“A subculture is a homogeneous group of people who share elements of the overall culture as well as cultural elements unique to their own group. Within subcultures, people’s attitudes, values and purchase decisions are even more similar than they are within the broader culture.” MKTG3, Lamb, Hair McDaniel, 2009
By this definition, Millennials are a subculture.
While they share many of the myths, customs and rituals of the larger culture, they have language, preferences and customs that are distinct to their generation. They have a unique set of reference groups and opinion leaders. These cultural factors exert enormous influence over Gen Y buying decisions, and are crucial for establishing relevance.
Learning about Millennial culture can be a tricky business if you are not a Millennial yourself. Even within the Millennial subculture, there is diversity. In fact, this generation is notable for it’s multi-culturalism.
Two of the best Millennial culture sleuths I have discovered are Tim Stock, Head of Planning at scenarioDNA, and Kevin Walker of Culture Labs Creative.
I found both Stock and Walker on Twitter and have spoken with each of them ‘live’ (proof Twitter works!). They are both passionate about understanding cultural influences on consumer behavior among youth.
ScenarioDNA describes itself as a ‘consumer insights think tank.’ Stock, who is also adjunct faculty at Parson’s School of Design, urges marketers to think in terms of ‘culture networks’ and ‘culture codes’. This philosophy is based on the idea that “values are shaped at critical points of the maturation process”, and that “our image of what products mean is dictated by this imprinting“. In other words, generations are shaped by common experiences peculiar to that point in time.
Stock has developed a strategic methodology for segmenting consumers based on their ‘culture code’ and for ’mapping’ the corresponding networks. He offers a fabulous lecture on culture networks (via slideshare), and another look at one particular network, the ‘Transformer Generation”. Both are well worth viewing.
Culture Labs Creative is a research-focused digital agency with special expertise in urban youth culture. Walker, who comes from a marketing communications and research background, emphasizes immersion techniques. 15-20 members of the target audience are invited to share their experience and ideas in a live workshop that is part event, part research. Sample output from a Global Trends event is provided on the Culture Labs site.
To identify the ‘Top 10 Trends, Culture Labs ‘monitored social media chatter during the last quarter of 2009′ and conducted in-market explorations in Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York as well as a ‘Trend Summit’ in Dallas in December. Among the 10 Trends were these observational ‘gems’ I haven’t seen anywhere else:
Vans Sneakers
“Take note of the Classic Americana fashion trend developing. We also predict that Vans sneakers will be the hot brand of 2010. Vans are classic, inexpensive and are offered in many colors and styles…. As times remain challenged and serious, people are going to dress up more in 2010. The era of sloppiness in dress and casual Fridays is so ’00’s. Young people are rediscovering “dressing up” and it is driven by a new pragmatic sense that to make progress, get a job, and be taken seriously you have to look the part. As one of our speakers at the Trend Summit, Michael Hastings-Black, mentioned, it is the “grown ass man” syndrome that is inspiring people to dress up more.”
Has the world finally woken up to Millennials?
Judging by the media attention focused on Gen Y yesterday, it seems we may finally have arrived at the tipping point. On Feb 24 alone, there were articles and segments that appeared around the country, sparked by the new Pew Report on Millennials:
Chicago Tribune: “Millennials Dubbed ‘Always Connected’ in Pew Report”
Washington Post: “Under 30 Americans: The Next New Dealers?”
Washington Post: “Story Lab: Quiz: How Millennial Are You?”
PBS News Hour: “Demographic Profile of a Generation”
Christian Science Monitor: “Great Recession Hits Millennials Hardest”
Huffington Post: “Our Generation: More Confident, Less Employed”
A quick Google search returned 56 ‘related articles’ for a search on “Pew Millennials“. I certainly welcome the attention on this remarkable demographic group, and I applaud Pew for its indepth coverage. But where are the marketing articles? The Pew data so far is mostly attended to by social scientists, political scientists, journalists and academics.
The marketing world, aside from youth-focused marketing firms, as yet are still fairly tone deaf about the coming shifts.
If you are interested in understanding how more mainstream marketers are reaching out successfully to Millennials, you have to dig a little deeper. MobileYouth’s profile of Ten Brands that connect with Gen Y is a good start for profiles of Ford Fiesta, Monster Energy drink and others. But once you get beyond these high profile stories the cases get a little harder to come by. Here are three less publicized, inspiring exceptions:
Houlihan’s: (Fast Company, March 1, 2010)
“Last summer, it created its own social-networking site, HQ, an invite-only “brand community” of 10,500 “Houlifans” to serve as a virtual comment card. Customers appended that a-little-too-cute prefix to all things Houli-, and they’ve helped the formerly stodgy Irish pub rebrand itself as a contemporary suburban lounge-style hangout.”
