connect anyway, but much prefer the connections I make at conferences via Twitter.
2. I never get offers
Despite checking in numerous restaurants and stores, I have yet to receive an offer, even from restaurants and stores I have checked into repeatedly. I was at Lucky Store in Oakbrook Terrace Monday night buying jeans. Foursquare indicated that store has over 1000 members. You would think Lucky would make some acknowlegement of that fact? After all, according to Paco Underhill’s book, half of all retail store visitors don’t make a purchase. Perhaps the absence of an offer makes sense though: retailers have many ways to make me an offer once I’m in the store that don’t require a GPS signal. But why don’t t retailers nearbyshoot me some kind of alert? After all Oakbrook Terrace is a very big mall.
3. Checking in is work
Even though I have the app on my phone, I have to remember to check in. It’s another step – why can’t it check me in automatically? If the place I am visiting isn’t already on Foursquare, it’s tedious to enter it. If it is on the list, I have to scroll through and find it. This isn’t my first priority on entering a restaurant and is mildly irritating to my family. There goes mom again…. Apparently I am not the only one who forgets. According to Forrester, of the 4% of U.S. adults who have used a location based service like Foursquare or Gowalla, only 1% check in more than once a week.
4. There are no psychic rewards
Foursquare makes me feel boring. I didn’t realize how little I actually go out and about until I used Foursquare. Really, a night with 4 check in’s is probably beyond me, unless I am travelling. The solution is that I probably should do more. Twitter on the other hand has the opposite effect. Each RT and @ reply makes me feel more interesting.
Location-Based Marketing Is Still in Early Stages
I continue to believe in the power of location-based marketing, but I tend to agree with Forrester that it’s too early for marketers to make a big move onto Foursquare. Of the 2 million users, over 80% are male, 70% of whom are age 19-35, and college educated. While it’s true that these men tend to be highly influential, that target concentration makes ‘FourSquare’ more like ‘ForMales’ – an attractive niche audience. As a Boomer woman this could explain in part why I feel rather left out.
Another reason for caution is that there have been some missteps on Foursquare, even by marketers the likes of Starbucks that should know better, as David Teicher (aka @aerocles) points out in his Ad Age Blog this week. Apparently, Starbucks ended a Foursquare loyalty promotion without letting barristas know how to let participants redeem their offers.
Nevertheless, location-based marketing holds a great deal of promise if these early obstacles can be overcome, as Sara Hoftstetter points out in her Ad Age blog post yesterday (“Four Reasons Brands Must Check In To Foursquare. Now“) Regardless of whether it’s Foursquare or another, yet to be invented service, retail locations are still the last mile for marketers trying to connect with prospects. Any service that promises to bridge the gap will get marketers’ attention.
I just wish there was something that required less work on my part relative to reward. Meanwhile, I think I’ll wait and check in again in a year.
Young people today watch more video in more different places other than traditional TV. This is hardly news.
Study after study has shown a dramatic shift, not in hours spent watching video, but where it is watched.
“Younger Viewers Watching More TV on the Web” – Retrevo 4.12.10 “According to a Retrevo “Pulse Report” of over 1,000 people regarding their TV viewing habits, 23% of people under the age of 25 watch most of their television content online compared with just 8% of people over the age of 25 watching most of their TV shows via the web.”
“Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18 year old s” Kaiser Family Foundation Longitudinal research tracked changes in media use 1999-2009 via diary. Loaded with great charts on total media usage and how it breaks out by medium over time. Total hours spent with media has increased by over 2 hours due to multitasking. TV accounts for 4 hours 29 minutes a day, but only 59% (2 hours 39 minutes) is watched live.
“How Teens Watch: The Future of Media is in Their Hands: Nielsen 6.16.10 “12-24 year olds are more connected, more tech savvy, and more likely to use personal devices such as smartphones, laptops and other gadgets for video viewing. They are also less likely to watch traditional television. Teens living at home tend to watch more TV overall than 18-24 year olds busy with college or their first jobs. But the “first screen,” TV, is less central to both.”
But will this behavior shift persist as Gen Y ages?
The Nielsen research raises some interesting questions regarding whether this pattern away from traditional TV and toward time shifted TV or third screen is age and lifestyle related or generational. This may seem like hairsplitting, but actually is important. If the behavior is age and lifestyle related, they may revert back to traditional viewing with age. If it’s generational, however, we’re seeing something more fundamental.
