Millennials 101

How food chains can get more from Millennials

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:32:00 +0200

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.

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

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:27:49 +0100

“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..."

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:32:45 +0200

“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

Helping Millennials and Digital Natives discover old gadgets

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:15:32 +0200

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

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:15:09 +0200

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.”

Puberty before age 10: a new "normal"?

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:13:20 +0200

“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.’ ”

The 14yo girl who become a real estate mogul

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:13:13 +0200

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.

Digital Natives may have serious problems in some jobs

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:13:06 +0200

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.

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

Thu, 24 May 2012 01:27:10 +0200

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.

Where have all the young men gone?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:29:56 +0200

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.

The Re-Generation

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:29:43 +0200

Being 11 to 13 in 2008, meant you were born in 1995-1997. That, I suspect, was the switch point — the cut off for Generation Y and the beginning of the new generation, one that I call the Re-Generation.

This new Re-Generation is shaped by the Recession, steeped in Reality, well-aware of the need for Restraint and Responsibility, and challenged throughout their lives to Rethink, Renew, and Regenerate.

Many events influenced our youngest generation; I’ll discuss others in subsequent posts. But the economy is almost certainly near the top of the list. How has this generation made sense of recent economic events?

Five themes emerge: uncertainty, less emphasis on materialism, smart frugality, savings and debt avoidance, getting rich through reality.

Advertising and aggressive marketing pumped last august London's riots

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:31:49 +0200

A survey of those affected by the August riots in Tottenham, London, found that 85% of people feel advertising puts pressure on young people to own the latest products.

More than two-thirds of people feel materialism among young people is a problem within their local area. A similar number (70%) feel that steps need to be taken to reduce the amount of advertising aimed at young people.

Read the Riots Communities and Victims Panel Report

"37% of consumers ages 18 to 22 prefer online customer service to the telephone."

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:13:02 +0200

“37% of consumers ages 18 to 22 prefer online customer service to the telephone.”

- Mark Tamis

From the Generation Y to Generation Why Bother

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:52:03 +0200

Young Americans have become risk-averse and sedentary. The timing is terrible. With an 8.3 percent unemployment rate and a foreclosure rate that would grab the attention of the Joads, young Americans are less inclined to pack up and move to sunnier economic climes.

Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother. The Great Recession and the still weak economy make the trend toward risk aversion worse. Children raised during recessions ultimately take fewer risks with their investments and their jobs. Even when the recession passes, they don’t strive as hard to find new jobs, and they hang on to lousy jobs longer.

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Tue, 06 Mar 2012 11:00:02 +0100

An old Xbox tells us a story about a big boy who finally become a man

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:48:02 +0100

“With my friend’s Xbox, his gaming career is compact enough that it truly does tell a story. He and I have known each other more than a decade, and I’ve shared, as close friends do, in his and his wife’s lifetime milestones over that time: moves, professional accomplishments, family celebrations. But here I saw him in a new light. I caught a glimpse of my friend transiting from his late 20s to his early 30s, from fiancé to husband to father. I saw a man past midnight, whose time for games was running out.”

London is struggling against a baby boom

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:00:05 +0100

It’s a frightening time for those planning education or health care or—worst of all—housing. “We thought we had it nailed,” says Baljit Bains, head of the Greater London Authority’s demography unit. “We were a typical industrialised country, with fertility dropping and economic prosperity. Then these crazy fertility numbers came, and the economic downturn.” As so often, the capital is a crucible for experimentation.

A generation of entrepreneurs

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:02:05 +0100

Millennial Branding and analytics firm Identified teamed up to comb through millions of US Facebook profiles and discovered where folks aged 18 to 29 are working. The survey results found that the job title “owner” is the fifth most popular one listed by folks under 30. This showed the researchers that young people are starting or running their own businesses or freelancing. Even though most of their companies won’t succeed, they are demonstrating an unprecedented entrepreneurial spirit.

Researchers found that just seven percent of those surveyed listed worked for a Fortune 500 company and the single employer most-often cited was the U.S. military. Big employers most often cited included the nation’s biggest chains, such as Walmart, Starbucks and Target.

What has the recession done to Millennials?

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:50:50 +0100

The circumstances surrounding the Millennial generation are particularly strange. Many came of age in the longest economic expansion of the 20th century and graduated into the worst recession since the 1930s.

[…]

Adulthood has probably been delayed, permanently, for better or worse. It’s not just the recession, which has interrupted plans for financial independence. It’s young people who have delayed plans for their own financial independence, by going to school. Every year, more twentysomethings are graduating from college than the year before. We should celebrate this, mostly. College debt might be the best investment in the world. But with more twentysomethings in school, fewer people in their early 20s will be getting married, buying houses, or having children. This the logical result of our choices. Blame the Great Recession for delaying adulthood for millions of Millennials. But “blame” the Millennials, too.

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Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:12:55 +0100