You know a relationship is over when you no longer put in the effort to keep it going. After five years of blogging about Millennial marketing, Millennials have changed, and so have I! It’s time to move on.

When I started talking about Millennials in 2007, we weren’t sure the name would stick. Not everyone agreed they were different. Millennials were considered simply more pampered versions of ourselves at the same age. My experiences with early Millennial students at Notre Dame told me this simply wasn’t true. So I set out to learn all I could, became a contrarian voice, and loved every minute of championing the success of early marketers who embraced this wonderful generation.

Today my position on Millennials has been thoroughly vindicated. The question is no longer “Are they really different?” Now the question is “How can we win with Millennials?”  Marketers need more than just evidence that Millennials are different, they need concrete examples of what it takes to engage, satisfy and grow with Millennials’ changing needs.

Starting today, the blog will be stewarded by a different voice well-equipped to the task. Barkley is a Kansas City-based marketing agency with deep expertise in Millennial marketing. For the past two years, they have sponsored the leading conference on Millennial marketing, Share. Like. Buy. In 2010, Barkley invested in proprietary research with Boston Consulting Group to explore Millennial values and create a segmentation. The results were published in the report, “American Millennials: Deciphering the Enigma Generation,” which you can download for free.

Jeff Fromm, executive vice president at Barkley, has co-authored a book, Marketing to Millennials: Reach the Largest and Most Influential Generation of Consumers Ever. Fromm will now lead this blog now, along with two other Barkley partners, Carolyn Battle and Kelly Stroda. (And they’re both Millennials, by the way.)

Barkley has many successful Millennial marketing case studies to share. The blog is in good hands to begin a new chapter, with a new look and renewed purpose.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me these last five years.

Carol Phillips
Founder, MillennialMarketing.com