It is back-to-school time again and it is always exciting to see kids and parents alike getting ready for the ever-important dive into the next year. This year was a little different for me since it’s my little brother, not my kid, going off to college for the first time. When I realized that I hadn’t said goodbye on his last night, he looked at me puzzled and said, “I’ll see you in a couple of days,” leaving me completely baffled. “I will be online.”
That sentence has been gnawing at me since I heard it. Are online connections really gaining so much strength for Millenials? More importantly, what does that mean for marketers? Does that mean a phone call, Facebook poke or text is nearing the same impact as a face-to-face conversation?
Millenials have grown up with rabid texting, online gaming and social networks all being native in their daily lives. It appears that these types of connections are becoming increasingly more relevant and tangible to them. Now from an advertising/marketing point of view, does this mean that an online connection with a Millenial has more emotional weight than with any other generation? Would an online tech-support agent really make a Millenial feel better about a brand or product because they felt a greater connection on the computer than on the phone or in person?
As the Millenial generation grows and becomes increasingly important to marketers, let us keep in mind that the obsessive habits, like texting, that other generations can sometimes think of as ridiculous could actually be deep Millenial connections in the making.
Martnehz says: I just thought of an addendum to your insightful. As a seemingly reasonable Millenial, I try to consider these new trends in terms of previously experienced transformations of our society.
In this case, you brought up personal interactions via the computer compared to those on the phone or in person. The “in person” aspect seems difficult to reproduce digitally, for a slew of primal, evolutionary reasons. The inclusion of “on the phone” made me think of customer service representatives. If one has ever dealt with a bad CSR on the phone, it’s mostly due to their decorum. Do they sound like they’re mechanically answering your questions? Do they have a litany of canned responses? Are they even listening to you? This phone-bound experience is the same form of abstracting from true face-to-face interactions as a computer is, except there’s a human voice on the other end.
The same is true for any online presence. That’s why all the crap about online marketing talks about “engagement,” since it’s a multi-syllabic word for “being human”. It seems too simple to state, but I feel that as long as emotional beings feel like they’re having a dialogue with other emotional beings, the medium of interaction doesn’t matter & shouldn’t be discounted.