10 truths about Millennials

10 truths about Millennials

J Walker Smith
The Futures Company

The Millennial Generation is all about adaptability and using technology to invent new ways to play, share and consume, says The Futures Company's J Walker Smith

For all the attention and headlines they get, the Millennial Generation (also known as Generation Y) are misunderstood. Much of what is said about them is anecdotal – good stories, not good theory. A great deal of what is reported about them from surveys is simplistic. Advanced analysis and long-term tracking data are needed to tease apart what is true of all youth from what is special about Millennial youth. A lot of the criticism directed at them comes from middle-aged experts pining for a bygone era that was stitched together with a yarn that has little bearing on the crazy-quilt complexity of life today. The Futures Company 2010 Global Monitor interviewed 27,000 people in 20 countries, and with this research a detailed assessment of the received wisdom about Millennials was completed. A new report, Unmasking Millennials:The Truth Behind a Misunderstood Generation, by Yannis Kavounis, a director at The Futures Company, and consultant Sophie Stringer, sets the record straight, including these ten truths about Millennials.


1. MILLENNIALS ARE NOT BABY-FACED TEENAGERS

There is no consensus on the exact generational boundaries of Millennials, but roughly speaking, this is the cohort born in the early 1980s to mid-1990s. This range of years includes some teens, but the bulk of Millennials are in their early twenties to early thirties. Millennials are young adults, facing adult decisions, responsibilities and anxieties. They are caught up in a life-stage transition to adulthood, and they are struggling to find a place for themselves in a world ill-designed for the 21st Century challenge of sustaining prosperity in the face of limits and scarcity.


2. MILLENNIALS DO NOT HAVE AN ETERNALLY OPTIMISTIC OUTLOOK

The optimism so often attributed to them has been nothing more than the buoyant enthusiasm that always characterises youth. Now that Millennials have become parents, with more obligations and a wider range of life experiences, their optimism is fading, just as it does for every generation. This is entirely consistent with research about happiness, which shows a U-shaped curve when plotted by age. Cheerful youth become stressed adults, who look forward to a contented retirement. Millennials are aging into a time of pressure and strain that will take the edge off their celebrated optimism and good cheer. What's remarkable about Millennials is not that they are a disproportionately upbeat generation, but that they remain able to keep their wits about them and pass through the ordinary progression of sentiment and outlook, notwithstanding the extraordinary times in which they live.


3. THE OPEN, EXPANSIVE, PRO-SOCIAL MINDSET OF MILLENNIALS IS CLOSING AS THEY MATURE

The focus of Millennials is shifting from the world at large to their own worlds as the demands of their personal situations become greater and more pressing. Making a difference matters to Millennials, but not as much or in the ways that all the hype would lead one to believe. Growing up with sustainability as a fact of life means it's no big deal for Millennials to do their bit, and they expect brands to do the same. But taking it on as a cause is another matter entirely. Unfortunately, painting them green is the sort of Millennial typecasting that has the potential to do the most damage. Many expect Millennials to step up and take charge of planetary priorities in areas such as climate change, deforestation, depletion of fishing stocks, overcrowding and water shortages. Name a problem and Millennials are the hope for the future of the planet. Unfortunately, passing the buck like this to Millennials gives older generations psychological permission to delay taking any action themselves when immediate action might be exactly what is required.

Millennials are tied to technologies that are always changing, upgrading and leapfrogging from one to the next


4. MILLENNIALS ARE NOT USHERING IN A WORLD DEVOID OF MATERIAL AMBITIONS AND LIFESTYLES

Certainly, they are post-materialistic in their interests in experiences, creativity and contentment. Happiness is higher on their agenda than it has been for their immediate predecessors. But many Millennials remain utterly motivated by material things, and for all Millennials, material comfort is not something they are willing to forego in order to find satisfaction or to make a difference.


5. MILLENNIALS ARE ALL ALIKE, YET WHOLLY UNALIKE

Analysis of The Futures Company Global Monitor data identified four overarching attitudinal segments among Millennials. In this way, Millennials are different. But these segments hold together tightly and reliably across different countries. So, in this way, Millennials are alike. The same four value and lifestyle segments show up everywhere. These findings are a reminder that differences abound, so it is tricky to generalise about Millennials. But despite differences, certain dynamics hold true for all Millennials – not just commonalities of opinion, but commonalities of the defining dimensions that cleave Millennials everywhere into comparable segments.


6. THE STEREOTYPICAL DEPICTION OF MILLENNIALS IS TRUE, BUT ONLY IN A SMALL WAY

When looking at the distribution of the Millennial segments across the globe, there is one segment that fits the bill as an optimistic, open, creative and group-minded generational cohort. But, globally, this is the smallest segment. It is bigger in Western markets, but even in those markets it is still not the biggest.


7. TECHNOLOGY IS THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC FOR MILLENNIALS

It is central to every aspect of their lives. It is the facilitator and portal for every interest and passion and the way in which they define themselves as unique from other generations.


8. MILLENNIALS USE TECHNOLOGY TO CREATE NEW SPACES AND INVENT NEW WAYS TO PLAY SHARE AND CONSUME

Technology is about more thanconverting every offline experience into an online format. Like everything, however, technology usage occurs across a spectrum of engagement. At one extreme, it is a palette for radical creativity; at the other, an instrument of productivity. Similarly, an intensely personal, insular style of using technology is just as prevalent among Millennials as the extensive, unabashed social style of sharing, connecting, revealing and exposing that gets all the headlines.


9. MILLENNIALS ARE REDRAWING GEOGRAPHIC BOUNDARIES IN UNEXPECTED WAYS

Markets that are wholly dissimilar in almost every other way look strikingly alike when it comes to Millennials. Their closest neighbours are other Millennials, who share attitudes, not checkpoints. For example, Argentina and France are first cousins when it comes to Millennials. The generational scaffoldings in Argentina and France more closely resemble one another than they do those of neighbouring countries in Latin America and Western Europe, respectively. The ratios of the four Millennial segments are virtually identical, making these two countries tribal mirror images of one another. Local differences matter, but the mix of attitudes and motivations makes for a similar cocktail of brand opportunities in both markets. While this could be said about any generational cohort, it matters more when marketing to Millennials because of their prowess with information and social technologies that expose them to a greater range and diversity of cultural influences. Millennials in Argentina and France, for example, are not only alike in the distribution of their attitudes, but in their exposure to gadgets, styles, fashions and designs. They are connected by a broad outlook of motivations and lifestyle aspirations that unifies them as a coalition of motive, impulse and inspiration.


10. WHATEVER YOU KNOW ABOUT MILLENNIALS IS LIKELY TO CHANGE TOMORROW

Don't take anything you know about Millennials as the final word. More than any generation in recent history, Millennials live in a fluid world that requires an unprecedented mutability of mind and action, and plasticity of identity and disposition. Millennials expect to live their lives in constant transition. They anticipate holding many jobs. They are tied to technologies that are always changing, upgrading and leapfrogging from one to the next. They have ridden a roller-coaster market of stratospheric highs and ruinous lows. They have witnessed overnight overthrows of long-standing regimes by people their own age, transforming their countries in a flash. Millennials will fashion more fluid lives in response to a more protean world. What works for Millennials in one category or context is not assured of working in another. Millennials are defined now by possibility not closure, by engagement not detachment, by developing not finishing. Life has become a matter of relentless transitions. Flex, adaptability and responsiveness are the keys to success in marketing to Millennials.

http://www.warc.com/Content/ContentViewer.aspx?MasterContentRef=145aaa27-91f1-42bb-b4f9-319510818c8c