StarkSilverCreek Web Publication: (PR Web, February 17, 2010)
All Things West Coast, the company’s flagship brand, is one of the fastest growing digital media properties. Readers value inspired and thoughtful coverage of the west coast including arts (film, stage), wine country, travel, and technology. Alexa Internet, Inc. ranks starksilvercreek.com 93,401 in the US and 285,000 globally. According to Quantcast, readers are affluent (28% earn $100K+), highly educated (67% college/grad school). Generation X and Y (Millennials) account for 68% of visitors.
Herbal Essence: (Business Week, July 2008)
“The shampoo and conditioner bottles are curved so that they literally fit together on the shelf. The nesting shape not only helped Herbal Essences stand out from others on the shelf but also encouraged more young women to buy both products, driving up conditioner sales. To appeal to Millennials, the team also updated the language on the packaging. The ho-hum “dandruff” reference gave way to “no flaking away.” Names for different hair styles were changed to more youthful phrases such as “totally twisted” or “drama clean.” “We totally reframed the proposition,” says Lafley. ….soon after the shampoo was relaunched the brand was growing again, with sales growth rates in the high single digits.”
A lot is known now about how to build a more appealing brand that connects more directly with Millennials. It requires a different approach, because as anyone who reads this blog or the Pew Report knows, it’s a different kind of audience. Getting results like these requires a more collaborative approach to research and a more engaging approach to marketing.
Marketers will be wise to begin now. The rewards for early movers in categories like banking, wine, leisure travel, retailing, and media will be great, both in immediate sales lifts (like Houlihans) as well as in better positioning for future consumers. Gen Y trends have a way of migrating up the generations.
Soon it will be more than just the wine industry that is experiencing ‘classic market disruption’, it will be most industries as this 75-million strong demographic recovers from the Recession, and gets about the business of creating homes and careers. Will your brand be ready?
Meanwhile, we are launching a new page on our MillennialMarketing.wikispaces.com wiki to aggregate successful Gen Y marketing case studies. Check it out and feel free to contribute your stories.
I follow quite a few members of Gen Y in social media. It’s surprising to me how little, with a few exceptions like American University student, Chris Golden, they talk about politics.
Of the big three, Sex and Religion get more digital ink than Politics. While Millennials are hailed as possibly the next ‘civic generation’, their engagement seems to be more with making a difference through social causes than via political action.
Two new studies each purport to know where Gen Y’s partisan sympathies lie at this moment in our political history. To my surprise, the results appear to be diametrically opposed.
The first study, by the ever-reliable Pew Research Center, shows support for the Democrats among Millennials took a nosedive in 2009 following the outpouring of support for Obama in ‘08.
“The Democratic advantage over the Republicans in party affiliation among young voters, including those who “lean” to a party, reached a whopping 62% to 30% margin in 2008. But by the end of 2009 this 32-point margin had shrunk to just 14 points: 54% Democrat, 40% Republican.”
A quick look at the Pew chart above shows that the ’shift’ is actually a return to the baseline level of 37% Republican/53% Democrat for Gen Y that was seen in 2007. This ‘bounce’ suggests that the Obama campaign represented an anomaly in Millennial’s political sentiments, not a fundamental shift in affiliation. According to Pew, the weakening may have a lot to do with diminished support for Obama and his policies among Millennials, similar to the waning seen for the general population.
“Obama’s job approval rating slipped substantially over the past year among Millennials as well as among older age groups. … in February 2009, 73% of Millennials approved of Obama’s job performance — the highest percentage in any age group. One year later, in February 2010, just 57% of Millennials give Obama a positive rating.”
The second study by Frank Magid and Associates, which provided much of the data underlying Winograd and Hais’s book, Millennial Makeover, shows Gen Y’s Democrat leaning solidifying in 2009.
“In 2008, Millennials voted more than 2:1 for Obama over McCain (66% vs. 32%) and by roughly the same percentage (63% vs. 34%) for Democratic congressional candidates. Magid’s 2010 data shows this same level of Democratic identification persisting among Millennials who are attending college. Twice as many college students call themselves Democrats as Republicans (47% vs. 24%). Only 15% are independents, with a similar percentage unwilling to identify with any of those three choices.
