10,000 marketers from all over the world attended Inbound 2014 in Boston.

I spent all of last week in Boston at Inbound 2014. The conference was full of ridiculously smart speakers — Martha Stewart, Malcolm Gladwell and Simon Sinek were all wonderful keynotes. It was impossible to leave a session without being fired up. But I don’t want to go on about how awesome every session was (I’m sure a few other fellow attendees will do that), or how strongly I believe inbound/content marketing is the way to go (that’ll be a separate post), or even how great the beers and bars in Beantown are. I really want to comment on some interesting things I noticed about the people.  Read full post...

For years we’ve been studying Millennials. We know their mindset, values and technographics. We know where to find them online and offline. We know the best ways marketing can gain their brand loyalty and how to entice them to become advocates for our brands.

Except, most Millennials are now 18 to 34 years old. Millennials are aging, and so is the way we market to them. A new marketing demographic is emerging: Post-Millennials.

Take a look at these facts from The Beloit Mindset List of the Class of 2017:

• Eminem and LL Cool J could show up at parents’ weekend.
• As they started to crawl, so did the news across the bottom of the television screen.
• Their parents have always bemoaned the passing of precocious little Calvin and sarcastic stuffy Hobbes.
• As they slept safely in their cribs, the Oklahoma City bomber and the Unabomber were doing their deadly work.
• Their parents’ car CD player is soooooo ancient and embarrassing.
• Bill Maher has always been politically incorrect.

As Post-Millennials emerge as the next big demographic, so do the online platforms we can find them on. Here are a few to keep on your radar.Read full post...

This is a generation that didn’t learn to use computers in college or in late high school, they learned from their parents as soon as they could pick up a mouse.

Shari Short, president of Short Answer Consulting, and I were privileged to present at the recent 2013 National Association of Physician Recruiters Annual Conference. We spoke about communicating with different generations and what it means to physician and advanced practitioner recruiters.

Our observations on the differences between communicating with the silent generation (66+), Baby Boomers (49–66), Gen Xers (28–48) and Millennials (7–27) elicited a unanimous response: “We’re all doomed!” But not so! Do Millennials have a different perspective on the value of work/life balance than their older counterparts? Absolutely. Do they frustrate us with their dogged addiction to mobile and digital technology? Sure. Do they strive to do something great in their lives? Absolutely. Maybe they don’t value 12- to 14-hour workdays like their older counterparts. But they do understand that the technology they embrace may help them to accomplish more, faster. What’s wrong with that?Read full post...

The rise of social media and nontraditional marketing techniques has also strengthened this brand-youth connection.

The Internet is everywhere — seeping into conversations, bulging out of jean pockets and trembling in the hands of nearly half of the American population. Never in history has access to information been so readily available; never has the information itself been so torrential. One side effect of all this interconnectivity: It has left the youth of first-world countries with ADD. Their attention spans have been cut in half and their efforts to find something engaging usually leave them numb.

Given this bleak reality, how can an advertiser or brand get the attention of the Millennials?Read full post...