Nick Shore

Unless you compete in a market place that specifically targets
youth, yous probably don't spend a lot of fourth dimension thinking near the emergence of
the so-chosen Millennial Generation in America today.

And if yous don't spend a lot of time thinking well-nigh
Millennials, information technology may come up as a surprise to you lot that at 100 million potent they are
the single largest generational cohort in American history, dwarfing their
predecessors Generation X, and even out-sizing that virtually famous of all
generational behemoths, The Babe Boomers.

"Only nosotros don't sell glue or acne cream," yous may even so be
thinking, "so why should we care?"

Consider for a moment the half-century long trajectory that
The Boomers have taken from 1960s to the present day. Those bearded idealists
of the civil rights motion are the self aforementioned retirees now marching with
placards in the streets protesting for heath-care reform. It'due south not difficult to see
just how many of the tectonic shifts in civilization and commerce over the last half
fifty years have been powered by the demands of the Boomer generation. From Pepsi'southward co-opting of Sixties counter-culture, to the
casualization of the workplace, at that place is a wealth of prove for how closely linked broad
changes in the American landscape accept been to the Boomers moving through time,
like the proverbial egg in the snake.

Millennials are not just a more than voluminous generation than
Boomers, but better educated, more than self-esteemed, more enervating, more
technologically savvy, more empowered and wired to win at the game of life. And they
are pouring daily by the tens of thousands into the commercial and cultural
mainstream.

In short, no matter what business you lot are in, they are your
adjacent generation of consumers.

Whether iii years, five, or ten from now, sooner or later
the Millennials will be the ones standing in the grocery island, or in the bank
managers office, or in the car dealership evaluating your product or service
offer, asking "is this for me, really?" More likely, of course, they won't
be standing in whatever of these places, but doing it on a voice-activated iPad
while driving to work in Smart Car Version 3.0, simply you get the point.

And if you want a vision of the kind of impact this
generation can have on an industry, just await at some of the categories where
they take come to play already: music– transformed from a big label album-driven model to something so
customizable and just-in-time that it'south barely recognizable as the industry information technology
once was; clothing–the fast way of a Forever 21 shattering traditional
"i trade drop per flavor" models into shards; and of course the
social networking "industry," remarkable in so many means, non least of which is
the speed with which a single business entity can become from zero to half a
billion consumers.

At MTV, of course, youth is our market.

MTV fabricated a decision at its point of inception to never grow
old with the audition but to reinvent periodically for each "generation next."
And then naturally, we have been i of the companies impacted first and dramatically
by the Millennial generation coming of age as entertainment consumers.

Because immature people are our viewers and because they
are so fast and so fickle (and becoming ever more so), we study them with a
deep intensity and intimacy. We strive to empathise not just the "what," just
also the "why"–their drives (conscious and unconscious), desires, passions,
fears, and challenges.

In all of our piece of work with Millennials, we have identified a
serial of traits that are quite unique to this generation (versus prior
generations), and which we believe will have dramatic implications on who
they volition become every bit consumers–not but consumers of entertainment,
only of cars, homes, refrigerators, and shampoo.

Before describing these principles, it's important to
highlight two tectonic forces that move beneath much of what defines the
uniqueness of this generation. The first, and perhaps most of import, is the
recalibration of the nuclear family unit and, as a result, the way this
generation was parented.

A century of "parent-centered" nuclear family has steadily
been under-going a epitome shift,
and may have merely passed the tipping point. The nucleus of the family has been moving
towards the child, and Millennials look like the first generation raised in
that new nuclear family structure. No longer the hierarchical structure with
disciplinarian parent "leadership," the new family is flattened to a democracy, with
collective (if not kid-driven) controlling process. Parents are more like
all-time friends, life coaches, or as nosotros at MTV call them "peer-ents."

75% of Millennials in an MTV study agreed that "Parents of
people my age would rather support their children than punish them," 58% agreed,
"My parents are like a best friend to me."

