06/01/2015
Fromm, coauthor of Marketing to Millennials, and Vidler, founder of marketing research firm Clear Box Ideas, team up to explore the most effective ways marketing can reach the Millennial generation (born between 1977 and 1996) as it moves into parenthood. The authors paint a detailed picture of Millennials, urging readers to let go of erroneous visions of them as "jobless bums" still living at home (one in four is already a parent, they note). Millennials, according to their research, are pragmatists ("Useful is the new cool") who want to actively engage with the products they buy and the companies that make them. Parenthood changes how Millennials behave and consume, and mothers are in charge of most household purchases (so dads are relegated to the epilogue). Savvy marketers and entrepreneurs, the authors write, must recognize that the monolithic American family structure, if it ever existed, is no longer around. Thus, they must plan for more varied family types, not to mention content that stands for more than just a company's bottom line. (The authors cite such companies as Ikea and Chipotle as successful examples.) Fromm and Vidler offer a wide range of practical takeaways and strategies for marketers in this in-depth analysis of the Millennial parenting mind-set. (Aug.)
Millennials With Kids: Marketing to this Powerful and Surprisingly Different Generation of Parents
Narrated by Sean Pratt, Shannon Parks
Jeff FrommUnabridged — 5 hours, 43 minutes
Millennials With Kids: Marketing to this Powerful and Surprisingly Different Generation of Parents
Narrated by Sean Pratt, Shannon Parks
Jeff FrommUnabridged — 5 hours, 43 minutes
Audiobook (Digital)
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
Related collections and offers
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
Overview
Editorial Reviews
"For marketers, brand strategists, start-up entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Millennials with Kids is a riveting revealing guide well worth the investment and time." —Retail Observer
"There's a lot to learn here...Millennials are the biggest generation this country has ever seen, and no business can afford to ignore them." —Web.com
“The book is a good starting point for retailers looking to craft a marketing plan and a dialogue with this important demographic.” —The Gourmet Retailer
08/01/2015
Millennials, often defined as those born between 1977 and 1996, are now reaching an age when they have started families. Following up on previous research on this group, coauthors Fromm (president, FutureCast; coauthor, Marketing to Millennials) and Vidler (founder, Clear Box Insights) take a look at millennials with children to see how they differ from their counterparts without children. The authors posit that those who have children are more pragmatic than those without, and as such, this generation presents a very different challenge for marketers. Following a more general examination of the age group, subsequent chapters address ways in which companies can sell their products, appealing to what is important to particularly moms, though dads are also considered in the final chapter. Some of the topics covered are the ideas of customization and personalization, convenience, and the importance of interacting with customers through content. VERDICT While this title is written for those who market to millennials, it is also a compelling study for readers interested in generational differences or those who want to understand this group better.—Elizabeth Nelson, McHenry Cty. Coll. Lib., Crystal Lake, IL
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171473877 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Ascent Audio |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Millennials with Kids
Marketing to this Powerful and Surprisingly Different Generation of Parents
By JEFF FROMM, Marissa Vidler
AMACOM
Copyright © 2015 Jeff Fromm and Marissa VidlerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8144-3658-5
CHAPTER 1
Who Are They Now?
Why is our culture so intrigued with the very idea of generations? It stems in part from the rise of mass society — a relatively recent phenomenon — and how easy it is for a group to share common experiences. Baby Boomers bonded over TV culture, rock 'n' roll, Motown, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the go-go 1980s. Decades later, Millennials bonded over the rise of the Internet, Facebook, and the tumultuous first decade of the twenty-first century — 9/11, two wars, and the Great Recession.
