The Mythology of Millennials

I just finished reading a posting on the corporate blog of a research firm that I really respect. But this posting did nothing to extend that respect. It was more drivel about Millennials, surely the most confusedly-defined generation of all.

Before getting into the details of why this posting was so disappointing, it’s worth sampling the wide variations in how Millennials are defined. On the first page of a Google search, eight out of the first 20 postings disagreed on how many Millennials there are. The population count ranged from 70 million to 100 million.

As to the calendrical bookends indicated in another Google search, the lack of consistency was astonishing. Wikipedia says Millennials were born “between the early 1980s to the early 1990s.” That would yield a Millennial population of around 48 to 58 million – notwithstanding the research company blog’s claim that “Millennials account for the largest generation in U.S.history. (Boomers, you’ll remember, are generally sized at around 78 million.)

A sampling of the calendrical bookends of the Millennial cohort as indicated by the first 20 Google listings:

1984 – 1993: 9 years

1982- 1998: 16 years

1982 – 2001: 19 years

1982 – 2003: 21 years

One “expert” in the Google listings thinks Millennials are still being born.

Now this is what I want to know: How can we trust generalities about Millennials when there isn’t even any consensus about when they were born and how many there are?

By my lights, whether a discussion is about boomers, Gen X’ers or Millennials, the subject of generations is riddled with intellectual slovenliness. That is the deeper problem I have with the blog that inspired this post.

The author of the research companies post on Millennials held up the 16-year-old high schooler in the recent movie Juno as the quintessential Millennial:

“Upon finding herself pregnant, (Juno) demonstrates remarkably little agony or angst in her decision to move forward with her pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption. She considers her situation, briefly weighs the options, and proceeds with far more poise and peace of mind than most couples at the altar …we never find Juno rethinking or otherwise agonizing over her decision.”

The implication is that Millennials are preternaturally mature for teenagers. Supposedly, according to the blog writer, Millennials quickly size up a matter, take decisive action on it and move on without looking back. But perhaps Juno is more like teenagers in every generation in recorded history: unable to assess the full consequences of situations as dramatically framed as sexual intercourse that just happened because she was bored when a boy friend came over to her house after school. Handing off the baby that resulted was not proof of maturity but of a desire to avoid responsibility for a life carelessly conceived.

Recent brain scan research shows the 16-year-old mind to be far less developed than once believed. It has another decade or so of development ahead before scientists are comfortable saying a person’s brain has fully developed. Brain scans show remarkable indifference to subtle distinctions between conditions and objects. One study showed teens to be poor readers of facial expressions, unable to determine expressions of anger from expressions of sadness in photos shown them while they were in a fMRI scanning process. Adults seeing the same pictures had no such difficulty.

The blog writer seems unaware of the processes and states of adolescent development, yet unabashedly makes claims about Millennials’ developmental states with the voice of authority.

The writer states with no hint of equivocation:

Today's Millennials are coming of age in a postmodern world which encourages consumption with playful, reckless abandon — it's likely they will be consuming at levels relatively higher than their predecessors. Believe it or not, in the future we'll all likely be buying more stuff and our youth will lead the charge.

Now, he/she purports that statement to be supported by a report you can buy for $500.00. However, I have seen much research that falls victim to what a friend calls “specious correlations.” By that he means something like this: A man about to enter his office building one day sees a bedraggled figure on the street corner rapidly snapping his fingers over a box at his feet with a few coins in it. Overcome with curiosity the office worker walks over to the fidgeting vagrant to ask him what he’s doing.

“Keeping tigers away.”

“But there are no tigers here.”

“Yep. That’s right. I’m keeping them away.”

I presume that the basic findings in the report on Millennials’ behavior are accurate abstractions of reality, but I suspect that a number of conclusions drawn are based more on specious correlations.

As I have said before in this space, I have fathered 3 boomers, 2 Gen X’ers and 1 Millennial. As expected, they are all different, but at the same time, they all went through the same stages, with pretty much the same worldviews and very much the same needs. And as I have also said in this space, the partitioning of the population into generational groupings is fraught with peril. Yes, generations do differ in style, but not in substance. Changes in technology, culture and opportunities for self expression have been a constant fact of life since the Dark Ages. But the underlying needs of people are the same today as they were in Elizabethan England. It would do you well to keep that in mind the next time someone tells you about how _______ (fill in the generation name) are different – really different!

