On Millennials

”Millennials Want Their Purchases To Mean Something”

Following 90degreeasia.com’s publication on the subject of marketing to Millennials, I promised to continue sharing my insight here.

I come across many millennials at work and in my daily life, and I really believe it is important to interact with them as partners and in some way, as customers even if you are just trying to recruit them as members of your company. You may ask, “What are you promoting to them as customers?” The answer is Your Vision.

Millennials demand authenticity. When you try to buy “their time” from them as collaborators in your firms or their “valuable earnings” as customers, they want to make sure their time and money are well invested. In many ways, their consumer behavior style is the most sustainable one among us. Unless they believe your products are ethically sounds, environmentally sustainable, socially beneficial, resource & waste minimized, culturally sensitive, contributive to their personal growth, in addition to the usual practical utility, and reasonable pricing, they will not waste their time on you, or if they do due to limited options, their stay with you as customers or members of your team will be transient. 

So, what do you do to create a loyal following of the millennials? You have to continue to renovate yourself, the culture of your company, the social meaning of your brand, the environmental significance of your operation & manufacturing practices, and most importantly, your method of communication with the millennials.

Here I am not only talking about social media, I am actually referring to person to person communication and self-awareness. They are the best B.S. detectors I’ve ever come across. Because of how tech savvy these millennials are and how they are so in tuned with social media in our present days of global connectivity, they will burst made believe stories like a needle to a ballon. In addition, thanks to the advancement of emotional intelligence and psycho-social treatment modality in classrooms and media content, they tend to be more self aware than previous generations.

The cumulative results of these fast changing elements make them ultra-adaptive, and in the eyes of older generations, very finicky. But don’t worry, they do need you. They need you to guide them through inter-generational/ inter-social transactions. Find the child within yourself and genuinely present your concerns. They can be really good listeners if you give them your time of the day, counsel them in setting boundaries, help them to see the bigger meanings in life, or just be there when they are bruised from their adventures.

In other words, the old paradigm of inspiring work ethics using purely logical motivation alone will no longer be sufficient. They want you to be present with both your heart and your mind. The millennials want to make sure that you are leaving them a better world regardless of profits. And in many ways, I hope you find these a liberation. The millennials are the driving force for work-life balance, equality, social justice, and they are urging you to be more in tune with your inner self, and whenever we take actions, that we also consider social costs, which does not have to be mutually exclusive with profits.

They wish for a better world, don’t you?