Nielsen suggests the changes may, in fact, be more due to age. But I think it’s generational.
Let’s look closer at the Nielsen analysis. This gets a little convoluted, but bear with me (it helps to look at the chart above as well). According to Nielsen:
“The teens of 2001 watched less than 25 hours of television a week but by 2009 as they aged into 18-24s, they were watching 31 hours of television.
Even more dramatically, the young adults of 2001 watched less than 25 hours of television but watched more than 36 hours a week of television as they aged into the 25-35 cohort.”
This is compelling on the surface, but I think the comparisons are unfair. First, if you compare apples to apples – P18-24 in 2009 vs. P18-24 in 2001 – you see that the total hours of viewing have increased from under 25 per week to 31 per week in 2009. So the increase from P18-24 in 2001 to P25-34 in 2009 is consistent with the overall trend that indicates video watching in general is becoming more, not less, important.
Second, the Nielsen analysis doesn’t account for the fact that the media environment is exploding with options, making it difficult to predict how today’s 18-24′s will behave ten years from now. If the pattern of increased television holds, they will watch more, but that does not necessarily mean it will be on traditional television. ”Convergence” is something that has been predicted for a long time. Given the dramatic changes in time shifted and third screen viewing by Gen Y, it may actually come true sooner than we think. In my opinion, the changes indicate a generational shift. Those in traditional television should take little comfort in the Nielsen analysis.
The foundation of brand equity is familiarity, and that starts with ‘hello’. Awareness is a critical first step in any brand relationship — unless you happen to subscribe to the power of subliminal advertising. It’s impossible to deliver any kind of message, let alone create engagement, interest or desire, without first gaining attention.
Are Millennials Attention Deficient?
With Millennials, earning attentions can also be the most challenging step in the communications model. Millennials spend their attention the way the rest of us doing money – very carefully. They are accused of having Attention Deficit Disorder. I disagree. They simply have superior Attention Deserving Detectors.
One of the characteristics that separates young adults from less digitally savvy older consumers is their remarkable filters for tuning out information they don’t want to hear.
This category of information includes alarm clocks, due dates, nagging parents, and negative feedback. It also includes advertisements. According to a study by the Participatory Network and Pace’s Lubin school, 81% say ads are not relevant and 36% say they never look at them. The reason is that they perceive advertising to be irrelevant at best, and manipulative at worst. Rebecca Denison, a 20-something social media analyst at Edelman and member of our Super Consumer Gen Y community puts it this way:
“The big thing for me and my friends is that we don’t want to know we’re being marketed to, if that makes sense. We’re smarter than that (or so we think), and we don’t like to be advertised to. It feels like manipulation, so I think a big aspect marketing to Gen Y has to be a lack of manipulation. You have to be really careful that you don’t make it too much like old school marketing because I think that really does turn Gen Y off.”
Information My Way: Customized, Personalized, Contextualized
Millennials don’t attend to banner ads, commercials or radio ads because they prefer to discover or search for information than have it foisted upon them. They are masters at finding the information they want. They also know how to ensure that the information they want is pushed to them. A year ago, I was introduced to NetVibes by a Gen Y’er who assumed I was already using it. They are masters of RSS feeds and bookmarks, Google alerts and customized home pages. As Kristin Dziadul, another Gen Y marketing community member put it, “In the attention economy today, we don’t find information, it finds us”.
This is not to say that ads never work. Of course they do. But with Millennials context and credibility may matter more than message in enabling an ad to breakthrough. A message from a friend or trusted source is far more likely to be attended than a randomly placed ad.
A new joint study by Facebook and Nielsen demonstrated the lift a campaign receives in effectiveness simply by being in a social context. An ad on a homepage enjoys a 10% lift in recall relative to a control group. Put the same ad on a Facebook page with some social context and it enjoys a 16% lift. But the same ad in an organic feed enjoys a 30% lift.
The key to getting attention is to stop waving your hand in the air and start thinking about how to get your brand discovered. Creative brilliance and heavy rotation is no longer enough. With the Millennial audience, attention is less about intrusion than it is hiding in plain sight. Millennials want to believe that they have discovered information for themselves. It’s no accident that the hottest bars, like El Secreto in Sao Paulo, are usually well-kept secrets. What’s the point of knowing about it if everyone else does too?
