Millennial Marketers: Humanity’s Only Hope

I kind of wish we could go back to the days when using the internet meant your phone didn’t work. We should bring that back.

I was a digital “early adopter” before those words were ever used consecutively to form a sentence.

How it started

It started during the ads sprinkled throughout my Saturday morning cartoons, and again when my college instructors had to scramble to learn more about the power of the internet and social media in order to stay relevant and teach my fellow students and I something we didn’t already know.

I remember desktop publishing to create my own newspaper spread.

I remember the prestige of a back cover magazine ad.

I also remember my go-to “*~aWaY mEsSaGe~*” on AOL.

I remember moving my crush’s ranking in my Top 8 on MySpace or picking the perfect song to reflect my personality.

I remember my first Facebook friend on a Facebook that was only for college students. (Anna Zinger, I hope you’re doing well!)

I also remember having an advertising class which I LOVED, but I still didn’t believe that advertising worked. (No one was really teaching integrated marketing campaign strategies. They were selling the sexy agency life of Don Draper and telling stories about the cool clients they worked with in their careers.) It was all about the creative side of advertising (which is very important) but not at all about strategy.

OK, but what is my point? No, it’s not for you to feel bad for the generation that (everyone?) continues to blame for all the world’s problems. My point is actually a plea. The plea is that you PLEASE LISTEN to us because we are the only generation that can save humanity. *for dramatic effect*

How it's going

I have a Masters degree in Integrated Marketing Communications along with 13 years of marketing experience. My fellow Millennial Marketers and I have seen things I can promise you no other generation has seen. Graduating during an economic crisis was a good character builder/reality check smack in the face, too.?

For example, we learned about traditional media buying and planning in school and then taught ourselves (and became the experts) in social media advertising. We watched products go from being strategically placed in TV shows, to being sent to social media influencers and celebrities with captive audiences that could never be reached via traditional means. SO MUCH TUMMY SLIMMING TEA.

We learned how to carefully craft creative messages and visuals that appealed to a specific target demo based off of what we knew about them. Then, we started teaching ourselves (and becoming the experts again) on how to strategically choose keywords we wanted to rank for in search engines.?

This is why you should listen to a Millennial Marketer: We watched and participated in the strategic digital marketing takeover of your lives. All of ya. I personally feel obligated to talk about this because it all happened very quickly and it was (and still is) the Wild Wild West in a lot of ways.

Ownership is on the user: you, me, your grandma, your child. All those agreements we scroll past, passwords we save, websites we bookmark, devices we use, places we travel to, foods we eat, people we like, medical questions we have, secrets we keep, dreams we have…as Millennial Marketers, I think we have a responsibility to share what we know and add some integrity to this machine that has taken over.?

It’s A LOT even for the experts. But we are the only generation that simultaneously evolved with these innovations to almost organically become experts on both sides of the spectrum. And lately, things are just out of control. Who is out there doing the right thing while no one is watching? Who is out there with good intentions and not just a budget to spend and a conversion rate to hit?

Things got weird when we started being able to quantify…..everything. The amount of time a pair of eyeballs spends on a picture while scrolling through Instagram can indicate interest in such a topic, leading to more of the same topic being fed to that pair of eyeballs. That’s just one example.?

Every online activity being measurable now has taken humanity out of marketing (and even out of journalism.) Sure, quantifying online activity can reduce the time it takes to get a consumer to consume, but it also speeds up our already fast-paced lives.

The power of being a Millennial Marketer in today’s world lies in our understanding that all online activity is measurable and used to inform integrated marketing strategies. Most importantly, we know that those marketing messages are not just for products or services, but they also apply to news, politics and propaganda.?

Nothing you see online is a coincidence anymore. It’s all precisely measured and curated just for you. Let’s just do our best to remember how we got to such an automated way of life. And to my fellow Millennials, chins up my friends. I know, I know…they’ll never understand us.

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