We'd kick off this story about Millennials by reciting a bunch of statistics about their behavior, their numbers, but...you know all of that already, right? And you know that besides the sheer size of this cohort, it's pretty much mass-confusion about who these folks really are: They all want to live downtown, but they also plan to buy suburban homes — ahh yes, but they also live in their parents' basements. According to some reports, they're social activists. According to others, they're less likely than older generations to care about social responsibility at all.
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Marketers have made their living of late knowing how the deck is stacked, so they're understandably anxious about this massive, and massively contradictory, group of consumers.
But maybe it's time to stop studying millennials and start engaging with them. Because for all the analysis and over-analysis of this growing, changing ,and diverse population, one thing has always rung true, study after study: Millennials are doers. They're participators. They're creators.
If you want to grab onto one thing you can really know about these consumers, start here: they are the perfect partners for co-creation.
The Millennial Brand Loyalty Equation
Marketers spent decades perfecting the formula for baby boomer brand loyalty. Now, it's time to wipe down the whiteboard and start from scratch.
"Millennials don't just want to buy your brand," writes Executive Vice President of BARKLEY & co-author of "Marketing To Millennials" Jeff Fromm for PSFK, "they want to be a part of it. They're looking for ways to participate."
So how exactly do millennials want to participate with brands? If you think sending out a survey is the answer, guess again. Think Apple's "Shot on iPhone" campaign as seen on billboards and print ads. Or Burberry's Art of the Trench site. These marketing campaigns weren't customized for consumers, but were made with consumers. They were co-created.
Millennials love to create content. They make it by themselves and they make it with friends. What smart marketers are realizing is that by giving millennials the opportunity to create projects with them, they can become their friends too.
Co-Creating Experiences
Successful co-creation with millennials is more than about requesting fans share a photo on your Facebook wall. Millennials aren't interested in seeing their content thrown onto a meaningless, crowdsourced pile. Instead, think of ways you can make the participation into a richer, more engaging experience.
Experience Matters
It's long been touted that millennials prefer experiences over things. So it's no wonder Airbnb is in its heyday while automakers are wondering what's happened to car culture. It seems young consumers would rather save up for a vacation than a muscle car.
But what does this mean for brands that offer things, rather than experiences? Savvy product marketers aren't being left out in the cold. Take Nike. Sure, they make shoes. But over the last decade, they've been selling customized, co-created running experiences. Their great shoes are just one part of these experiences.
With NikeiD, it all begins there, as customers co-design their own running shoes. The Nike+ app made working out a branded experience long before most consumers had ever heard the word "Fitbit." The brand has used crowdsourcing to search for sustainable materials, create an electrifying video featuring 1,440 individual Indian cricket players, and more.
"The shoe company Nike provides a glimpse of the next 'best practices' of value co-creation with customers," wrote Venkat Ramaswamy in the abstract for his study, "Co-creating value through customers' experiences: The Nike case"—which was published all the way back in 2008. "By engaging with informed, connected, and networked customers around the globe, Nike has found their shared experiences to be a new source of value."
They certainly have. Not only has Nike's multi-faceted, long-term invitation to consumers to co-create reeled in the revenue, it's helped secure the shoe company as the millennials' number one favorite brand.
Who knew they were so into working out?
The Digital Tools of Co-Creation
So it turns out the video game generation is most loyal to an athletic shoe company. This brings to the fore another "seeming" contradiction that actually suggests millennials' affinity for co-creation. You've probably heard jibes about millennial's propensity to keep their heads buried in the digital devices. From a marketers point of view, ask yourself: is this really a sign that millennials are disengaged? Or is it a sign of an insatiable appetite for finding new stimuli and staying engaged?? Seems pretty obvious when you give it some thought...
Digital Engagement Is A Given...
According to eMarketer, the average 13 to 24-year-old spends about 99 minutes per day accessing social networks on their mobile device. And thanks to all that time on digital media, a 2014 Nielsen study reveals millennials actually read more magazines than boomers. The bottom line is that the true meaning of the term "digital native" is just now being realized. Millennials have a fundamentally different, more fluid relationship with digital tools than any other generation.
"While the rest of adults see smartphones and the Internet as revolutionary," states an Experian report, "for Millennials, they're just part of the natural order of things."
And when you have the innate ability to operate technology, it becomes a powerful way to share an experience with a brand. GoPro is demonstrating this with their next-level user-created video content. It's not just that consumers can share their GoPro videos with the brand's hugely popular website and YouTube channel, but the user-created content can also be viewed on a dedicated channel on Virgin America Airlines or via Xbox.
In the end, all of those beautiful, intense, mind-blowing videos are marketing content for GoPro. And all the fun consumers have making them? Think of it as a loyalty program!
"But, We're Not GoPro..."
Yes, perhaps a tiny video camera intended to capture adventures is just too on the nose for most consumer brands to relate to. But you can extrapolate from their success. The idea is to find a way to open a door for participation.
If you make paint: what are people painting?
If you make toothpaste: what are people smiling about?
If you make microwave ovens: what's cooking?
If you make music... Beck Hansen gave the world an innovative example in 2012 when he released an album without recording a single note. Song Reader was an album of sheet music, rather than audio files.
Though not high tech in and of itself, how those 20 songs burst into reality was digital co-creation at its finest. With the sheet music in hand, fans recorded their own versions of Beck's songs, which he then shared on his website. This last piece is key. As James De Julio, founder of creative platform Tongal explains it: "When you venture down the path of co-creation, consider a variety of methods and outputs, but make sure you have a venue or stage for these creations to be seen, heard, and appreciated. In a real sense, you're planning a show." "And make it fun," DeJulio adds, " really, such an important ingredient."
Yeah....fun. Maybe that's why Beck told NPR that crowdsourcing the album was a way to make the music creation project less lonely.
"When you write a song and make a recording and put out a record, it's kind of [like] sending a message in a bottle," Beck said in 2012. "You don't really get a lot of feedback. This is a way of sending that song out, and you just get literally thousands of bottles sent back to you."
Feedback is...Fun
For brands, each of those thousands of bottles floating back to them represent a new customer—often a millennial—who has spent the time and energy to co-create with them. When leveraged correctly, presenting consumers with the opportunity to have a positive, rewarding experience with the brand can build the most coveted customer loyalty in the world: millennial brand loyalty. Co-created by the largest consumer block in history, enjoyed by the savviest brands. And yes, that can be a lot of fun.