Fishing Where the Fish Are
‘Being found’ is not easy. It requires a shift in thinking away from message broadcasting to extreme narrowcasting. It also requires more imaginative ways to embed messages into places where they will be welcome. Ironically though, it may be easier to be ‘found’ on a more obscure digital site or special interest community than on Yahoo.
The top sites for Millennials might surprise you in their degree of specialization. Facebook of course is the number one site for 18-24 year olds, yet it is really is not one site but a Balkanized nation of groups, subgroups and special interests. Bill Tancer of Hitwise provided drill down data on top sites for 18-24 year olds by income, geography and ethnicity. The top sites for 18-24 year olds on an index basis might surprise you. Those with family incomes $150,000 are actually most likely to be found concentrated on sites like DeviantArt, Fanfiction, UrbanChat, OVGuide, ProjectPlaylist,and MathXL.com. Those under $30,000 are most likely to be found on some of those sites but also badoo, zShare.net, mocospace and IMVU.
A New Idea – Search Enabled Discovery
Another way to ensure your ad is ‘welcome’ and ‘hiding in plain sight’ is offered by a company I learned about this week at iMedia, Vibrant Media. Vibrant Media offers a way to provide greater context for brand messages by embedding ads within relevant content. Think of it as search meets social media. Here is how it works. As an online user is reading an article, certain words or terms are highlighted by hypertext links, similar to how they appear in a blog or wiki. When the reader, who is presumably reading this article because it is relevant to them, passes their mouse over these words, an advertisement appears (and disappears as the mouse passes on). The content can be tailored to be relevant to the key word and can offer more than a standard banner; it can be an API, video or demo. For example, BING used Vibrant to demo its search engine. (To see how it works check out my bylined article on iMediaconnection today. Near the bottom of the first page, the word ‘social media’ is hyperlinked to a dynamic search app from imediaconnection that features what else, ‘social media’!).
(This post is the first in a series about digital marketing to Millennials based on a speech given at iMedia Summit, Miami on June 15. Tomorrow: “Who Cares? I is for Interest”)
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’.
Not long ago, marketers were obsessed with identifying the right message. Communications strategy really meant ‘what do we want to convey about our brand or product’? Many hours were spent studying the consumer and the competition to come up with something relevant and unique to say.
The brief answered the question, ‘what is the most motivating thing we can say about this brand’? The answer was expressed in words, the fewer words the better. A one or two word brief was considered the pinnacle of achievement.
Today, the idea of a singular, focused message is under pressure — from media fragmentation, from shorter attention spans and the pressing need for a constant stream of relevant ‘content’. With social media, the idea of a singular message has given way to culturally relevant brand ‘themes.’
After all, saying the same thing over and over, even if you find new ways to say it, makes for a boring conversation. Marketers are recognizing that they are not in control of the conversation, much less the message.
Now the question for those preparing a brief becomes, “where can the brand make a contribution to the conversations consumers are having or want to have?” Dove’s Eveolutionwas an early pioneer in this themed approach to branding. By identifying that women don’t think of themselves as attractive and wanted to have a conversation about the meaning of beauty, Unilever’s marketers were able to make Dove more culturally relevant. The message is hard to summarize in words, but is more along the lines of “Dove ‘gets’ you”.
Little wonder taglines are falling into disuse! Here is Millennial marketer and “super consumer” panel member, Derek Yegan, on the demise of the “Big Idea”:
“As a millennial, I’d say diversity is key. Perhaps marketers need to present several ideas all related to “The Big Idea”. This may require multiple tag lines for multiple demographics and people (doable but difficult to cover all aspects) or maybe a broader “Big Idea” with broader tag lines to target more people. In the end, i think a lot of what will define the successful companies from those that fail are the ideas and values the advertisers have, the tactics the agency employ, the response(s) to the feedback given, and the relevancy of the product.”
Brand themes may or may not have much to do with the brand; they are more likely to reflect consumer interests and areas the brand has permission to talk about. Rather than narrowing the scope (to one word), the idea now is to make the brand platform as broad as possible. The goal is increasing brand ‘ubiquity’. The bigger a brand’s authority (the more subjects it can speak to) the better. Perhaps the ‘ubiquitous’ Virgin brand is not an anomaly after all, but the way of the future in branding?
Not only are messages broadening, they are also becoming subordinate to things like context, placement, and timing. Here’s Millennial panel members, Brian Sweet and Desiree Asena Dundar on how the message is so much more than the words.
