10 things that marketers have taught us about Millennials

Decision-Making

Millennials like stuff.

Millennials don’t like other stuff.

Conveniently, all Millennials like exactly the same stuff.

Millennials are completely different from every other generation, in that they were born at a different time. That much we can agree on.

We can’t actually agree on when Millennials were born.

Millennials will not persist with anything that doesn’t keep them interested. When writing for Millennials, you must be unceasingly entertaining.

When writing about Millennials, you must be unceasingly boring.

Millennials will immediately detect if you’re being condescending, the clever little scamps.

You do not simply ask Millennials what they think, you ‘tap into their mindset’

Millennials don’t like Apple. They don’t like broccoli either, but that’s kids for you.

Here is what a birth-year segment omits: income, household, urgency, experience, geography, health, taste and the reason anybody is buying today.

That is quite a lot to surrender in exchange for the word “Millennial”. A 27-year-old sharing a flat may buy the cheapest washing powder. A 39-year-old with two children may pay extra for the brand her mum used. The shared date range explains less than the laundry basket.

Generational reports survive contradiction by calling it nuance. Millennials want experiences and ownership, novelty and nostalgia, institutions and rebellion. Given a large enough cohort, every human trait will appear somewhere. The segment sounds scientific because time can be measured precisely; the behavioural claim often remains jelly.

Shared history can matter. Technology, recessions, schooling and social rules encountered at a similar age may produce testable differences. Test those influences directly. Compare people of different ages facing the same constraint and people of the same age living under different ones.

For the washing-powder work, keep birth year in the data. Build the decision around first-time renters buying alone, parents managing sensitive skin and households switching after a price rise. Each group has a recognisable circumstance and a reason to act. The final research table still contains the demographic column, beside the variables that actually changed the purchase.