Cover Credit: Andrew B Myers for TIME. Read full article here (behind a $5 paywall).

Calling millennials the “Me Me Me Generation” is like writing a biography of Neil Armstrong called “The Nice Guy From Ohio”.  It may be true, but it misses the point. Neil Armstrong is remarkable because he landed on the moon. Millennials are special because we have more choices than any other generation before us. That’s the trait that most defines our behavior and sets us apart from previous generations at our age. Not narcissism.

Call us the “Decisions Decisions Decisions” Generation Instead.

Think about it. Any question we’ve ever had about anything ever can be answered with a Google search. We don’t even have to wait for a computer to ask, we can even do it climbing a mountain if our smartphone gets reception. With social media, we talk, collaborate and listen to the thoughts of anyone in the world, including our favorite rock stars, industry leaders, the Dalai Lama or even the President of the United States. We maintain social networks of hundreds of people, some we may never have met in person or seen in years. Any passion, any interest, any job, any art form, any skill, any business, we can pursue with the cost of an internet connection. And what do we think of all these revolutionary developments? Nothing. It’s entirely ordinary–we’ve grown up with them.

Millennials have made it to the moon. Now, we’ve just got to decide what to do there.

All these choices  make us feel incredibly optimistic and empowered, despite high unemployment rates and the Great Recession. According to the Time‘s article, 89% of millennials are confident that eventually they will get what they want out of life. We expect jobs to not just pay our bills but, “deliver self-actualization”; if they don’t, we’ll just keep looking, book gigs online or start our own business. Our dating pools are larger than ever and full of more opportunities to meet someone perfect.

The down side? All these options are incredibly overwhelming! Decisions, decisions, decisions. We take a longer time to settle down. Why should we with so many choices available? According to The New York Times, one-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. We’re not getting married, buying houses or having kids until much later than generations before us. Heck, we’re not even committing to owning a car—46% of 18-24 year old drivers would choose the internet instead.

Joel Stein covers many of these points in his story, and even ends with the fact that millennials will be defined by our choices not narcissism, but you have to read a few pages to get there. He writes later on:

[Millennials] put off life choices because they can choose from a huge array of career options, some of which…didn’t exist 10 years ago. What idiot would try to work her way up at a company when she’s going to have an average of seven jobs before age 26? Because of online dating…they no longer have to marry someone from their high school class or even their home country…Because technology allows women to get pregnant in their 40s, they’re more free to postpone big decisions. The median age for an American woman’s first marriage went from 20.6 in 1967 to 26.9 in 2011. And while all that choice might end in disappointment, it’s a lottery worth playing.

Now, this is the part that resonates most. I should know, I’m a 23 year old millennial living it! This data is much more telling about my generation than the fact that three times as many middle school girls want to be a celebrity’s personal assistant instead of a Senator–a statistic Stein starts off the article with (plus, with Senate at such a low approval rate, is it any surprise that these girls would choose another profession?).

Our biggest fear isn’t repression by The Man (I’m looking at you Gen X), but instead missing out. We’re excited to pursue new passions and opportunities, but wary about committing to them if they’re not just right. Many of them aren’t yet–the Time‘s article features Sean Lyons, co-editor of Managing the New Workforce: International Perspectives on the Millennial Generation, explaining that “‘this generation has the highest likelihood of having unmet expectations with respect to their careers”‘. He calls this a “crisis of unmet expectations” which, I would argue extends well beyond careers.

When you didn’t grow up being able to apply to any job in the world online, it’s hard to understand why someone unemployed might be paralyzed searching for a job, let alone a “dream job”. When someone’s not limited to people they know your high school or college class, why not wait a while to find your perfect mate before getting married? It’s easy to laugh off someone who spends all day glued to their smartphone or pursuing their own frivolous interests on social media. But how can you resist when the opportunity to read anything  or talk with anyone is always at your fingertips and you’ve grown up with it all your life?  As Stein quotes Scott Heiss (TedX presenter of “Millennials: Who They Are and Why We Hate Them“), ‘”I think in many ways you’re blaming millennials for the technology that happens to exist right now”‘.

When millennials have such high expectations, you might say we’re entitled or arrogant for wanting more. Narcissistic even. But that’s the subheader, not the headline. We obsess about the size of our social following because we have the opportunity to have and maintain more relationships than ever.  We’re preoccupied with our self-image because we have more information and channels to learn about, define and express ourselves. Finally, we hold ourselves, our careers and others to high expectations  because the power exists to meet our expectations. Our generation’s greatest challenge will be consolidating reality with this crisis of unmet expectations.

Stein’s article is interesting, thorough and worth reading for the wide range of data he covers alone. But framing the content around narcissism instead of the incredible choices we have is all wrong.  It’s not just TIME magazine missing the big picture, publications from Forbes, The New York Times and Psychology Today are all buzzing about millennial narcissism. Even The Atlantic, who were quick to skewer TIME‘s cover story, wrote about how the internet turns young people into self-centered like- and tweet-aholics desperate for affirmation just a few months ago.

