The Word of the Day: "It's Generational"

"There's no doubt that we represent the kind of change Senator Clinton can't deliver on. And part of it's generational," Barack Obama on Fox News November 2007.

"I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change and that's why I'm supporting Barack Obama, not out of any lack of respect or admiration for Senator John McCain." -- Colin Powell on Meet the Press Sunday.

Obama's Gen Y appeal has accelerated public awareness that Millennials are not just younger versions of their Boomer parents and Gen X siblings, but the result of a massive generational shift. Obama was named "Marketer of the Year" by Ad Age today largely because of his savvy use of his knowledge of Millennials. I agree with Winograd and Hais that Millennials are not politically motivated this year because of the appearance of Obama. They would have been involved regardless. But Obama's marketing has been pitched perfectly to this group in everything from message to medium, and that is not an accident. Team Obama did careful research, created focused brand messages and showed clear strategic understanding that Millennials matter. Here is what Winograd and Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover, had to say on their blog Oct 8:

...the political attitudes and identifications of Millennials were clearly evident long before the Obama candidacy gained widespread visibility. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March 2007 indicated that Millennials identified as Democrats over Republicans by nearly a 2:1 ratio (52% vs. 30%). And, a study conducted at about the same time by the Millennial Strategy Program of communication research and consultation firm Frank N. Magid Associates showed that Millennials were the first generation since at least the GI Generation to contain a greater number of self-perceived liberals than conservatives. All of this at least raises the possibility that the high level of Millennial political involvement is significantly based on the Democratic and liberal affinities of the generation and would be strong even without Obama's strong candidacy....Millennials are intent on working together to create a better America than the one Boomers have left them as an inheritance. Their confidence, political activism, and unity will begin to initiate that change on Election Day this year thanks to a record turnout of young voters. The 1.7 million vote plurality given to John Kerry by young voters in 2004 will grow to between 8 and 10 million for Barack Obama when this involved and unified generation goes to the polls on November 4.

Why Millennials Matter

After 74 posts on the values, purchase habits and preferences of Millennials, it's probably worth a short post on what I hope should be obvious by now: why it matters what Millennials think. Not only is this generation similar in size to the Boomers, they have enormous purchasing power. Today's 18-29 year old has an average income of $29,000, and their earning power is growing faster than for other age cohorts. Most important, Millennials are meaningfully different in their values. Those differences will increasingly come to define products, marketing approaches and politics for the entire country. (p. 209)

Let's start with politics. In their terrific (and prescient) book, Millennial Makeover, Winograd and Hais write:

"Political behavior resarch has consistently indicated that once most individual, and hence most generations, take on a party identification, they maintin 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."

Likewise, marketers know that brand affinities established early in a consumer's life can persist for decades. This is why Bride's magazine stays so fat year after year.

With so much at stake tomorrow, it's little wonder marketers need to find what moves Millennials today. Some of their lifetime values are already becoming clear: Tolerance, the environment, authenticity, family, global perspective, team-work, immediacy, ethics. Others are still emerging. It remains to be seen how the current financial crisis will shape their career aspirations and life goals. Certainly there are fewer MBA's looking for a career in investment banking this week, than a month ago. And the dream of homeownership may not be as compelling for today's young people as for Gen X.

Shop the Vote: Marketing the Election to Millennials

Are Millennials engaged in this election? Opinions are divided (see earlier blogpost and comments). But whether they care or not, getting out the vote is a marketing issue -- and a marketing opportunity for those interested in reaching Millennials.

First there was Rock the Vote; now there is Shop the Vote. Shop the Vote is a partnership between the filmmaker who brought us "18 in '08", a documentary that provides a picture of this year's 18-year olds and why they should care about this election. I haven't seen the film, but would like to. A 6-minute CNN video (accessible from the home page, with film creator, David Burstein, yielded a great quote representing the message of the file: "I understand your cynicism." 18 in '08's web site is worth visiting. It describes its missions as a "peer to peer youth voter engagement and mobilization organizationsing the film as a voter registration vehicle." The site is comprehensive and engaging, a great example of Millennials talking to Millennials.

