Alloy's Media + Marketing's Samantha Skey gives iMedia Summit attendees a crash course in understanding and reaching the "millennial" generation.
They're already calling MySpace passé, they seek out socially-conscious brands and they represent $350 billion in annual spending power. Meet the Millenials. Born between 1980 and 2001, after the slack-heavy Generation X, purpose-driven Millenials are the second biggest generation in history. In total, there are 74 million Millenials. That's just 3 million shy of their grandparent's generation, the Boomers.
Like their predecessors, Millenials have a style all their own, and it's transforming the fastest growing media channel in history: the internet. "The way that this generation acts has helped social media grow so quickly," Alloy Media + Marketing's Samantha Skey told attendees at the iMedia Summit this week.
Skey, who serves as Alloy's SVP of strategic marketing, led a breakout session at the summit called "Millenials' Social Media Addiction."
If you're not studying Millenials yet, you will be soon: kids grow up so fast these days. In order to reach them, you've got to think like they do and start with a fundamental understanding of their approach to media. According the Skey, "Millenials are interested in total control over their media."
To reach previous generations, the old model of messaging worked: messages moved from brand to media to consumers. For Millenials, the best brands can do is weigh in on two-way interactions between consumer and media.
"Millenials are producers, promoters and absorbers of content," explained Skey. Unlike previous generations, Millenials are basically a self-contained media ecosystem. In this environment, marketers have the unique challenge of balancing between effective message delivery and staying out of people's way.
To reach Millenials, Alloy began by looking at a day in the life. To quantify it, they have a scatter graph that plots media usage against time of day, and qualifies usage as "ambient" (passive) or "engaged" (focused).
What they found is that Millenials are most engaged between the hours of 8 PM and 10 PM. Leading the pack of media they're engaged with are cell phones and the internet. Not surprisingly, cell phones have a slight advantage. According to Skey, "[cell phones] are leading by a hair, but the two [internet and cell phones] are going to merge soon anyway."
After understanding the when and what of media usage, Alloy looked at how Millenials were using media. "Most young people are engaging voyeuristically… looking at their peers and using them as a guide," said Skey. On a chart showing typical usage online, reading other people's profiles and checking out pictures were the top activities. Things like posting comments, working on their own profiles or checking out new music were much lower.
"Usually, kids will do a scan… check out their friends… and then go update their own profiles."
Another interesting revelation from Skey was the Millenials' value for face-to-face interaction with their friends, and how that value changed over time. For tweens (at the younger end of the Millenial generation), 81 percent prefer to hang out with friends in person. But it erodes to 51 percent by the time they reach their mid-teens, according to an Alloy/Harris Interactive Study.
Such findings are cause for both interest and concern. "There are wonderful benefits to online connections… but these kinds of things make you wonder how [Millenials] are going to do when they get into the real world."
Social issues aside, the findings demonstrate increasing focus on digital media among emerging age groups. To reach them, Skey suggested facilitating their online conversations; for example, setting up brand pages at social networking sites or creating a forum where kids can create profiles. Once a community like this begins, Millenials may visit in search of new friends. Another way to get involved, demonstrated Skey, was with branded wallpaper Millenials could add to their own profile pages.
At the strategic level, Skey recommended a "four-for-one" understanding. For each brand, Millenials expect four things:
- Competitive pricing: Remember, these are kids, and they have limited budgets.
- Do-gooder brand: Millenials have a high sense of social responsibility and expect their products to reflect that.
- Newness and innovation
- Discovery: Millenials like to feel as though they've found things on their own.
Skey stressed the importance of the "do-gooder" brand quality by explaining the fact that most Millenials feel they have a responsibility to make a positive change in the world. Even to the point of absurdity. "They're more likely to pay an extra $.50 for a bottle of 'Ethos' water than do some research and find that bottled water, in general, is bad for the environment," said Skey.
To infiltrate the Millenial market, Skey reiterated some of the more-or-less standard rules of engagement for today's marketers: take risks, be relevant and stay connected.
Mario Sgambelluri is associate publisher, iMedia Connection. Read full bio.
