While attending ad:tech San Francisco, it seemed to me that people had a lot to say about Millennials. "Millennials are tech savvy; Millennials know advertising," et cetera. Every time I heard the term "Millennials," it made my skin crawl. It was as if people were talking about my generation like we were a newly discovered species they didn't quite understand. But when I thought about it, I realized just how different my generation really is.
I got my first computer when I was 11 and my first cell phone at 13. By 14, I was building web pages, using instant messaging programs, downloading music from Napster and text messaging on my cell phone.
We grew up in an environment that didn't know what it was like not to have the internet and have grown to become the most influential and knowledgeable group of individuals today. And there are a lot of us: The recent Frank N. Magid presentation to OPA, "Generational Media Study" counted 79 million Millennials compared to 48 million Generation X-ers, with an average of those Millennials spending 2.5 hours online daily.
Millennials have developed the rules of conduct for interactive marketing, and if you break them, you risk the chance of doing significant damage to your brand identity. The OPA report mentioned above found that 70 percent of Millennials find internet advertising annoying and a huge factor towards that number was attributed to them feeling that companies don't know how to create internet ads for their age group.
Ouch.
With that said, you're probably wondering, "How do I reach the members of this demographic in a way that will engage their interest without harming my brand or campaign?"
Editor-in-Chief of iMedia Communications Brad Berens likens Millennials to "four-year-olds on crystal meth." Now I, myself don't twitch uncontrollably when I sit in front of my computer but I get his meaning. Usually I'm listening to music, with the television on, six tabs open on Firefox while instant messaging. If you want me to see your ad, you need to do it in a way that will capture my attention.
As iMedia's resident Millennial, I will give you the lowdown on exactly what we look for in a campaign, and ways to ensure you'll not only get our attention but get us excited about your brand as well.
Step one: get our attention
A recent CNN Money/Fortune article titled, "Attracting the twentysomething worker," highlighted the hurdles of working with Millennials. It brought up a point I find relevant for this conversation which is, Millennials are confident and have since they were young been told they were "special" and "unique," which is a nice way of saying we are very centered on ourselves. We've even been called "needy" and "entitled," and a group described to have one consciousness. I don't deny this allegation; the mere fact I began this article talking about myself proves this statement true, so what does that say to marketers?
It says, we like to think, talk and work on things that are centered around ourselves and our interests. So to get our attention, your campaign needs to be relevant to whatever content we are interacting with. Not only that, we want to interact with you on our terms.
Non-intrusive interaction
There is nothing more off-putting to a Millennial than something that gets in her way of completing the task she has at hand, whether that task is listening to music, watching a video clip or reading a blog. Millennials don't mind advertising but it is important to find a way to advertise with them, not to them.
Pandora, an online radio project, has found a way to market to youngsters in just that way. "It's important to us to make sure our advertising isn't getting in the way of the user's experience," Cheryl Lucanegro told me. "We make sure that our ads enhance our user experience rather than interrupt." And Pandora's listeners have seemed to respond very well to this model. Pandora users tend to listen to their customized radio stations two to three hours everyday and clickthrough rates are through the roof.
The way the ads work on the site is that they "skin" the site based on 400 character traits of the music a person is listening to as well as geographic, gender and age targeting. The advertising skin stays stagnant until a user interacts with his radio station. Once the user skips a song, or clicks on his play list, the skin will change to reflect a new brand or campaign. Pandora even has branded radio stations (big players such as Blackberry and Budweiser have participated in this program) that play music chosen by those brands. When users listen to one of these stations, the skin of that brand stays on their background.
On average, a user will participate with the site 7.5 times per hour, ensuring that the advertising on the site is actually being viewed by the user. It never interrupts the flow of music or the user's experience. Pandora currently has 7 million subscribers.
So what is Pandora doing right? It's customizing the user's experience with the ad based on heavily researched targeting methods, which means the advertising being exposed to the users is relevant to their interests. When users click on the ads, it's because they are interested in the product, and, because they choose to interact and are not forced to.
Now, let's say you developed a campaign that's not intrusive and relevant to the user; the time has come to get Millennials interested in your product.
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