The other partner in Shop the Vote is Access 360 Media, which describes itself as "a premier multi-platform media network that connects to more than 173MM young adult (P12-34) consumers each month in the places and through the communication channels that matter most to them: In-store, Online and Mobile." In-store partners include Journey and FYE.

A visit to Shopthevote.org provides many opportunities to get involved in the election:

Links to Obama and McCain campaign web sites

Download mobile media wallpaper and signups for election news delivered to your cell phone

Register to vote

Participate in a poll

Upload videos

The main purpose of the site, no doubt, is capturing email and mobile numbers in exchange for debate alerts and other relevant content -- and presumably ad messages. It's not clear how successful this effort has been, or will be. But as a creative approach to engaging Millennials in the election -- and exploiting a marketing opportunity at the same time -- I admit it is impressive.

Who Cares? Millennial Engagement in Election 2008

There's universal agreement that the youth vote is critical to the outcome of the 2008 election, but how engaged are Millennials? Engagement is a tricky thing to measure, but just released data (9.23.08) from Pew Research sheds some light. First, the table shows a strong trend among 18-24 year olds for going 'newsless'; 34% say they watch no news on a daily basis, up from 25% in 1998. (Presumably news on the Comedy Channel doesn't count as 'news', although I'm not sure.) While over 9 out of 10 18-29 year olds say they intend to vote, only 7 out of 10 say they 'definitely plan to vote' and less than two thirds say they voted in their precinct last time they had a chance, and only 4 out of 10 say they 'always' vote. These figures are even lower for 'cell phone only' respondents.

Given these figures, it's clear why the candidates are focusing on social media to engage young voters. Obama is doing far better than McCain, but the gap is closing. According to Hitwise, Obama gets about 56% of the total candidate web site traffic. As of Sept. 9, Obama boasted 510,799 MySpace friends, compared with McCain's 87,652 friends, a more than 5-to-1 lead in number of friends, but down from a 7-to-1 advantage in August according to Live Research. Obama also has a sizeable leads on Facebook with 1,726,453 supporters to McCain's 309,591. Obama's Web site has twice as many videos posted to his official YouTube channel and far more YouTube channel subscribers, by an 11-to-1 margin. But what is surprising to me, is that these figures aren't higher, given the penetration of these media among young people.

The Stanford Daily, in an article yesterday titled "Just How Political Is This Place?", quotes Evan Purcell '09 as saying "it's diffcult to stay informed; politics isn't a big social presence here." My daughter at Notre Dame reported the same lack of interest when I asked how students were responding to the Palin pick. "Mom, we're in a bubble." While I am sure some campuses, like George Washington University in DC, are more passionate about politics, neither candidate should overestimate the 'engagement' of today's young voters in the election -- at least for now.

Millennial Media: Campaign News Sources

What media do Millennials rely on for election news? Political marketers addressing the youth vote would be wise to avoid overreliance on Internet media. Among the 88% of Millennials who are actively seeking or at least paying attention to the 2008 election, there is as much reliance on old fashioned TV news as on flashy Internet web sites. According to a May 2008 study by Crawford, Johnson, Northcott, a respected audience research firm, “Even with all of the media options available to Americans, television still rules – at least as a source for presidential election information.” CJN's research shows National, Local and Cable TV News are the three most relied upon media sources for election news across every age group -- including 18-29 year olds.

What about Internet media, surely young people are more likely to turn to the web for news than their parents or Gen X’ers? Reliance on Internet media for election news across all four age groups polled reveals a surprisingly complex dynamic. It’s not as simple as 'young = Internet, old = TV'.

• Across all four age groups, news organization web sites are the most heavily relied upon. • Those under 45 are more likely to rely on ISP news pages than those 45 and older.

• There is no age difference in likelihood of relying on candidate email, political web sites and local TV web sites.

• The largest age differences are in reliance on YouTube and social networking sites, which skew strongly young, but have fairly low penetration even among 18-29 year olds (less than 1 in 5).

What Do Millennials Think of Sarah Palin?

