Millennial Research: Just the Facts

When I first started blogging about Millennial Marketing, there were few research summaries. Now there are almost too many. This new presentation by Resource Interactive is among the best I've seen. It incorporates some fresh in-depth primary research among 72 Millennials with a range of secondary sources - Jupiter, Census, Harris and Forrester. The quotes help break up the statistics and bring the data to life. It's a little long, but the graphics are great and there are some good basic reminders about how to reach Gen Y near the end.

Digital Millennials: R U Ready

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: digital millennials resource interactive)

Millennials: What is Their Iconic Brand?

I am pondering the question, what will be the Millennials 'iconic' brand? Doug Holt writes in his thought-provoking 2004 book, How Brands Become Icons, that 'to become an icon, a brand must come to represent an important cultural idea or 'identity myth'....The crux of iconitis that the person or the thing is widely regarded as the most compelling symbol of a set of ideas or values that a society deems important.' Holt argues that this symbol is usually NOT a mainstream idea -- rather it grows from a contradiction or 'anxiety' that society faces at a particular point in time. The brand helps those caught up in the contradiction to resolve their identity issue. Snapple, Corona, Mountain Dew and Coke are all more than beverages - they are identity systems that at least at some point in their history, embraced a contradiction. They appealed to a specific value or group and their power lay in an imaginary, populist world that was counter to the prevailing notion of what society deemed good or appropriate.

What will be the counter-culture brand of Millennials? Gen Y offers many contradictions, but the one that intrigues me the most is the gamer culture. It just seems so, well, contradictory to the other values pinned on Millennials. Gamers are not trying to 'make a difference'. They are more loners than team oriented. They are different. And that may make them what slackers were to Gen X'ers, what 'red necks' were to yuppies, what James Dean was to 50's teens. If I were writing a cultural brand brief, I think I'd take a hard look at gamers. The gamer subculture meets many of Holt's criteria for contradiction and anxiety. It is a populist sport - no one gained any status by being a gamer, except among other gamers. Gamers go their own way. They eschew the mainstream brands. Gamer parties are not everyone's idea of fun. You bring your laptop to someone's house and play against them and their friends. In the same room.

I don't pretend to know much about this group, but I know it is big, and not just limited to 12-17 year old boys. In a focus group last month, an engaging 20-something college grad with an advanced degree sheepishly admitted he spends a lot of his spare (and not so spare) time playing Worlds of Warcraft. According to Mintel, he is not alone; 24% of males 18-24 and 13% of 25-34 year old males say playing games is 'a favorite leisure activity'. The first brand that embraces this cultural contradiction could find a ready audience and become the next 'brand icon'.

Millennial Target: Starbucks Project Red

Starbucks appears to have hit it right with Millennials with its Dec 1 RED Event for World Aids Day. So far, nearly 580,198, people have RSVP'ed on Facebook. Whether all of them actually come and sip a 'handcrafted beverage' (and generate a 5 cent donation to Project Red), is irrelevant. Starbucks is already a winner just by getting that many people to raise their hand in support of the effort. At minimum, those handraisers will think twice before buying a latte someplace else on Monday. The event is only the beginning. For the next few months, all holiday drinks will also result in a 5 cent donation. There's a Red Community site where customers can use an 'impact calculator' to see how their donations are impacting the world crisis.

If Monday's event results in lines at Starbucks stores, it will owe its success to doing its its homework on Millennials. The Project Red promotion hits a number of Millennial hot buttons:

1. A worthy cause.

2. Easy to do - doesn't require any extra effort.

3. Social - hey, let's all go!

4. Multi-media - everything from TV to celebrities in Times Square.

5. Lots of ways to participate online and in person -- even a photo op in the store.

While RED is a promotion, it feels bigger, more like a party. That's what makes its appearance on Facebook more permissible than most commercial attempts on Facebook, and consequently something Millennials click on rather than ignore. A lot has been written lately about Facebook's struggles to become a viable advertising medium. Perhaps Starbucks has just given us all a clue as to how to leverage its potential.

What Millennials Will Be Talking About at Thanksgiving

Millennials across the country will be returning home for Thanksgiving. What will they be talking about other than the pie? I strongly suspect the economic crisis will be at the top of the list. For those in college, there will be some anxious discussion of whether it will be possible to stay there. For those out of college, jobs will be top of mind. We just completed a series of focus groups among Notre Dame students and recent alumni about their lives post-graduation. While they are overall optimistic about their future, they have immediate worries about getting a job, keeping a job, or changing jobs, depending on where they are in their career. They yearn to be independent, and want the freedom to make good choices based on what they really want to do, not ones dictated by a poor economy. Many are struggling to pay back loans.

Jessica: "My loan payment is about a quarter of my income each month, it's constantly hanging over my head."

Gwen: "I worry that I'll never go back to school and I want to."

Laura P. "More generally, my biggest worry the economy and job stuff. I feel okay about our mortgage and student loans as long as our jobs remain stable."

Chad: "If I didn't do what I do, i wouldn't be able to pay my debt. And I hate that fact."

Traditional Thanksgiving conversations about 'What would you like for Christmas?' will give way to 'How can we moderate our Christmas spending and still make it feel like Christmas?' Millennials tell us they are finding small ways to save -- eating out less often, forgoing a cell phone upgrade, drinking fewer lattes, taking fewer trips. One Millennial I know has given up his car in favor of Zipcars. But they are still having trouble making ends meet. A study from the American Savings Education Council (ASEC) and AARP shows that 91% of young adults report having financial goals for themselves, only 53% report sticking to a monthly budget. 61% feel their retirement savings is behind schedule. 42% of these young adults give themselves a grade of D or F to describe how well they are saving. Cash in a stocking is likely to be a common request.