In and of itself, I could go either way on the millennial narcissism debate. Either the developmental or generational argument for millennials could be true and research exists to support both sides. In general, teens and twentysomethings are usually a little more self-centered than other age groups regardless of generation–after all, they are in the process of defining themselves independently for the first time. This represents the developmental argument for millennials’ narcissism, as expertly summarized in The Atlantic’s article “Every Every Every Generation is a Me Me Me Generation“. But millennials are the first generation to grow up with an “About Me” section. We’re coming of age much more concretely to a much wider audience. Who wouldn’t focus more on self-image? This (again, debated) increase in narcissism may be nothing more than a result of normal development stages exacerbated by existing technology. It certainly doesn’t help that we have a fad revolving solely around posting pictures of ourselves online (aka “selfies”).

But the big picture remains the same. Millennials are not defined by narcissism, but instead by the incredible opportunities available to us and the crisis of unmet expectations. I don’t know if we’ll “save us all” (or even what that means), but I do know I feel lucky to be a part of my generation, selfies and all.

Thanks for reading! Lindsey Kirchoff

PS. This video of Joel Stein spending a day like a millennial is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time–well done TIME. Enjoy!

Jennifer Lawrence tripped on the way to accept her best actress award. What a way to start off a once-in-a-lifetime moment in front of a million viewers! Instead of letting mortification ruin her night, Jennifer Lawrence called her slip out in her speech by saying “You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that’s really embarrassing.” She then went on to completely charm everyone in her press conference and post-win interviews. She owned her awkwardness, and that ownership made her Oscar’s darling.

It’s not just Jennifer Lawrence–awkward is making a comeback. Don’t believe me? Check out this Google Trends Map of searches with the word “awkward”.

*Letters represent news with “awkward” in the headline

If you’re trying to tap into the millennial market, awkward is the new cool–and understanding why isn’t something marketers can afford to miss.

The New Kind of Awkward

Socially awkward characters have long been a part of pop culture landscape in the form of tropes. Don’t be scared of the English major term–a trope is just a common character attribute or pattern in a story that conveys information to the audience (definition adapted from Feminist Frequency). One awkward trope is the Fish-Out-Of-Water where a character experiences awkwardness due to an unfamiliar environment or culture (think Jeannie of I Dream of Jeannie, Mork of Mork & Mindy or The Beverly Hillbillies). Screech was the butt of every joke on Saved By The Bell and no one can forget classic “Did I Do That? moments from Urkel on Family Matters–both examples of the Socially Oblivious trope. Finally, we have the Unaware Genius trope, where a character’s intelligence or skill set makes tunes them out to social norms, perfectly embodied by Dr. House of House or Sherlock Holmes. In fact, there are so many tropes attributed to lack of social skills that it earned its own archive on TVTropes. Heck, Jane Austen was writing about navigating social niceties back in the early 1800s!

There’s a reason awkward characters have stuck around for a while–they help people identify with their own social anxiety. Someone doesn’t have to be geeky, nerdy, or hipster-y to be awkward. And as I’m sure Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts, would want me to point out, social anxiety doesn’t mean introverted or shy either. Awkwardness is uncertainty in a social situations and it’s pretty darn universal, regardless of generation of age.

There is no argument though that awkwardness especially resonates with teens and twentysomethings.  When teens and young adults are still struggling to figure out what image they want to present to the world, awkwardness is almost guaranteed to ensue–as countless haircut experiments, music choices and friend group shifts can attest to.

What makes millennials special is the introduction of a never-seen-before awkward pattern:

The Awkward & Aware Trope

Millennials resonate with heros that are not only socially uncertain, but acknowledge and own their awkwardness as part of their identity by re-claiming deprecating terms.

Millennials are relating to perfectly normal people in everyday situations proudly proclaiming their awkwardness. This isn’t awkwardness as the butt of the joke (Screech/Urkel), a fish-out-of-water comedic device (Jeannie/Mort), an unfortunate side effect of genius (Sherlock Holmes/Monk/House) or any of the other frequently used awkward tropes. Instead, self-referential awkwardness is an attribute millennials seek out in their heroes, relate to and publicly attribute to themselves.

Let’s take books first. Everyone knows about the youth heavy hitters like Harry Potter, Twilight, or The Hunger Games.  But what 2011′s No. 1 kids author not only displaced Twilight on the charts, but also started $500 million franchise with his book? Jeff Kinney of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. 

Would any pre-teen in the eighties or nineties be caught dead reading a cartoon diary of a professed wimp? I don’t think so.

But it’s not just the middle school kiddies. Look at the success of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. The best-selling young adult novel went on to become a film starring Emma Watson that Rotten Tomatoes calls “a modern classic”.

