Marketers are endlessly fascinated with the Millennial generation. Articles on lifestyle habits and media consumption abound. The number of agencies specialising in digital communications and new creative content pathways has exploded. At almost one-third of the population, Millennials certainly represent the future, but is this where brands should be uniquely focusing in the present?
Before we get too carried away with our Millennial obsession, we should perhaps step back and ask ourselves whether we are spending enough effort focused on that most fundamental of marketing questions: who is mostly likely to buy our product?
Millennials versus the rest of the population
So let’s look at some definitions and statistics – we are using US data because comparable UK data is difficult to come by. The Pew Research Center uses the following demographic generation definitions:
· The Greatest Generation: born before 1927, which would make them at least 90 years old in 2017
· The Silent Generation: born between 1928 and 1945, making them aged between 72 and 89
· The Baby Boomer Generation: born between 1946 and 1964, thus aged 53 to 71
· Generation X: born between 1965 and 1980, now aged 37 to 52
· The Millennial Generation: born between 1981 and 1997, now aged 20 to 36
Generation Y: born since 1997, still under age 20
Research conducted by Pew over the years confirms that social networking use has shot up in the past decade. Young adults (18-29 year olds, or mostly Millennials and Gen Y) as a percentage of their generation are the most likely to use social media. No real surprise there.
However, when you look at the numbers as a percentage of the total US population, the picture begins to shift. Actually, more 30-49 year olds are likely to use social media than any other age group, which begins to shift us toward Gen X.
When you look at percentage of generational groups, the Millennials and Gen Xers are almost equally likely to use social media. But as a percentage of total US population, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers together (37-71 year olds) are a far bigger part of the population. And, not so incidentally, they represent a larger proportion of likely adult social media users than Millennials.
And when you look at population projections by generational group, it becomes clear that this Gen Xer/Baby Boomer combination will continue to be the largest population group – at least until they are overtaken by Generation Y (though it will be some time before they achieve any significant purchasing power). Millennials may be the single largest generation at 31% of the US adult population (about 75.4 million people as of 2015), but Gen Xers and Baby Boomers combined are 58% (about 140.9 million people).
Generation X and Baby Boomer insight
So who are these people – these Gen Xers and Baby Boomers? How does technology and social media fit into their lives?
Anecdotally, my husband’s childhood, as a member of the Silent Generation, was marked by the invention of the television. My childhood, as a Baby Boomer, saw the development of the modem, ASCII, video games and the WAN. The earliest forms of personal computers, mobile phones, email and gaming consoles were launched in the early childhood of our children, nieces and nephews — all Gen Xers. The real explosion in terms of both hardware and software has come in the early lives of Millennials and Gen Y.
Consequently, it is not surprising that adoption rates and usage patterns of new technologies vary by generation. Baby Boomers and early Gen Xers grew up with ‘technology’ that included things like the rotary telephone, electric typewriter, floppy disk and cassette tape.
Nevertheless, while some may consider them to be old fogies and Luddites, scratching their heads about how they might extract old files from 3 ½ inch floppy disks, they have come some way in adopting more modern forms of technology usage. Even for this combined group, Facebook is the dominant social network of choice – probably as a means of keeping up with friends and children. However, it is not at all clear that Facebook or other social media platforms are their primary source of information and news.
Purchasing power
However you look at it, there are more Gen Xers/ Baby Boomers spending time (and money) online than there are Millennials. While the data is a bit dated (2010), the numbers of Gen Xers/ Baby Boomers engaging in these activities are likely to continue to grow as adoption of these ‘new’ technology applications continues to spread. As of 2010, online game playing was the only activity where they were outnumbered by Millennials. Nevertheless, they seem to be going online predominantly for emailing, conducting searches, getting news and health information, accessing government websites, making travel reservations and other purchases.
Add to that, this larger group is in the prime of their earning/ spending power, while the Millennials are just starting out. In addition, Millennials focused media coverage would lead us to believe that these younger people are struggling to get on the housing ladder and establish their own households. As a result, they are staying in or moving back to the parental home. The implications for consumer products marketers of this are huge. Mums of Millennials are continuing to do the shopping, laundry and household cleaning.
Marketers need to ‘follow the money’ (or should we say, ‘lead’ the money) and that means a renewed focus on older parts of the population – Generation X and Baby Boomers. To the degree that marketers themselves are predominantly Millennials (average age in ad agencies is 34), they need to realise their most lucrative targets are likely not like them. It requires educating themselves to understand not just the channels Gen X and Baby Boomers use, but the kind of messaging that effectively communicates with them.
The world does not revolve solely around Millennials. Of course, they have proved to be a unique target audience and are of significant future value to marketers. But for the foreseeable future the other 60% of the population are of greater value and should not be overlooked or ignored for sustained success.
By Debra Marmor, liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Marketors
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