The key difference here may be the words “Millennials who are attending college”. Indeed, if this is the case and student affiliation is stable, it suggests an even greater decline for the Dem’s among non-college educated Millennials.
While the two studies do not appear to agree on political party affiliation, they do agree on liberal-conservative self-identification.
According to Pew, ideologically, 29 percent of Millennials describe themselves as liberals, 28 percent say they are conservatives and 40 percent identify themselves as moderates.
Similar numbers are reported by Winograd and Hais in the Huffington Post for the Frank Magid study: 31 percent of college students 18 and older call themselves liberals or progressives, 20 percent say they are conservative and 30 percent describe their political philosophy as moderate, while “20% haven’t learned enough in college yet to say just what their ideological orientation is.”
What this tells me is that both parties have some work to do.
The Republicans have an opportunity perhaps to win over some of the moderates and undecided’s, or at least give them pause about voting Democrat in the mid-terms. The Democrats need to recapture their appeal by reinvigorating their party with some of the faded glow of the Obama victory. The stakes are high. As Morley and Winograd wrote in their excellent 2007 book, Millennial Makeover, political affiliations tend to persist well beyond young adult years.
“Political behavior resarch has consistently indicated that once most individual, and hence most generations, take on a party identification, they maintain it throughout their lives. As sociologist J.V. Namenorth noted, “Value orientations do not change much during a generation’s life time. Committed during its early stages a generation most often carried its value commitments into the grave”. If the Democrats can maintain this initial generational allegiance during the next two presidential elections, they should gain a decisive electoral edge for decades to come.”
For both groups, the bigger issue is that partisan politics is simply not the biggest issue in the lives of Millennials, at least right now. They are preoccupied today with understanding what their place will be in this changed world, not which party offers the most ‘hope’ for change.
Millennials are a high potential target for banks and credit unions.
According to a September 2009 report by Mintel on “Echo Boomers and Finance”, just 56% of 18-24 year olds own any banking product, usually a savings account (41%). But this figure jumps to 70% among those 25-29.
Credit Unions have been making the most of their historic opportunity to attract Millennials.
According to Mintel, several credit unions have launched “Young & Free” sites. These sites feature young spokespeople and include blogs, listings of “free items” or promotions available in the credit union’s local area. They also provide calendars of events, and financial literacy tools on topics thought to be of special relevance to Echo Boomers. These topics include:
- car buying versus leasing
- establishing and maintaining good credit scores
- saving money tips
- finding an apartment.
It only took a quick Google search to turn up several of these “young and free” initiatives, like this one in Alberta from Servus Credit Union. The site features spokesperson, Myles Peterson, who tweets, blogs and creates videos all focused on what’s happening in Alberta and with the Young and Free account at Servus. The site seems to have done its Gen Y homework: it is up to date, provides useful information and apps in a Millennial-friendly format.
There are other Young and Free efforts in Alabama (Listerhill Credit Union), South Carolina (South Carolina Federal), and Texas (TDECU). While the format is similar, each has its own spokesperson and unique content. There is substance as well. For example, South Carolina Federal offers special deals for 18-25 year olds:
- fee refunds—the idea is that young people make mistakes with managing their checking accounts and the credit union gives them one free fee refund per quarter in recognition that they are still learning how to manage their accounts
- online budgeting tools
- mobile access
- debit cards
- no monthly maintenance fees
- additional dividends on deposits.
Analyst, researcher and Millennial, Dane Coalson on CreditUnion.com provides a “Personal Gen Y Perspective” on which features are most meaningful:
Personal recommendations: “The first place I turn to before I purchase a product or utilize a service would be my friends and family for recommendations. I want feedback directly from someone who can tell me about their personal experience, and I’m not alone.”
Help establishing credit: “Helping us build credit is a great opportunity for credit unions to actually differentiate themselves and provide a service that Gen Y needs!”
A fresh, well-designed web site: “If your website looks like it is stuck in the past, this can leave a bad impression.” (Duh!)
Plain English: “Don’t get wrapped up in using what you consider to be the coolest, hippest jargon. Gen Y does not want to be pandered to, they just want easy access to straightforward, clear information.”
Details matter: “I believe that younger members can be easily swayed by seemingly insignificant details such as the ability to exert some control over how their personal card looks.”
Financial Institutions will never be ‘cool’ – this should not be your goal: “Instead, focus on showing them how you can provide better rates, help them build their credit, and actually are an honest institution that genuinely has their best interests in mind. Like anyone else, younger individuals are simply looking for a safe, efficient, non-problematic institution that they can trust with their money.”
