Nick Shore

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

And if y'all don't spend a lot of time thinking about
Millennials, it may come equally a surprise to yous that at 100 million potent they are
the unmarried largest generational cohort in American history, dwarfing their
predecessors Generation X, and even out-sizing that most famous of all
generational behemoths, The Infant Boomers.

"Merely we don't sell gum or acne foam," you lot may however be
thinking, "and so why should we care?"

Consider for a moment the half-century long trajectory that
The Boomers take taken from 1960s to the present twenty-four hour period. Those bearded idealists
of the civil rights movement are the self same retirees at present marching with
placards in the streets protesting for heath-care reform. Information technology'southward not hard to come across
simply how many of the tectonic shifts in culture and commerce over the last half
l years take been powered by the demands of the Boomer generation. From Pepsi's co-opting of Sixties counter-civilization, to the
casualization of the workplace, in that location is a wealth of testify for how closely linked wide
changes in the American mural have been to the Boomers moving through time,
like the proverbial egg in the snake.

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

In brusque, no matter what concern you are in, they are your
side by side generation of consumers.

Whether iii years, 5, or 10 from now, sooner or afterward
the Millennials will be the ones standing in the grocery isle, or in the depository financial institution
managers office, or in the machine dealership evaluating your product or service
offer, request "is this for me, actually?" More than likely, of course, they won't
be standing in any of these places, but doing it on a voice-activated iPad
while driving to work in Smart Car Version 3.0, but you go the point.

And if you want a vision of the kind of bear on this
generation can take on an manufacture, just expect at some of the categories where
they take come up to play already: music– transformed from a big characterization album-driven model to something so
customizable and just-in-time that information technology'southward barely recognizable equally the manufacture information technology
once was; clothing–the fast fashion of a Forever 21 shattering traditional
"i merchandise drop per season" models into shards; and of course the
social networking "industry," remarkable in so many means, not to the lowest degree of which is
the speed with which a single business entity tin can go from zero to one-half a
billion consumers.

At MTV, of course, youth is our market.

MTV made a decision at its indicate of inception to never grow
quondam with the audience but to reinvent periodically for each "generation side by side."
So naturally, we have been i of the companies impacted start and dramatically
by the Millennial generation coming of historic period every bit amusement consumers.

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

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

Before describing these principles, information technology's important to
highlight two tectonic forces that motility beneath much of what defines the
uniqueness of this generation. The starting time, and possibly nearly important, is the
recalibration of the nuclear family and, as a effect, the fashion this
generation was parented.

A century of "parent-centered" nuclear family has steadily
been under-going a paradigm shift,
and may have just passed the tipping bespeak. 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 construction with
disciplinarian parent "leadership," the new family unit is flattened to a democracy, with
collective (if not kid-driven) decision-making process. Parents are more than 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 support their children than punish them," 58% agreed,
"My parents are like a best friend to me."

No longer is information technology necessary to "rebel against" authoritarian
parents to individuate, engage in acts of cocky-expression, or push at the
boundaries. Every bit one youth psychologist nosotros piece of work with pointed out, "Parents don't
say you can't become to the party, they create safe spaces to consume booze, they
say Can I choice you upward afterwards?, Here'south coin for a taxi."

Self-expression, having your voice heard, following your own
path–these are all values that are positively encouraged in mod parenting
styles. Why rebel when you simply need to explain your behavior in terms of "my
experiment in self discovery."

Percentage of
Millennials who agree with the following statements
(from MTV Millennial Edge
Written report, 2010):
• I'm always expressing
myself in different means – 81%
• I detest information technology when other
people expect me to live by their rules – 76%
• If I want something,
naught is going to end me – 69%

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

And in the style of pouring gasoline on a fire, the 2nd tectonic
shift is technology. The "You lot Demand It," push push, everything free, always
on civilization of technology and the Net has amplified much of the "social
coding" of the way Millennials were parented. And as many commentators accept
already pointed out, the revolution will exist tweeted. The power is in the hands
of a 1000000 bearding easily, and tin can be wielded apparently consequence free,
in real time, with the click of a mouse.

Based on what nosotros know about what makes this generation tick,
and what we hear and observe about them on a daily footing, we take distilled
down five principles, or perhaps they would be better described as challenges
for businesses thinking about what it will hateful to cater to this Millennial
consumer as they come on line in a major way to more and more sectors of
concern.

1. What
will it mean when co-creation with your consumer becomes function of your business organization
model?

A generation
raised on "children should be seen and heard" just will not be a passive
consumer of annihilation. They will demand a phonation in, a pale in, fifty-fifty a creative
signal of view about, everything that your concern does–from the product
itself to the fashion it is sold and marketed, to the social responsibleness
policies of the organization itself. They may or may not choose to use that
power (for case only miniscule percentages of people really contribute to
the crowd-sourced IP of Wikipedia), but they will demand that the mechanisms
are in place that give them the choice to participate and the feeling that
co-inventiveness drives the development procedure.

