The Millennial Generation
as customers
From the book: “Millennials and the Popular
Culture: How the Next Generation will change
arts and entertainment” (Lifecourse.com)
Dr. Pete Markiewicz
Indiespace.com & Lifecourse Associates
Art Institute of California, Los Angeles
5 views of Millennials as customers
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The “entitlement” generation
The “call for a feeling” generation
The “DJ/generative” generation
The new Millennial brand
The “virtual” generation (next deck)
The entitlement generation
• Derives from the “special” core trait
– Millennials see their needs as “rights”
– Everyone’s a “micro celebrity” worthy of special
customer service
– Expect benefits (and a list) from the start
– Expect free stuff
• “Special” enough to deserve it
• They’ll give up their privacy to get it
– Helicopter parents will defend their “rights”
Reaching an ‘entitled’ generation
• Give them enhanced peer to peer communication
– it’s their greatest “right”
• Tell them they have a ‘right’ to virtual products and
services (that can reproduced at low to zero cost)
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Mashups, Widgets
Membership
Online entertainment
User-generated entertainment
• Let them barter their privacy for your content
• Parent/child co-marketing (parents will foot the bill)
The “call for a feeling” generation
• Derives from the “team-player” core trait
– Millennials don’t have an “inner compass” (unlike their
mostly Boomer parents)
– Online peer groups in Web 2.0 provide the “wisdom of
the crowd” for personal decisions
– Short, frequent “ping” style communication (texting
rather than long calls, emails, or letters)
– Definition of “friend” loosened to anyone you can
communicate with
– Virtual personas to broadcast their inner state (e.g.
avatars in virtual worlds)
“Inner compass” vs. “The wisdom
of the crowd”
Older generations have a feeling
(excitement, sadness), and call a
friend to share…
Millennials call a friend to get their next
feeling…
Millennials consult the group to know
what to think/feel next! – Sherri Turkle, MIT
Calling for a feeling…
“Students can’t go for even a few
minutes without talking on their
cellphone. There’s almost a
discomfort with not being
stimulated – a kind of ‘I can’t
stand the silence’…”
-Donald Roberts,Stanford Professor, quoted in “Generation
M”, Time, March 27, 2006
Answering a “call for a feeling”
• “Ping” them via their networks
• Viral, Internet every day (really hour)
• Mass media when Millennials are “sharing”
• Drop the Superbowl ads
• Tell them how to be… like everyone else
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Do this – your friends are all doing it!
We help everyone share what you do!
We help you get the coolest product/service possible
We tell you how to plan your future
We support the “right” social causes (‘clickthrough’
activism)
The DJ/generative generation
• Derives from “team player” core trait
– All Millennials are “media creators”
– Preferred technology is generative
– Media is “cut and paste” mashups
– More parts, options, features = better product
– Multiple origins, sources, ok
– “Authenticity” less important
Generative technology
• Millennials have grown up with technology
that encourages
– Configuration
– Flexibility
– User modification
– User sharing
– User-created content
Generative technologies have…
• Leverage – simple product or concept enables a
broad new range of activity
• Adaptability – easily built out, ramped up, modified
• Ease of mastery – users can learn how to use –
and repurpose product
• Accessibility – everyone can be creative using the
technology
• Transferability – changes/innovations made by one
group are easily transferred to others
• Payoff - allow amateurs to come up with the really
big innovations
Generative plus/minus
• Advantages
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Easily “ramped up”, modified
Allow amateur innovation
Innovations rapidly propagate through system
Quick fixes for problems
• Disadvantages
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Configurable may equal “too complex”
Too arcane (PNG versus GIF)
Lame amateur stuff crowd out professionals
Vastly more susceptible to damage through viruses,
hacking, malware
Examples
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Tea kettle versus “coffee pod”
MP3 versus iPod
iPod versus CD
Mac versus iPhone
Carterphone vs. Pod
• The “Carterphone” or “Pod” gambit
– Turn a generative system into a non-generative one
– Take end to end control
– Improve ease of use
– VASTLY improve security
• BUT, when a wireless carrier controlled which
cellphone could be used in their network
– Quality suffered
– Features valuable to consumers were removed
– Undesirable features were not improved
SOURCE: Tim Wu, “Wireless Carterphone, 1 International Journal off Communication
389, 404-15 (2008), at http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/152/96
Reaching the DJ/generative
• Millennials don’t want
– ‘Freedom’ for freedom’s sake at the hardware or
network level
– Generative ability at the software level
• Millennials DO want
– Configurability
– Generative “mashup” ability at content level
(media exchange, visual language)
– Sharing mashups (media creations versus opensource software)
The Millennial “mashup”
• Features
– Existing data and media re “DJed” together
– Generative tech allows end-users to “overlay” media
from other sources
– Results are easily shared via the network
• Types
– Media creations (e.g. blog)
– Virtual products/widgets (e.g. virtual pets)
• Creates value from
– Word-of-mouth advertising
– Virtual product sales and distribution
Selling to the generative…
• Your product should
– Let them generate at the content level
– Let them generate at the media level
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Build mashups
Create online characters/personas
Upload “micro-celebrity” video, commercials
Create/sell virtual products (IVMU example)
– Less important at hardware, software level
• Don’t create products that
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Are stripped-down, inferior to “protect” the vendor
Show them the walls of your garden
Allow only one-way watching and listening
Don’t be the one who stops the Millennial Carterphone!