No longer is it necessary to "rebel against" disciplinarian
parents to individuate, engage in acts of cocky-expression, or push at the
boundaries. As one youth psychologist we work with pointed out, "Parents don't
say you can't go to the party, they create safe spaces to swallow alcohol, they
say Can I pick yous up afterward?, Here's coin for a taxi."

Cocky-expression, having your phonation heard, following your ain
path–these are all values that are positively encouraged in modern parenting
styles. Why rebel when you simply need to explain your behavior in terms of "my
experiment in self discovery."

Percentage of
Millennials who agree with the following statements
(from MTV Millennial Edge
Study, 2010):
• I'chiliad always expressing
myself in different ways – 81%
• I detest it when other
people expect me to live by their rules – 76%
• If I want something,
nix is going to stop me – 69%

In curt, the ability dynamics of the family have shifted
dramatically, and much of the empowered, one could even say "super-powered"
style of the Millennials has its roots in this redistribution.

And in the way of pouring gasoline on a burn down, the second tectonic
shift is technology. The "You lot Need It," button push button, everything costless, always
on culture of technology and the Cyberspace has amplified much of the "social
coding" of the style Millennials were parented. And equally many commentators have
already pointed out, the revolution will be tweeted. The power is in the easily
of a million anonymous hands, and can be wielded apparently event free,
in real time, with the click of a mouse.

Based on what we know nigh what makes this generation tick,
and what we hear and observe about them on a daily ground, we take distilled
down five principles, or maybe they would exist amend described equally challenges
for businesses thinking about what information technology will hateful to cater to this Millennial
consumer as they come on line in a major way to more than and more sectors of
business.

one. What
volition it mean when co-creation with your consumer becomes part of your business
model?

A generation
raised on "children should be seen and heard" simply will not exist a passive
consumer of anything. They will demand a voice in, a stake in, even a artistic
betoken of view about, everything that your business does–from the product
itself to the way it is sold and marketed, to the social responsibleness
policies of the arrangement itself. They may or may not choose to use that
ability (for instance just miniscule percentages of people actually contribute to
the oversupply-sourced IP of Wikipedia), simply they will need that the mechanisms
are in place that give them the choice to participate and the feeling that
co-inventiveness drives the development process.

And this probably won't be a onetime event ("lets go and do
some creative focus groups and get our audience to help us think well-nigh
innovation"). It will be an on-going existent time feedback loop with demonstrable
impact and validation congenital in. One of the most buzzed virtually ad campaigns of
the last few years is One-time Spice, where existent fourth dimension changes happen in the
commercial artistic as a result of input from the audience. At that place's the beauty
of the idea itself, and then there's the power of the feedback/validation loop
created with the audience–"See, you affair, your vote counts, your impact is
felt and something moves as a consequence, you are smart and creative and you accept … power."
And speaking of smarter …

2. What
will it mean to make your product ten times smarter than it is today?

In all the research we carry with this generation at MTV,
the word we perhaps hear the well-nigh is "smart" (closely followed by "random,"
"awkward," "crawly," and "love"). "Smart" means a multitude of things to the
generation, but one thing that's common is that it carries a very high premium
and social currency. For the well-nigh educated generation in history, told by then-called "velcro" parents that smart is
everything, it should hardly be a surprise. And indeed 57% of the generation
consider themselves smarter than their parents, and 68% agree that "Nerds are
the new jocks"!

We already accept the Smartphone, the Smart Motorcar and even Smart
Water. What is smart soap, smart diapers, smart gas stations.

When you lot investigate the concepts of smartness further with
the generation, some of the nuances that emerge give fascinating insights into
their commonage psyche. For something to be "smart" it has to, for example, entertain
me, remember what I practise and anticipate my needs, do "everything" for me, take
born complexity and layers of pregnant, shape-shift, be as smart as me!

3. What
will it mean to be in a "two player game" with your consumer?

Millennials accept a natural predisposition to view situations
in terms of the metaphor of a game. Take the workplace–"what are the rules of
this world, what are the levels, how do I get to the tenthursday i as
quickly as possible (that nice CEO suite on the corner of the top floor), is
there a shortcut, a smart bomb, a surreptitious entrance, a magic potion?" Foursquare,
the location-based social networking site, literally turns one's social life
into a game complete with badges, medals, trophies, and even mayor-hood awarded
to "players."

