Millennial Marketing

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

Are Millennials Attention Deficient?

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

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

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

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

Information My Way: Customized, Personalized, Contextualized

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

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

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

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

Fishing Where the Fish Are

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

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

A New Idea – Search Enabled Discovery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: How important are demographics?

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

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

According to Pew, just 31% of Millennials have no plans to go to college, with the rest either in college, planning to go to college or already graduated. This may be the most educated cohort in history. Yet, there seems to be an increasing sense of uneasiness about the degree to which college is preparing them for life after college.

They are right to be concerned. Pew data also shows that in 2010, only 41% of all 18-29 year olds have full-time jobs compared to half in 2006.

By contrast, the proportion of older adults employed full-time stayed about the same.  10% of Millenials report losing their jobs recently, compared to just 6% of older adults.

The cost of a college education (amount families pay after adjusting for financial aid) according to Money magazine has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982“. Increasingly, students are funding the cost of their education via student loans. College debt constrains their post-college options and places a drag on their income for a decade or more.

With high paying jobs in shorter supply, students, grads and parents are questioning what is the true value of a college degree?

ROI as well as depth of majors and the college experience are considered when it comes to selecting a college.  A MarketWatch article reported the results of a survey among 2010 high school seniors. About two-thirds reported that their families’ economic concerns “greatly” or “somewhat” influenced where they were applying to college.  The decision about where to attend is also being influenced by other practical considerations such as graduation rates and percent of students employed after graduation.

Harvard has been tracking attitudes toward college among undergraduates 18-24 years old for over a decade. Over the years the study has expanded to include non-college students and 25-29 year olds. Their most recent report is based on responses from 3,000 18- to 29-year-olds from late January through late February, 2010. They found that concern about finding and keeping a job is high across college students and non-college students alike.

“The biggest thing that [college] students share with their [non-college] peers is an intense anxiety about the economy. Sixty-percent of Millennials are concerned about their ability to meet their current bills and financial obligations and 59% are worried about being able to afford a place to live. Almost half of those who are currently in the workplace are afraid that they’ll lose their job, and this fear is echoed in college students’ anxiety about their future after graduation – 84% indicated that finding a job will be ‘very difficult.’ Students are also worried about their ability to keep paying for college, with 45% of 4-year college students and 64% of community colleges expressing concern about staying in school.”

Wednesday night, Josip Petrusa and Chanelle Schneider moderated an hour-long Twitter chat using the hastage, #GenYchat (transcript here). Their topic? The “Experience Catch 22″ – how to get a job or job experience without having any. The 34 contributors vented their frustrations and shared some practical advice. Most agreed that internships help bridge the gap between college and job, but often are not valued by employers.  Blogger Jenny Blake of “LifeAfterCollege.com” (who just landed a book deal, congrats Jenny!), has this to say about an internship eased her transition:

“During the first quarter of my junior year at UCLA I got the opportunity of a lifetime. My political science professor and mentor suggested a possible internship opportunity for me at astartup company in Palo Alto. I grew up there and was ahead in school, so I told her and the founder I would move home to work full time if it meant I could help start the company. I anticipated filing papers…I was wrong. I had tremendous opportunities and responsibilities, but I hadn’t anticipated what it would be like to be in the real world – to work full time, to save money, to spend so much money, to be so far from my friends. As much as I loved the confidence I got from working so hard and learning so much every day, at times I felt incredibly lonely and confused.”

We were curious to see if other Gen Y had similar feelings, so we posted the question to our Super Consumer Community of Gen Y marketers. “Did your education prepare you for what your are doing? Should it have?”  Here’s what they had to say:

Kyle: I feel like I come from a unique background having partaken in a specialized program at my Alma Mater called the BDIC (Bachelor’s Degree in Individualized Concentration). Essentially, what it allowed me to do was really narrow down the focus of my studies at college to the topics I KNEW I was interested in pursuing in the professional world. I had the incredible opportunity to work closely with 3 professors from 3 of the colleges within my University to design a classroom and experiential curriculum around my BDIC in Sports Marketing. My BDIC experience allowed me to handpick the courses I took and pair them with internships that allowed me to really get a hands-on feel for the subject matter. Had I not had been given the reins and allowed to work in the experiential learning aspect of my curriculum, i feel like I would have left college under prepared for the challenges that one encounters on the job. While I gained a great deal of knowledge and insight from my internships, it also didn’t hurt that it helped build my resume – I feel like I finished college with a leg up on the competition for jobs in the narrow industry of sport since I had 4 internships as opposed to 1-2.

Josip:  I think education we’re getting is great and it would prepare you for that field your being educated in. The problem doesn’t so much lie in education, i think the issues lie in what happens after education. Also, sometimes education doesn’t prepare you for actual real world use. Being a philosopher, historian and many other programs that get a lot of students quite frankly don’t have real jobs associated with them. For instance my political science major does not dictate I join the government or politics. I also find that thousands of students graduate with degrees that quite useless unless you plan on being a teacher or something. Although, there are jobs for every field, the ones I mentioned at the end of the first paragraph have the most real world jobs waiting for them. My university has thousands of students graduating with political science degrees every year but I hardly see any political scientists in the real world.

Rob: This is the kind of question schools should be challenging themselves with at least once a year. I think an opportunity exists to bring more real world cases into the classroom. I know case competitions often give students the chance to sink their teeth in to real projects, but those are often some of the more challenging ones employees take on (read: looking for free consulting/ideas from students) and likely not typical enough tasks to get a solid sense of what an entry level marketing or finance person really might do at company X on a day to day basis.

Micah: Funny you should as this is a topic I have been wondering about myself very recently. I am in the midst of a Masters in Library and Information Studies and I am starting to get very worried about if I will actually have any practical skills when I graduate. Most of the coursework I have done thus far has been theoretical-based and while understanding information needs of groups and database structures seems useful, I still have no idea what it actually means to work in a library day to day. My former Master’s degree (I love college) was in American Studies, and while I learned a great deal about the culture and history of our country, I graduated with no practical work experience and went back to school after a summer working as a temp for a medical supply company. In conversations with friends recently I have started to think that if anything vocational training needs to become a more active part of our educational system. Internships are great, but since I have always had to work full time, I never had the opportunity to pursue one outside of my coursework. So basically, I have greatly enjoyed my education but I am not sure it has prepared me for active citizenry or professional life. Any steps I have made in those directions have been of my own interests and initiative.

Derek: Education itself is a wonderful thing. However, education in America today is something that is too broad. General education in college is the same things one learns in high school and middle school and even elementary school before that. This focus on general education prepares us for nothing but provides jobs for professors in the subjects. If we were to have those classes as options as opposed to being forced into them, perhaps we can begin the process of specialization. Internships further specialize but are a catch-22 in themselves. Requiring an internship as part of graduation (like Chapman University does) is an excellent idea because it helps build the résumé. The problem with requiring an internship is that not all students can afford to work for free or take time off from their paying jobs.

Tony Szymczak: Since I am in a totally different field not related to my degree my Education did not totally prepare me for what I am doing. I cannot count the number of classes that I was required to take that I had absolutely no interest in. When picking classes becomes a process of, what will count towards my degree so I can graduate on time, the education process fails. When you take a class that you really have no interest in it really destroys focus. Students face so many appeals for their attention it is hard enough to get them focused on education. The time they do spend on education should not be in classes they are forced to take because a college mandates it.

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 mob

Be 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 it

Spend 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’.