Nick Shore

Unless you lot compete in a market that specifically targets
youth, you probably don't spend a lot of fourth dimension thinking about the emergence of
the then-called Millennial Generation in America today.

And if yous don't spend a lot of time thinking almost
Millennials, it may come up every bit a surprise to you that at 100 million potent they are
the single largest generational cohort in American history, dwarfing their
predecessors Generation 10, and even out-sizing that near famous of all
generational behemoths, The Baby Boomers.

"But we don't sell gum or acne cream," you may still be
thinking, "and so why should we intendance?"

Consider for a moment the half-century long trajectory that
The Boomers take taken from 1960s to the nowadays mean solar day. Those bearded idealists
of the civil rights movement are the cocky same retirees at present marching with
placards in the streets protesting for heath-intendance reform. It's non hard to see
just how many of the tectonic shifts in culture and commerce over the last half
fifty years accept been powered by the demands of the Boomer generation. From Pepsi's co-opting of Sixties counter-civilization, to the
casualization of the workplace, there is a wealth of evidence for how closely linked broad
changes in the American landscape take been to the Boomers moving through fourth dimension,
like the proverbial egg in the snake.

Millennials are not only a more voluminous generation than
Boomers, but better educated, more self-esteemed, more demanding, more
technologically savvy, more empowered and wired to win at the game of life. And they
are pouring daily by the tens of thousands into the commercial and cultural
mainstream.

In short, no thing what business organization you are in, they are your
next generation of consumers.

Whether three years, 5, or x from now, sooner or later
the Millennials volition be the ones standing in the grocery isle, or in the bank
managers office, or in the automobile dealership evaluating your production or service
offering, request "is this for me, really?" More likely, of class, they won't
be standing in any of these places, just doing it on a voice-activated iPad
while driving to work in Smart Machine Version 3.0, but you become the signal.

And if you want a vision of the kind of bear on this
generation can accept on an manufacture, only look at some of the categories where
they accept come up to play already: music– transformed from a large label album-driven model to something and then
customizable and but-in-time that it's barely recognizable every bit the industry information technology
in one case was; clothing–the fast manner of a Forever 21 shattering traditional
"1 merchandise driblet per flavour" models into shards; and of form the
social networking "industry," remarkable in so many ways, not to the lowest degree of which is
the speed with which a single business entity can go from null to half a
billion consumers.

At MTV, of class, youth is our market.

MTV made a decision at its betoken of inception to never abound
old with the audition but to reinvent periodically for each "generation adjacent."
So naturally, we have been one of the companies impacted first and dramatically
by the Millennial generation coming of age as entertainment consumers.

Because immature people are our viewers and because they
are so fast and then fickle (and becoming ever more so), we study them with a
deep intensity and intimacy. We strive to understand not just the "what," but
also the "why"–their drives (conscious and unconscious), desires, passions,
fears, and challenges.

In all of our work with Millennials, we accept identified a
serial of traits that are quite unique to this generation (versus prior
generations), and which we believe will have dramatic implications on who
they will become as consumers–not only consumers of entertainment,
but of cars, homes, refrigerators, and shampoo.

Before describing these principles, information technology's important to
highlight two tectonic forces that move below much of what defines the
uniqueness of this generation. The first, and peradventure nigh important, is the
recalibration of the nuclear family and, as a consequence, the manner this
generation was parented.

A century of "parent-centered" nuclear family unit has steadily
been under-going a paradigm shift,
and may have but passed the tipping indicate. The nucleus of the family has been moving
towards the child, and Millennials look like the first generation raised in
that new nuclear family unit structure. No longer the hierarchical structure with
disciplinarian parent "leadership," the new family is flattened to a democracy, with
collective (if not child-driven) controlling process. Parents are more like
best friends, life coaches, or equally we at MTV call them "peer-ents."

75% of Millennials in an MTV study agreed that "Parents of
people my age would rather back up their children than punish them," 58% agreed,
"My parents are similar a all-time friend to me."

