Marketing to Millennials

I came across another interesting article at my internship, this time from Marketing Dive. This article is a short, easy read, and it focuses on the marketing tactics necessary to appeal to millennials. I found this article interesting not only because I am interested in marketing, but because I am a millennial myself. I was curious to see if the content of the article was something I agree with.

The article referred to millennials as an "audience segmented by their passion". I think that this is extremely true, and it can directly relate to marketing. Our age group has been bombarded with advertisements since we were little kids, so there is a wide range of clutter. With that said, advertisements need to spark our attention in order for us to get anything from them, or even notice them at all. This relates to our core course concept of emotional involvement, something we keep going back to all semester. Emotional involvement is the key to marketing success in many instances. Because millennials are driven by passion, generating emotional involvement and engagement is a key to successfully marketing to them.

In addition, the article mentions that the millennial generation is extremely diverse, making it more of a challenge to market to. Because of this, marketers have to focus in on individual passions and emotions in order to effectively reach this audience. I think for most market segments this has to be a huge struggle- because not all members of the segment are the same. They may fall under the same demographic or psychographic criteria, but their passions and emotions are most likely extremely diverse. I've discussed this in previous blog posts, but I know for a fact that I am unique among other college students who purchase brands.

Another aspect of the article that relates to our course concepts is toward the end, when it discusses how marketers need to be "educational, entertaining, and visual" when trying to reach millennials. Like our the famous empirical generalization #7 that states that "brand advertising often has a short-term sales impact. This impact decays over time. The most dramatic influence on short-term sales effect is creative copy". The educational, entertaining, and visual marketing tactics need to contain creative copy that will reach millennials. I was surprised that this did not mention emotional as one of the criteria for marketing messages to millennials. Because the article referred to this cohort as full of passion, it is clear that they need emotional messages. For instance, I would definitely describe myself as a passionate person, and I am greatly influenced by advertisements that trigger my emotions.

This article got me thinking a lot about different demographics and generations and how marketing to each one needs to be significantly different. Do companies with a large target market (say, of a range of age groups) come up with multiple marketing messages, depending on the particular age group? Marketing is a lot more work than I thought it was when I first began college, and articles like this make me realize how much thought and planning needs to go into sending a marketing message out to try and reach a target audience!