(unless you still think the music industry is cool)
Generative for mobiles
• Do
– Keep the “walled garden” for hardware, network
– Keep code, network private (security)
• But…
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Lower gates for developers (e.g. add Flash)
Provide tools for media generativity (mashups)
Figure out a revenue model (micropayments)
Provide tools for sharing between users
• Don’t
– Use celebrities (professional content producers)
– Rely on “top down” entertainment, media as a sole
strategy
The new Millennial brand
• Brand loyalty, with a difference…
• Loyalty to the transaction, not the big picture
• Loyalty to companies giving them “generative” ability
Loyalty to companies with a social cause
• Millennials trust
• A few “big, bright, and friendly” brands that give them
generative capacity
– Think Apple, Google, MySpace, Facebook
• Millennials don’t trust
• Brands catering to narrow race/gender classifications
• One-way brands (they don’t get to generate)
Millennial house of worship
Brands and networks
New network allows
more brands to reach
an audience due to
lower cost barrier
# of
Brands
Network technology allows
ever-larger groups of consumers to
form consensus on a small number
of preferred brands
New network (telegraph, telephone,
radio, television, Internet) is introduced
Time
End of brand fragmentation?
In the long term, Millennial consensus building
will reverse brand fragmentation and a few
“big, bright and friendly” brands will reemerge - Neil Howe
Becoming a Millennial brand
• Cool Brands
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Enable me to create via technology
Tell the truth
Are NOT edgy or cynical (software LINK)
Are serious (no ironic humor, jackass behavior)
Are something my parents and I agree on
• My Brands
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Part of my communication network
Say/prove that I’m special
Mix (apparently) free stuff with payment
Let me make and share stuff
Show social responsibility (‘click through activism’)
The virtual generation
All the features of Millennials as customers
described thus far are small potatoes
compared to their participation in virtual
worlds
See you at the next deck!
References
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Millennials and the Popular Culture
http://www.lifecourse.com/pubs/books.php
Millennials Go to College (2nd ed.)
http://www.lifecourse.com/pubs/books.php
The Press-Democrat - Millennials fight Boomer-led Wi-Fi bans
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/EarlyEdition/article_view.cfm?recordID=9085&publishdate=04/13/2008
“Generation M”, Time Magazine March 27, 2006
Sherri Turkle MIT cyber-psychologist, in The Economist, April 12, 2008
Online traffice at compete.com
http://siteanalytics.compete.com
Cnet - Neilsen 2008 results for social networking sites
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9948219-36.html
Why virtual worlds are overtaking the game industry
http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2007/10/why-virtual-wor.html
New World Notes - New World Notes' True Community Search: Top Twenty Popular Second Life Sites, September 20
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/09/new-world-notes.html
“Total minutes” netratings for web 2.0 sites
http://www.netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf
MySpace real pageviews
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2006/04/myspace-click-factory
Fun with numbers: Do New Ratings Mean New Valuations?
http://voices.allthingsd.com/20070712/robert-seidman/
Second Life statistics
http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy-graphs.php
Second Life engagement “Second Grade Math”(Oct. 5th 2007)
http://blog.secondlife.com/category/economy/
Kid’s worlds poised for growth spurt
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005410&src=article_head_sitesearch
Harvard Business School Conference, Nov 2007
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16326
There.com demographics (2004)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PJQ/is_6_2/ai_114573226
Daedalus Project - The Psychology of MMORGs
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001369.php
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/3-4.pdf
Comparing virtual worlds
http://www.kzero.co.uk/blog/?p=978
Virtual World Growth Projections
http://www.slideshare.net/nicmitham/virtual-world-growth-projections/
Round-up of 50 virtual worlds
http://fabricoffolly.blogspot.com/2007/10/second-life-in-perspective-round-up-of.html
eMarketer report on virtual worlds
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005410&src=article_head_sitesearch