Page 22 - NECO News

Industry Coaching
Communicating with Millennials BY JANET WEYANDT
THE FEATURED SPEAKER at the Fall
Expo at Foxwoods was Jason Dorsey from the
Center for Generational Kinetics. Jason is the
leading expert on Millennials (AKA Gen Y)
and the emerging generation after them, known
as Gen Z or iGen. Jason gave an eye opening
presentation on the shifting demographics in
the retail world. Jason reassured the audience
by telling us “if you don’t want to change, you
will be fine. As long as you retire or die soon.” A
sobering thought for an audience at Foxwoods
that had a disproportionate amount of grey hair
and for the most part was comprised of Baby
Boomers. Jason’s presentation focused on the generational divide as both a growing challenge and a powerful opportunity.
Although there is no widely agreed-upon age range for Millennials, sometimes called Generation Y, it’s a title generally used for people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. That means some Millennials are still in high school and some already have professional careers and families. It’s a wide audience, which makes marketing a challenge. Understanding this audience is critical to being able to work with them as both customers and employees.
By and large, Millennials don’t think in a linear way so it is best to start with the outcome and go backwards. They are also visual learners, so the use of photos, videos and short bullet- point demonstrations work best. Keeping the message short is the most important thing.
Millennials don’t think of themselves as part of a generation the same way Baby Boomers do, so tried-and-true methods or gimmicks won’t work with them, Dorsey said.
One thing that will nearly always work, however, is catering to their ease with technology. When talking to a person in that younger generation – whether the objective is to sell them something, interview them for a job, etc. – use your technology to keep them engaged, Dorsey said.
“As long as you are looking at the screen, they will look at the screen,” claimed Dorsey. “It’s what you naturally do. As long as they’re looking at the screen, they’ll answer any question on earth. It’s our default behavior –
when you put up a screen, we look at it.”
The perception of Generation Y is that all young people
are tech savvy, but Dorsey doesn’t agree. Constantly having a phone in their hands doesn’t make them savvy, it makes them dependent.
Technology also provides the best way to communicate with Millennials, Dorsey said.
Retailers can’t assume handing a business card to a prospective customer with an invitation to call with questions is a winning strategy. It worked well for Baby Boomers and even with Generation X consumers (born between the mid- 1960s and the mid-1980s, with an overlap with the following generation), but it doesn’t work anymore.
22 NECO News DECEMBER 2016