Millennials Are Wired Differently
Tuesday, 11 October 2011 13:22
Are you marketing to the younger generation — those born after the explosion of digital media that began in the 1970-90s? Some call them Millennials. Others call them Echo Boomers. Whatever you call them, if you are marketing to them, there is new evidence that they not only have different interests and preferences than their older counterparts, but their brains are wired differently. They are actually wired for digital media.
We know because Time Inc. has commissioned a research project on this topic in which neuroscientists are wiring the brains of Millennials and older media consumers. Although the study, dubbed "A (Biometric) Day In The Life," will not be released until early 2012, preliminary findings released at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX conference in New York indicate that the brains of these two groups are, in fact, quite different. This means that marketers looking to reach this group need to approach them differently.
Findings were released on two participants — Rachel, a 23-year-old “digital native,” and Dan, a 47-year-old “digital immigrant.” As reported by MediaPost, Rachel lives and dies by her smartphone, incessantly multi-tasks media options (but had no interest in television), and averaged more emotional engagement but had fewer peaks and valleys of intensity. Dan, on the other hand, had no interest in his smartphone, enjoys watching television, and during the survey observation period, didn’t multi-task media at all.
Granted, individuals will be different, but these participants must have been sufficiently representative of the overall results to have been used in the pre-release. So the takeaway is that as a marketer, when targeting Millennials, you can’t do the same old, same old just using digital rather than traditional media. Your entire approach needs to adjust.
Multi-tasking Millennials have short attention spans and only limited engagement. To reach them, this requires repetition. It means using multiple media to reinforce the message. It also means you don’t have much time to tell your story. That story may need to be told in snippets. You may be building your brand, your message, and your story piece by piece. This will require a coordinated marketing strategy that pulls together all of these media in an integrated fashion to tell and reinforce that story.
It’s not just where and when you tell your message. It’s also how.
But here’s something that may be non-intuitive, and it didn’t come from the preliminary results released from this research. It comes from other surveys that consistently show that, among the younger generation, print needs to be part of the mix. As counter-intuitive as it is, survey after survey shows that Millennials are responding to direct mail. As far as I know, nobody knows why. Perhaps because the mailbox is less full. Perhaps because direct mail is outside the box from what they are used to. Whatever it is, it works.
So if you’re targeting Millennials, mix it up. Coordinate it. Integrate it. Write for short attention spans. Use mobile. Blend in print. This ain’t your father’s target market.
