Millennials don’t live in the present.
They’re stuck between the past and the future.
Disclaimer: I’m 23 — there are people much wiser than me, go listen to them if you want.
It’s 2014 and in my hand sits an iPhone 4s sheathed in a tattered leather case. The brown fabric is ripped across every edge and should have been replaced months ago, but I keep it on day after day. The reason? Its imperfection reminds me of an older time.
Whatever you want to call my generation (Millennials, Gen Y, “Youths”), we’re all secretly familiar with this feeling — the feeling that as we move further into the future we’re losing parts of a past we never knew. We don’t live in the present, we live in a dichotomy of the past and the future.
This phenomenon is one of the most important things you could understand about selling to millennials. While technology may be “eating the world”, there’s a secondary movement under our wings that draws us to everything old, crafted, and analog — a movement that smart designers and marketers can capitalize on.
So does this mean throwback everything?
The short answer is no. I mean, not in the literal sense. Making your app or product an exact replica of the past won’t get you anywhere with millennials — because they simply don’t have a frame of reference (it’s why Polaroid can’t make an app as succesful as Instagram).
Instead, I believe a successful strategy is to create a synergy of both time periods — mixing in remnants of the past with the new.
Let’s look at an example:
The phone call is dead as far as millennials are concerned, but a 1–1 conversation platform was still lacking in the digital age. Our generation had been broadcasting content to an ever expanding network (on twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram) and a hole was clearly forming in people’s ability to communicate with one another — Enter Snapchat.
Now I’m not going to insinuate that Eric Spiegl was doing anything more than making an app for “bros” at the time… but I think the widespread success of snapchat is a result of it’s ties to the historical phone call — bear with me.
Snapchat lets you select exactly who you wish to receive a message, and keeps that message private and intimate as far as anyone is concerned. Snaps are also ephemeral (lasting 10 seconds at most) in the same way that a phone call was historically “off the record” and untraceable.
Snapchat may have been made famous for teen sexting, but its widespread success and adoption today is a result of its return to an older form of communication (while using the new tech available in a smartphone).
This Way Out
Snapchat and Instagram are interesting examples of success with Millennials by hinting to the past, but there are countless others out there — look at the resurgence of Ray Bans, the success of Movember, the return of Vinyl records (Often sold with digital downloads), and even the recovery of printed photos (An industry seeing growth over the last few years after a decade in decline).
For the generation closest to new technology, taking a step back might just be the trick to close a sale.
Well, technology is a glittering lure. But there is a rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash – if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job I was in house at a fur company, with this old pro of a copywriter, a Greek, named Teddy. Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is “new.” It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion. He also talked about a deeper bond with a product: nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent. Sweetheart. [starts slide show featuring photos of Draper’s family.] Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a space ship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called a wheel, it’s called a carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Round and a round, and back home again. To a place where we know we are loved.
- Don Draper, “The Wheel”
