About The Study

Millennials are tthe '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.

Here is part two of the nine attention grabbers to consider when planning and reviewing campaigns that target millennials. Enjoy!

Respect new platforms and learn from those immersed in them

Young women's clothing retailer Wet Seal wanted to develop a presence on the Snapchat platform, as they had seen their audience gravitating towards it. Rather than striking out on their own, they initially handed over their account to a 16-year-old fashion blogger who was already using the platform, learning from her as she built their following over the first couple of weeks.

Make it personal

The Coca-Cola Company has run its Share a Coke activation across many global markets following its launch in Australia. To support the second outing for the activation in the UK recently, the brand partnered with 4oD, the catch-up service for broadcaster Channel 4. Because the majority of users are signed into the 4oD platform when they watch the service, the brand was able to personalise its message: a viewer called Kate would see a pre-roll TV ad with the message 'Share a Coke with Kate'.

Give them a chance to express themselves online

Millennial audiences are gravitating towards social media platforms that allow them to express their creativity – Instagram for example. Urban Outfitters has tapped into this trend with its #UOONYOU ('Urban Outfitters On You') campaign. Fans of the fashion retailer are encouraged to post a photo of themselves wearing clothes bought from Urban Outfitters, along with the campaign hashtag. The incentive is simply the chance to appear on the retailer's website – the best submissions are featured there. But their Millennial target audience are taking selfies and posting them online all the time, so will willingly participate in this campaign, which costs Urban Outfitters nothing in paid media spend, but creates consistent social media buzz and fresh content for their website.

Plan for the ringleaders

Every social group, be it a set of friends or online community, has a core group who are particularly important in driving the activities of that group. These are the ringleaders – the people who instigate the nights out, the people who post most often on social media platforms or on forums, the people who glue the group together. Influencing these ringleaders is important for advertisers who want to target Millennial groups, as the ringleaders are big influencers among their communities.

Electronic Arts launched its firstperson shooter video game 'Titanfall' with a campaign designed to influence the ringleaders in the online games community Gamer Network. The games publisher gave 2,000 of the most active participants in the forums the chance to play the game prior to release. As well as the natural word-ofmouth buzz this created, footage from their gameplay was captured, turned into content and distributed across the Gamer Network in video advertising formats, tapping into the huge demand for watching gameplay video content online. Hence, a small number of ringleaders helped to influence the broader audience.

One important thing links most of these campaigns: they worked because of the collaboration between those responsible for the different elements of the marketing mix. While the idea for the Sam Smith live concert ad break came from MediaCom, the execution required a collaboration between, among others, the singer and his management, the media agency, the concert promoter, the creative agency, Channel 4 and Google.

Millennial audiences are not hard to reach, but as we've seen, it can be hard to get their attention. The best way to counter this is to break down the silos, getting different agency types and client teams working together to create a coherent communication system, perhaps using the nine 'attention grabbers' outlined here as inspiration.

Source: Warc, Steve Gladdis