“This question becomes even more interesting when you realize the time/place your message is conveyed is also part of the message itself. Does a brand hang out in the environments with which its target consumers identify? If it does, and if it “fits” that environment without seeming out of place, that unspoken message is very possibly more powerful than the overt message. Authenticity is a vital brand attribute that is communicated most effectively through unspoken means.” – Brian Sweet
“Creating a difference in a world full of names is an essential step to be taken by the brands, especially if you are referring to Gen Y. I believe this is why the emphasis that was on brand message has been shifted towards the right time, right place and the right communication tools. As we can see Viral and Guerrilla Marketing tools are widely adopted by many brands in order to create that difference so they can attract more “audiences” or “viewers”. Yet this does not mean that the message sent through these channels will result in higher number of customers. The aim is still to influence purchase decision and generate a link to the brand. I, therefore, think that the brands and marketers should establish a well-balanced relation between the message and the tool, the time and the place that is used to deliver that message.” – Desiree Asena Dunda
Briefs today must move beyond target definition, current belief, key message, and desired belief to identify broader areas of brand interest.
Marketers, especially those who want to reach Gen Y, now have a better appreciation of the importance of reference groups in creating brand affinity and shaping attitudes. They have to deal with the challenge of moving away from a broadcast to an engagement model of brand communications. And with the advent of mobile phones and geolocation, they know they need to incorporate a ‘temporal’ and ‘locational’ component to their strategies.
What does your brief look like these days? To keep up with the new communications realities, I recommend a communications brief address these four components:
1. Audience = deep understanding of not just who they are and how they relate to the category and brand but what they like - cultural interests, important social causes, key influencers, activities, what they think is funny, what they worry about. You get the idea. More is better. LISTENING IS CRITICAL.
2. Attention = what can we say that is memorable and will get the brand noticed and talked about? What can we make, invent or built that will be of value?
3. Action = How can we get people to participate? To share their experience with their friends? Will this deepen their active involvement with the brand, even if it doesn’t lead to purchase?
4. Affinity = It’s not a ‘target’, it’s a potential friend. What can I say or do that suggests I ‘get’ this audience as individuals and I want to know them better?
I’m glad to finally see social media starting to show up in television shows in a big way. While smart phones have long been a staple feature of sitcoms and dramas, few plots until now anyway, appear to have actually turned on social media or mobile technology.
But last week, I spotted not one but two major shows with social media-related plot developments.
Glee: On Tuesday’s episode of Glee, the most nerdy of the Gleek students enjoyed a hilarious pilfered video of their nemesis, Sue Sylvester, the intense and intensely funny cheerleading coach dancing in her office to Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical”. They quickly upload it to YouTube where it quickly reaches 3 million hits. Sue has the last laugh however, when Olivia Newton John contacts her about remaking the 80′s video together.
The Office: Then on Thursday in The Office, Pam Halpert searched out information incriminating Michael Scott’s new girlfriend of being unfaithful by leveraging access to her Facebook page through a friend. He later learns she is actually married, a development that would not have occurred but for Pam’s Facebook stalking.
The use of social media in these shows feels completely natural and plausible. One takes place in an office and another in a high school where social media is a routine part of daily life. One wonders why we don’t see more?
This leads to me to speculate how technology and social media may have played a role in 90’s television shows and movies had it been as integrated into daily life then as it is now. Imagine the way things would have gone if…
Bonfire of the Vanities: Gordon Gecko accidentally ends up in the Bronx when he fails to make a fast enough turn in response to commands from his Garmin. “Re—- calculating!”
Cosby: Cliff Huxtable uses simulated reality game to instruct Cleo on the true cost of life on his own.
Sex in the City: All the single ladies use the new Facebook social graph to prequalify dates, making it faster and easier to identify the ‘likes’ of potential dates, weed out creepers, identify keepers and generally ‘put a ring on it’.
Home Alone: Kevin McAllister uploads photo shopped pictures of himself in France to make his family believe he is actually already there. Meanwhile he projects Youtube videos of his family onto the walls to create the illusion of people being home for the benefit of the burglars.
Fresh Prince of Bel Air: Will Smith challenges Carlton to see who can get to 10,000 Twitter followers first.
Okay, you get the idea. Now consider how different the shows of the 70′s and 80′s might have been! What if there had been social media when they made Back to the Future, Golden Girls, Gilligan’s Island, Family Ties…
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.
