Young adults are in near-constant communication with one another. In 2009, The New York Times ran an article entitled 'Is texting taking its toll?', about the impact that the unlimited text tariffs offered by mobile network providers was having on American teenagers. Among tales of teens sending hundreds of messages each day, Michael Hausauer, a Californian psychotherapist, was quoted in the article, saying teenagers have a "terrific interest in knowing what's going on in the lives of their peers, coupled with a terrific anxiety about being out of the loop". This is the 'fear of missing out' that many of us experience; it is particularly acute among teenagers though, leading to incessant messaging. And the rise of the messaging app has fuelled this fire, with updates from Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Twitter constantly distracting millions of young people from whatever they were doing beforehand.

Also, they spend more time online generally – socialising, studying, working and entertaining themselves. And this makes getting their attention even more difficult. In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr talks of the impact that constant web usage is having on our ability to concentrate. While the following of links and multiple tabs that characterise any web-browsing session improves our ability to skim across a lot of information, quickly determining whether it's of use, it is harming our ability to 'deep read' – to concentrate and absorb; to form our own opinions about what we are reading.

So we can describe Millennials as the 'attention deficit generation'. They spend more time online, with more connected devices, skimming across the surface of the world's entertainment and information. They spend more time dual-screening or media multitasking, and are in constant communication with their friends through messaging services.

Constant web usage and its effect on concentration makes Millennials the 'attention deficit generation'. This presents a significant challenge to marketers. All of this presents a challenge to marketers trying to gain their attention. What should we do differently? Here are nine 'attention grabbers' to consider when planning and reviewing campaigns targeting Millennials.

Do something new and eye-catching

One obvious way to get an audience's attention is to create something new; to put something in front of them that they've never seen before. Sam Smith is a new artist from Universal Music, whose first album was released in June 2014. To promote this launch in the UK, MediaCom teamed up with Sam's management team, Channel 4 (the UK's second largest commercial channel) and Google Play to create a music-industry first.

On 30th May, Sam played his biggest ever gig at The Roundhouse in London. This entire gig was streamed live on Google Play, with the final song of the show broadcast live across a full three-and-a-half minute ad break of Alan Carr: Chatty Man, Channel 4's popular celebrity chat show. Sam used his TV appearances and social media profiles to promote this newsworthy event, which allowed millions more people to see his performance, helping to propel his debut album to the top of the charts.

Make sure your content fits the media environment

Millennial audiences watch a higher proportion of their audio-visual video content online, with YouTube making up a sizeable chunk of this. So it is important that any creative assets deployed in these spaces will work on any device (and screen size) on which the content might be viewed, and also reflect the behaviour of the viewer.

Universal Pictures provides an example of how advertisers are adapting to the new paradigm. YouTube has developed an ad format called TrueView that allows consumers to skip the ad after five seconds if it hasn't captured their interest. In the UK, Universal has begun tailoring ads for films to this format, making sure that the title and basic premise of the film are communicated in the first five seconds, with the rest of the ad fleshing out the story for those who want to see more. A traditional film trailer or ad that builds to a crescendo would not work as well in this environment.

Make your Ideas easy to navigate

Lucozade Energy worked with MTV to create a campaign which allowed British university students to 'Pimp My Summer Ball' – to make their flagship social event even bigger and better with the help of MTV's access to music talent, and event production skills. All students had to do to enter was to tweet a campaign hashtag and the name of their university; each tweet counted as a vote, with the university that generated the most tweets winning the pimped-up summer ball.

This campaign was successful in part because it was simple to understand. The concept of 'Pimping' (used in the slang sense) was already well known in youth culture. One of MTV's most popular series globally is Pimp My Ride, where battered old cars are given a total makeover, transforming and customising their appearance to make them newly desirable. So with Pimp My Summer Ball, there is no new language or concept for the youthful target audience to translate or interpret.

Also, the entry mechanism required virtually no effort – just a simple tweet, which could be fired off in a second, with the secondary benefit of reaching the friends and acquaintances of the voter. The campaign generated 6.8 million tweets – an extraordinary number, equating to around 380,000 per participating university – meaning the participatory aspect of the campaign actually contributed significantly to the overall reach.

Find a Trojan Horse

This Lucozade campaign is a good example of a Trojan Horse strategy. All target audiences have passions that they collectively find more interesting than most brands or products – even brands in highinterest categories. So associating with one of these passion points can be an effective way to get the attention of a target audience.

Sometimes, the Trojan Horse can be a more credible 'messenger'. A few years ago the London Metropolitan Police worked with urban music collective, Roll Deep, who created a song about the problem of gun crime. This was a more effective way to get the attention of (and this message to) innercity teenagers than a piece of advertising from the Met Police would have been.

Tap into the zeitgeist

Beats Electronics, initially known for its headphones, has also developed its Beats Pill range of wireless speakers. A campaign running in multiple markets to promote this range successfully tapped into the zeitgeist, bringing the range to life as a set of animated characters, who commented in real-time on popular cultural events as they happened.

For example, when Miley Cyrus infamously twerked on stage with Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, the Beats Pills characters appeared in the ad breaks immediately afterwards talking about the incident. And when Kim Kardashian posted a revealing selfie on Twitter and Instagram, which instantly popped up on websites and in newsfeeds around the world, the Pills characters were there to tweet a response.

By responding to the topics that were trending and events that were making the headlines, Beats Pills claimed a place at the heart of popular culture.

Source: Warc, Steve Gladdis