Millennials Are a Thing

From Time Magazine running a cover story calling Millennials, “The Me, Me, Me Generation,” to the countless online articles claiming that Millennials will be the downfall of us all (see: any Twitter post in the last 24 hours), every assumption about Millennials seems to be negative.



What’s interesting, in his talk at the 2016 annual Deep Shift conference, Adam Conover, host of “Adam Ruins Everything” explains how latter generations assume the following generation are the laziest, the most irresponsible or the most selfish.

We see this theory played out on the covers of Time Magazine every decade.

As a marketer, you can’t afford to let your judgement be tainted by these cyclical – and false – negative stereotypes. Your real marketing dollars are on the line. If you fall prey to misguided thinking, you’ll lose money for yourself or, even worse, for your client.

That’s why this issue reveals who Millennials are: A group of people who have $200 billion in annual buying power, according to Forbes Magazine (and that number is rising). And people that are tech-savvy, but still share similarities, such as price sensitivity and an attraction to creative advertising, with the generations before them.

At the end of the day Millennials are just people like anyone else, except they’ve grown up with, and are extremely comfortable with, more advanced technology and the digital space. Which, honestly, we should be thankful for, in terms of marketing.

If your brand is going to thrive, it needs to learn how to connect with Millennials – and that’s going to take some logic and magic.