millennials on millenials

Millennials on Millennials: Tell Us About Media

Engaged With Our Digital Neighbors
– Kirstyn Scott

As millennials, we often get a bad rap for being disengaged. Whether it’s because of our Netflix binges, hours spent on Instagram, or constant Snapchatting, older adults tend to think that we are too engaged with screens and not engaged enough with our neighborhoods. However, our reality doesn’t necessarily exist in neighborhoods anymore. As the most transient generation thus far, we tend to connect less with places and more with familiar digital spaces and people who are like us. These are our digital neighborhoods.

Everyone still wants the ability to go out and have a drink with their friends, but we are still interacting with our online communities. The foodie/lifestyle friend will make sure to get a gorgeous shot of their food on the table while the architect friend will tag the restaurant in a post about its doors in a carefully curated #filthyfacade photo. These two posts on Instagram garnered directed reach to thousands of people for the restaurant without asking or trying. This earned advertising is beneficial for the restaurant, but was created with the poster’s community in mind.

It is incredibly difficult to measure earned reach on social media. Companies can measure metrics when the brand posts for itself, but it is much harder to track the immense monetary and social value in terms of being an unprompted millennial choice to promote.

There are some brands that walk the line between curating their own platforms while allowing millennials to have their own voice, as well. Music-loving skaters, artists, and individualists find each other through Converse’s Facebook, IG, and Twitter pages. Converse encourages everyday consumers and influencers to treat their shoes as a blank canvas to mark with art, wear and tear, or express their individuality in any other way to be featured on their site. By sharing these individual’s stories and through their commitment to discovering and developing local music talent, Converse has garnered 37.4M Facebook likes, 919K Twitter followers, and 2.3M IG followers who regularly interact with their posts with thousands of comments, favorites, and reposts. These millions of social consumers interact with each other in the branded, safe space that Converse has created, which in turn makes Converse an appealing brand.

Joe Pugliese of Buzzfeed recently spoke with us about being highly specific when targeting groups—the key takeaway being that when you try to target everyone, you are marketing to no one. When similar consumers get together and organize themselves into recognizable groups, half of the work is done. We’ve seen that authentic, curated brand spaces work well for millennials because we organize ourselves online by interest.
Marketers have always known to meet people in their living spaces—we have to meet millennials in their digital neighborhoods.

Should We Really Be Telling Millennials to Put Down Their Phones?
– Kirstyn Scott

Last night at dinner I was chastised for being on Instagram instead of speaking to my mother. She was upset, but brands would not have been. When posting my picture of our gorgeous dinner table (free marketing for the restaurant btw), I was exposed to four different car brands and three cosmetic brands while scrolling through the profiles I follow. The post from Sephora was so compelling that I returned later and purchased one of their products. This may sound scary to parents, but it’s a marketer’s dream world. Barring situations of putting themselves or others in danger, should we as marketers really tell the millennial generation who annually spends about $2,000 per person in digital purchases to get off their phones?

Mobile devices not only allow for efficient targeting efforts, but they also allow brands to curate spaces for millennials to engage each other on a variety of social media platforms. Guiding these created communities in a positive brand direction is the goal of social media managers, but standing out in a sea of names becomes increasingly difficult as millennials become desensitized. The ever-popular flat-lay is great for a blogger on Instagram, but we all know that the item was gifted or persuaded earned advertising. Due to the immediate disdain millennials have for paid ads on Instagram, and product placement becoming even more obvious, the forerunners of new experiential marketing to millennials will likely come out on top.

We can already see brands starting to mold their marketing strategies to the younger crowd. In a world where millennials prefer to interact with each other instead of products, our goal should be to facilitate interaction as a narrator so that they will buy our brand. A great example is Clinique, who recently started their #faceforward campaign that harkens to marketing without direct product display. Hannah Bronfman, Margaret Zhang, and Tavi Gevinson are three millennial influencers who seem to have amazing lives, and also happen have great skin. We are being encouraged to watch their videos on YouTube and IG, while sharing our thoughts about how we could have, and will be able to progress in various aspects of our lives via all platforms and discussions.

Touting the abilities and value of products makes a lot of sense, but millennials want to know who you are before they deem you valuable. Tapping into their need to communicate with each other in a way that is not blatant is one of the fastest ways to get their attention and loyalty. Millennials with smart phones are here to stay, and the most influential brands will be those who quickly understand how to harness the power of millennial mobile communications.

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