Nick Shore

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

And if you don't spend a lot of fourth dimension thinking about
Millennials, it may come every bit a surprise to you that at 100 1000000 potent they are
the single largest generational cohort in American history, dwarfing their
predecessors Generation X, and even out-sizing that nigh famous of all
generational behemoths, The Infant Boomers.

"Only nosotros don't sell gum or acne cream," you may still be
thinking, "so why should we care?"

Consider for a moment the half-century long trajectory that
The Boomers accept taken from 1960s to the present mean solar day. Those bearded idealists
of the civil rights movement are the self same retirees now marching with
placards in the streets protesting for heath-care reform. It's not difficult to see
but how many of the tectonic shifts in culture and commerce over the final half
fifty years take been powered past the demands of the Boomer generation. From Pepsi's co-opting of Sixties counter-civilisation, to the
casualization of the workplace, at that place is a wealth of evidence for how closely linked wide
changes in the American landscape have been to the Boomers moving through fourth dimension,
like the proverbial egg in the snake.

Millennials are not just 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 matter what business organisation y'all are in, they are your
next generation of consumers.

Whether iii years, v, or 10 from now, sooner or later on
the Millennials will be the ones standing in the grocery isle, or in the banking company
managers office, or in the auto dealership evaluating your product or service
offering, asking "is this for me, really?" More likely, of grade, they won't
be standing in whatsoever of these places, but doing it on a voice-activated iPad
while driving to piece of work in Smart Car Version 3.0, but you get the point.

And if you desire a vision of the kind of bear upon this
generation can have on an manufacture, only await at some of the categories where
they have come up to play already: music– transformed from a large label anthology-driven model to something so
customizable and but-in-time that it'due south barely recognizable every bit the manufacture it
once was; habiliment–the fast fashion of a Forever 21 shattering traditional
"1 merchandise driblet per season" models into shards; and of grade the
social networking "industry," remarkable in so many ways, not to the lowest degree of which is
the speed with which a single business organisation entity can go from null to one-half a
billion consumers.

At MTV, of course, youth is our market.

MTV fabricated a determination at its point of inception to never grow
quondam with the audience but to reinvent periodically for each "generation next."
So naturally, nosotros have been one of the companies impacted first and dramatically
by the Millennial generation coming of historic period every bit amusement consumers.

Considering young people are our viewers and considering they
are and so fast and and then fickle (and becoming ever more so), we report them with a
deep intensity and intimacy. We strive to empathize not simply the "what," only
also the "why"–their drives (conscious and unconscious), desires, passions,
fears, and challenges.

In all of our work with Millennials, we have identified a
series of traits that are quite unique to this generation (versus prior
generations), and which we believe will have dramatic implications on who
they will get as consumers–non only consumers of amusement,
only of cars, homes, refrigerators, and shampoo.

Before describing these principles, information technology'due south important to
highlight two tectonic forces that motility beneath much of what defines the
uniqueness of this generation. The get-go, and perhaps virtually important, is the
recalibration of the nuclear family and, every bit a consequence, the style this
generation was parented.

A century of "parent-centered" nuclear family has steadily
been nether-going a paradigm shift,
and may have simply passed the tipping point. The nucleus of the family has been moving
towards the child, and Millennials wait similar the beginning generation raised in
that new nuclear family structure. No longer the hierarchical structure with
authoritarian parent "leadership," the new family is flattened to a republic, with
collective (if not kid-driven) decision-making process. Parents are more like
best friends, life coaches, or as nosotros 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 it necessary to "rebel against" authoritarian
parents to individuate, engage in acts of cocky-expression, or push button at the
boundaries. As one youth psychologist we piece of work with pointed out, "Parents don't
say you can't go to the party, they create rubber spaces to consume alcohol, they
say Tin I pick you upwardly afterwards?, Here'south money for a taxi."

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

Pct of
Millennials who concord with the following statements
(from MTV Millennial Edge
Study, 2010):
• I'm ever expressing
myself in different means – 81%
• I detest it when other
people wait me to live by their rules – 76%
• If I want something,
zip is going to stop me – 69%

In curt, the ability dynamics of the family have shifted
dramatically, and much of the empowered, i could even say "super-powered"
mode of the Millennials has its roots in this redistribution.

And in the fashion of pouring gasoline on a fire, the 2nd tectonic
shift is technology. The "Yous Need Information technology," push button, everything free, e'er
on culture of applied science 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 volition be tweeted. The power is in the hands
of a million anonymous easily, and tin can exist wielded obviously effect gratis,
in real time, with the click of a mouse.

Based on what we know nigh what makes this generation tick,
and what we hear and discover about them on a daily basis, we have distilled
down five principles, or perhaps they would exist better described as challenges
for businesses thinking about what information technology will mean to cater to this Millennial
consumer as they come on line in a major way to more than and more sectors of
business.

