Why Changes in Consumer Demographics Mean Changes For You

If you’re younger than 38, at least in the US, you’re now in the majority. Demographics are shifting in developed countries and new priorities are emerging as younger generations come to have increasing sway in what they demand from their peers, brands and content. Free Actionable Bonus: Free Actionable Bonus: Want to create better content for social media? Get the complete guide to building a social media strategy and creating content for social, plus 6 awesome examples to inspire your next post. What’s Changed? Younger consumers are now less concerned with the basic products they need. The focus for them has shifted to products that they want to own, either because those products are the ones currently in the hands of celebrities or because the product’s message represents something important to them. Increasingly, the value associated with a product or service is coming from what it represents more than its usefulness. The risk to brands is not recognizing this shift. Focusing simply on the qualities of your features isn’t enough to attract millennials. They expect content to either save them time or bring direct value to them through creative story-telling and true engagement. Content’s New Role Millennials are social media savvy and expect the businesses they buy from them to be as well. Brands that can’t keep up can no longer rely on the loyalty they maintained with older cohorts. The best brands are creating thoughtful, engaging and empowering content and delivering it through the platforms and mediums that their target audience is actually using. How Are They Doing It? Creating True Value Tracksmith, a running apparel company, knew that its customers were competitive runners, and not simply weekend warriors. The brand also recognized that, at the time, no company was filling the ‘running lifestyle’ niche. Other companies, like Nike, were more focused on fitness than running. Matt Taylor, Tracksmith founder and CEO, has said that â€Å"long-term, we want to have a role in anything that someone who is committed to running wants or needs.† And that includes content. Running Influencer Campaigns Your word alone is not enough. Customers are significantly more likely to trust a recommendation from someone they know or from a social media influencer than most marketing materials. This is why many have embraced influencer campaigns within their content strategy. A prime example of a modern influencer campaign is Calvin Klein’s #mycalvins campaign. Calvin Klein contacted 600 influencers across Instagram and Tumblr and had them take photos with Calvin Klein underwear showing from underneath casual-wear. Each post was accompanied with the ‘mycalvins’ hashtag and spurred millions to follow Calvin Klein. Millions of fans imitated the campaign for themselves and Calvin Klein reposted the best user-generated content on a microsite as part of their ecommerce store. Creating Captivating Stories An excellent example of a brand that has transitioned from a company-centric marketing approach to an experience-based one is Mazda. Russel Wager, Mazda’s VP of Marketing, described the key challenge of this new approach as â€Å"connect[ing] our products to an experience, an emotional value,† and finding â€Å"the story that does this for the audience we want to reach.† Mazda chose to tell that story through narrative ads. One follows a protagonist from teen to empty-nester and another (embedded above) has individuals intimately describe how important motorsports are to them, where Mazda has a dominant presence. By framing the ads in a way that connects with people on a more intimate level, Mazda creates higher quality engagement amongst its fans and the comments on the above ad vouch for that. â€Å"Love the film! Love the company! Love their cars! Love2drive! Anything, anywhere, anytime, but most of all in my Mazdas!!!† – Ken â€Å"I love this video so much for that it shows genuine love.† – Alan â€Å"Thank you, Mazda, for being my brand, now and forever. † – DaedalusZero Empowering The last key content element to maximize your marketing effectiveness with younger demographics is to make your content empowering, especially with women. Over the next decade, women will control two-thirds of U.S. consumer wealth so creating content that appeals specifically to women is not optional. Using YouTube and a three-minute long video â€Å"Dove Real Beauty Sketches,† Dove asked women to describe themselves to a forensic artist from behind a curtain and then compare the resulting sketches to reality. This campaign served to start a discussion on women’s self-image and has been viewed over 180 million times. Campaigns like Always’ #LikeAGirl and Nike’s #BetterForIt serve to empower more explicitly, by showing women competing in and training for sports. But whether it resembles Dove’s campaign or one like Nike’s #BetterForIt, it’s critical for brands to start embracing empowering content. Young women, aged 18 to 34, are 80% more likely to like, share, comment and subscribe to empowering content. What It Comes Down To It’s no longer enough for brands to try and let their product speak for itself. The youngest consumers are demanding products and brands that represents their values. To create that brand and deliver that value, you need to create content that captivates, is unique and is delivered through the digital mediums millennials use most, because those are the consumers that are going to control the purse strings going forward.