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Peter Koeppel is Founder and President of Koeppel Direct, a leader in direct response television, online, print and radio media buying, marketing and campaign management. With a Wharton MBA and over 25 years of marketing and advertising experience, Peter has helped Fortune 500 companies; small businesses and entrepreneurs develop direct marketing campaigns to increase profits.

Peter started Koeppel Direct in 1995 and has built it into one of the leading direct response media-buying firms in the U.S. Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/DRTVBUYER

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The Kids Are All Right: Targeting Millennials

Written on
Sep 24, 2010 
Author
Peter Koeppel  |
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The Kids Are All Right: Targeting Millennials

kids_smallADOTAS – The current generation of people under the age of 34 is the first of what we call “digital natives” — those born, raised and living almost all of their lives with some sort of computer technology present and accessible.

These “Millennials,” as they are referred to in studies and reports, are those born into the digital millennium and they represent both the fastest-growing and the hardest-to-reach market around. These are the young men and women who’ve grown up and come of age with digital trends, marketing, gadgets and more in front of them from Day One. They are the most comfortable at using, dismissing and benefiting from them.

So when it comes to targeting this ever-important, tech-savvy demographic, what’s a marketer to do?

Millennials are harder to target than are their predecessors, particularly when it comes to marketing via traditional media. This generation doesn’t tend to read newspapers or watch TV in the same way, but over 70% of its members engage in social media of various kinds (from blogs to social networks to microblogs to media sharing sites) to exchange and receive information with friends, acquaintances, colleagues and news sources.

Targeting the Millenial means that these forms of “new media” must be mined and used to their utmost. That said, it is important to remember and beware that this group is cynical when it comes to advertising. Most will not join mailing lists, although they do see advertising as a way to learn of (not necessarily about). Above all, this generation expects entertainment value from the advertising they’re presented with. (Source: Experient Simmons National Consumer Survey, 2010.)

This generation is more likely to respond to marketing that is augmented by intelligent, witty or otherwise entertaining advertising.

The Millenial Buzz

The buzz around this new generation of savvy users focuses not on traditional media such as broadcast TV or printed matter, but on websites and blogs and online social networking sites like Facebook.

The new generation of millennial entrepreneurs are taking advantage of this, bypassing traditional media outlets and instead advertising almost exclusively with social networking and new media. At the same time, graduates and the newly-unemployed are using social media as a means towards employment like no generation before.

The days of circling ads in red on the back of the newspaper and making cold calls are coming to an end as the new generation leverages social networking and out-of-the-box thinking to get interviews and get hired. And that makes sense, because in the current economy, Millennials are the hardest hit by the recession and make up the largest section of the unemployed, with an estimated 14% of them out of work.

My Information, Your Information

Along with its heavy use of social media, this generation is also more knowledgeable and selectively careful when it comes to privacy.

Realizing that one’s online presence could affect their lives, job prospects, love life and more, this age group is much more privacy-conscious than previous generations. In one poll from Oxygen Media Insights Group, 89% of female social media users reported that they would never put anything on Facebook they do not want their parents to see and 72% believe that what they do put there will likely stay there forever. What’s more, over half say they don’t trust Facebook with their private information.

All of these trends lead to this: social media and new media are the future (as well as the “now”) of marketing. Traditional or older media may continue to have a place, but its influence will continue to decrease as this generation and the next spend more and more time away from printed and televised media.

Fresh ways of thinking, incorporating new trends into existing marketing campaigns and using entertainment as a key “tactic” are all important strategies when it comes to marketing to the Millennials. New and innovative business models, faster and better service, higher amounts of engagement and other approaches are more likely to garner benefits than are traditional “push-the-brand” name-recognition-only forced marketing that may have been the norm in the past

Above all, marketers will need to stay ahead of the curve by embracing, utilizing and (when appropriate) dropping mediums. Two years ago, no one was predicting the enormous impact Facebook would have on marketing and this generation. Finding today the Facebook of tomorrow is where effective marketing and, ultimately, a new payoff, will be found for those marketers who not only spot but act upon these trends.





Reader Comments.

It is great how marketing is changing over the years. Millennials are a huge part of the marketing pie right now and will only continue to be a bigger slice as time goes on. It is crutial that we realize how to effectively market to those millennials. Great article!!

Posted by Fred Ranchero | 3:12 pm on February 14, 2011.

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