What makes these books and their popularity remarkable isn’t that they feature characters who don’t know how to react in certain social situations, but the characters identify openly and directly with their awkwardness and choosing less than flattering words to do so. Unlike the humor of the obliviously awkward Lucy of I Love Lucy, Greg Heffley of The Diary of A Wimpy Kid is painfully aware of his social anxiety and makes it part of his narrative identity–he openly calls himself a wimp. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a bit more gritty tale of “Charlie” (the narrator uses an alias) as he faces issues like suicide, homosexuality, drug use and molestation. Charlie reminds me of a millennial’s take on Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye.  But while Holden’s story is named after his ideal self, what role does Charlie relate to? Wallflower. Awkwardness.

When you turn your attention to tv shows directed at a millennial audience, the meta awkward archetype is even more pronounced. Here the genre expands to include twentysomethings who identify with people who tell everyone how awkward they are. HBO’s Girls tackles a more, ahem, adult version of social anxiety by diving head first into the world of all things awkward, including sex. I know Lena Durham is probably a post all in her own, but I think millennials relate to her not only because she doesn’t have any aspect of her life together (career, boys, friends–the whole nine yards are all a mess), but because she admits it so openly. Just read how she describes the relationship she wants with Adam in Season 1–basically that she doesn’t want a boyfriend because she likes him too much and feels uncomfortable. That’s a whole lot of social insecurity she’s announcing to the world. Talk about awkward. But she owns it, so we love her for it.

And of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without a tip of the hat to Zooey Deschannel’s New Girl. Not only has the actress made a career of awkward roles, but she embodies the twentysomething meta awkward persona by embracing an off-the-beaten path approach to social interactions. I could write more, but I think this gif sums it up for me.

Can you imagine Bob Newhart announcing he’s weird and proud of it?  Or Sabrina the Teenage Witch telling Harvey that she likes him, but doesn’t want to date him because it’s too awkward? Me neither. This is a new trend and it’s specific to millennials.

I do love New Girl and all, but where I’m really interested in diving in is MTV’s Awkward. This show catalogues the angst and woes of high schooler Jenna Hamilton, who repeatedly gets thrust in the spotlight when she doesn’t mean to. She details her thoughts and insecurities on a blog, which sometimes exacerbates her problem. Not only does this show perfectly illustrate my theory on how  this new meta-awkwardness resonates with millennials (it’s is the show’s title after all), but it speaks to MTV’s audience as well. The show’s second season premiere grossed 3.8 million viewers, ranked higher than a Jersey Shore spin-off, and was praised by The New York Times for it’s accurate feel. Not bad for another high school teen drama.

Parts of Jenna Hamiliton’s story seem strange–you wouldn’t think that teenagers talking about how awkward they feel on the internet would be a thing. But then you have videos like this.

*This inclusion isn’t hating on LeighBirdwell. I think you poem is beautiful, love sci-fi too and, as a fellow Bostonian, will assist you in kicking the ass of anyone dissing the Bruins. Keep it up Leigh–you’re awesome.

There are approximately 331,000 YouTube videos with the word “awkward”; I’m betting you Leigh’s video isn’t the only one like it out there. This feeling isn’t something millennials just relate to in tv, books or celebrities–they broadcast it themselves online. They take ownership of that feeling. Cool used to mean navigating effortlessly (or appearing to) through murky social situations. Now? Awkward is the new cool and adolescents and twentysomethings aren’t afraid to claim it.

Doing Awkward Right: Channel Jennifer Lawrence and Be “Flawesome”

Awkwardness is obviously an important part of the millennial psyche right now, and there is tremendous opportunity for marketers to cash in on this new trope. But how do brands capitalize on that awkwardness without, well, alienating people?  Doing awkward wrong can be patronizing to millennials and just get the wrong tone. And that’s where it all comes back to Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence’s admission of her own awkwardness made her the darling of the Oscar’s–despite falling on stage. Jennifer Lawrence become “flawesome”, or awesome in light of  her showcased imperfections. In fact, I’d say her ownership of her flaws makes us love her even more as it embodies the Awkward & Aware persona millennials resonate with so strongly today.

Brands can win over the hearts of millennials with awkwardness, but only if they own it. Millennials may give themselves a lot of leeway to be awkward, but they are pretty tough on brands and actors who they think aren’t depicting emotions honestly. Just like Holden would tell you in 1951, nobody likes phonies. But today, what is most phony are people who don’t accept their own awkwardness. It’s why we love characters who name books after their own weirdness or proclaim it on camera for the world to see. It’s a new age of awkward and it’s up to brands now to own it. For inspiration on the brands embodying the Awkward & Aware persona and being “flawesome”, check out this post on PointSmith.

Thanks all for reading. Please let me know if you see any examples of brands using awkward messaging in their advertisements–I’m officially on the lookout. Lindsey Kirchoff.