No longer is information technology necessary to "insubordinate confronting" authoritarian
parents to individuate, engage in acts of self-expression, or push at the
boundaries. Every bit 1 youth psychologist we work with pointed out, "Parents don't
say y'all tin can't go to the party, they create safe spaces to consume alcohol, they
say Tin can I pick you lot upward subsequently?, Here'south coin for a taxi."

Self-expression, having your voice heard, post-obit your own
path–these are all values that are positively encouraged in modernistic parenting
styles. Why rebel when you but need to explain your beliefs in terms of "my
experiment in cocky discovery."

Percentage of
Millennials who agree with the following statements
(from MTV Millennial Edge
Report, 2010):
• I'thou always expressing
myself in different ways – 81%
• I hate it when other
people expect me to live by their rules – 76%
• If I want something,
zero is going to terminate me – 69%

In short, the ability dynamics of the family have shifted
dramatically, and much of the empowered, one could fifty-fifty say "super-powered"
style of the Millennials has its roots in this redistribution.

And in the way of pouring gasoline on a fire, the 2nd tectonic
shift is technology. The "You Demand Information technology," push push button, everything free, e'er
on civilization of technology and the Internet has amplified much of the "social
coding" of the way Millennials were parented. And as many commentators take
already pointed out, the revolution will be tweeted. The ability is in the hands
of a million bearding hands, and tin can be wielded plain result free,
in real time, with the click of a mouse.

Based on what we know virtually what makes this generation tick,
and what we hear and notice about them on a daily basis, we have distilled
down v principles, or peradventure they would exist meliorate described as challenges
for businesses thinking about what it will mean to cater to this Millennial
consumer every bit they come on line in a major fashion to more and more sectors of
business.

i. What
will it mean when co-creation with your consumer becomes office of your business
model?

A generation
raised on "children should exist seen and heard" simply will not exist a passive
consumer of anything. They will need a vocalization in, a stake in, even a artistic
point of view about, everything that your business does–from the product
itself to the way it is sold and marketed, to the social responsibility
policies of the organization itself. They may or may not choose to use that
power (for instance just miniscule percentages of people actually contribute to
the oversupply-sourced IP of Wikipedia), but they will demand that the mechanisms
are in place that give them the option to participate and the feeling that
co-creativity drives the evolution process.

And this probably won't be a 1-fourth dimension event ("lets get and do
some creative focus groups and become our audience to help us retrieve about
innovation"). It will be an on-going existent fourth dimension feedback loop with demonstrable
touch and validation built in. One of the near buzzed about ad campaigns of
the concluding few years is Old Spice, where real time changes happen in the
commercial creative as a effect of input from the audience. There'due south the beauty
of the idea itself, and then at that place's the power of the feedback/validation loop
created with the audience–"See, you lot matter, your vote counts, your impact is
felt and something moves every bit a consequence, you lot are smart and creative and you have … power."
And speaking of smarter …

2. What
will it mean to make your production ten times smarter than it is today?

In all the research we conduct with this generation at MTV,
the word we perhaps hear the nigh is "smart" (closely followed by "random,"
"awkward," "awesome," and "love"). "Smart" means a multitude of things to the
generation, just i affair that'south common is that information technology carries a very loftier premium
and social currency. For the nearly educated generation in history, told by so-called "velcro" parents that smart is
everything, it should hardly be a surprise. And indeed 57% of the generation
consider themselves smarter than their parents, and 68% agree that "Nerds are
the new jocks"!

We already have the Smartphone, the Smart Auto and even Smart
H2o. What is smart lather, smart diapers, smart gas stations.

When you investigate the concepts of smartness further with
the generation, some of the nuances that sally give fascinating insights into
their commonage psyche. For something to be "smart" it has to, for example, entertain
me, call back what I practice and anticipate my needs, do "everything" for me, have
built-in complication and layers of meaning, shape-shift, be as smart as me!

3. What
volition it mean to be in a "two player game" with your consumer?

Millennials accept a natural predisposition to view situations
in terms of the metaphor of a game. Accept the workplace–"what are the rules of
this earth, what are the levels, how exercise I become to the xthursday one as
quickly as possible (that nice CEO suite on the corner of the elevation floor), is
there a shortcut, a smart flop, a secret entrance, a magic potion?" Foursquare,
the location-based social networking site, literally turns 1's social life
into a game complete with badges, medals, trophies, and even mayor-hood awarded
to "players."

