Millennials are to digital marketers to what baby boomers are to geriatrics — they’ll forever be linked like mac and cheese.
The demographic is so prevalent, the White House released a 49-page report last year titled “15 Facts About Millennials.” You know you have staying power when the government produces a headline-optimized sermon targeted right at you.
Discovering unique methods to reach Generation “Netflix and Chill” with tactics that actually work is when marketing professionals earn pay dirt. After all, adults ages 18-through-34 total $1.3 trillion in annual buying power, yet, still rather rent, share and barter than buy. Use trumps ownership, and getting them to change their ways is proving to be a tall task as they largely ignore traditional and online advertisements. So how can marketers make the most and capitalize on the demographic?
For one, big brands such as Royal Caribbean (patrons riding zip lines/chefs cooking meals on its ships) and BMW (24-hour teaser of the M2 coupe) are livestreaming via Periscope. “There is an authenticity to this kind of campaign,” said Kara Wallace, the cruise operator’s vice president of North American marketing, per Reuters. “This is going to be the future of marketing.”
There are many brand-building ways to use Twitter’s video app, allowing marketers to share news, provide product demonstrations, conduct remote focus groups and building personal relationships. Plus, Periscope is free — and that’s a universal world everyone gravitates toward.
But that doesn’t mean premium content and entertainment can’t come with a dollar sign. Millennials living stateside are willing to pay for entertainment. According to a recent survey from the American Press Institute, between news and entertainment, 78 percent of Generation Y pay for at least one type of entertainment service (movie, video games, cable, music and TV downloads) compared to 40 percent who pay for news.
Christine Barton, a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, told Yale Insights that “millennials are not the primary spend or the primary customers of every sector.”
“If you think about the way that marketing used to work, it was much more of a linear relationship,” she said. “Today, it is much more of what I would describe as an ecosystem. You see over time the sectors they are impacting. You also see the sectors that see them coming and know that they have to foundationally change their product, or service, or value proposition — and they’re starting to prepare for that.”
Deciphering the code to break into the first digital generation’s coffers remains great. Authentic content and empowering products will only ease those efforts.