Are All Millennials Tech Savvy?
One of the biggest myths about Millennials is that they are all digital natives, blogging and tweeting their way through life. The truth is a bit more nuanced.
True, Millennials are some of the most avid USERS of mobile and Internet technology.
The age of first cell phone is dropping rapidly and now stands at about 9 or 10. Currently nearly six of every ten 12-year olds have their own cell phone, a figure that increases to 83% by age 17. On average, 75% of all 13-17 year olds have a mobile phone, 93% go online (76% with broadband), and 80% have a console gaming device (Pew Research).
It’s also true that Millennials rely heavily on digital media to manage their daily life activities, stay informed and stave off boredom.
Digital media so pervades their lives, they cannot imagine living without it. Digital content and communication literally enables their social lives. Some even refer to this dependency as ’addiction’.
A new study conducted at the University of Maryland asked 200 college students to give up digital media for 24 hours and write about the experience. The students’ journals, which amounted to the equivalent of a 400-page novel, were full of stories of deprivation and emotional angst. “We noticed that what they wrote at length about was how they hated losing their personal connections. Going without media meant, in their world, going without their friends and family.”
“I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening,” said one person in the study. “I feel like most people these days are in a similar situation, for between having a Blackberry, a laptop, a television, and an iPod, people have become unable to shed their media skin.”
“Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,” wrote one student. “When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life. Although I go to a school with thousands of students, the fact that I was not able to communicate with anyone via technology was almost unbearable.”
One student said he realized that he suddenly ‘had less information than everyone else, whether it be news, class information, scores, or what happened on Family Guy.”
The Maryland researchers concluded that “most college students are not just unwilling, but functionally unable to be without their media links to the world….Without digital ties, students feel unconnected even to those who are close by.”
Given this level of dependency, it follows that Millennials are adept at manipulating and adapting technology to their needs. However, this is not the case, at least for the majority of Gen Y.
The top six web sites by volume according to Experian’s Hitwise service are pretty mainstream: 1. Facebook 2. Google 3. Myspace 4. Yahoo 5. Yahoo Mail 6. Youtube. Although my students are adept at Facebook, and finding information, music and videos online, few make use of Twitter or maintain a blog. This is in line with statistics by Forrester, which shows only half of 18-24 year olds are what they classify as ’creators’. Few students make use of RSS feeds, wikispaces or other productivity enhancing tools.
A 2007 study by Northwestern professor, Hargittai on web use among so-called ‘digital natives’ reached the conclusion that there is a wide range of web use and skill levels among young adults. Over 1000 college freshman were surveyed on the frequency and diversity of their web use as well as indexed for skill on 27 variables. The study found a range of skill and use and concluded, ”web-use skill is not randomly distributed among a group of young adults who have grown up with digital media.” While some of the diversity could be explained via socio-economic status and ethnicity, much could be attributed to what the authors called ‘context of use’, which included the number of years online, the time spent online, access to a laptop and more. ”Overall, these findings suggest that familiarity with the medium is very much related to how people use the Internet and user savvy mediates some of the otherwise observed relationships of user background and online activities.”
A recent article in The Economist also questioned the assumption that all Gen Y’ers are Internet-savvy (“The Net Generation Unplugged”, March 2010).
“Michael Wesch, who pioneered the use of new media in his cultural anthropology classes at Kansas State University, is also sceptical, saying that many of his incoming students have only a superficial familiarity with the digital tools that they use regularly, especially when it comes to the tools’ social and political potential. Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives, in other words. The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population.”
The article goes on to point out that according to Pew Research, “internet users aged 18-24 were the least likely of all age groups to e-mail a public official or make an online political donation. But when it came to using the web to share political news or join political causes on social networks, they were far ahead of everyone else. Rather than genuinely being more politically engaged, they may simply wish to broadcast their activism to their peers.”
For marketers, this diversity of use is a caution not to confuse digital dependency with digital savviness. Not all Millennials will be jumping up and down to respond to your latest crowd-sourced campaign, app or contest.
Many of the popular digital marketing tactics require a level of involvement and expertise may be beyond the skills of many Gen Y members on the far side of the digital divide. Far safer, and more broadly appealing, are approaches where the call to action is easy and intuitive, requiring nothing more than a working knowledge of how to use XBox, text messages, Facebook or Youtube.
