Almost every company in the U.S. has been asking, since the oldest of the so-called

millennial generation (born 1980-2000) was in diapers: How do we reach millennials?

It’s hard to go a day without experiencing a news story asking what do millennials want –

usually featuring anecdotal evidence that proves This One Thing totally “explains”

millennials.

 

Here are some statistics about this group:

– At 77 million, millennials make up about a quarter of the U.S. population.
– Forty-three percent are nonwhite, the largest share of any generation, according to Pew Research.
– They wield about $1.3 trillion in annual buying power.
– More than 85 percent of millennials in the U.S. own smartphones, and they touch those phones about 45 times a day.

 

But millennials can’t – and won’t – be easily categorized, not by their use of technology,

nor by their attitudes or their racial, ethnic or sexual identities. Try to label them and they

will balk. Marketers who understand that younger Americans are in no way a

homogenous group will be far better positioned to reach them.

And marketers shouldn’t just assume that they should just reach out via smartphone apps

and forget everything else.

 

Marketers must not only understand the wide range of attitudes of this highly diverse and

influential segment of American society, they must accurately gauge millennials’ usage

of products and services, identify opportunities for new products, and understand

reactions to brand marketing and media communications.

 

New American Dimensions has conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative research

that has helped marketers speak their language. Or we should say languages: those born

after 1980 are more likely to be fluent in more than one language and are more likely to

have a multicultural identity, than other age cohorts.