Comments

[Ronni Bennett]

This is a topic that irritates me at the other end of the generational divide. Elders - by which I mean anyone older than Boomers - have been erased from existence by the media which have been using "boomer" as a synonym for "old" for several years.

But elders' needs and interests differ dramatically from all but the very oldest boomers as you have pointed out here in the past in your posts on Carl Jung's seven tasks of aging, among others.

And boomers too can hardly be lumped together. The youngest are still raising families, saving for their kids' college educations and beginning to hit the peaks of the their careers - a very different life-outlook from the oldest boomers just now reaching the age of eligibility for early Social Security.

Generational naming and references seem to me to be the hobgoblin of lazy marketing - and research - minds.

[Brent Green]

Generalizing about a group is nevertheless generalizing, whether you’re attaching generationally motivated values or life-stage / age influenced values to the group.

Otherwise, all marketing would ideally aim at the individual, but we can never know a stranger’s personal value set, even if we can target them one-to-one. Since we must generalize about underlying values, needs, and motivations to construct mass media messages, the only remaining questions are which values, constructed how?

Targeted recipients may or may not embrace values associated with a generation, life stage, or personal level of psychological development (tied with age). As with all marketing communications, some consumers will resonate with a message informed by insights about the larger group; some will not.

However, attaching a product or brand to a message constructed around generational or life-stage assumptions (shared historical culture/experiences or current age-related worldview, etc.) can be equally effective. Some marketers do it better than others, but both approaches (generational values or life-stage and age values) work effectively for those who have mastered the craft.

I just attended a Jethro Tull 40th anniversary concert this week, and I was struck by the extreme homogeneity of the 9,000+ concert audience: significantly dominated by leading-edge Boomers, mostly Caucasian, with lots of Boomer culture expressed in concert clothing and concert behavior. (See my blog for a telltale photo.)

So, would this same audience react to a product message using Jethro Tull music and evoking some of the life experiences / values associated with this group's dominance – back in the early 70’s? Yes, I believe a profitable number would if it's the right product presented with the right level of message sophistication.

What holds true for the Boomers also holds true for Millennials. Some of their shared life experiences, and attendant values, will survive throughout adulthood, and tapping these values can and will be effective.(But I agree with David that the defining Millennial Generation bookend years are wildly inconclusive. I also agree that ascribing maturity to immature mating behavior is specious.)

People share metavalues: these values can be associated with the coming-of-age period of a generation; they can be the values associated with a particular life stage or age.

All approaches work equally well — and equally not as well — depending on the message creators; and there are plenty of successful marketing case studies to support this contention.

By the way, those successes don't shout, "Hey Boomer, buy this." The best generational advertisements don't market to labels but rather values and shared culture / experiences. Yet, the messages still address a generational cohort with known motivational characteristics. "Gen" is the root of generation and generalization.

[David Wolfe]

Brent,

Your comments are well reasoned, conform to my experience and beliefs, and are well expressed. I do recognize that there is value in categorizing people by the time frame encompassing their "coming of age" years. My complaint is that the practice of labeling age cohorts as it has been done in marketing is as reader Ronni Bennett says, "The hobgoblin of lazy marketing - and research - minds." The emphasis should be on "lazy" because there are people like yourself that while using an age cohort to benchmark their work don't become so enslaved by the practice that they exercise no critical thinking at all and end up governed by trite generalizations that simply have no defensible standing.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

DBW

[Brent Green]

David,

I very much appreciate what I have learned and am learning from Ronni and you. Every time I read what you have to say about ageless marketing and related topics, I recognize my need for more study, critical thinking and mentorship. Thanks so much for challenging all of us to "think differently." Way too much money gets wasted on marketing without message or meaning. That's why we applaud the real breakthrough campaigns that increase "share of heart" as well as share of market. Mostly the sponsors are called "Firms of Endearment."

Brent

[Atare E. Agbamu]

David --

Who will research the Web-enabled researchers? Thank you for a mind-opening critique of sloppy marketing research.