La República, a financial and economic newspaper from Columbia, published a commentary from Núria Vilanova titled, “Millennials, a new era of communication”, which goes deep into explaining the importance of this new type of consumer.
This article has placed a special emphasis on the necessity for current companies to strive to know how to communicate, attract and finally to position themselves in the minds of Millennials, because undoubtedly, these are the users and future targets of companies.
There are many people who know what Millennials are but they do not realize that they are part of this generation. They ignore the fact that their own daily habits represent part of this sector of society which would make them included, despite not belonging to the age of this generational group. This is key because Millennials don´t define themselves strictly by their birth date but by, some particular life trends, perception of reality, participation in society and driving change… It is about a group that envisages the world with different eyes than the established previous generational system.
They are characterized as being individuals that increasingly believe less in companies and more firmly committed to people. Their mental structure has been adapted to take immediate decisions and execute all vital activities in the virtual environment. Their education and the political and economic situation have been provided by characters committed to society and at the same time, have the responsibility to actively promote a change that will improve our surrounding conditions.
These are some of the reflections that were formulated in the “Millennial Forum, the new consumer”, issued by the newspaper La República some days ago. This article has demonstrated once again the ability of the newspaper to choose good quality debate topics.
The Millennials have arrived to stay and companies have the important challenge to understand, recognize and listen to them. This generation is revolutionizing the social and business structures and this means an update of the different paradigms and established processes in all directions and sectors.
The communication professionals are not the exception. If we want to satisfy the demand of our clients and make sure their investments are profitable, we have the obligation and the moral duty to update our internal processes, focusing on innovation and permanent renovation for designing and implementing effective communication strategies in their analysis and execution. Millennials have made it necessary for us to innovate to change the design paradigm strategies. We have revolutionized communication that is based on connections constructed from stories that transmit feelings and emotions.
The change responds solely to the objective of persuading a generation with a selective consumption of information. The new communication paradigm requires focused strategies in the environment of social media. This is due to the fact that Millennials live and breathe social media on a daily basis. It is their natural habitat and the way in which they connect with the world and their community of friends.
This generation receives 3,000 daily impacts in terms of information (news, publicity, mails) and our brain only has the capacity to retain 12%. Therefore, brands or companies have to face important competitive information to captivate them and they should develop strategies that are disruptive, extraordinary and uncommon.
There exists another factor that characterizes this change in paradigm. A brand or a company with interests towards Millennials should be accustomed to positioning themselves across communication frameworks related with entertainment, leisure, lifestyle trends of this group: music, food, sport, TV series… It’s about involving them subtly in your daily life so that they will be integrated with the brands life.
This generation and the people that belong to a previous generation but are still connected to it have consolidated a profound change. The organizations have before them a challenge and at the same time, an opportunity with one road to success: renew themselves or die.
