{"id":16798,"date":"2016-05-31T08:53:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-31T13:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exob2b.com\/en\/?p=16798"},"modified":"2021-12-09T14:49:21","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T19:49:21","slug":"marketing-to-millennials-ok-but-no-hype-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exob2b.com\/en\/marketing-to-millennials-ok-but-no-hype-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Marketing to millennials: Ok, but no hype please"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millennials have been described<\/a> as digital natives who are collaborative, open-minded and consensus gathering. They are also portrayed as liberal and overtly passionate about equality. If you were you born between 1980 and 2000, would you say this is an accurate description of your personality? Or does it seem more like the description of your astrological sign: occasionally accurate depending on the day, as dictated by the laws of probability.<\/p>\n

I kid, because you read a lot of nasty things about millennials, too: Lazy, entitled, able to leave a job on a whim, bla, bla, bla. You have to take it all with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

It could be argued that there is only one empirical truth about millennials, whether in B2B or B2C marketing: That they were raised with computers (no,no,not raised by<\/em> computers. That\u2019s 15 to 20 years from now) and as such, that they have certain ingrained expectations about how the world works: always faster, easier more interconnected and more automated. After all, for them, computers, the internet, advances in technology have always been accelerating at this ridiculous pace.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marshall McLuhan <\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, you should be marketing to millennials because as of last year<\/a> they became the biggest part of the North American workforce at 35% and will continue to grow in influence as they attain more and more senior roles in their companies. But should you be building B2B marketing programs around much hyped, supposedly common personality traits? Seems risky.<\/p>\n

I would also argue that you don\u2019t necessarily need to be a millennial to have some \u201cmillennial characteristics\u201d: It is just a matter of how well you\u2019ve adapted to, or bought into the different technologies that are around us. Millennial or not, as we all witness and participate in advancing technologies, we are all building our expectations about<\/p>\n