The generation learned young and learned well how to
expertly negotiate with their parents to become a pass out of homework or a day
off school … power-players in the game called "family." Raised on a nutrition of almost millions of hours of World Of
Warcraft, elaborate world kid-centered "constructs" like Harry Potter, and
soccer trophies for the whole team, Millennials desire to win.

Asked virtually "worldview" based on the following phrases, the
intergeneration differences hither become quickly apparent.

"Game" the system:
Millennials – 53%
Boomers – 26%

Protest the organization:
Millennials – 13%
Boomers – 59%

Marketing to this generation may exist more similar a ii player
game, where everyone's looking for the win win. How will your campaigns create
a sense of "play" on the part of the audience, a sense of depth and levels, a
sense of engagement, a validation loop, and ultimately a sense of material and
emotional victory (or even of beingness the special one that figured out how to
game information technology )? In the marketing campaign for Halo 3, level after level of depth was
buried inside layers of the marketing campaign, consumers freeze-framing DVR
playback of commercials to pick upwards codes embedded in the film to follow
breadcrumbs down Internet wormholes for the adjacent clue.

4. What
will it mean to your business concern to operate in on-going versions rather than a
concluding product?

If we had to identify someone who is the face up of the
Generation, the fashion that Bob Dylan mayhap was for the Boomers or Kurt Cobaine
for Xers, so today that face would be Lady Gaga'southward. Considered across doubt the "about interesting
person today" by the generation the core feature of Gaga is the speed
and ferocity of her self-reinvention. She is doing in 10 minutes what it likewise
Madonna 10 years to reach.

Who do you think is the most interesting person in pop culture today?

Size of give-and-take indicates book of response:

The parental premium placed on cocky expression for today's
kids, combined with technology tools to literally "curate the self" in real
time, has created an insatiable ambition for newness. If something does not
version, information technology quickly becomes slow. This has ever, of course, been the
consumer need that drives every company'southward innovations engine, but the requisite
rpm of that engine is quickly going into the cherry-red zone as this generation come
on line as buyers. It'southward no longer acceptable, for example, that chewing gum
remain the same flavor throughout the duration of the chew. No, the gum has to
flavor-shift mid chew lest the chewer'south dopamine/adrenaline cycles kickoff to
fade and new stimulus is required.

5. What
volition it mean when there is no such matter as an un-connected product?

Everything nosotros are learning about the generation points to a
need to be constantly connected, existentially uncomfortable with the feeling
of existence "lonely," experiencing a fear of missing out when they stray to the hinterlands
of their social graph. 1 interesting piece of research led us to understand
how the automobile, then squarely a symbol of freedom and independence for prior
generations, has get in danger of beingness perceived as a "disconnection
device" for Millennials. "Trapped" inside the hermetically sealed vehicle, "alone",
and of class unable to text and check your condition update, the feeling of the
open road becomes the very antithesis of freedom, more similar isolation.

A product which is 'un-connected' has a certain inertness
for the generation. At the more superficial level even the most inert production
can build a web site and "connect". Just it is much more challenging to
re-imagine your production experience by request how to increase its innate
connectedness. What would a connected retail experience wait like? Perchance like
the so called "haul video" syndrome where kids film themselves in changing rooms
trying out different outfits, post the picture show of their ensembles in existent time,
and seek feedback from their social network on which ones look best earlier
purchasing.

Every bit the erstwhile hockey adages goes, y'all don't skate to where the
puck is, you skate to where it's headed. And in the example of the Millennials,
we're looking at a hundred million pucks moving towards open ice where bold,
as-nonetheless-unimagined products and services volition some twenty-four hours await them. So heads-upwards, here come the Millennials.

Nick Shore is Senior Vice President of Strategic Consumer Insights and Research at MTV. He is responsible for all of MTV's inquiry efforts across MTV, MTV2, mtv.com, mtvU, and MTV Tr3s platforms.