The Millennial Generation as customers

1
The Millennial Generation as customers

• From the book Millennials and the Popular
  Culture How the Next Generation will change
  arts and entertainment (Lifecourse.com)
• Dr. Pete Markiewicz
• Indiespace.com Lifecourse AssociatesArt
  Institute of California, Los Angeles

2
5 views of Millennials as customers

• The entitlement generation
• The call for a feeling generation
• The DJ/generative generation
• The new Millennial brand
• The virtual generation (next deck)

3
The entitlement generation

• Derives from the special core trait
• Millennials see their needs as rights
• Everyones a micro celebrity worthy of special
  customer service
• Expect benefits (and a list) from the start
• Expect free stuff
• Special enough to deserve it
• Theyll give up their privacy to get it
• Helicopter parents will defend their rights

4
Reaching an entitled generation

• Give them enhanced peer to peer communication
  its their greatest right
• Tell them they have a right to virtual products
  and services (that can reproduced at low to zero
  cost)
• Mashups, Widgets
• Membership
• Online entertainment
• User-generated entertainment
• Let them barter their privacy for your content
• Parent/child co-marketing (parents will foot the
  bill)

5
The call for a feeling generation

• Derives from the team-player core trait
• Millennials dont have an inner compass (unlike
  their mostly Boomer parents)
• Online peer groups in Web 2.0 provide the wisdom
  of the crowd for personal decisions
• Short, frequent ping style communication
  (texting rather than long calls, emails, or
  letters)
• Definition of friend loosened to anyone you can
  communicate with
• Virtual personas to broadcast their inner state
  (e.g. avatars in virtual worlds)

6
Inner compass vs. The wisdom of the crowd

• Older generations have a feeling (excitement,
  sadness), and call a friend to share
• Millennials call a friend to get their next
  feeling
• Millennials consult the group to know
• what to think/feel next! Sherri Turkle, MIT

7
Calling for a feeling
Students cant go for even a few minutes without
talking on their cellphone. Theres almost a
discomfort with not being stimulated a kind of
I cant stand the silence -Donald
Roberts,Stanford Professor, quoted in Generation
M, Time, March 27, 2006
8
Answering a call for a feeling

• Ping them via their networks
• Viral, Internet every day (really hour)
• Mass media when Millennials are sharing
• Drop the Superbowl ads
• Tell them how to be like everyone else
• Do this your friends are all doing it!
• We help everyone share what you do!
• We help you get the coolest product/service
  possible
• We tell you how to plan your future
• We support the right social causes
  (clickthrough activism)

9
The DJ/generative generation

• Derives from team player core trait
• All Millennials are media creators
• Preferred technology is generative
• Media is cut and paste mashups
• More parts, options, features better product
• Multiple origins, sources, ok
• Authenticity less important

10
Generative technology

• Millennials have grown up with technology that
  encourages
• Configuration
• Flexibility
• User modification
• User sharing
• User-created content

11
Generative technologies have

• Leverage simple product or concept enables a
  broad new range of activity
• Adaptability easily built out, ramped up,
  modified
• Ease of mastery users can learn how to use
  and repurpose product
• Accessibility everyone can be creative using
  the technology
• Transferability changes/innovations made by one
  group are easily transferred to others
• Payoff - allow amateurs to come up with the
  really big innovations

12
Generative plus/minus

• Advantages
• Easily ramped up, modified
• Allow amateur innovation
• Innovations rapidly propagate through system
• Quick fixes for problems
• Disadvantages
• Configurable may equal too complex
• Too arcane (PNG versus GIF)
• Lame amateur stuff crowd out professionals
• Vastly more susceptible to damage through
  viruses, hacking, malware

13
Examples

• Tea kettle versus coffee pod
• MP3 versus iPod
• iPod versus CD
• Mac versus iPhone

14
Carterphone vs. Pod

• The Carterphone or Pod gambit
• Turn a generative system into a non-generative
  one
• Take end to end control
• Improve ease of use
• VASTLY improve security
• BUT, when a wireless carrier controlled which
  cellphone could be used in their network
• Quality suffered
• Features valuable to consumers were removed
• Undesirable features were not improved

SOURCE Tim Wu, Wireless Carterphone, 1
International Journal off Communication 389,
404-15 (2008), at http//ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ij
oc/article/view/152/96
15
Reaching the DJ/generative

• Millennials dont want
• Freedom for freedoms sake at the hardware or
  network level
• Generative ability at the software level
• Millennials DO want
• Configurability
• Generative mashup ability at content level
  (media exchange, visual language)
• Sharing mashups (media creations versus
  open-source software)