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

A generation
raised on "children should be seen and heard" simply will not be a passive
consumer of anything. They volition demand a voice in, a stake in, fifty-fifty a creative
point of view about, everything that your business does–from the product
itself to the way information technology is sold and marketed, to the social responsibility
policies of the system itself. They may or may not cull to utilise that
power (for case but miniscule percentages of people actually contribute to
the crowd-sourced IP of Wikipedia), but they will need that the mechanisms
are in identify that give them the pick to participate and the feeling that
co-creativity drives the development process.

And this probably won't be a i-fourth dimension effect ("lets go and practice
some creative focus groups and get our audience to help us call back about
innovation"). Information technology will be an on-going real time feedback loop with demonstrable
impact and validation built in. I of the most buzzed most advert campaigns of
the concluding few years is Old Spice, where real fourth dimension changes happen in the
commercial creative as a result of input from the audience. There'south the beauty
of the idea itself, and then there's the power of the feedback/validation loop
created with the audition–"Run across, you matter, your vote counts, your touch on is
felt and something moves as a consequence, you are smart and artistic and y'all 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 enquiry we conduct with this generation at MTV,
the word we possibly hear the most is "smart" (closely followed past "random,"
"awkward," "crawly," and "love"). "Smart" means a multitude of things to the
generation, but one affair that's common is that information technology carries a very high premium
and social currency. For the most educated generation in history, told by 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 Machine and even Smart
Water. What is smart soap, smart diapers, smart gas stations.

When yous investigate the concepts of smartness further with
the generation, some of the nuances that emerge give fascinating insights into
their collective psyche. For something to exist "smart" it has to, for instance, entertain
me, remember what I practice and anticipate my needs, do "everything" for me, take
built-in complexity and layers of meaning, shape-shift, exist as smart as me!

3. What
will information technology mean to be in a "ii player game" with your consumer?

Millennials accept a natural predisposition to view situations
in terms of the metaphor of a game. Have the workplace–"what are the rules of
this world, what are the levels, how do I become to the xth one as
quickly as possible (that prissy CEO suite on the corner of the summit floor), is
there a shortcut, a smart flop, a secret archway, a magic potion?" Foursquare,
the location-based social networking site, literally turns one's social life
into a game consummate 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 diet of about 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 rapidly apparent.

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

Protest the system:
Millennials – xiii%
Boomers – 59%

Marketing to this generation may be more similar a two histrion
game, where anybody'southward looking for the win win. How will your campaigns create
a sense of "play" on the function of the audition, a sense of depth and levels, a
sense of date, a validation loop, and ultimately a sense of textile and
emotional victory (or even of being the special i that figured out how to
game information technology )? In the marketing campaign for Halo three, level later on level of depth was
buried inside layers of the marketing campaign, consumers freeze-framing DVR
playback of commercials to choice upwardly codes embedded in the film to follow
breadcrumbs down Internet wormholes for the next clue.

4. What
will it mean to your business organization to operate in on-going versions rather than a
final production?

If we had to place someone who is the face up of the
Generation, the mode that Bob Dylan maybe was for the Boomers or Kurt Cobaine
for Xers, and then today that face would exist Lady Gaga's. Considered beyond doubt the "most interesting
person today" by the generation the core characteristic of Gaga is the speed
and ferocity of her self-reinvention. She is doing in 10 minutes what it too
Madonna ten years to achieve.

Who practice y'all recollect is the well-nigh 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 cocky" in real
time, has created an insatiable appetite for newness. If something does not
version, it quickly becomes boring. This has always, of grade, been the
consumer demand that drives every company's innovations engine, but the requisite
rpm of that engine is rapidly going into the red zone equally this generation come up
on line as buyers. It'south no longer acceptable, for example, that chewing mucilage
remain the same flavor throughout the duration of the chew. No, the glue has to
flavor-shift mid chew lest the chewer'southward dopamine/adrenaline cycles start to
fade and new stimulus is required.

5. What
volition it mean when there is no such thing equally an un-continued product?

Everything we are learning about the generation points to a
need to be constantly continued, existentially uncomfortable with the feeling
of beingness "alone," experiencing a fear of missing out when they stray to the hinterlands
of their social graph. Ane interesting piece of research led u.s.a. to empathize
how the car, so squarely a symbol of freedom and independence for prior
generations, has become in danger of being perceived every bit a "disconnection
device" for Millennials. "Trapped" within the hermetically sealed vehicle, "lone",
and of course unable to text and bank check your status update, the feeling of the
open road becomes the very antithesis of liberty, more like 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". But it is much more challenging to
re-imagine your production experience past asking how to increase its innate
connexion. What would a connected retail feel look similar? Perhaps similar
the so called "haul video" syndrome where kids film themselves in changing rooms
trying out different outfits, mail the film of their ensembles in real time,
and seek feedback from their social network on which ones look all-time before
purchasing.

As the onetime hockey adages goes, you don't skate to where the
puck is, you skate to where it's headed. And in the case of the Millennials,
we're looking at a hundred million pucks moving towards open ice where bold,
as-however-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'due south research efforts across MTV, MTV2, mtv.com, mtvU, and MTV Tr3s platforms.