HubSpot & the Job-hunt

For those of you wondering what this post is doing on a millennial marketing website, I first started this blog as a senior in college as both a way for me to learn about the marketing industry and a tool in my job search. Using social media and blogging, I was lucky enough to land the job of my dreams at HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company, in September 2012.

I was originally hired as a marketing blogger, but my position immediately changed to a more PR-focused role with Laura Fitton (aka @Pistachio on the Twitterverse), one of the first people to discover the potential of Twitter for business. While this was a temporary role change (I just started external content creation/blogging in March) , it was a fascinating few months. Not only did I get to learn a whole new industry, but I also met a lot of journalists. I was lucky enough to meet Lynn Kellerman of WCVB tv (my favorite Boston news station) who told my story on the 11 o’clock news. The full story is here, but check out the video below:

Since I mentioned LinkedIn was a major asset in my job-hunt on the news segment above, I had the pleasure of  being introduced to Connie Chan Wang, the Community Manager of LinkedIn. With her help, I was able to share my job-hunting story on the LinkedIn blog.

Spaghetti-Os, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and LinkedIn: How I Went From Unemployed Grad to Landing My Dream Job

All in all, I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to not only meet some amazing people, but share my story.

Millennials, Cars and Speaking

2012 wasn’t just the year of blogging, job-hunting and working PR for HubSpot–it was also my first public speaking engagement! Through my article, The Real Reason Aren’t Into Car Ownership, I met David Kain of Kain Automotive, an automotive internet sales training firm based in Lexington, KY.  I adapted the original article to a 45 min presentation that I presented as a keynote speaker at the 8th Annual Clients & Friends Workshop in November to an audience of approximately 150 automotive professionals. David Kain could not have been a warmer host and I am so happy to have made the trip.

Here is video plus slides of my presentation–courtesy of a nifty application called 9slides. Unfortunately, I’m having issues with the embed function, but feel free to click on the image to be taken to my presentation. It’s a pretty cool functionality.

Can’t watch the video? Here’s the slides-only version. See if you can spot which 90s soap star makes a cameo.

Link to Slideshare page

As a surprise to no one that knows me, I loved public speaking. I am currently in training at the HubSpot chapter of Toastmasters, an organization that helps people develop their presentation skills. I’m looking forward to sharpening my skills and hopefully giving more presentations in the future.

Website Updates to Come

Since my position at HubSpot has changed to something much more writing-centric, I’ll keep a running log of what I write on a separate page of this website (to be built). If you’re interested in some of my content around inbound marketing, be sure to check it out.

Other than that, I finally did find a place to live (woohoo!) and I am continuing to learn so much about marketing and the business world. I feel blessed to be surrounded by such smart, interesting people (both online and off) and  I still can’t believe how many opportunities this blog has given me from when I wrote my first post in January 2012. One thing’s for sure, it’s great to be back.

Thanks for reading and following me along this crazy journey–Lindsey Kirchoff.

However, between starting a new job (one month in), meeting awesome new marketers, reading everything I can get my hands on and oh yeah, looking for a place to live, things have been a bit crazy lately–in the best possible way. For now, I’m going to embrace my inner Susan Cain and go full-on introvert. That means I’m taking a break from blogging and Twitter for a while until I get a bit more settled.

The good news is that I’ll be back soon with a system to make this whole blogging thing less sporadic and tons of great content to share. Thanks for reading! Lindsey Kirchoff

Ever wish you could pick the brains of some of the marketing industry’s smartest people? Well…have I got a treat for you!

I recently attended–not one, but two– inbound marketing conferences back-to-back over two weeks. I met some amazingly smart people,  bought a suitcase full of marketing books, saw more orange articles of clothing outside a UT football game (my Knoxville TN peeps know what I’m talking about!) and, most importantly, learned a ton.

I initially wanted to share everything possible here (you should have seen my blog drafts on everything I learned), but I’ve decided to boil down the message to something super digestable. Here’s 5 quick-and-dirty tips I learned from Inbound2012 and Content Marketing World that you can implement in less than 5 minutes. I promise– they’re really that easy!

Let’s Get Visual—Pamela Vaughan (Inbound2012)

It’s no secret that the digital world is getting much more visual.  Think about Pinterest’s rocket launch to the mainstream, Facebook’s Timeline layout or the $1 billion dollar Instagram acquisition. Pictures aren’t something you just stick in anymore, images are content drivers. Still not convinced? Here are 19 statson how visual content is more engaging and results-driven than traditional text-only content. That’s great and all, but how do you go about maximizing this visual trend?

1) Tip:Create a Pinterest Board for blog images.

It’s so easy, but so practical. Don’t go scrambling at the last minute trying to find the perfect blog picture! Collect awesome pictures as you go so that you have tons to choose from. Even better, why not follow other people who pin images about what you write about? Before you know it, you’ll have a whole catalogue of images you’re just waiting to share. I just started a Pinterest now at How To Market To Me. It’s a little rough around the edges, but feel free to check it out.

