Archive for 'Millennial Generation'

It’s not that you’re getting older, it’s just that culture changes so rapidly. At least that’s how the creators of Beloit College’s annual “Mindset List” are spinning this year’s source of angst for faculty and staff who mention iconic figures and events, only to receive blank stares from incoming freshmen.

Beloit College has been doing this for 12 years now, and while the news media have fun with it, there’s a serious side.

The list represents those experiences and observations that have shaped the lives — and formed the mindset — of students starting their college career this fall. That’s important for professors and administrators to know.

It also underscores the dangers of reaching back into your own experiences for examples that may ...

Twenty-something Josh Shipp is a phenomenon. Abandoned and abused as a child, he overcame those obstacles to become a successful motivational speaker while still in his teens. He has developed a special affinity with the Millennial generation, who see him as part older brother and part “Dear Abby.”

Shipp is now a go-to source on Millennials for everyone from TV producers to product-peddling corporations. And he recently shared his views on how to connect with young people with writer Kimberly Smith of MarketingProfs.

- Don’t speak down to them. Nobody likes that, but to really connect with this group you need to take it a step further and actually talk above their age levels. If they’re 15, think of them ...

Barack Obama’s appeal to young voters has not gone unnoticed by the advertising industry. Long identified as a generation sensitive to hype and resistant to marketing-speak, Millennials have nonetheless responded enthusiastically to the Obama brand.

“Mr. Obama’s brand management, unprecedented in presidential politics, shows pitch-perfect understanding of the keys to appealing to the youngest voters,” writes Peter Feld in the current issue of Advertising Age.

One of the best examples of the Obama campaign’s success with Millennials is its “mastery of cutting-edge social media,” according to Feld. In a passage that may hold lessons for college recruiters, Feld quotes Allison Mooney, who tracks youth trends for Fleishman-Hillard, a strategic communications agency.

Mooney points to the social network set up by the campaign at ...

As an expert in generational marketing, Kenneth Gronbach knows that electronic communication is the quickest way to a Millennial’s heart. But it wasn’t until he stopped his car at his mailbox one day that he realized something else about today’s young people.

When he got back in the car, his two teenage daughters excitedly asked if there was anything for them. In fact, they had each received direct-mail offers from their favorite clothing store, and they proceeded to beg Gronbach to take them shopping so they could use their new coupons.

“Even though kids live in a digital-online-wireless world of iPods, laptops, mobile phones, text messages and downloadable media, his daughters’ enthusiasm for the low-tech approach of direct mail is not unusual,” ...

Today’s college bound teenagers are so resistant to marketing-speak, so skeptical of “we’re the best” claims and so tired of platitudes, that Norman Kraft felt the need to write an open letter to college presidents suggesting they review their institutions’ communication.

“Your youngest prospects, who cut their teeth on Internet searches and learned early how to separate wheat from chaff, have learned to filter traditional marketing messages and regard most advertising with a degree of skepticism,” wrote Kraft in his blog, Zen and the Art of Higher Education Marketing.

“Authenticity sells to this group,” he explained, “and an examination of how you present your institution and its programs is needed, and needed now.”

Kraft, a marketing and copywriting consultant, offered some specific suggestions:

- ...

He most likely works in an admissions office for a Philadelphia-area university and is one of many readers to react online to a devastating look at the helicopter parents hovering above you and your colleagues everyday.

“This is a great article,” comments Matt Butler. “And based on how often I hear people discuss these topics, I’m shocked that it does not seem to be getting any better. Only worse! I work at a college. The applicants’ parents do the talking, the emailing….and now even the visiting (without the student). Everyone is reading this article….except parents!”

Butler was reacting to the cover story of Philadelphia magazine’s September issue. Entitled “Bad Parents,” it’s a warning to anyone responsible for recruiting the Millennial generation that ...

It’s time again for the annual reminder that you’re getting older while the students you recruit are getting younger. So young, in fact, that they never knew the Berlin Wall, never “rolled down” a car window, and have no idea how a telephone could be “off the hook.”

Beloit College has issued its 2007 version of people, places and things that produce only blank stares when mentioned to incoming college freshmen.

The Class of 2011 think of Tiananmen Square as an Olympics venue, don’t picture a spy plane when they hear U2, have always viewed Fox as a major network, and know everything about JFK from Oliver Stone and about Malcolm X courtesy of Spike Lee.

This is the 10th year that Wisconsin’s ...

The U.S Postal Service calls it “the Mail Moment,” and they swear it’s just as powerful for tech-driven Millennials as it was for earlier generations.

“The Mail Moment defines the highly interactive ritual that consumers devote to bringing in the mail and discovering what it offers,” says the USPS. And that includes the next great generation — what the Postal Service calls Gen Y but most experts refer to as the Millennial generation.

“You think you’ve got today’s young people figured out?” asks the USPS. “Too busy…too techy…just too cool to consider mail? U.S. Postal Service research examining the attitudes of Gen Yers toward mail has produced some unexpected results.”

Examples: 87 percent of Millennials bring in the mail the day it’s delivered ...

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler,” suggested Albert Einstein, who would apparently fit in well with today’s Millennial generation.

A recent survey by Outlaw Consulting concluded that today’s young people value brands that use language in a “straightforward and stripped-down way, use plain packaging, and avoid excess.”

The companies most cited by respondents stress simplicity, reported Holly Brickley, a strategic analyst for the San Francisco research firm.

The findings have strong implications for colleges — for everything from website design to email communication to publications — reminding us that less truly is more.

Brickley noted that many of the companies and brands selected by “trendsetting” Millennials avoid excess and fluff in their marketing and product styling. For example, Apple received ...

The image of the Millennial generation took a battering this week. All those socially responsible, civic minded, perennially optimistic young people fell to the earth with a thud.

A new study portrays this generation of 70 million as more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors. Electronic gadgets and social networking sites stoke their self-indulgent tendencies while misguided parents fuel their self-inflated sense of importance.

It’s not a pretty picture and it certainly runs counter to the collective generational image painted by Neil Howe and William Strauss, authors of two seminal books, “Millennials Rising” and “Millennials Go to College.”

A team of five psychologists, led by San Diego State University’s Jean Twenge, looked at the responses of 16,475 college students who completed an evaluation ...