Evidence is mounting that Sarah Palin is making an impact on young voters. While it's not clear whether he selection changed anyone's mind about the candidates, she seems to have emboldened those who already favored McCain to speak out.

Gallup data has shown for months that about a third of 18-24 year old voters are for McCain. However, youthful McCain supporters have been, at least until now, less passionate about their candidate than Obama supporters. A quick glance at the candidates' friends tallies on Facebook shows Obama leading that 'race' by nearly a million friends. However, Sarah Palin has already gathered two-thirds as many friends as McCain. Nancy Meinhardt of Miami, wrote on her 'wall' on August 30, "I think that Sarah Palin is a great choice. McCain was not my 1st choice but after seeing his choice for VP I am sold and ready to work full time on his campaign."

The Wall Street Journal, in an article titled "Palin's Entry Gives GOP Ticket Shot at Capturing the Youth Vote" (9.11.08), reports that 32% of 18-34 year old voters say that McCain's choice of a running mate makes them more likely to vote for him, compared to just 17% who say the same thing of Obama's running mate choice. The Journal goes on to say that Palin makes supporting McCain 'cool' -- or at least less uncool:

"She reminds me of my friends", said Allyson Wartick, 20, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Just two weeks ago, the mood on campus "was definitely, 'Obama is the cool place to be,'" said Jennifer Kacerosky, 21, senior a the University of Florida. This past weekend, though, she went to a football game sporting a McCain-Palin button, and "it was, 'Where'd you get that? I need that!'"

What makes Palin appealing to Millennials? Here are some hypotheses:

First, Sarah is an overnight celebrity and Millennials relate to that -- after all they have grown up believing anyone with talent can become a star (see earlier post "I want to be a star" for more on that subject).

Second, it may be that Palin reminds Millennials of their Moms. This generation is remarkable for its good relationships with their parents, they respect what their Moms have accomplished.

Another hypothesis is her social conservatism is appealing, at least to some young voters. Pew says 46% of 18-30 year olds believe abortion should be banned or limited.

Maybe it's because, at 44, Sarah is young herself. Her achievements don't seem that out of reach, and her particular brand of feminism, which features life-work balance, is in sync with young women's own aspirations for having it all - marriage, family and career.

Whatever the reason, the Sarah factor has made predictions of Obama's lock on the youth vote a little less certain.

Brand McCain: What Will It Take to Win Millennials?

The latest Gallup poll shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 56% to 35% among 18-29 year olds. By now, Obama's strategy of mobilizing youth is generally acknowledged to be the edge that can/will win the election. Recent articles in Ad Age and Newsweek do a great job of analyzing Brand Obama's singular appeal to Millennials. Andrew Romano, a 25 year old associate editor for Newsweek traveling with the candidates, first wrote about Obama and Millennials back in February, in an article titled, "He's one of us now," he wrote, ""how fully and seamlessly he embodies the attitudes, aspirations and shortcomings of the generation that's rallied around him." Today, Ad Age features an article, "What Obama Can Teach You About Millennial Marketing" that praises Obama's 'brand management': "Mr. Obama's brand management, unprecedented in presidential politics, shows pitch-perfect understanding of the keys to appealing to the youngest voters."

Where does this leave Brand McCain? Well, he needs to play catch up for sure, but all is not lost. Fortunately, there is more than one way to appeal to Millennials, as many marketers are discovering. Here are some ideas for Brand McCain as it attempts a "Millennial Makeover".

1. Emphasize Authenticity. Many Millennials voted for the first time four years ago, and many of them voted for McCain. Millennials value authenticity above all. Obama, according to Ad Age may have the smoothest brand, but McCain should emphasize his willingness to take the unpopular stand, when it is true to his values.

2. Downplay Age. The age jokes have to go. The lack of technology, the fact he is proud of never having done a Google search. Vietnam for these voters is what WWII is for Baby Boomers -- WAAAY before my time. Half of all Millennials aren't even aware that their generation has been labeled. They don't think of themselves as a 'generation' yet, just as young people working on their resume and figuring out what impact they want to make on the world.

