It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous

I know I shouldn't. Every fibre of my being is telling me to stop. But I can't help it. It's almost a compulsion. I have to do it. I need to. I must talk about millennials.

Or perhaps, more accurately, talk about the people who talk about millennials. I thought they'd gone away, but it seems they've returned. And they're worse than ever.

Take a deep breath. Dive in. It's sink or swim now.

STP

Or segmentation, targeting & positioning to the uninitiated. It's a core principle of marketing. And no, I'm not getting into the Byron Sharp vs. Mark Ritson debate about reach vs. targeting.

First you segment the market. Then you decide which segments you want to target. Then you position your offering to them.

Segmentation is, in principle, straightforward. You divide & group people (the market) according to the meaningful behaviours & characteristics they share with each other. The people within each segment should be homogenous to each other & heterogenous to the people outside of the segment. If they're not, you haven't got a segment.

And it's here the first cracks in the millennial argument appear.

The Pew Research Centre defines millennials (a term first coined by William Strauss & Neil Howe in 1987) as born between 1981-1996. There are around 1.8bn of them on the planet. 350m in China. 70m in the US. 14m in the UK.

If we believe what we're told, then millennials want a sense of purpose in their work. They want to engage with brands that share their values. They value experiences over things. They're entitled job-hoppers who don't know how to respond to failure.

When the millennial-peddlers ascribe these attributes to millennials, they're ascribing them - knowingly or not - to all 1.8bn born between 1981-1996. They're saying that those 1.8bn people are one homogenous segment. Which, I think we can agree, is patently ridiculous.

The only thing those 1.8bn people all share is that they were born within 15 years of each other. A meaningful behaviour or characteristic? Err, no. You might as well as pull together a group of people who have a second cousin called Henry.

Hammers & nuts

To illustrate a point you sometimes need to paint with a very broad brush.

So I'd like to present this fictitious portrait of James and Sarah. I'm not suggesting this is how you should approach segmentation or create personas. But, you know, one good stereotype deserves another. And this is just to illustrate a (very obvious) point.

James was born in Henley-on-Thames in 1981. Like all the men in his family he boarded at Eton & studied PPE at Oxford. He then took a job at the investment bank where his father worked.

He lives in a townhouse in Chelsea with his wife. She's an equity partner at a global law firm. They have twin girls, aged three, both of whom have their own nanny and will soon start at the prep school their mother attended.

James has been a member of the Conservative party his entire life, but voted remain in the EU referendum.

Sarah was born just outside Doncaster in 1996. Along with many of their friends, her grandparents moved from Ireland to one of the numerous pit villages there. Sarah's grandfather & father were miners until the pits closed in the 1980s.

Sarah left school at 16 with no GCSEs and had her first child soon after. She had another child aged 19. She's single & works two jobs to provide for her children. She relies partly on benefits to survive.

Like everyone around her she was a Labour supporter, but switched recently to UKIP and voted leave in the EU referendum.

Sarah and James are both millennials. But what we really know about them? Virtually nothing.

Suddenly that crack in the millennial argument becomes a little bigger.

Digital what?

Even more misguided than talking about millennials is talking about millennials as digital natives.

The iPod launched in 2001 & iTunes followed in 2002. YouTube was created in 2005. Facebook & Twitter launched to the public in 2006. The iPhone in 2007. Apple opened the App Store in 2008. Instagram was born in 2010. Deliveroo started delivering food in 2013.

If you were born in 1981 you'd have been 24 before you could watch videos on YouTube & 25 before connecting & sharing on Facebook & Twitter. You'd have been at least 26 before you could make a call on your iPhone.

Even if you were born in 1996, Facebook & Twitter wouldn't have been around until you were 10. You wouldn't have been downloading apps from the App Store until you were 12. You'd have been 14 before you started sharing photos on instagram & 17 before making an order on Deliveroo.

The term digital native was first coined by Marc Prensky in his 2001 article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. In it he advocated that the students of the time processed information differently to previous generations & therefore required a different mode of education.

You can read part one here & part two here.

He describes digital natives as people who have "spent their entire lives surrounded by & using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones & all the other toys & tools of the digital age... Computer games, email, the internet and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives."

By contrast, he says that people born earlier & who were introduced to this technology "are, & always will be compared to them, digital immigrants."

So let's apply Marc Prensky's test. Would someone born in 1981 have spent their entire life surrounded by the toys & tools of the digital age? Absolutely not. Would someone born in 1996? Not really. They would both have known plenty of the pre-digital world.

To refer to millennials as digital natives is simply wrong.

And but

The thing is, those who talk about millennials aren't actually talking about all 1.8bn on the planet or all 14m in the UK.

When Steinway started using video to attract millennial buyers (true story), they weren't doing it to attract people like Sarah.

When Fieldfisher say that "everyone is struggling" to understand millennial motivations at work (true story), they aren't talking about people like James.

When agencies say they specialise in social media marketing to attract millennial customers (true story), they aren't talking about every person born between 1981 - 1996 from Baghdad to Bangkok, Berlin to Berhampur, Bilbao to Binangonan, Bratislava to Bristol.

When consultants make a video series educating millennials on how to behave in the workplace (true story), they're talking about a mythical creature who doesn't exist. Someone created by snake oil sellers.

So stop talking about millennials & start talking about real people.

And so

Why is this important? It goes beyond saying that talking about millennials is boneheaded - which it is.

Here are three big problems:

1. It damages marketing's credibility. We already struggle for influence in the boardroom. Producing pretty infographics showing how millennials like to communicate in today's fast-paced digital world just makes us look like the colouring in department - when we need to be seen as the department that helps the business make money.
2. It's lazy. Lazy thinking. Lazy language. If you actually think all 14m people in the UK born between 1981 - 1996 share the same meaningful characteristics you don't know what you're talking about. If you don't, but still hold forth about targeting millennials, you don't know what you're talking about. Stop giving bad advice.
3. It's patronising. Simon Sinek should be treated to a public flogging for the way he's dehumanised an entire generation of people. These are the people we want to buy our products & services. We should treat them with respect. Yet keynote speakers & LinkedIn gurus talk about them as if they're idiots. So called snowflakes who don't know how to behave in the workplace & can't survive in the real world. I know who's side I'm on.

So the next time you see or hear someone talking about millennials, challenge them on it.

Ask what market segmentation they've done to arrive at their conclusions. Ask what meaningful characteristics those 1.8bn people share. Ask if anyone born before 1981 may also share some of those characteristics. Ask what factors other than age affect preference to buy certain products & services. Ask them if they're talking about a 37 year old investment banker in New York, a 30 year old farmer in Lincolnshire, or a 26 year old aid worker in Lesotho.

Because, hey, they're all millennials. Apparently.

About the author

Lee Grunnell is responsible for brand strategy at Thirteen. As well as arguing with people about millennials, he helps firms make more money by articulating, communicating & demonstrating what makes them distinctive. You can find out more here.