THE MILLENNIAL MARKETING MENTALITY

I think the millennial marketing mentality is the reason that most brands miss every big moment that lands right in front of them. Let me explain what I mean by this. A moment pops off and the first question out of the marketer's mouth is, is this on brand? Not is this interesting? Will our audience think this is funny? But does it fit our brand? And then it's followed by things like, okay, could this offend anyone? Which is important for sure, but we're way too worried about that nowadays. And then does it fit within the campaign budget? And by the time all of that is answered or even discussed, the moment is over and the brand is lost. Think about the time when that Stanley Cup survived that car fire. Their president was immediately on TikTok within 24 hours offering to replace the woman's car. There wasn't a committee, there wasn't a brand review on that. I highly doubt anyone asked if it was on brand. It was just a human doing the right thing, responding in the moment. And that one video probably did more for Stanley than hundreds of thousands of dollars of Aspen could have done. Same thing with McDonald's a couple years ago when they launched the Grimace shake. They didn't plan for people to fake their deaths after they drink the Grimace shake on video. I highly doubt that was in the campaign brief or discussed, but instead of panicking and pulling it down because it is a touchy subject, they leaned into the wild absurdity of it. And quite frankly, I have not seen McDonald's do something bigger than that in my entire social media career. Look at LA LA Land Kind Cafe. They are a coffee brand that never talks about coffee ever on their social. And I guarantee there is a millennial marketer out there somewhere saying, how does this impact the bottom line if you never talk about coffee? Yet it works because they understand something that a campaign brief or an on-brand questionnaire will not tell them. Here is the thing. The person on your team who is great at keeping a campaign brief and campaign calendar dialed and making sure things are on brand and fit within the branding guidelines is not the same person who is going to understand cultural moments that are going to pop off for you. Those are two completely different skills. And most teams overstack on the first person and they start to wonder why their brand feels so safe and isn't standing out. The brands that are gonna win over the next five years are not the brands who are gonna keep things on brand constantly, who have the money to outspend everybody and who have their whole marketing campaign over the next 24 months. It's going to be the brands who can move fast and out understand their customers.