How food chains can get more from Millennials

There are some common themes and values held dear among all millennials.

Fresh and organic food: Millennials place an emphasis on the importance of organic and fresh food. Fast-casual chains do well with the demo because many of them promote a fresh or organic message.

Variety and customizable products: In the food world, millennials appreciate the ability to build their meals from an array of choices. Chains like Chipotle and Subway do well in this regard because each item is made to order.

Social change: Millennials care about social issues and tend to support companies that are actively helping address problems across the globe.

Sustainability: Particularly with food, millennials value companies that are proactive with sustainable farming practices and are environmentally conscious.

Social-savvy brands: Brands that have active Facebook and Twitter pages and engage in conversations with customers tend to have more long-term support from millennials.

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“Love and Lust in the Digital Age” by Havas Worldwide

When Millennials respondents to a survey were asked to name three terms that encapsulate the purpose of business, 51% cited societal development and only 39% cited profit.

— Deloitte, Business: Society – Millennial Survey 2011 

(Source: web.hbr.org)

Helping Millennials and Digital Natives discover old gadgets

To help Digital Natives and Millennials discover (or remember) gadgets from the past, there is on Youtube the Museum of Obsolet Objects.

Grown-up food brands are after your kids

Vicki Wellington, publisher of Food Network Magazine, said the idea for a kids’ magazine grew out of requests from readers for family-focused content and a recognition that children’s tastes were getting more sophisticated, a result of the rise of celebrity chefs, cooking programs and more dads cooking at home.

“It’s for parents, but there’s something going on in the culture,” Wellington said of the food craze. “There are 10 million kids under 10 watching Food Network programming. They’re eating things we never would have been eating when we were younger. We’re getting letters from parents sending photos of their kids cooking [recipes] from the issue. Guy [Fieri]’s got kids, and they’re cooking with him all the time.”

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Puberty before age 10: a new “normal”?

“I would have a long conversation with her family, show them all the data,” Greenspan continues. Once she has gone through what she calls “the proc­ess of normalizing” — a process intended to replace anxiety with statistics — she has rarely had a family continue to insist on puberty-arresting drugs. Indeed, most parents learn to cope with the changes and help their daughters adjust too. One mother described for me buying a drawer full of football shirts, at her third-grade daughter’s request, to hide her maturing body. Another reminded her daughter that it’s O.K. to act her age. “It’s like when you have a really big toddler and people expect the kid to talk in full sentences. People look at my daughter and say, ‘Look at those cheekbones!’ We have to remind her: ‘You may look 12, but you’re 9. It’s O.K. to lose your cool and stomp your feet.’ ”

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The 14yo girl who become a real estate mogul

When the housing market went belly up in South Florida, 14-year-old Willow Tufano learned a lesson from her real estate agent mother Shannon: the teen bought a home, along with her mom.

She got the money to buy it part from renting it for $700 a month and part from selling all the furniture and goods previous owners left inside the house.

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(Source: theweek.com)

Digital Natives may have serious problems in some jobs

Consulting, financial advising, and diplomacy: if you are a digital native seeking for a career in these fields you must be aware of your possible shortcomings and try to compensate for them.

Excessive, long-term exposure to electronic environments is reconfiguring young people’s neural networks and possibly diminishing their ability to develop empathy, interpersonal relations, and nonverbal communication skills.

With more time devoted to computers and less to in-person interactions, young people may be understimulating and underdeveloping the neural pathways necessary for honing social skills. 

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The importance of the co-view target: Disney Moms channel

Since toddlers don’t have median incomes, of course, much of the network’s sales pitch is centered on co-viewing. “There are a lot of advertisers looking to talk to mom in a place where she’s mom and not just woman 18-49,” says Rita Ferro, evp of Disney media sales and marketing.

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Where have all the young men gone?

In some countries, the greatest concern of employers is not with keeping up the numbers of women in their workforces. Rather it is with how to maintain some semblance of gender balance when the vast majority of their current recruits are women. Surprisingly, one was running operations in supposedly macho Iberia (Spain and Portugal), the other in China.

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