Generational divides also stem from the natural rivalry that exists between those who are older and those who are younger. The generation gap has been fueled for decades by stories starting with the phrase "Back in my day," followed by some unbridled narrative explaining how the younger generation has life much easier and is far too unappreciative. It happens in every era. Socrates famously com plained about the lazy youth of Athens (Aristotle being one of those "good-for-nothings") and believed they would spell doom for Greek society. Centuries later, the Greatest Generation, whose defining moment of youth was landing on Omaha Beach, looked at their Baby Boomer, hippie-loving children with alarm as they attended Woodstock and defined the Summer of Love. Now those same Boomers cannot understand how their entitled children cannot leave their homes without their smartphones and tablets and prefer texting to personal calls. Fortunately, their kids (whom we all know as the Millennial) are growing up and leaving their selfishness behind them.
In fact, there is an epidemic raging through the Millennial generation, and it seems to be unstoppable. All signs point to the continual spread of this epidemic until the vast majority of the Millennial population is affected. Once exposed, everything changes — in a heartbeat. What could be so contagious, so powerful, so life-altering? Parenthood.
About one in four Millennials is a parent already, and in the next ten to fifteen years Millennial women will give birth at the rate of roughly 10,000 per day. Over the next twenty-five years, 80 percent of Millennials will be like every generation before them as they step into their new roles of mom and dad. Our media-saturated culture hasn't yet caught up with this reality. There is still a chronic tendency to report on Millennials as if they were still an exotic species, ahead of the rest of us in technology adaptation and practitioners of all kinds of peculiar habits. This is a myopic view of the generation. The truth about them lies elsewhere.
Parenthood is one dimension of that truth. One of the things that modern brands must come to grips with is that Millennials who are parents act, think, behave, and consume differently than those who are not. Understanding this difference and adapting product, branding, and marketing strategies to appeal to this ever-changing generation could be the dividing line between thriving and crumbling brands in the future marketing landscape. It also means recognizing that the Millennial generation as a whole is, indeed, different, and the differences that have shaped this generation will make it a market group unlike any we have known before. Here are some of the critical differences:
• The Great Recession hurt them far more than any other age group. The Millennials are the first since the generation that grew up in the 1930s who have been forced to start their working lives at a time when prosperity remains elusive. That has had a notable effect on how young families are forming and evolving.
• They've delayed or avoided marriage. Marriage means household formation and signifies a time when adults settle down and often combine two incomes to achieve shared prosperity in order to start a family. However, according to the Pew Research Center, only 26 percent of Millennials have married so far — that's far below the marriage rate of Gen Xers when they were the same age (36 percent) and that of Baby Boomers (48 percent).
• The Millennial "monolith" is a myth. In short, there really is no such thing as a single Millennial outlook. Among Millennial parents, we've identified five distinct — and statistically valid — behavioral segment groupings. These segments, or "orbits," are vastly different from one another and reflect everything from the footloose Millennial stereotype to families that look suspiciously like Ward and June Cleaver. You'll read more about these orbits in Chapter 2.
Getting Older and Wiser
The overall Millennial experience as we have come to understand it looks something like this: Growing up, they were surrounded by a party. Born into the Wolf of Wall Street 1980s and dot-com boom of the 1990s, the prospect of wealth and fulfillment was within reach for all — it was just a matter of loving and believing in yourself and doing what makes you happy. How wonderful for children to be raised during a time when they could do anything they wanted! Then, when they were old enough to enjoy it, someone took the punch bowl away.
By the time Millennials entered young adulthood, the great recession of our time, starting in early 2008, changed the playing field. Jobs were hard to come by. Recent college graduates began competing with experienced workers, who were willing to work for below their pay grade or skill set. This roller-coaster economy, which hasn't quite made its way back up, is one of the reasons that Millennials feel financial pressure to such a great extent. Millennial parents, in particular, feel the pinch. The "Millennials as New Parents" study by Barkley's new Millennial consultancy, FutureCast, revealed that 54 percent of Millennials say it is harder to make ends meet since they became parents. This research also revealed that 48 percent of Millennial parents still believe kids are better off if a stay-at-home mom raises them. So, what do you do when Baby is on the way and both Mom and Dad need to work to make ends meet?
