Marketing shift seen for Millennial generation

In a recent survey of incoming college freshmen, 87 percent favored watching TV and movies online instead of subscribing to a cable service, while 76 percent spent more than an hour a day on Facebook.

Also, 75 percent sent more than 20 text messages per day and 58 percent used Twitter “all the time,” yet only 5 percent planned to buy a PC.

Those students, who are starting their college life as soon as today, are the youngest of a tech-infused millennial generation who – in sharp contrast to Baby Boomers and other previous generations – no longer view a driver’s license as a rite of passage into adulthood.

“For millennials, if you were to think about the thing that enables freedom and independence, it’s your first cell phone, and it not happening when you’re in your late teens or early 20s,” said Ford Motor Co. futurist Sheryl Connelly. “It’s probably happening in your preteen years,”

Connelly, the automaker’s manager of global trends and futuring, headed a panel discussion last week at Twitter Inc. headquarters in San Francisco on how Ford was designing cars and marketing to appeal to the 16-to-32 age group known as the millennial generation.

At the same time, Mr Youth, a New York marketing services agency that specializes in studying the youth market, released results of a separate survey of 5,000 incoming college students who represent the graduating class of 2015.

Both Ford and Mr Youth presented similar insights into how technology – especially those produced by Bay Area companies like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Pandora Media and Apple – are causing a cultural shift in the attitudes of the millennial generation.

To be sure, that generation has also been reshaped by nontech events. The class of 2015, for example, is an “innocence lost” generation forever changed by the sobering terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the economic recession at the end of the decade, said Matt Britton, Mr Youth founder and chief executive officer.

“This has conditioned them to not take anything for granted and appreciate the good things in life,” the report said. They also view their parents as role models and are not as rebellious or antiestablishment as Boomers were.

They also believe that the technology at their fingertips gives them the ability to make a difference in the world and “empowered them with a sense that anything is possible if you are willing to work hard,” the study said.

“This generation has grown up watching (Facebook co-founder) Mark Zuckerberg build one of the world’s most valuable companies through social media. They have seen the influence that organized groups and individuals alike are able to steer via social communities and they are more than capable of wielding this power themselves.”

Half the students have more than 300 friends on Facebook and 59 percent visited the social network during class. “Facebook is like a dial tone for this audience,” Britton said.

One surprise result showed the effects of online video such as YouTube and Netflix. Only 13 percent of the students planned to subscribe to a cable TV service, a sign of a coming “seismic shift of consumer media consumption habits,” Britton said. Right now, “the lion’s share” of ad dollars still goes to traditional TV channels, but that may have to change, he said.

Owning less important

Companies like online movie and TV rental service Netflix and video game retailer GameStop, which offers a used-game trading service, have changed the concept of ownership, said Ford’s Connelly. That’s another shift from the “conspicuous consumption” mantra of Baby Boomers, who “signaled to the world that they were successful through fancy cars, expensive jewelry and very large homes.”

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Tinley Park health panel debuts

BY MATTHEW BRUCE
Correspondent

August 21, 2011 9:30PM

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Updated: August 21, 2011 10:44PM

A Facebook page, a marketing plan and a survey of residents were among the ideas discussed by a new advisory health panel in Tinley Park that met last week for the first time.

The panel’s executive committee has been given the task of developing a public policy plan to make the village a healthier place to live and raise awareness about health issues. Mayor Ed Zabrocki appointed 10 administrators from different organizations to the panel, which is to recommend a plan to the village board in January.

The executive committee quickly approved the idea of setting up a fan page on Facebook and reviewed a mission statement that panel chairman Tom Mahoney said he hopes to finalize quickly.

The panel also discussed “branding” strategies, including possibly changing its name from “mayor’s advisory panel on wellness” to something catchier. The group also discussed creating logos, catch phrases and a marketing plan.

The committee plans to survey residents to gauge their health awareness, using the information it collects as a base to measure future improvements against.

Tinley Park High School Principal Theresa Nolan gave a presentation on a wellness program implemented there last school year. It included changes in the cafeteria menus to make healthier food options available for students and staff. The initiative also features an agricultural component, with students helping oversee a chicken coup and egg hatchery. A vegetable garden will be added this year, teaching students to grow healthy crops, Nolan said.

“They enjoy it; the kids love it,” she said. “So they’re learning and they love it at the same time.”

The wellness panel also discussed having a healthy vending machine policy and talked about a federal law that will require fast-food chains to provide nutritional content on menu boards starting in 2012.

Panel member Michael Byrne, the Kirby School District 140 superintendent, was enthusiastic after the meeting about the panel’s direction.

“When I was first appointed, the only cautionary thought I had to myself was me being part of government intervention,” he said. “But I haven’t seen anything or heard anything here that’s stepping on anybody’s liberties.”

The Tinley Park initiative is funded by a $116,000 grant from the Cook County Department of Public Health and the Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded those agencies $16 million to make similar grants to other entities to promote healthy choices and active lifestyles.

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