Millennial Entitlement: Keeping it in Context

Does this sound familiar? "Why do those in the Millennial generation seem to have such a sense of entitlement?" "Has anyone else noticed the “Paris Hilton syndrome” that is taking over our young people’s brains? The lust and desire for material possessions and fame increases, while the standards of hard work and creativity diminsh."

Gen Y:

Mike: "Older people sometimes laugh when I say I want my job to have meaning.My parents' generation... they often accept that a job is a job. (They) say my generation is spoiled -- I'm spoiled -- because I look for work that means something to me. They were satisfied with the paycheck. I have the luxury of wanting much more."

Katie:I feel like i want a lot more out of my work than what my parents generation ever thought of let alone expected. Older men laugh at the idea."

Justin:

"I often play the work/life balance card to work from my girlfriend's apartment in DC for a day so I can have a long weekend. It is critical to have the balance (between work and life) and I will demand it or find a new job."

The first comments came from the web. The Gen Y comments are from the transcripts of a series of online focus groups we conducted among young professionals last spring. The general theme was that my job isn't big enough for me, I want more from my job than just a job. Millennials feel prepared to make a difference.

Managers interpret this yearning for 'more' as over-ambition and unrealistic expections. The biggest frustration I hear when I speak with managers about their Millennial employees is an inability to meet high expectations on the job. Managers feel pressured to give young workers more responsibility, more praise, more rewards, faster than they feel comfortable. One senior brand agency exec I spoke with last week described his anguish over having to fire a talented and promising young Millennial because he was exhausted by the constant demands for more responsibility that he didn't feel the employee was ready to assume.

One generation's idea of 'spoiled' is another's idea of 'better prepared'. Here's blogger Cliff Mason's response to a review of Ron Alsop's new book, "The Trophy Kids Grow Up." Cliff blogs for CNBC at MillennialMoney.

"We all know the rap about us so-called millennials: we're spoiled, we have entitlement issues, we think we're better than everyone else, we have unrealistic expectations about entering the workforce. Apparently we were coddled too much by our parents and teachers, or at least that's what the baby boomers keep telling me.....At the end of the day the millennial generation is better educated, more adept at using technology, and much more media savvy than generation X or the baby boomers. Maybe we feel superior because we actually are?"

I may have to agree with Cliff. At the very least, it's worth giving him and his generation the benefit of the doubt. After all, it may be true!

What Are the Cool Kids Doing Online?

Millennials spend 12-14 hours a week online searching for information, watching video, updating their profiles and messaging their friends. They are confident "neti-zens" who have never known a time when up-to-date info about friends, grades, tonight's biology homework, favorite political candidates and the latest SNL episode wasn't instantly and freely available. It's worth understanding what they like online now, because Millennial's online tastes are very influential. According to Deloitte's 2007 State of the Media Democracy Survey, word of mouth is the most common reason for Millennials to visit a website. When they find a particular television show or website that they enjoy, they tell an average of 18 people, compared with only 10 people for all age groups. So what online brands are hot with Millennials today? New research from Outlaw Consulting among 100 hand selected Gen Y Trendsetters sheds some light. The biggest surprise here is that there are no real surprises here. Facebook is number one, even among trendsetters, who at the beginning were vaguely uncomfortable doing something so, well, popular. It just seemed so vain. That apparently has changed however, due to the ubiquity and ease of use.

>"Facebook has become more of a fact of life, a way to communicate and schedule events—consider it this generation’s version of Microsoft Outlook, but with an emotional side. “There is an entire army of friends who I don’t see regularly but still care about. It means a lot to automatically be able to see their photos from time to time, and keep abreast of who’s where. Facebook provides a warm blanket for me. It makes me feel more connected, less alienated.”

In our research with recent college graduates, we learned Facebook has become essential for remaining in touch with newly scattered friends. While the Facebook habit is strongest among those who actually used it in college (those who graduated less than 4 years ago), we expect the trend to continue.

Other popular trendsetter sites pose similar paradoxes. Ironically, trendsetters want to tap into the 'wisdom of crowds' available, where else, on EBay, Yelp, Wikipedia, Craigslist.

“There are tons of different opinions on there, but you can sift through and get a feel for the truth. I don’t know what I did before Yelp.” “Whenever I have an item in mind, I check eBay. It standardizes the pricing. If you want to know what the public thinks an item is worth, eBay will tell you.Gen Y trendsetters will gladly sacrifice 100% accuracy for direct access to the public’s version of reality, whatever it may be. They believe they know when to trust sites, and when to seek another source. In the meantime, they credit these sites with doing no less than changing their lives. The model of the open platform giving voice to a crowd will be close to their hearts as this generation comes to power.

The rest of the list is equally unsurprising. CNN, NYT, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Flickr and Pandora round out the list. Where are the obscure, the trendy, the not on the map ideas? Perhaps that is the big finding. The Internet, arbiter of every personal whim and taste, may be more mass than we even suspected.

Millennial Theatre: Speech and Debate

It may be the first true "millennial" play. "Speech and Debate" by Stephen Karam captures the Millennial point of view, right down to text messaging and blogging as important elements of the plot. The story features three earnest, tech savvy high school senior misfits who find each other on the web through a serendipitous convergence of, ahem, interests. They find themselves weirdly entwined and move awkwardly toward a deeper mutual understanding in an ending that surprises us all. The repartee is fast and witty and very 2007. The portrayal of the relationships between the three main characters and their relationships with teachers and reporters, is hilarious and very much in line with how Millenials view Boomers - quaint, clueless and easily to run cirlces around.

The play debuted late last year off-Broadway in New York and has also been staged in Chicago and on the radio. I heard a production on the radio Saturday night by LA Theatre Works. It is reportedly being produced as a movie. If that is true, I predict it will be bigger than Hamlet 2 and Juno.