Are the Millennials an important phenomena?

Millennials or Gen Y are the generation born in the 80s and 90s. They are grown up with or parallel to Internet and mobile phones, and many of them are used to have everything at their fingertips. Many of them are also very comfortable with technology.  Does this influence the optimal way for companies to connect with them? Are millennials shaping marketing technologies? Are millennials as homogeneous as it might first look?

Yes a large proportion millennials are smart phone owners, how many vary from market to market, Our experience also gives that the smartphone is an essential way to reach millennials, and they are a significant and important consumer group. However, they are neither the biggest nor the most intensive smart phone user group. Additionally, they are not as homogeneous as you might think and for many millennials life change substantially when they become adults. How do we know this? Let an old man recap some of his life.

Being an electronic engineer driven by the utilitarian aspect of innovation I early enter a path in user experience and consumer insight and the drive to pave the way for a smarter phone has long been there.

- 1987 I sketched my first smartphone

- In 1995 I had a master thesis student making a prototype

- In 2000 one of my millennial daughters become one of the first teenagers on   this globe owning a smartphone

- In 2008 I became a happy owner of an iPhone

2008 however was bigger for me than the iPhone. 2008 I learnt to know an amazing engineer who introduced me to the world of big data. Having 20 years of experience of the small data world of market research I found the opportunities to combine my experience with what was shared fascinating. I particularly remember how we together digested some really powerful call graph analysis. I was also introduced to a group of great eager young engineers.

Time went , but years later in 2013 we both had left the corporate world. I had returned back to Sweden. We sat down in my summer house discussing the opportunity to do something. The intention was to combine skills and extensive experiences in big data technology and consumer insights. We discussed that transactional data might not be enough to profile people precis enough, we assumed we needed to combine market research and big data in some way. How remained to be solved. Together with some other industry people we founded an analytics start up.  We also convinced some great young at heart people to join. 

Today 3 years late after crunching more than 100 Tbyte of data and aligning it with surgical market research we know that it was not only needed, it was possible, it makes a lot of sense and it provide significant value to our customers. We also found a name on what we do, we call it bridging.

In the process we found that big data alone is not as rich as you might think. It explains what people are doing, but reveal little about why. Therefor it has less value in influencing and predicting peoples’ behaviour than many think. In fact, our experience is that big data’s most significant contribution is not the consumer insights, but the fact that it enables precis action and follow up on every individual customer. To achieve the later you need the answers on both what and why, you need rich data and rich data require both and inside out and an outside in perspective. In summary our learnings are that both market research and big data is needed. The value you get out of your investment in customer insights is very dependent on how you combine the two.

During these 3 years we have done some break through innovation in bridging. Innovations that provide concrete value to clients. These are some of the benefits.

Rich customer insights became operational with fast feedback loops

• Predictive segmentation model combining outside in dimensions with inside out.
• Precis and cost efficient tagging of a consistent, stable, comprehensive and multidimensional segmentation model is possible on millions of customers.
• Brand strategy, inbound- as well as outbound-tactical marketing and sales can be better aligned
• More marketing impact for less money
• Possible to evolve and enhance existing demographic models like millennials.

Trend setting and influencing customers can be identified on individual level

• Opportunities to predict trends and align strategy with operations.
• Increased capability to set trends
• Faster and more accurate feedback on adoption and diffusion of new offers
• Earlier detection of new behaviours

Customer value for different segments and unique individuals becomes clearer

• Facilitator for more optimised offers
• Vehicle to increased margins
• Tool to improved loyalty

So we believe that the future is about meeting the majority of people, not only millennials, on their smartphones. We also believe that how you design your inbound marketing is very dependent on who you are and who your customers are. In fact, some marketing that attract millennial have little effect on other consumers. In some cases becoming too millennial for everything can even be negative. To succeed you need deep insights in what provide value for different consumers and deep insights are enabled by rich data. The road to rich data is bridging.