2) Tip: Post image separately in Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn rather than let it pick the image itself. 

This example works best as a show, not tell.  Here are two identical posts I put on Facebook.

This is the exact same post, but the second one is about 100 times more visually interesting–and appealing. How’d I do it? Instead of just posting my link in the status and letting Facebook do the resizing, I saved the article’s image to my desktop and put it in the post myself. Sound difficult? It’s not. Here’s exactly how I did it:

• Left clicked image in article that I wanted to feature, saved as JPG to desktop
• Pasted article in Facebook status and clicked the “No Thumbnail”  box
• Clicked the Add Photo/Video icon and uploaded the saved image from my desktop. Bam!

You can do this exact same process with Twitter using its Add Photo icon in the left corner of every tweet draft. One simple change, a world of difference.

How Klout Is Changing Everything—Mark Schaefer (CMWorld)

Klout, an application that measures influence using an individual’s online social behavior, has always been somewhat of a mystery for me. The idea of placing a number of on your own online influence is both fascinating and terrifying (especially when they change the scoring formula on you!). Lucky for me, I got to hear Mark Schaefer, the guy who literally wrote the book on measuring online influence quantitatively, speak at CMWorld. Here’s one easy tip that blew my mind.

3) Tip: Use Klout to track influencers in your industry. 

Search people on Klout, find out who’s talking about your keywords and bam, you’ve got a list of people to start building relationships with. As a job-hunter, I was always worried about what my Klout score was and if it would ever come up in interviews. I never even thought about using the metric to find other influential people in my field! Klout can be super helpful to help you target who you want talking about your product/service or newest bit of content. Who knew? Now you do.

 Anticipate Big Stories Before They Happen–David Meerman Scott and Rand Fishkin (Inbound2012)

While I still haven’t read the book on it yet (it’s on my list I swear!), I’ve definitely heard David Meerman Scott’s term “newsjacking” all over the place. The idea is to earn lots of inbound links by writing about something just before it “hits” full media coverage. That way, when journalists and bloggers are looking for sources to quote, there you are all gift-wrapped and under the Christmas tree. How do you do that? Scott touched on this concept and gave some great examples in his keynote, but it was actually Rand Fishkin’s speech that connected the dots for this one great tip.

4) Tip: Search Google News for keywords in your industry. 

Again, super easy but I would have never thought to do it. Google News aggregates content from 50,000 sources around the world and locally. Here’s how Google explains these features.

Not only can you personalize your settings to get more feed information from certain topics (say Business or Massachusetts) but you can also type in specific keywords (say Gen Y, Millennials or YourCompanyName) that Google will watch out for and send you news about. And if you’re a big fan of certain news sources or academic journals (such as the Advertising Journal or the Harvard Business Review), you can make those show up more in your feed too.  Pretty cool.

The Sales Lion and the Power of In-sourcing (CMWorld)

At Content Marketing World, I was lucky enough to hear Marcus Sheridan (aka The Sales Lion), one of the most enthusiastic speakers ever. Perfect for waking up an audience at 8:30am! Like many of the speakers at these events, he evangelized about the benefits of Inbound marketing. In his case however, he listed countless small local businesses exponentially increased their success using blogging, content marketing techniques. What’s his advice?

5) Tip: Ask people on your team to contribute posts.

Mark Sheridan said that he thought in-sourcing content creation from within the company is the future of content marketing. Why is this an easy tip for you, the marketer? More writers =more content/voices for customers to connect with, more search engine traffic and quite frankly, more respect from colleagues who think your job is playing on Twitter all day. Yes, convincing people to help contribute can be a battle. But this woman had Marcus Sheridan come talk to her B2B medical business and now, one of their engineers is Chief Content Officer! You never know who is going to click with blogging and you’ll really never know if you don’t ask. But how do you ask? Make them feel comfortable with specific assignments about something they already know a lot about. Appeal to their expertise on a topic you may not know as well. If they say it’s too hard, point out that Bob the plumber blogs. And it’s really fantastic! There’s no reason why your team can’t as well. Period.

I can’t tell you how valuable going to these conferences were and how much I learned. Even the non-marketing speakers, such as Susan Cain and Jack Hanna, taught me lessons in marketing that I keep coming back to. Thankfully (for you guys!) I cut myself off at 1,000 words. However, I can’t promise there won’t be a part 2…hope you found these tips as helpful as I did! Thanks for reading. Lindsey Kirchoff

If you can’t watch the video, here’s the news: I’m officially working for HubSpot as an Inbound Marketing Manager. This means I will be writing on the HubSpot blog, with an audience of over 90,000 email subscribers, all about inbound marketing techniques, starting next Monday. Writing to marketers about marketing online? Talk about a dream job. In fact, my first article (edited from the application) just went live this morning!

