Hack into the Millennial Mind – by Rachel Fox

Next month, on October 19th, I’ll be speaking on a panel with a few experiences tech/business/stock market players at the super rad Stocktober Fest of 2015.

I’m super excited to not only learn from all the skilled and experienced traders/investors attending and speaking, but also to share some first hand insight on my panel titled, “What the Hell is a Millennial & What are They Doing to/for the Economy?” (haha)

I’ll be talking about what the hell we are and why our progressive views of spending, ownership, health, habits, values and other such ideas are relevant to businesses, the economy, & the stock market.

And of course I’m also mega excited to see this massive collision of Wall St and the tech communities… something that is rare but has been steadily becoming less rare since I first started learning the markets in 2011.

Recently, I wrote a blog about McDonalds vs. Shake Shack and how millennial’s views are effecting these food chain’s brand & popularity.

Yesterday, I stumbled across an article written by Matt Kleinschmit, senior vice president and general manager of Vision Critical (which provides a cloud-based customer intelligence platform that allows companies to build strong consumer bases by sharing their untraditionally gathered, cutting edge research).

The article shared some infographics that quite accurately describe our changing millennial lifestyle, with some degrees of variance here and there, I mean we’re not all exactly the same. But this definitely captured a good idea of the ideas that influence a lot of what we do.

With millennials having $1.68 trillion in spending power, our trends and culture leaves an important trail for businesses to take note of when it comes to pop culture and how to market to/around it.

Here are the infographics:

1. We stay with our families a lot longer

This is one thing I can’t really vouch for. As soon as I was legally allowed, I started living on my own and wanted to understand what it means to have ownership of things. However, many millennials are much more akin to staying with their families and are comfortable depending on them for a lot longer. There’s no rush to fly into a career, unless you are highly passionate about it. There’s also no rush to get married super early anymore.

2. We aren’t as easily convinced by traditional consumption patterns.

Marketing is missing the Mark

Many marketers have been missing the mark with this.

What drives millennials to do things is different than what has driven the previous generation.

Like the infographic above says, our values lie in happiness, passion, diversity, sharing, and discovery as opposed to the gen before us, whose values lie in justice integrity, family, practicality, and duty, according to this research. It’s just a shift of underlying motives for buying certain things and engaging in certain activities.

3. We have less interest in the idea of actual ownership and marriage, pushing fourth the concept called “the sharing economy, which I read about for the first time last year in “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism” written by Jeremy Rifkin. (awesome book)

In the ’70s, the median marriage age was 23, according to Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, but today’s millennials are waiting until they’re in their 30’s.

4. We’re very likely to be engaged and influenced via video, & have no problem watching videos on mobile

5. Banks and Credit… save us the trouble

I definitely use the online platform Mint.com for budgeting help and to get a solid snapshot of my spending life. If a bank were created by Google, or some millennial friendly tech company, that helps me track my spending and budget, all inside a bank portal that’s accessible online, I would move over to that bank in a heartbeat. Other bank’s customer interfaces haven’t really offered that sort of thing yet.

In Closing