16
The Millennial mashup

• Features
• Existing data and media re DJed together
• Generative tech allows end-users to overlay
  media from other sources
• Results are easily shared via the network
• Types
• Media creations (e.g. blog)
• Virtual products/widgets (e.g. virtual pets)
• Creates value from
• Word-of-mouth advertising
• Virtual product sales and distribution

17
Selling to the generative

• Your product should
• Let them generate at the content level
• Let them generate at the media level
• Build mashups
• Create online characters/personas
• Upload micro-celebrity video, commercials
• Create/sell virtual products (IVMU example)
• Less important at hardware, software level
• Dont create products that
• Are stripped-down, inferior to protect the
  vendor
• Show them the walls of your garden
• Allow only one-way watching and listening
• Dont be the one who stops the Millennial
  Carterphone! (unless you still think the music
  industry is cool)

18
Generative for mobiles

• Do
• Keep the walled garden for hardware, network
• Keep code, network private (security)
• But
• Lower gates for developers (e.g. add Flash)
• Provide tools for media generativity (mashups)
• Figure out a revenue model (micropayments)
• Provide tools for sharing between users
• Dont
• Use celebrities (professional content producers)
• Rely on top down entertainment, media as a sole
  strategy

19
The new Millennial brand

• Brand loyalty, with a difference
• Loyalty to the transaction, not the big picture
• Loyalty to companies giving them generative
  ability Loyalty to companies with a social cause
• Millennials trust
• A few big, bright, and friendly brands that
  give them generative capacity
• Think Apple, Google, MySpace, Facebook
• Millennials dont trust
• Brands catering to narrow race/gender
  classifications
• One-way brands (they dont get to generate)

20
Millennial house of worship
21
Brands and networks
New network allows more brands to reach an
audience due to lower cost barrier
of Brands
Network technology allows ever-larger groups of
consumers to form consensus on a small number
of preferred brands
New network (telegraph, telephone, radio,
television, Internet) is introduced
Time
22
End of brand fragmentation?

• In the long term, Millennial consensus building
  will reverse brand fragmentation and a few big,
  bright and friendly brands will re-emerge - Neil
  Howe

23
Becoming a Millennial brand

• Cool Brands
• Enable me to create via technology
• Tell the truth
• Are NOT edgy or cynical (software LINK)
• Are serious (no ironic humor, jackass behavior)
• Are something my parents and I agree on
• My Brands
• Part of my communication network
• Say/prove that Im special
• Mix (apparently) free stuff with payment
• Let me make and share stuff
• Show social responsibility (click through
  activism)

24
The virtual generation

• All the features of Millennials as customers
  described thus far are small potatoes compared to
  their participation in virtual worlds
• See you at the next deck!

25
References

• Millennials and the Popular Culturehttp//www.lif
  ecourse.com/pubs/books.php
• Millennials Go to College (2nd ed.)http//www.lif
  ecourse.com/pubs/books.php
• The Press-Democrat - Millennials fight Boomer-led
  Wi-Fi banshttp//www.pressdemocrat.com/EarlyEditi
  on/article_view.cfm?recordID9085publishdate04/1
  3/2008
• Generation M, Time Magazine March 27, 2006
• Sherri Turkle MIT cyber-psychologist, in The
  Economist, April 12, 2008
• Online traffice at compete.comhttp//siteanalytic
  s.compete.com
• Cnet - Neilsen 2008 results for social networking
  siteshttp//news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9948219-36
  .html
• Why virtual worlds are overtaking the game
  industryhttp//www.virtualworldsnews.com/2007/10/
  why-virtual-wor.html
• New World Notes - New World Notes' True Community
  Search Top Twenty Popular Second Life Sites,
  September 20http//nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/09/new-
  world-notes.html
• Total minutes netratings for web 2.0
  siteshttp//www.netratings.com/pr/pr_070710.pdf
• MySpace real pageviewshttp//www.mikeindustries.c
  om/blog/archive/2006/04/myspace-click-factory
• Fun with numbers Do New Ratings Mean New
  Valuations?http//voices.allthingsd.com/20070712/
  robert-seidman/
• Second Life statisticshttp//secondlife.com/whati
  s/economy-graphs.php
• Second Life engagement Second Grade Math(Oct.
  5th 2007)http//blog.secondlife.com/category/econ
  omy/
• Kids worlds poised for growth spurthttp//www.em
  arketer.com/Article.aspx?id1005410srcarticle_he
  ad_sitesearch
• Harvard Business School Conference, Nov
  2007http//www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.p
  hp?story16326
• There.com demographics (2004)http//findarticles.
  com/p/articles/mi_m0PJQ/is_6_2/ai_114573226
• Daedalus Project - The Psychology of
  MMORGshttp//www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/00
  1369.php http//www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives
  /pdf/3-4.pdf
• Comparing virtual worldshttp//www.kzero.co.uk/bl
  og/?p978