3. Tell Stories of Personal Altruism: Focus on John and Cindy McCain's personal rather than only political efforts to make a difference: John and Cindy McCain have real track record of jumping in when their personal money or compassion can make a difference, as they did when they adopted a child from India and encouraged others to do so. They need to stop being modest about these deeds, or let someone else tell their stories.

4. Talk About Economic Opportunity. Millennials are deeply concerned about their personal economic future and ability to maintain the standard of living their parents enjoyed. As they begin to make paychecks, they are experiencing the real impact of high taxes. As a business owning, wealthy, successful American family that has managed to do good while making a personal fortune, John and Cindy McCain should in a good position to speak to Millennials' economic aspirations.

5. Show Them Your Team: Millennials are famously collaborative and team-oriented. They understand that leadership is about who is 'on the bus' and how they are managed. By making wise choices and allow Millennials to peek inside the inner workings of Team McCain, the leadership story will resonate more deeply.

Obama & Facebook - What's the Buzz?

As a general marketer, I have the sense we will be learning a lot from political marketers this year about how to use social media to influence brands. Social media played a key role in several of the 2006 midterm elections. (See Millennial Makeover for an interesting description of the early use of newsfeeds and groups in campaigning). Social networks are expected to play an even bigger role in the 2008 Presidential campaign, especially given the importance of the Millennial vote to the election outcome. Will social media be just another channel, like radio or TV? Or will its interactivity transform the dialog into something never seen before?

As a first step to nabbing an invitation to the 'netroots' marketing party, I set out to see what Obama is doing with Facebook. I checked out his profile, joined a group and downloaded the Barack Obama Facebook app.

Obama's profile shows 992,564 'supporters'. Reading the profile and seeing photos of his 'supporters' isn't that involving, as I am sure he doesn't update it himself.

There are many Obama specialty groups, such as 'Notre Dame Students for Barack Obama'. The biggest group, 'Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Obama)', has 564M members. This seems like a lot of members, as the largest corporate sponsored group,'Apple Students' has just 432M members, more than even the PINK Victoria's Secret group's 348M members. However, it pales when compared to the group, '1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert', which really is one million strong with 1,249M members.

The Obama group site at first glance is more like a portal than an interactive experience, displaying links to events, videos, t-shirts, the official donation site, sites explaining Obama's stand on issues, etc. While useful to have aggregated in one place, they aren't anything I couldn't have found with a Google search. More interesting were the 32,322 discussion threads. Tonight's rally in Detroit appears to have many posts, the excitement the difficulty of getting tickets, the prospects of actually posting a video. Before we leave the group, I should note that there seem to be nearly as many anti-Obama groups as there are pro-Obama groups. Stop Barack Obama (One million strong and growing), has 65M members.

Meanwhile, the Obama Facebook app makes content more accessible than the group. Recent videos, news articles, speeches are rated in terms of number of member reader 'thumbs ups'. There are also links to other users’ via the Facebook network and the ability to leave a comment, blogger-style. The content can all be sorted by recency, popularity, and friend's favorites. There are clear links for donating, volunteering and getting involved. This feels more user friendly than the groups.

How these applications, groups and profiles influence the campaign remains to be seen. I plan to keep an eye on things.

Millennials vs. Boomers: Hogwarts as Metaphor?

I highly recommend Millennial Makeover by Winograd and Hais (Rutgers Press, 2008). While the focus is political, there is plenty of useful data for marketers, much of it from familiar sources like Pew (see previous blog post). My reason for recommending it, however, is their use of the data to address the question, 'Are Millennials just younger versions of previous generations or are they really different'? The arguments they put forth are compelling. According to the authors

"... media moguls, authors and even politicians make the fundamental error of thinking that today's young people think and act just like they did when they were young. Nothing could be further from the truth."

They ask us to think of Millennials as a generational cohort made up solely of Harry Potter and his plucky friends, and to contrast them with the adults at Hogwarts, the scowling, often clueless faculty and ministry of magic administrators. While Harry and his team (key word) work hard to save the world, applying special ingenuity and talents, the grown ups they must contend with are "individualistic, judgmental egotists who talk more than they act."

