MILLENNIALS: StatSocial Reveals the Folly in Marketing to a “Generation”
MILLENNIALS: StatSocial Reveals the Folly in Marketing to a “Generation”
Discussions of “Millennials” have been ongoing here at StatSocial for a long while. Repeatedly we’ve come to only one conclusion. There is no reason to market to an audience simply based on the years they were born.
This is the age of Facebook and the mass adoption of social media has given marketers the ability to understand consumers as individuals, allowing for the focus be on those who will be most receptive to every message. StatSocial exists to guide marketers directly to those people, leveraging the power of social insights.
To illustrate the folly of marketing simply to a generation, StatSocial presents to you an eight-part study to highlight the wildly divergent likes, tastes, and behaviors of younger vs. older Millennials (18–24 vs 25–35 year olds) . The insights you’re going to see are derived from StatSocial ’s consumer database, analyzing the online behaviors of over 20mm American millennial aged men and women.
The eight ways we’ll break down the differences in these older and younger millennials are as follows:
- Interests
- Brands
- Music
- TV genres and networks
- TV shows
- Personality Insights (Powered by IBM Watson)
Without further ado, we present you with a look at the wildly varying interests on the younger and older millennial sets.
KEY INSIGHT — YOUNGER MILLENNIALS ARE 61% MORE LIKELY TO BE INTERESTED IN ASTROLOGY THAN OLDER MILLENNIALS
To explain what this chart is telling you is simple. Millennials aged 18 to 24 are 61% more likely to be interested in astrology than Millennials ages 25 to 34.
More surprising is that the young — able to eat pizza and candy while retaining relatively slender frames — find themselves 59% more likely than their so-called generation’s older segment to be interested in nutrition .
College life , well duh. Body art , again, well duh (although the practice of body modification really first went mainstream with Generation X ).
But let us move on to those Millennials who even if — as some social critics would have it — our culture is infantilized and coddled, have an entirely more adult set of concerns. Or so we’d hope.
Ladies and gents, the other Millennials, those ages 25 to 34 .
OLDER MILLENNIALS ARE 178% MORE LIKELY TO BE INTERESTED IN ALCOHOL, 106% MORE LIKELY TO CARE ABOUT REAL ESTATE
From the top we see that adult life has stressed out this portion of the Millennials to where they’ve cultivated an interest in cocktails and beer exceeding their generation’s younger-portion by a whopping 178%. Since the first three years represented in that younger portion are not allowed to drink legally in the U.S., it’s nice to know that potentially today’s young people are so law abiding (obviously these stats neither prove nor disprove that, but the age matter is almost certainly a factor in the proportional difference).
We hope this older lot does hold off on mixing that first martini until at least late afternoon, as they also have an interest in homeschooling exceeding the younger Millennials by 148%; a strong suggestion of young parenthood among this segment emerges.
The next bunch seem the sort of interests you’d expect to find among the later end of this age bracket, and frankly in some cases, with those a bit older; Interior Decorating, Investors & Patents, Wine, Real Estate, and Business Software.
Wine, while related to the top entry, comes with trappings of refinement and culture. Further investigation reveals that it is indeed not Mad Dog 20/20 or Ripple holding their interest, but well-regarded labels such as La Crema, Kendall-Jackson, and Yellow Tail.
But number 10 is where the narrative goes slightly askew, but only if you’re insistent that ANY age bracket be a solitary body that conforms to a set of preconceived notions.
The fact is, to a degree exceeding the college aged Millennials by 85%, this age bracket is interested in Role Playing Games . While apparently there has been a bit of a revival in the tabletop games with which the nerds of my generation grew up , this category broadly includes many digital titles, most importantly the still insanely popular king of the MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) World of Warcraft .
Blizzard Entertainment , Warcraft ’s parent company’s annual BlizzCon attracts a crowd of at least 25,000 revelers each year, the majority of whom fall cleanly within this demographic (to give an idea of the event’s scale, its closing night entertainment over the years has included such mega-names as Foo Fighters, Ozzy Osbourne, and Metallica).
As the above picture illustrates, and other stats confirm — all of which can be found and/or bolstered by the analytics StatSocial provides — the 25 to 34 set is the prime MMORPG demo.
OKAY, YOU’VE HAD YOUR FUN. NOW GET TO THE MEAT OF THE MATTER!
You want meat? Here’s your meat.
In becoming overly concerned with appealing to Millennials — or any generation — as some monolithic cultural entity, a marketer’s message will reach not just two, but potentially many more distinct groups of people, only a portion of whom will be receptive to the message. It’s wasteful, and with StatSocial utterly unnecessary.
The days of “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” marketing are long behind us, but so are the days of generational targeting. If you sell cherry soda, StatSocial’ s data can bring you directly to the cherry soda fans. AND it can also tell you what else those who are already fans of your cherry soda also like. And much more.
IT SEEMS YOU’VE MUCH MORE TO TELL US ABOUT THIS
We’ve only just begun to discuss this topic.
In this space we will be sharing a rich assortment of statistical breakdowns and comparisons emphasizing, and elaborating upon what we’ve only hinted at above. Other, older generations may be popping in to say hello along the way as well. Bookmark and revisit often.
In the meantime, we encourage you to add us on Facebook and Twitter , and if you get a chance, say hello.