Much
public hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth have been made of late on the
subject of brand marketers targeting millennials and their appetite for the use
of digital channels to connect with the demo.
Recently,
former Condé Nast editor Bonnie Fuller wrote an op-ed titled in which she made a plea for
marketers to fully embrace digital as the holy grail to "own"
millennials, because “millennials spend a huge amount of their time online.” In
related news, water is wet.However obvious (and self-serving) Fuller's observations are, the bigger issue is that her single-channel solution completely fails to take into account the defining media-behavioral characteristic of millennials: interconnectivity.
Contrary
to conventional wisdom, the Creative Collective saw magazines reemerging among
this group as the preferred "screen" for beauty categories and a
luxury/reward. Similarly, the assumption that millennials don't watch TV fails
to take into account the fact that while marathoning/bingeing is big and
getting bigger, Gen FOMO is drawn like a moth to the TV flame by big events,
sports, premieres and finales— proving once again there’s no such thing as
"conventional wisdom" when targeting millennials.