Millennial professionals who participated in two online focus groups, to our surprise, expressed a similar view of Boomers. When asked who they prefer to work with, all said they preferred to work with other Millennials (no surprise there), and they MUCH prefer to work for Gen X'ers over Boomers. This was indeed a big surprise to us, after all that has been written about the supposed natural affinity between Millennials and Boomers. Boomers are considered to be like their parents, pretty old fashioned and out of touch. One young brand manager at Unilever even shared with us that there is a 'reverse mentoring' program in place at his company, where Millennials share their technology wizardry insights with older, less adept Boomers. In contrast, they feel as if they have more to learn from Gen X'ers and that X'ers are more willing to take the time to teach them what they need to know.

Winograd and Hais would find this no surprise, contending that indeed X'ers and M'ers have more in common with each other than they do with the 'idealist' Boomers who bear responsibility for years of political gridlock and ultimately pointless culture wars.

Are Millennials Really Less Cynical?

According to a 2007 Pew Research report, Millennials are markedly less cynical than older generations -- at least as far as putting faith in government and business institutions. A full 82% of 18-29 year olds agree with the statement, "the strength of this country is mostly based on the success of American business". Agreement with this statement among Millennials actually increased 5 percentage points over the past four years. In contrast, agreement among other age groups is much lower and has decreased. The gap is even more pronounced when it comes to perception of government. Just 42% of people under 30 agree with the statement, "When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful", compared to 62% overall (see chart).

These statistics are not that surprising, and help explain the success of Obama's 'change' message among Millennials. They do believe that all of us can do better, that government can be the solution not the problem and that business is a place to make a difference in the world. The College Board has been tracking the most popular majors for over 30 years. While the popularity of business as a major has declined from its eighties peak, it is still the most popular major, beating the runner ups of health, biology, engineering and education by a wide margin.

The paradox here is that Millennials are entirely cynical and suspicious when it comes to marketing. My marketing students at University of Notre Dame uniformly believe that advertisers lie, that there is a catch to every offer and are willing to believe the worst customer service and product horror stories. Last November, I published an article in Ad Age entitled, "Clued in or Clueless, What Marketing Students don't know about Marketing." I asserted that students routinely dismiss claims made in advertisements, without considering that it might be illegal or that there are natural checks and balances against lying in ads. The response from Millennials was denial. Here's a sampleof what Millennials had to say:

They also know that ads aren't allowed to lie, but they do know that lying ads and false claims slip by and have to be brought to court to be disputed or distort the truth just enough to be factually accurate yet coming off with a different claim. This is why they're skeptical. They don't put much stock in enforcement and compliance, while well aware of the laws.

So my quesiton is, if Millennials are truly are less cynical, why doesn't their lack of cynicism extend to marketing messages?

Millennial Politics: Generational or Age-Related?

Is there anyone in the U.S. that hasn't heard that Millennials are shaping the 2008 election? Books, magazines and blogs are abuzz with the news that 2008 is going to be the year of the Democrats due to the liberal attitudes of younger voters, many of whom are voting for the first time. According to Pew Research's analysis of Super Tuesday voters, 58% self identify themselves as "liberal" in their political orientation. 57% voted for Obama, 41% for Clinton. The more interesting question is whether this is any different than in past elections? Are today's younger people actually more liberal than earlier generations? A quick glance at the chart indicates that he answer is 'yes' (don't you love it when that happens?). According to a 2007 Pew Study, each generation tends to be less socially conservative than the generation before it. Generation Y is not only less socially conservative than older cohorts, they are less socially conservative than those cohorts were at a similar age. Social conservatism is measured by agreement with 6 statements. Gen Y on average agrees with only 2.5 of the statements, while twenty years ago, Boomers agreed with more than 3 (see chart). However, the biggest gap, now and then, is between Boomers and the Pre-Boomer generation, not between Boomers and Gen Y. So the more correct answer is that Gen Y liberalism is actually both generational and age related.