Target (YOLO + FOMO) = Capture (True Millennials)

"Two roads diverged in a wood and I — I took the one less travelled by."

-Robert Frost

"Two roads diverged in a wood and I — I took the one less tweeted about."

-Millennials

Yes, that’s true being a Millennial myself, I can totally support the saying quoted above. Millennials are already on the brink of being the major population cohort on planet Earth. Researchers say that by the end of 2019, the spending power of Millennials will be around $ 1.3 Trillion annually. This, in itself, is a huge market and every brand wants to target millennials in every way possible. It’s not just the brands, for anyone and anything to be successful, it is imperative to understand that millennials will go on to become a major future workforce too, and that’s a major reason why every employer wants to hire and retain this future talent in their firms or as part of their teams. Now the part comes where I have to break the harsh but expected truth: “Millennials are NOT loyal”. Yes, we millennials, also known as Gen Y, born somewhere between the 1980s to mid-1990s, are neither loyal to brands and nor to our employers. So, what one should do capture us or retain us? Is there any secret sauce to it? Well, to understand that you must understand what drives real Millennials.

Millennials are driven by two major factors: YOLO (You Only Live Once) and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Research has proved that around 69% of Gen Y experience the phenomenon of FOMO and according to Strategy Online, 60% of millennials make reactive purchases because of FOMO. In other words, they'll buy something just because they feel they might miss out. About being YOLOites, everyone knows that millennials are the generation who are experience seekers. They don’t seek to save money, they don’t like to invest, and believe me, the inflation factor in the economy doesn’t mean anything to them. They will be ready to pay a fortune for one-time good experiences in their lives. A brand can be a total success in the upcoming times if they just capture these two factors cleverly.

One might think why this disruption in cohorts even happened. Surely, it wasn’t an overnight change. It was the accumulation of the various events that happened in the teen years of the millennials. Gen Y has witnessed the recession of 2008 and how the loyalty of Gen X employees never paid off. Those were the initial years of jobs for some part of the Gen Y cohort too, and a major portion of this cohort also got laid off. So, they don’t believe in tomorrow’s economy at all and that’s why they want to live it all today. Secondly, they have been overloaded with choices, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that brand loyalty is not going to come easy. One bad review on Zomato or Yelp or Airbnb or one bad tweet will make quite sure that your business is doomed. If you really want to have a bite of this Gen Y market, follow this cookbook recipe:

1)     Introduce 2 new KPIs in you marketing/retention plan: Generation of FOMO and Advertisement for YOLO. If you don’t include these two viral factors in your marketing plan, you will soon be saying goodbye to your business in the near future. Even at workplaces, Millennials don't expect to do monotonous everyday jobs which can be easily done by machines instead they like new challenges every day. So, if you want to hire to retain, try to always keep the work environment fresh with new challenges.

2)     Exclusivity is the key: Though we like to follow the masses when it comes to reviews but don’t forget we are core experientialists too. We enjoy the exclusivity factor. So, if you are exclusive we would certainly be your customers. But the question is for how long you can be exclusive as well as fresh. Paying premium is not uncommon for us we are ready to trade up by sacrificing few of the basic items in our day-to-day lives to get that one-time, out of the world experience, whether it’s skydiving or as simple as buying the latest iPhone.

3)     Don’t bore us: The time has come when a human’s attention span has nearly reached that of a goldfish. We are not interested in long elaborative content and lectures. We like minimalistic information.

4)      We love our world: According to Deloitte’s 2019 Millennial Survey, the top concern of Gen Y is Climate change/ protecting the environment. So if you are doing something about it, we will definitely support you. It also gives us a sense of belonging in doing something for the greater good.

5)     Freedom is our Birthright: We love flexibility and freedom and we are ready to trade anything for that. That is very much why subscription models and the flexible work timing concept trends are much more these days. So, give us freedom and we will give you results.

Just create a balance of above the 5 ingredients and cook them slowly and steadily, and that’s how a millennial market will be served to you hot in a platter.