Eager to get your message in front of millennials, or people born in the early 1980s to the early 2000s? If so, learn how to craft your messages so they lend themselves to having a dialogue.
▶ What’s the Sound of One Hand Clapping? The one-way conversation that marketers have been carrying on with consumers since, well, forever, has had a pretty good run. As millennials occupy a larger and larger swath of the U.S. population (now 25% strong, according to the latest demos), the one-way conversation that marketers have practiced for years is slowly but surely being eclipsed by more give-and-take between brands and consumers.
Brand activities that personally impact or benefit millennials are favored most, such as scholarship opportunities (89%) and contests (77%), with about four out of 10 saying these brand activities have driven them to purchase a product or service, according to a survey conducted by yconic, a digital media and research company focusing on younger consumers. “They want to have a two-way dialogue and that’s what the numbers are saying, more so than any other generation,” said Rob Henderson, CEO of yconic, who added that general trends among Canadian millennials reflect those of their American counterparts. “It’s about them, the causes they care about and what their peers are saying, rather than being told what to think” by brands and organizations. He added: “It’s got to be a two-way engagement and not a one-way transaction.” PRN
Source: yconic
Methodology: This survey was conducted online with 1,254 English-speaking Canadians aged 16 to 24, sampled from a representative panel of more than 549,000 Canadian residents. The survey was completed from April 9 to April 24, 2014, with an expected margin of error of +/- 2.8%, 19 times out of 20. Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population, as outlined by the industry body, MRIA.
This article originally appeared in the June 30, 2014 issue of PR News. Read more subscriber-only content by becoming a PR News subscriber today.