And this probably won't be a onetime result ("lets go and do
some creative focus groups and get our audience to assist us call up about
innovation"). It will be an on-going real time feedback loop with demonstrable
bear upon and validation built in. One of the near buzzed virtually ad campaigns of
the concluding few years is Old Spice, where real fourth dimension changes happen in the
commercial creative as a upshot of input from the audition. There's the dazzler
of the idea itself, and and then there's the power of the feedback/validation loop
created with the audience–"Run across, y'all affair, your vote counts, your touch is
felt and something moves as a consequence, yous are smart and creative and you lot have … power."
And speaking of smarter …

2. What
will it hateful to make your product ten times smarter than information technology is today?

In all the research nosotros conduct with this generation at MTV,
the word we perhaps hear the most is "smart" (closely followed past "random,"
"awkward," "awesome," and "love"). "Smart" means a multitude of things to the
generation, but one thing that'southward common is that it carries a very loftier premium
and social currency. For the most educated generation in history, told past and then-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 Car and even Smart
Water. What is smart soap, smart diapers, smart gas stations.

When y'all investigate the concepts of smartness farther with
the generation, some of the nuances that emerge give fascinating insights into
their commonage psyche. For something to be "smart" it has to, for example, entertain
me, remember what I do and conceptualize my needs, do "everything" for me, accept
built-in complexity and layers of pregnant, shape-shift, be as smart as me!

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

Millennials have a natural predisposition to view situations
in terms of the metaphor of a game. Take the workplace–"what are the rules of
this world, what are the levels, how practice I get to the 10th 1 equally
quickly as possible (that overnice CEO suite on the corner of the top floor), is
there a shortcut, a smart bomb, a secret entrance, a magic potion?" Foursquare,
the location-based social networking site, literally turns one's social life
into a game complete with badges, medals, trophies, and fifty-fifty mayor-hood awarded
to "players."

The generation learned young and learned well how to
expertly negotiate with their parents to get 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 want to win.

Asked about "worldview" based on the following phrases, the
intergeneration differences here become quickly apparent.

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

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

Marketing to this generation may be 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 audition, 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 being the special one that figured out how to
game information technology )? In the marketing campaign for Halo three, level later level of depth was
buried within layers of the marketing campaign, consumers freeze-framing DVR
playback of commercials to pick up codes embedded in the pic to follow
breadcrumbs down Internet wormholes for the next clue.

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

If we had to identify someone who is the face of the
Generation, the way that Bob Dylan possibly was for the Boomers or Kurt Cobaine
for Xers, then today that face would be Lady Gaga's. Considered beyond doubtfulness the "most interesting
person today" by the generation the cadre characteristic of Gaga is the speed
and ferocity of her cocky-reinvention. She is doing in x minutes what it besides
Madonna ten years to achieve.

Who practise you call up is the about interesting person in pop culture today?

Size of word indicates volume of response:

The parental premium placed on self expression for today's
kids, combined with technology tools to literally "curate the self" in real
time, has created an insatiable appetite for newness. If something does non
version, information technology chop-chop becomes boring. This has e'er, of course, been the
consumer need that drives every company'south innovations engine, simply the requisite
rpm of that engine is apace going into the red zone every bit this generation come
on line as buyers. It'due south no longer adequate, for example, that chewing gum
remain the same flavor throughout the elapsing of the chew. No, the gum has to
flavor-shift mid chew lest the chewer's dopamine/adrenaline cycles outset to
fade and new stimulus is required.

5. What
will it mean when there is no such thing as an united nations-connected product?

Everything we are learning almost the generation points to a
need to be constantly connected, existentially uncomfortable with the feeling
of being "alone," experiencing a fear of missing out when they stray to the hinterlands
of their social graph. One interesting piece of research led us to empathize
how the car, and so squarely a symbol of freedom and independence for prior
generations, has go in danger of being perceived as a "disconnection
device" for Millennials. "Trapped" inside the hermetically sealed vehicle, "alone",
and of course unable to text and check your status update, the feeling of the
open road becomes the very antithesis of freedom, more like isolation.

A product which is 'united nations-connected' has a certain inertness
for the generation. At the more superficial level even the virtually inert production
can build a web site and "connect". But information technology is much more challenging to
re-imagine your product feel by asking how to increment its innate
connectedness. What would a connected retail experience wait like? Perhaps like
the then chosen "haul video" syndrome where kids moving picture themselves in changing rooms
trying out different outfits, post the pic of their ensembles in existent time,
and seek feedback from their social network on which ones look best before
purchasing.

Every bit the old hockey adages goes, you don't skate to where the
puck is, you skate to where information technology'south headed. And in the case of the Millennials,
we're looking at a hundred million pucks moving towards open up ice where bold,
as-yet-unimagined products and services will some day await them. And then heads-up, 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 research efforts across MTV, MTV2, mtv.com, mtvU, and MTV Tr3s platforms.