Lots to read and learn at bookstores throughout Austin during this week's festival.
(Editor’s Note: Rob Anderson, director of content strategy for Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods advertising agency in Little Rock, is on the ground at South-by-Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. He and his team are filing regular reports throughout the week on what’s hot at this influential annual conference. You can see previous posts here, here and here.)
The South-by-Southwest Interactive Festival is a marathon.
Entrepreneurs, marketers, tech industry leaders, gamers, media and more all arrive at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and begin a four-and-half day race from conference room to conference room and ballroom to barroom, with too-brief stops at restrooms, restaurants and hotel rooms. Phone chargers work overtime and laptops and tablets are drained, dropped and thoroughly abused.
The circus atmosphere that takes over downtown Austin includes everything from costumed brand mascots to party busses, pedicabs, protestors and food trucks. Lots of food trucks.
(Side note: Without the food trucks, it’s likely that many attendees would go all day without food. If you take too long getting food, you might not make it to your next session in time, or worse, you may be forced to wait in a block-long line. )
One other prominent feature of SXSWi is youth. Millennials not only make up a large percentage of attendees, but they’re a popular topic at the conference sessions. In fact, there were more than 10 presentations or sessions with “Millennial” in the title.
Many of these were aimed at helping marketers and business owners get a better grasp of this much-discussed generation, and one in particular stood out: “Solving the Millennial Content Challenge,” hosted by Jason Dorsey of the Center for Generational Kinetics.
Billed as “the No. 1 Millennials speaker and researcher in the world,” Dorsey provided a wealth of data and observations.
The best of these are listed below:
Birthdays – Dorsey wanted to settle any debate about the correct dates for defining the Millennial generation. In the U.S., it’s those born between the years 1977 and 1995 (some say 1980-2000, but Dorsey says this is incorrect). “The most defining event for this generation is 9/11,” Dorsey explained. “People born in 2000 could not have processed this event.”
Big Spenders – In 2017, Millennials will outspend Baby Boomers. As a customer, they now have the most lifetime value and most of their major purchases lie ahead.
Brand Loyalty – Dorsey says that many in business think that Millennials are not “loyal” to brands, but he says this is a myth.
He explains that many Millennials are only now beginning to escape parental influence and make major purchase decisions on their own (cars, homes, etc.), so they have yet to set a purchasing pattern.
“You can’t prove loyalty until you’ve had time to make the same purchase multiple times and the autonomy to choose for yourself,” he said.
Segments Within Segments – For marketers, Dorsey advises changing some old methods and introducing new thinking.
“Advertising’s traditional media buy buckets — breakdowns like ‘18-34’ are no longer relevant. The 18-34 age category was used to group people in the ‘same life stage’ back in the 60s,” he explained. “Now, we’re getting married older, going to school later, having first children later. Today’s 28-year-old can be dramatically different than 28-year-old in the 1960s and 1970s. This 18-34 group has some very, very different groups within it.”
Tech Dependent – “Millennials are not ‘tech savvy.’ They are tech dependent,” Dorsey said. “There is a distinction. Many Millennials don’t get how the technology works, they just know they can’t live without it.”
Talking to Millennials
Dorsey concluded his presentation with several tidbits from a new research report on Millennials that his firm will be releasing in early April.
He said their research shows that the most preferred method of communication for this generation is text, followed by email (though they only read the subject line) and social media.
“We think social media is real, unfiltered and will lead to faster responses. This isn’t necessarily true, but it is our perception,” he said.
According to Dorsey, the research showed that 36 percent of surveyed Millennials would contact companies more frequently if they could do so by text. In other words, it could behoove companies to offer some sort of texting option for customer service, something that many have not considered.
In addition, he said, almost 70 percent of Millennial females surveyed said they would rather spend time solving a product or service problem on their own than talk to a customer service representative.
(For more, follow the CJRW team on Twitter at @RobWAnderson, @WeAreCJRW, @ZackHill, @LizzyMichael and @BryceParker.)
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