Meet Emily: She is 32 years old and has been married more than ten years, with two young children. Emily and her husband were both gainfully employed when they first met. (In fact, they met at work!) Before the kids came along, they scrimped and saved and bought a home in the Bay Area, about an hour east of their jobs and Emily's in-laws. Their daughter was born shortly after the real estate market went in the tank, leaving them upside down on their mortgage. Emily wanted to stay home with their new daughter, so they made the tough decision to sell the house and move in with Emily's in-laws. Even though Emily had worked hard in her career and knew it would be a difficult sacrifice, she felt strongly about staying home with her daughter and not juggling baby-sitters, nannies, and day care. After their second baby was born, they made another conscious decision that Emily would not work for two years so she could be home with the kids, which left them with only one income and forced them to extend their stay with her in-laws while they saved money for another house. Eventually, they saved enough money and were able to purchase a new home (though they had to stay with the in-laws for another few months while the house was being built).
Finally, years later, they are (quite happily) on their own. Living with the in-laws had its perks, both financially and for child care, but it was often a difficult sacrifice. "We never got ahead financially, which is what we needed to be doing to move where we wanted. At some point, we had to prioritize the kids over work, over money, and over my career for a little while. The balance has shifted back now that the kids are older and slightly more self-sufficient. I'm working full-time and I'm happy with that. I'm focused on my career, but at the time we thought it was more important to prioritize them." Emily's story reminds us that not only are there different segments of Millennial parents (which you'll read more about later in this chapter), but there are many changes that occur when Millennials have kids, some of which are permanent and some that are just another step in their journey.
There are many myths surrounding the Millennials: They are lazy; they are self-absorbed; they are not reaching their full potential. However, one of the most prevalent myths about them is that they are the best-educated and most affluent generation in history. This is simply not true. If we do a comparison, we see that Millennials are actually aligned with the Boomer generation in terms of post-high school education. What has changed drastically since Millennials have come of age is the life road map that has traditionally guided young adults. For previous generations we think of a very linear path: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage, right? However, many young men and women today are stepping into these new roles without first having completed the laundry list that traditional Boomer parents followed. A large portion of young women are now opting to have children out of wedlock. These single mothers are typically career-driven women who have not found a partner, or are still looking, but do not want to put off motherhood. Many women feel that having a child is incredibly important, and they are not willing to sacrifice that if they have not met their life partner yet. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 35 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds and 22 percent of 30- to 34-year-olds who gave birth in 2012 were not married. So is this all accidental, or is this a choice? For some, it is a conscious choice, as many Millennials deliberately decide to have babies without first getting married — in essence, they are willing to delay marriage but not parenthood.
This trend is particularly prevalent among those without a four-year college degree. A recent Pew research study further affirms this trend by revealing a perception shift among Millennials, who ultimately put more weight on the importance of being a good parent (52 percent) than on having a successful marriage (30 percent). Kay S. Hymowitz, William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, suggests that this trend is "not the widespread rejection of marriage; it's not even the record number of thirty something brides and grooms. It's the abandonment of the idea that marriage has anything to do with children." It could also be argued that the decision many young adults are making to have children separate from marriage is a function of the increasing divorce rate combined with the perception that it's easier for women to earn an independent living in today's economy.
For Ann, a single mother to her 5-year-old son, there is no question in her mind that parenting is a priority over marriage. "People come and go as far as boyfriends, but I'll always be his mother and he'll always be my son. Marriage is really not a priority whatsoever. If it happens, it happens, but it's not something I actively pursue. Blood is thicker than water."
Though happily married for ten years and with two kids, Emily also understands why some Millennials value parenthood over marriage. "I was really into getting married when I was younger, but now, if anything were to happen, heaven forbid, and right now we are in a good place, I don't know if I would ever get married again. It just wouldn't be important to me. I can see why people prioritize having kids if that is what is important to them."
Amber, mother of two and married eleven years, echoes Emily's sentiment. "Marriage is hard, but kids love you forever. Kids just have an unconditional love for you. Of course, it's a battle raising them and teaching them right from wrong, but with a spouse, sure — you picked them to be your life partner, but growing together and being on the same page is tough."