For those of you scratching your head on why this post is on a millennial marketing website, let me catch you up. I’ve been using this website and other inbound marketing techniques to  job-hunt as a recent college graduate. If you want to learn more about my non-conventional approach, check out David Meerman Scott’s profile of my job-hunting style.

Just to be clear, I absolutely intend to keep up this website, How To Market To Me, in addition to writing for HubSpot. In fact, I am sure all the things I’ll learn working at HubSpot will help make this website even stronger.  That being said, I will probably be introducing some website changes soon and I’m not sure how this new development will affect my posting schedule. Keep an eye out for updates!

Thank you again for reading and supporting me on this crazy journey, Lindsey Kirchoff.

Since this statistic broke in March this year, more have followed. Today, 21-34 year olds only make up 27% of new vehicles sold in the US as opposed to 38% in 1985. Even teenagers aren’t feeling the love, with teen licenses falling by 28% between the years 1998 and 2008.

Everyone from The Atlantic to Time has reported on why exactly millennial car ownership is down. For a quick-and-dirty synopsis of the most popular theories, check out my friend Walter Frick’s bullet point list over at BostInno. While these articles are thorough, well-researched and certainly worth a read, they are missing a very important part of the picture.

As a twentysomething actually living car-free, let me tell you the real reason why millennials aren’t into car ownership….and it’s not the Great Recession.

Quite simply, we are becoming homebodies. Society is undergoing an shift from storefront to homefront. Think about it. Almost all of the needs that twentysomethings used to need to leave the house for can now be met from the couch.It’s bigger than simply shopping online, social media or surfing the web instead of going to the library. We are living through a lifestyle revolution. A new economy. Or, in author and wine entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk’s words at Inbound 2012 ( a marketing conference in Boston I attended last week), ” the biggest cultural revolution since the invention of the automobile”.

Half of my generation rates the Internet as more essential than a car. That’s how much lifestyles have changed.

I know this is a pretty radical idea, and a big picture one at that. But when you view some of the reasons proposed for the decrease in millennial car ownership through a lens of “homebody-ism”, it starts to make sense. I’ll use BostInno’s list to demonstrate my point. Just to be clear, every indented bullet point is quoted directly from the list while my comments are underneath.

• Money – Thanks to the recession, young people don’t have as much of it.

A bad economy, high unemployment rate, and gas prices approaching $4 a gallon–can you really justify taking the car out of the driveway unless you have to? Why not stay home and transfer that cost onto online retailers, like Amazon.com and only go out to buy the things you really need?

• Urbanization – Young people prefer the cities more than previous generations (see here, here, here). That supports the idea that they’ll have less need for cars.

Young people prefer cities/urban centers because they have less need for cars. More and more of their needs are met at home and they’d like to be closer than driving distance to those that aren’t.

• Culture – There’s an argument that car culture is falling out of fashion. This seems less plausible for home ownership, as most millennials say they want to own a house eventually (here, here).

Car culture is falling out of fashion because there is less need to leave the house. Home entertainment systems, like video games and fancy televisions, are on the rise while traditional movie theaters just suffered their worst summer turnout since 1993–despite the boost from billion-dollar blockbusters like The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Whereas teens used to go to arcades and movie theaters, more and more are visiting friends’ houses to be entertained at a high quality for smaller cost.

• Tech – The “sharing” economy, led by Zipcar and Airbnb, is enabled by the internet.

The industry, such as Zipcar, is lowering ages so that, in some cases 18-20 year olds can rent cars instead of the traditional 25 year old limit. Car ownership just isn’t the only option available to twentysomethings when they want to leave the house.

• Mobility deferred – Young people are in general more mobile than older people, by which I mean they move cities and jobs more often, except today’s youth have been less mobile than previous generations because of the recession. This matters because the less you’re moving jobs and cities, the more sense it makes to purchase a home. But my guess is that many young people, even if they haven’t moved much, still hope to, meaning that purchasing a home isn’t necessarily a wise investment right now.

Here’s where things really click. Millennials do hope to own a home someday. I’d say with the current value shift towards homebody-ism, it’s more important than ever. However, there are fewer options for those who don’t own a car, which contributes to apartment-hopping in various cities. Because owning a home is such an important investment, millennials want to make sure that they are making the right one. And quite frankly, there aren’t many houses that fit with this decreased emphasis on a car-centric lifestyle. So we’re holding out, renting and most likely will make the investment…once the housing system catches up with our needs.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your thoughts. It’s been a crazy few days of marketing conferences. I’ve just come from Inbound 2012 and am now off to Content Marketing World. I can’t WAIT to share all the new stuff I’ve learned. Until then, I’ll be filling legal pads with notes, passing out my fancy new business cards and getting my networking skills on–thank you again for the shout-out Al Getler!

