By now we are all familiar with the plight of the Gen Y/millennial generation, those born after 1980. They have little or no savings. A third still live with their parents. Those with jobs are often under-employed and underpaid. Not only have they delayed the typical trappings of adulthood - marriage, home, kids - they may be stuck in perpetual adolescence.
However, millennials do have one big thing going for them: there are more people in their twenties than in their thirties, forties, or fifties in both the US and Australia.
These up-and-comers expect to be the ones in control.
The Gen Y/millennials, and those born from the early 2000s, are the people who every business needs to learn about and understand how they work. The seamless experience they desire with your business, to which they would probably never admit, is based on wanting to discover you and your product or service. On top of all that connectivity, you have to figure out how to facilitate their discovery, proactively but invisibly, to create the illusion that they are discovering all on their own. They are looking for something that makes even connectivity and connective collaboration seem old-fashioned, and they want that invisible magic. They want radical authenticity, and when they discover something they like, they devour it.
These new customers want nothing short of trust, transparency, and total openness. If they want loyalty, and expressed it as such, they would say it is your loyalty to them. The authenticity they demand is visceral, and if they sense that you are trying to make them think you are giving them autonomy but are really trying to sneak some management into the equation, they will have a problem, and you will have a bigger problem.
Their discovery and experience of you may cause them rapture, which means they want to devour you (in a good way), but it can just as easily cause them to demonise you. They post about you, drop you, and the relationship is over. The worst you get from this is to be summarily dismissed.
Bottom line: You are either great and loved raptly or really untrustworthy, uncool, and hence, demonised.
The power and importance of these kinds of connections is backed up by research. The Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising Survey, conducted in late 2011, involved 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries and found that 92% of consumers "around the world say they trust ‘earned media’...above all other forms of advertising - an increase of 18% since 2007..." Earned media is "word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family."
Bottom Line: Your friends are the ones advertising for you. For example, if a friend posted on Facebook that he uses a product, you'd be more likely to believe it and want to use it - versus seeing a commercial that a company is paying money for to influence you to buy something.
The ever shifting cultural and commercial tides cause continual adjustments in our approaches. What was once trusted (government, big corporations) are now suspect. What was taken for granted (truth in advertising) is now subject to lawsuits and fines.
The continual erosion of trust and truth are giving rise not to the marketing machines but to authenticity. Authenticity spreads virally, especially through the Internet. Authenticity for old school marketers is hard because it's their job to stage, craft, and simulate. Today, that is not selling so well.
Source: Alan Trefler: “Build for Change: Revolutionizing Customer Engagement through Continuous Digital Innovation”.
Business Tips
The Connected Mobility of the Millennial Generations
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- Category: Management