Bret, a father of three and husband of eleven years, has a slightly different view from those in the previous stories. Knowing that he couldn't do it all without his wife's support, he places a stronger value on marriage. While many women are happy and willing to begin a family in the absence of traditional marriage, Millennial men show a few more insecurities about becoming fathers without the support of another parent. According to a 2014 DDB study, a majority of Millennial father survey participants feel a significant amount of pressure most of the time when discussing their parenting responsibilities. However, the value Bret puts on marriage is dependent on the role he feels it plays in his ability to be a good father. "I would never say this to my kids, but my relationship with my wife is really, really important, maybe more important than my relationship with my kids. I feel like, without that relationship with her, I wouldn't be a very good father. I'm a better father if I have a good relationship with my wife."
This decision by young adults to enter parenthood based on a nontraditional life path affects the way markets are connecting with these Millennials. It is important to realize that "family" in the United States looks very different today than it did even ten years ago. Messaging to Mom is no longer messaging to the homemaker. Now brands must walk a thin line between engaging the working, single mother and connecting with the stay-at-home, married mother. Both women are equally important to a brand but require different messaging strategies. We are also seeing a significant shift in the role of Dad as Millennial men are becoming first-time fathers. Fatherhood has been changing for decades, largely an outcome of women's evolving and increasing role in the workforce. Dad as breadwinner and Mom as caretaker are no longer the status quo. In analyzing U.S. Census Bureau data, Pew Research has identified that 40 percent of women are the sole or primary source of income for the family, which is up from only 11 percent in 1960. Some of this increase is attributed to single mothers, but almost four in ten (37 percent) are married women. Additionally, there is evidence that in married households the median income is higher when the woman is the breadwinner, reflecting the fact that she frequently has a level of education similar to or higher than that of her husband. Want to learn more about Dad? Don't worry, we will dive into a deeper discussion about his new role in Chapter 6.
Statistics aside, the dynamic of deciding who stays at home with the kids has evolved from an assumption to a discussion. These changing perceptions of marriage and parenthood are Millennial driven and have altered the way society as a whole connects with parents and new families. The Millennial stereotypes of yesterday are vanishing as young adults adapt to a new life stage and style.
American Pragmatism Remix — Millennial Style
When Barkley and FutureCast first published the report on Millennials with the Boston Consulting Group and Service Management Group in 2011, it was titled "American Millennials: Deciphering the Enigma Generation." If there is an overriding lesson in what is happening to this generation as it transitions from young adulthood into parenthood, it's that they are no longer as enigmatic as we once thought and there is a newfound pragmatism about them.
It would be easy for the casual critic to look at this claim — and the trend underlying it — and argue, "So what? Is that any surprise? Aren't you telling us what everyone always finds out when they grow up — ihat you give up your youthful ways and become responsible?" Yes we are, but that isn't the full story. We all know that happens — always has, always will. Our message is actually quite a bit different.
As they move into parenthood, Millennials are not only changing in the ways kids always do when they grow up, but they also are bringing with them an ideology that we haven't seen in this country for a very long time: a dynamic and refreshed form of good ol'-fashioned American pragmatism.
Pragmatism was the first (and really only) philosophical movement to come out of America. Pragmatism isn't just a lifestyle philosophy; it's a powerful theory that describes how we create truth in our lives and how we should act. In other words, it is a real philosophy, one that challenged the Old World ideologies of Europe and was shaped by intellectual giants like John Dewey, who said, "In its simplest form, pragmatism comes down to this: Knowledge should not just describe or reflect reality; it should be used to predict action and to solve problems." None of those European philosophers whose writing put you to sleep had ever said that.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Millennials with Kids by JEFF FROMM, Marissa Vidler. Copyright © 2015 Jeff Fromm and Marissa Vidler. Excerpted by permission of AMACOM.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Videos