Focus on what could draw Millennials into a financial institution today: “High interest products include direct deposit and bill pay, good rates on individual product offerings, such as an auto loan, CD, high-interest checking or savings accounts.”
This is great advice for any marketer, not just financial services.
Coalson concludes by emphasizing his belief that there is “a window of opportunity” to attract members as they leave college. But cautions that “once they start their jobs, set up multiple accounts, and become comfortable, it becomes much harder to entice them to switch.”
Kudo’s to Credit Unions for getting ahead of the curve.
Source: CDC/NCHS National Health and Nutrition Study
On two occasions in the past year, when remarking on my observations about Millennials and their evolved food preferences, I was challenged by senior executives who quite reasonable asked, ‘If Millennials are so much more sophisticated about their food choices, shouldn’t it follow that they are less obese?” On both occasions I had no ready answer.
Are Millennials healthier than previous generations, or is all the talk about fresh and nutritious foods, gourmet tastes and healthy lifestyles, just that: talk?
The data to address this question is surprisingly hard to find. There is a lot of research on kids and obesity, but adults tend to be lumped together by the CDC and other government health reporting groups. Now, just in time for New Year’s Resolutions, I have the answer, thanks to my new Twitter friend, Rick McGuire, a writer and expert on health and medical issues. He provided a link to a 600+ page report with the intimidating title, “Health, United States, 2008, with a special feature on the Health of Young Adults.” This report draws on a wide variety of sources to paint a most comprehensive picture, based on what I can only call ‘a ton of data’.
Unfortunately, the trends suggest the opposite of what I would have predicted: Gen Y, defined as young adults 18-29, are less active and more obese than earlier generations.
“The proportion of young adults 18–29 years of age who were obese more than tripled from 8% in 1971–1974 to 24% in 2003–2004.”
“Nearly two-thirds of young adults did not have regular leisure-time physical activity and three-quarters did not report strength-training at least twice a week.”
Beyond obesity, there are other reasons to be concerned about the Millennial generation’s health. Overall, the report makes for alarming reading. The statistics on risk factors such as cigarette smoking, drug and alcohol use, unmarried pregnancy, and infectious disease rates among 18-29 year olds all suggest a generation who’s health is in serious danger. These facts are not well understood and important to consider as country is about to take on the enormous challenge of insuring a greater proportion of the population.
Alcohol: “Trends in heavy drinking remained constant for both men and women during the period, with about 6%–8% of young men and 3%–5% of young women reporting heavy drinking. Heavy drinking is defined as more than 14 drinks per week for men and more than seven drinks per week for women, on average. One-fifth reported 5 or more drinks in a day on at least 12 days in the past year.”
Illicit Drugs: “Almost 40% of young adults 18–20 years of age, about one-third of 21–25 year-olds, and one-quarter of 26–29 year-olds reported using an illicit drug in the past year.”
Tobacco: “In 2006, nearly 30% of young adults were current cigarette smokers. Between 1997 and 2006, the current smoking rate declined nearly 20% among young adult women but did not decline significantly among young adult men.”
Sex: “Twenty-one percent of women reported forced sexual intercourse before age 30.”
HPV: “45% of women age 20–24 years tested positive for HPV infection.”
Overall Health: “Eighteen percent of young women and 12% of young men reported at least one of six selected serious health conditions in 2004–2006, and 4%–5% of young women and young men reported overall fair or poor health or an activity limitation due to a chronic health condition.”
Mental Disorders: “An estimated 7% of young adults 20–29 years of age had a diagnosis of major depression in the past 12 months. 9% of young adults 20–29 years of age had one or more of these three illnesses major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, or panic disorder) in the past 12 months. Young women (11%) were almost twice as likely as young men (6%) to have major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, or a panic disorder in the past 12 months.”
Unmarried Pregnancy: “Between 1990 and 2005, the proportion of births that are to unmarried women was highest for women under age 20. Between 1990 and 2005, the proportion of births to unmarried women rose from 66% to 84% for women age 18 years, from 58% to 77% for women age 19, from 37% to 56% for women age 20–24, and from 18% to 29% for women age 25–29.”
Health issues and health care are likely to be the single biggest issue of Gen Y’s lives. Already, the desire to maintain work-related benefits is contributing to keeping them in place on the job, according to a report by Fidelity (“Gen Y Workers Under Financial Stress Value Their Benefits”). Although they are healthier than older adults, young adults are still subject to chronic diseases, activity limitations, and death, and need health care for various reasons. As this report points out, however, “they are the age group least likely to have health insurance, and when they do need health care, they experience problems accessing the health care system.”