Lindsey Kirchoff

Richard Henegar, Jr., the manager at Quality Auto Paint and Body, decided to pool his resources and connections with 10 other local businesses, to do $10,000 and 100 hours work free of charge. He stated, ”Once I saw the vandalism that was done to it I said, ‘that’s uncalled for we’re gonna fix your car–that’s the least we can do.’” Here’s Jordan’s face after he saw his new car.

I can’t embed the video reaction directly, but it’s definitely worth the two minutes to watch. Check it out here.

Stories like these are inspiring and give great publicity to businesses that deserve them. Here’s my analysis of the PR aftermath for all parties involved:

 Quality Auto Paint and Body

Richard Henegar, Jr. and the other workers at this autoshop are (deservedly) getting a lot of attention for their good deeds. Popular news networks such as CBS, New York Daily News and even widely read gossip columnist PerezHilton.com are all reporting on the story. Fantastic news! How’s this small business handling the attention?

Very well. Their Facebook page, up to 803 likes, is blowing up with comments and responses. They released a plan to add a “Bully Car Project” section to their website, repeatedly thank commenters and well-wishers, share other positive small business stories, and most importantly, list all the other businesses and donors who made this project possible.

How could they be doing better? The company is also getting lots of positive buzz on Twitter, but they don’t have an account. It might be worth it to get one just to thank all the well-wishers! There are going to be a lot of people wanting to support the business and wondering how–Twitter is a great avenue to communicate that quickly. Finally, this isn’t the first good deed Quality Auto Paint and Body has done or the first time someone has written about them. They also re-modelled a deployed Navy soldier’s car while he was away on duty in a campaign called Operation Pay it Forward that was featured in The Roanoke Times.  This shop needs a press page! If this many people are writing positive news stories on you, you should make it as easy as possible to find them.

Radford University

Ok, I’m pretty torn on this one, so bear with me.

First, the obvious. Three of the times Jordan Addison’s car got demolished were on Radford University campus. Of course, I can understand how a random act of hate and property destruction can come out of left field on any college campus. Yet, after the first incident, somehow campus security let it happen again. Twice. Yikes.

If I were a student’s parent, I wouldn’t feel too comfortable sending my incoming freshman baby onto a campus where security is so lax and bullying is blatantly ignored by the administration. However, this story broke exactly at the time where most are going back to or starting school. What’s Radford’s reaction to the potential negative press?

A combination of avoidance and reactions to individuals. Radford’s Facebook page is full of back to school news, happy students and fun activities for new students. However, check out what happens when someone alludes to the story:

Honestly, this isn’t so bad. Would I like to see a statement from Radford University with an apology to Jordan, an active plan to improve security, gay-straight relations and crack down on bullying? Absolutely! However, I understand why they wouldn’t.

Right now, the story is mainly reported as a local business doing good, not a college doing bad. Why would they want to draw more attention to their failure right before a big “first impression”? They are avoiding making a blanket statement, press release or reporting the news on press page, but at least they are acknowledging the issue and responding to dissenters individually. It’s not the ideal crisis management technique, but it’s better than the gag order of silence that Penn State used on their social media during a very critical time. Even on their Twitter page, the majority of tweets are about move-in day today. Since this is  an important day to 100% of their customers, they probably should be.

In terms of administration, this story is an enormous fail for Radford University that I hope they learn from and take action to correct. In terms of PR, while it’s not what I would like to see happen, they’re doing alright.

However, at the very least they do owe an apology to a student that they failed to keep safe. Once moving day dies down, the university should publicly apologize to Jordan Addison for so poorly protecting his property and, ideally, introduce a plan to do better. Radford Gay-Straight Alliance, it’s time to put on the pressure and hold your administration accountable!

Jordan Addison, College Student

As a recently graduated student, I know how tight money can get sometimes. Incurring such an enormous cost from simply parking your car at your home or school is something no person should ever expect to deal with it, especially on multiple occasions. Hope you enjoy your newly repaired wheels!

Thank y’all for reading! As a Tennessean, it makes me happy to report on local Southern businesses doing good. Hope you guys enjoyed. Lindsey Kirchoff

Many marketers today create buyer personas to better visualize their target consumers. Some statistics, like age, geography and income bracket, are relatively straightforward. However, marketers today have all sorts of tricks to get themselves into their audience’s frame of mind. One of my friends from marketing firm Holland-Mark asks her clients to picture what kind of car their customers most likely drive. Mark Schaefer, author of the Tao of Twitter and {grow} blog, asks his clients to compare their brand to a celebrity and their audience as someone who might relate to that celebrity.

Sonicbids, a social music marketing firm in Boston, would probably ask you what music your customers are most likely to listen to. After all, a Justin Bieber fan makes a much different buyer profile than a Grateful Dead concertgoer. After identifying your target market and goals, they would take that information to create an interactive experience involving your brand, a band and of course, fans. Here’s how they work.