The generation learned immature and learned well how to
expertly negotiate with their parents to become a pass out of homework or a mean solar day
off school … ability-players in the game called "family." Raised on a diet of most millions of hours of World Of
Warcraft, elaborate world kid-centered "constructs" like Harry Potter, and
soccer trophies for the whole team, Millennials want to win.

Asked about "worldview" based on the post-obit phrases, the
intergeneration differences hither become rapidly apparent.

"Game" the system:
Millennials – 53%
Boomers – 26%

Protest the system:
Millennials – 13%
Boomers – 59%

Marketing to this generation may exist more like a two player
game, where anybody's looking for the win win. How will your campaigns create
a sense of "play" on the office of the audience, a sense of depth and levels, a
sense of engagement, a validation loop, and ultimately a sense of material and
emotional victory (or even of beingness the special ane that figured out how to
game it )? In the marketing campaign for Halo iii, level afterwards level of depth was
buried within layers of the marketing campaign, consumers freeze-framing DVR
playback of commercials to pick up codes embedded in the film to follow
breadcrumbs down Internet wormholes for the adjacent clue.

iv. What
volition it mean to your business to operate in on-going versions rather than a
final product?

If we had to identify someone who is the face of the
Generation, the manner that Bob Dylan perhaps was for the Boomers or Kurt Cobaine
for Xers, then today that face would be Lady Gaga's. Considered across doubt the "most interesting
person today" past the generation the core characteristic of Gaga is the speed
and ferocity of her self-reinvention. She is doing in x minutes what information technology too
Madonna 10 years to achieve.

Who do you think is the most interesting person in pop civilisation today?

Size of discussion indicates book of response:

The parental premium placed on self expression for today's
kids, combined with applied science tools to literally "curate the cocky" in existent
time, has created an insatiable appetite for newness. If something does not
version, information technology quickly becomes boring. This has always, of class, been the
consumer need that drives every company's innovations engine, but the requisite
rpm of that engine is apace going into the carmine zone as this generation come
on line as buyers. It's no longer acceptable, for example, that chewing gum
remain the same flavor throughout the duration of the chew. No, the mucilage has to
flavor-shift mid chew lest the chewer'southward dopamine/adrenaline cycles start to
fade and new stimulus is required.

5. What
will it hateful when there is no such affair as an un-connected product?

Everything nosotros are learning about the generation points to a
demand to exist constantly continued, existentially uncomfortable with the feeling
of existence "alone," experiencing a fearfulness of missing out when they devious to the hinterlands
of their social graph. One interesting piece of enquiry led us to understand
how the car, so squarely a symbol of freedom and independence for prior
generations, has become in danger of being perceived every bit a "disconnection
device" for Millennials. "Trapped" inside the hermetically sealed vehicle, "alone",
and of class unable to text and check your status update, the feeling of the
open up road becomes the very antithesis of liberty, more like isolation.

A product which is 'un-connected' has a certain inertness
for the generation. At the more superficial level even the most inert product
tin can build a web site and "connect". Only it is much more challenging to
re-imagine your product experience by asking how to increase its innate
connectedness. What would a continued retail experience await like? Perhaps like
the and then called "booty video" syndrome where kids motion-picture show themselves in irresolute rooms
trying out dissimilar outfits, postal service the film of their ensembles in real fourth dimension,
and seek feedback from their social network on which ones wait best earlier
purchasing.

Equally the sometime hockey adages goes, you lot don't skate to where the
puck is, you skate to where it's headed. And in the case of the Millennials,
we're looking at a hundred million pucks moving towards open up water ice where bold,
every bit-yet-unimagined products and services will some day await them. So heads-upwardly, hither come the Millennials.

Nick Shore is Senior Vice President of Strategic Consumer Insights and Research at MTV. He is responsible for all of MTV's research efforts across MTV, MTV2, mtv.com, mtvU, and MTV Tr3s platforms.