Marketing

Hey, Nineteen: So you think you’re marketing to the Millenniums?

by Roy MacNaughton

If your target group includes young people, and even if it doesn't, there's a message in here for you too. Just the other day I was visiting with a university professor colleague of mine and we talked about how much more difficult it is to teach in today's classroom. He shared with me his experience. His were so numerous and onerous that he put them together in a special paper and presented it to other teachers in other faculties and at other colleges and universities. He met with universal agreement at what he had found.

Some of his 'findings' included a much shorter attention span, a need to use interactive technologies to communicate, a reduced level of respect for any teacher (the students claim that the adult-professor must 'earn' their respect before they give it), a whole new way of talking and interacting with each other; a lack of interest in reading newspapers, text books or anything that is not on television, in the movies, videogames, interactive, audio-visual or on the web.

He also cited a refusal to learn the basics that create the platform upon which the software used in disciplines such as accounting, architectural design, mathematics, physics, and others are created. Their question is why do they have to learn 'that stuff' when there is a software program to handle it. If the software breaks down, as a yacht's global positioning system just might during a sailing vacation, knowing celestial aviation and the basics of navigation or 'dead reckoning' might come in handy. This need to know the basics seems lost on this target group.

I was reminded of how much more difficult it might or must have been for those in the late forties and early fifties to learn how to market to the new breed of consumers just after the Second World War. These people had just come through the worst depression ever experienced in modern times. Then Pearl Harbor catapulted them into four years of the armed services, war, death and destruction. Finally, with the end of the war, renewed prosperity grew rapidly along with the ways things were done and the manner in which people communicated. Now we had this entirely new thing called television. A few short years later, it was in color too.

Magazines grew like wild plants. Restaurants starting branching out and opening up other similar 'branded' locations. Chains of food service outlets like McDonalds, KFC, A&W and Big Boy grew exponentially. Retailing took off with the new prosperity. Marketers had to learn to speak a new language then too. This is not a new, unique problem or opportunity.

My objective in bringing this up is not to evaluate today's young people one way or another. My intention is to point out that this group of potential customers is totally different in many ways from any group of consumers you may have been marketing to over the years.

For instance if you are contemplating sending emails out to these prospects, be aware of the latest research. EmailLabs, a major email company, studied millions of emails they sent out this past fall on behalf of more than 300 of their clients. What they found was alarming. Email readers appear to be spending on average only 15-20 seconds on each email they open. We know that the average person can read up to 50 words in that 15-20 seconds, but if we've put our lovely graphics or logo in place and have taken two paragraphs to get to the point, our prospect will not have stayed around long enough to read it. And if you have many other visuals on the same page, as in the case of a web page, you just might be losing them almost immediately.

What does this mean to the average marketer today? It means that in order to effectively communicate with this target group, you have to learn a new language of fast sound bites, short expressions, and interactive communication methods.

The obverse side of the same coin is just as important. If you are targeting your messages to those over 40, you need to NOT use this same new language. Those of us over 40 don't understand this way of thinking; and probably don't like it either. We have not been raised in this manner. Media did not almost totally control our view of the world. There was more one-on-one interaction and relating in our upbringing and resultant society. Our media habits were different and we formed habits of reading newspapers, books, magazines, listening to talk radio, and spending time with art and culture, not just sports.

These young people have been brought up with super fast, mobile, wireless computers and the Internet with it's speed, access, and ubiquity. The web is taken for granted as an integral part of their lives. It's simply a case of when in Rome. To speak with someone in Paris, chances are you'll do much better if you use French. As I am writing this, "Hey 19" by Steely Dan is playing on the radio. This song says it all. It tells of the writer/singer of the song who laments about a young girl nineteen years of age and he says: "No we can't talk at all and we can't dance together. She thinks I'm crazy but I'm just growing old". Maybe that's it. Maybe it's just a generational thing. 'Fact is, if you want to market something to them, you have to jump over this generational chasm and communicate in their language so they will pay attention and respond to your entreaties. Otherwise, you'll never dance together either.

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Bio:

Roy W. MacNaughton

Roy W. MacNaughton is an operator, marketer and journalist with over thirty years of international hospitality and foodservice experience. He is president of his own firm that specializes in “niche markets,” while writing for several industry on and offline publications. He has taught hospitality courses at the university level in the U.S., Canada and the West Indies. As an employee or consultant, Roy has worked with McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Wendy’s, American Express, Four Seasons Hotels, Hyatt, Hilton International, Johnson & Johnson, H.J.Heinz, John Denver’s Windstar Foundation and the Aspen Highlands Ski company, among others. He is a graduate of Ryerson University’s School of Hospitality in Toronto; and he holds an MBA from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. He may be reached at: roymac@winning.com