It’s hard to miss the media explosion that’s occurring. What was once a seemingly simple paradigm of television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet has branched out into a plethora of varying extensions. From mobile devices and apps, tablets and pads, laptops and netbooks to DVR, on-demand videos and online streaming, pay-per-click online reading, social media and much more, the segmentation and expansion of media is truly extraordinary. A setting Millennials absolutely thrive-in and one you’ll have to wait until the end of this article to understand why.
Traditional Media
The family sitting around the radio is a distant thought. Knowing that at one time the whole country would be crouched around the same few television channels is even hard to conceive. Even the almighty print-press has fallen victim to changing times. Sadly, few of us young ones can recall the time and sounds of dial-up internet and the hours we spent on it doing the simplest of things.
It would be foolish to suggest that times aren’t changing. But this doesn’t necessarily imply it’s for the worse. It implies that, well simply, things are different. A different set of situations and circumstances. With the ongoing segmentation and expansion of media, media itself seems to be on steroids – and it’s nothing short of getting it’s own congressional hearing.
But what does this mean to everyone? What does all this “media” deliver? It ultimately depends on what side of the table you’re sitting on. And let’s be honest about it, it concerns those who deliver it and those who use it. But who will ultimately benefit from it in the end? The brands, marketers and advertisers or the people – the consumers, the customers, the Millennials? Those who now have an exuberance of media outlets to keep them occupied or those who can reach you by any means?
Perceptions and Misconceptions of Media
The introduction of the internet forever changed and shaped today’s world. You could find anything and reach anybody. The amount of information online is inconceivable. It’s almost as if the world was handed a golden-egg. And then that egg began to chip, becoming less golden as time wore on.
Even though the internet has advanced, improved a thousand times over and provided ingredients for opportunity and success a-like, it has become quite a dilemma. Especially once you include all aspects of social media into that mix. The dilemma simply begins by understanding that media itself is not social. Media is a medium in which something is communicated. Inherently, a medium which is not innately social. The idea of social media is in essence oxymoronic.
Social media itself is a strategy and one that is continually mistaken for ideas of social engagement. Equally, this strategy is one based on traditional understandings of the marketing and advertising worlds. That is why so many perceived social media strategies fall short. They follow a medium that isn’t social nor is it engaging. And you shouldn’t be deceived either. Social media takes more effort than many are willingly to admit or even provide. It has to go far beyond the bandwagon and notions of “if everyone else is doing it..”.
The effort needed even grows further when you begin to breakdown all the media available. Media segmentation is occurring at a drastic pace. As media outlets are trying to satisfy the wants of everyone, we begin to see a vast and growing network of customization, specialization and specification. The problem here is that while we’re slowly localizing everyone and understanding that location, the efforts of business have to grow at this same pace in order to match these growing segments. This is an emerging time where we will see more marketing and advertising dollars spent than those of previous years, while garnering less in return.
Millennials’ Media Use
A time where media was a series general outlets is gone. As time goes on, sub-groups begin to emerge and grow. Now there are sub-groups of those sub-groups. Covering everyone with one blanket is hardly possible anymore. And it’s something many customers, especially those young and tech-savvy Millennials, are taking a liking to.
Due to the environment Millennials are growing in and the characteristics they exemplify, they themselves will be something of a quagmire in reaching. What’s interesting here is the idea that they’re actually doing more with more. Watching television while on the laptop is becoming natural. They could even be watching it on the laptop and while doing something else at the same time. Throw in mobile phones and all other aspects of the internet and you have a generation that is not necessarily avoiding advertisements because they want to but because so much more can be done at that time in between.
Advertising is losing it’s touch, and fast. 20 years ago, you really had no alternative. You either waited through the commercial or read through it in the paper. Today, the users, viewers, the customers, the people, the Millennials control what they will and won’t wait through. Again, it’s not because Millennials hate advertisements. We highly customize, specialize and segment our environments to such a degree that it’s become extremely effective and efficient for us. Ads become a time constraint and one we turn away from to do something else.
And it doesn’t have anything to do with Millennials being attention deficit or being “programmed” in a way where they need new stimuli in short periods of time. Millennials are master mulit-taskers. And every second counts. From chats, to tweets, to online videos, BBM, texts, calls, emails, streaming music, status updates, prime television and more, we just like to do more with more.
We Want [Social] Engagement, Not [Social] Media
The more we do, the more we sub-categorize ourselves. We don’t share a whole video, we share a specific part of it. We don’t look at everything in our Facebook and Twitter feeds, we look at segments of it. We customize our lives. We control what we want and we control when we want it. It’s not because we have to, it’s because we can.
Media is no stranger to the Millennials. They are constantly engulfed in it. However, understanding the issues and characteristics mentioned above is truly necessary. As media grows in size and variation, there will naturally be increasing divides. Not only will these divides be problematic for brands, marketers and advertisers, they will at the same time provide Millennials with the control of what they want to be a part of.
The Millennial thought-process will in turn be one that is highly focused on customization and specialization, growing distinctly specific and segmented sub-groups. Ultimately, you will try to get their attention. Just keep in mind that when you try to, media itself is a medium for communication. Engagement is truly what you are looking for.
8/17/2010
Media and the Millennials: An Eccentric Relationship | it's Josip not joseph.com - by Josip Petrusa
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