I had the pleasure yesterday of speaking to a group of 70+ CMO’s in New York City on the topic of Millennials in marketing. Actually I did very little speaking and let three fabulous Millennials speak for themselves, Justin DeGraaf, Marketing Manager at Unilever, Adrienne Waldo of Ask a Millennial and Brian Rosenberg of Prophet. The presentation was Titled “10 Things Millennials Wish They Could Tell Their CMO’s”. The 10 key points are nicely summarized on The CMO Club blog today.

The speakers did a great job bringing the points to life, but apparently many in the audience just weren’t buying it. The Q&A session was unusually tense. The gist of the comments were that Millennials need to understand the workplace will not change to accomodate them Their issues are simply “management 101” – if they had good managers, their issues would go away. One CMO went so far as to say they are actively avoiding hiring Millennials because of the high maintenance demands.

I disagree. There is data, lots of it, that suggests this generation has different needs and expectations than Boomers and Gen X’ers. Their values are likely to have a greater effect on the workplace than the workplace will have on their values. If companies are to get the best from them, they will need to show greater sensitivity to these differences.

Beyond Management 101, understanding Millennials is critical for effective marketing. Millennials are the ‘target of the future’ and what better way to start to understand them than to listen to the Millennials in your own organization. While many of their tastes and habits are age-related, many others are generational. These differences will shape their lives as consumers for many years. For their sake, I hope that the CMO’s in the audience take time to do some investigating among the Millennials in their organization and keep an open mind that perhaps their young workers are not just younger versions of themselves.