Looking ahead, the cost of health care overhaul will mostly be borne by Gen Y. The single biggest thing they can do to keep the overall cost of health care down in the future is to change the choices they make now. It’s a new year and a new decade. Let’s hope for their sakes Gen Y makes a resolution to take the health care debate and their own health care seriously.
Unemployment is the story of year, and by now we all know young adults are suffering most. Several new studies show just how much pain they are enduring.
The Lumin Collaborative, an association of PR firms just released a study of 1,000 Millennials, ages 18-27, focused on understanding their changing expectations of the workplace. The study shows nearly all have been either directly or indirectly affected by unemployment.
- Over half (55 percent) have experienced a layoff or loss of work in their family within the past year.
- Nearly three-fourths (72 percent) feel threatened by a possible layoff or loss of work in the coming months.
- Two-thirds (66%) say they have lowered their expectations of being promoted. This compares to 51% among other workers.
Given the deep reach of the recession, it’s not surprising that economic worries are top of mind with Gen Y. A mobile survey of over three hundred 18-24 year olds reported this week by Engage Gen Y revealed the overwhelming concern is “The Future. College. Jobs. The Economy“’. One 24-year-old male said: “Jobs and our future are a big concern. We are a really talented bunch that just happens to be at the height of our ambition at the exact time the economy is hurting.” This finding was confirmed by a recent Harvard poll (reported by Don Tapscott’s blog).
“The economy is unquestionably the top national issue of concern for young people today. Almost half of 18-29-year olds today (48%) say economic issues are their foremost concern, more than double the second highest issue (health care: 21%) and nearly five times the third highest (War: 10%).”
With sentiment this strong, it won’t be long before Millennials start to direct some of their influence, clout and energy toward Washington.
Obama came into office on a wave of Millennial optimism and good feeling. While Gen Y so far as remained fairly silent about his performance, the Harvard poll suggests they are losing confidence in the government’s ability to resuscitate the economy: “More young Americans now believe that the government’s efforts will hurt (30%) rather than help (26%) their financial situation. The majority, 41 percent, say these efforts will have no impact.” John Della Volpe, the Director of Polling for the Institute of Politics at Harvard, says the numbers show that “If nothing else, this generation is fiercely independent and should not be taken for granted. Young people are no longer outliers — their opinions of Obama fall in line with rest of USA.”
For many Millennials, who in addition to unemployment are suffering from crushing college debt, jobs alone will not be enough to right their financial ships any time soon.
The average debt for a graduate is now $23,000. Many also have credit card debt exceeding $3,000. Without relief from the burden of hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in loan repayments, it will be difficult to get their lives moving forward again. Little wonder a Vanguard blog recently christened Gen Y, ‘Gen D for ‘Debt’. The impact of the double whammy of no job and high debt is millions of lives set on hold. According to a study by Alliance Bernstein, 34% of those who graduated with college debt have had to sell personal possessions to make ends meet. More significantly for our collective economic recovery, they are deferring the usual life events that trigger spending and economic growth: 18% have delayed getting married, 44% have delayed purchasing a house, and 28% have delayed having children (see chart). Other deferments include medical procedures, home repairs, car repairs and more.
Source: Alliance Bernstein
Coincidentally, According to the U.S. Department of Education , the total outstanding federal student loan debt exceeds $500 billion.
That number sounds a lot like the kind of numbers we hear when Washington talks about the economic stimulus. I recently posed a question to Paul Solman, the financial journalist for NPR’s NewsHour via Twitter and their web site:
“Question: Why isn’t some of the stimulus money being earmarked for college debt forgiveness, which would put money in the pockets of those most likely to spend it?”
He replied that it had been considered and shouldn’t be ruled out, but the idea currently has no momentum. That tells me it may not be such a dumb idea after all….
I am a marketer, not an economist or politician. But it seems to me that a transfer of funds from the government to loan programswould be less complicated and surer to work than costly ’jobs creation’ programs.
The impact of this action on Millennials would be immediate. Once released from the increasingly desperate burden of finding a job and paying down debt, this creative generation could set about generating new businesses, jobs and and economic activity. Unlike the rest of us who would be likely to save a windfall, Gen Y would spend it — smartly — for the benefit of all.
That’s my big idea. Gen Y, what do you think? Are you ready to mobilize?