Sonicbids serves three clients: bands, promoters and bands. CEO Panos Panay started as an agent and was inspired to start Sonicbids after realizing there was a real opportunity for bands to promote themselves and get gigs on the internet. Thus, one of the primary focuses of Sonicbids is to connect bands and promoters and help emerging talent book gigs online and develop their social media presence. This offering is all well and good for entrepreneurial music talent, but here’s where it gets interesting for traditional brand marketers.

Sonicbids reaches 100 million fans around the world through 350,000 bands and 26,000 promoters. Brands like Converse, Taylor Guitars, Universal Studios, GAP and even Midas connected with their music-loving consumers using interactive promotions. Yes, but what does that mean?

For Sonicbids’ partnership with Midas, it was all about the “Rock the Highway” campaign–connect to a younger generation through finding the next great “road song”. Their website received 1,000 submissions from artists, who in turn promoted the contest to their fans. The ripple effect continued when fans tuned in to vote on a winner all while receiving special Midas deals, content and music event access. Rather than directly seek out traffic for a notoriously hard-to-reach demographic (hooray for millennials!), they solicited much people with a built-in audience, aka rock musicians, to tap their fan-base for a promotion with the help of Sonicbids. Pretty cool, especially for an automotive repair shop.

Whether it’s connecting with your buyer profiles through their favorite bands, establishing a presence at a music festival or concert, soliciting musical content from over 36,000 bands, improving social media through musical engagement or strategizing an entirely different marketing plan to meet your needs, Sonicbids is a fascinating resource for brand marketers. I’m hoping to follow up this article with a more in depth interviews, but until then, this is definitely a company worth keeping an eye on.

If you have any companies doing interesting things in the marketing world, I’m always interested in learning what’s out there and talking to people in the industry. Thanks for reading! Lindsey Kirchoff

**I don’t benefit from this post in any way, other than meeting people in the marketing industry doing interesting things. This isn’t advertorial or paid copy, just the result of a fascinating conversation at the airport!

See Grandma, I told you I can read something other than my cell phone!

But why the sudden shift in dynamic? The answer may be less straightforward than you think.

eReaders

Electronic readers are the most obvious reason for this phenomena. eBook consumption raised from 4 to 14% in 2011. It also helps answer the first question that came to my mind, “since when does a 25 year-old have more time to read than a 65 year-old?”. eReaders, such as iPads, Nooks, Kindles allow people to read just about anywhere, including the subway to and from work.

For some millennials, having an eReader is enough to get motivated to start reading. Take my friend Ian for instance. After receiving a Kindle Fire for graduation, he started the blog Ian Can Read. All his friends submitted book recommendations, and now he’s reading them all. Over 50 of them. This kid is an engineer who hasn’t picked up a literary book in years, yet with the purchase of a Kindle, he’s tearing through classics like Irving and Vonnegut in just a few months. Yes, most people buy Kindles to read more, but when I purchased an iPad for entirely different reasons, having the option available it was enough to make me read more eBooks.

However, just because millennials can read anytime anyplace doesn’t automatically mean they want to. Unless, of course they have friends who won’t shut up about it.

Social Reading and Book Crazes

The Hunger Games. Harry Potter. Twilight. These are all young adult fiction novels whose record sales led them that became repackaged as millennial blockbuster movie series. Even more adult books, such as the Game of Thrones, are all the buzz. After the television series, George R.R. Martin’s release of the fifth book broke records. The books are taking off now, even though his first book in the series was published in 1997.

Moral of the story? Reading is cool again.

With websites like Goodreads, reading has become much more social. You can see what your friends are reading, what they recommend and what they dislike. When a book is well-liked today, it has a much higher chance of going viral, even self-published books like Fifty Shades of Gray.

Different Reading Style

Aside from peer pressure, millennials have an inherent thirst for content. As the generation most connected to the internet, we’re constantly reading new information, looking up answers and getting distracted by novel content. According to this millennial marketing firm, we read differently than our predecessors. Millennials are more likely to skim, scan and read for a purpose.

While this may not be a good thing for textbook sales (why spend $300 when you have Google?), I think it’s made us more well-practiced and efficient readers. Since the average 15-24 year old spends 50 minutes a day reading (more than GenXers, but less than Baby Boomers), we’re getting more well-practiced at reading quickly and efficiently. Thus, it will probably take millennials much less time to read a book than a Baby Boomer, which leads to increased book purchases per year for millennials.

Less Non-Tech Book Avenues for Seniors

Yes, millennial book consumption increased from 25 to 30% in 2011, but Baby Boomers dropped from 30 to 25%. The question here isn’t just why are millennials reading more, but also why are Baby Boomers reading less.

The answer could lie in a depressing, yet inevitable trend. There are significantly less brick-and-mortar avenues for book purchases. Not only did The Borders Group fall in 2011, but existing book stores are focusing more effort on eBooks rather than retail in accordance to sales. I remember visiting a Barnes and Noble in January, looking for a specific copy of a paperback. After entering the store to multiple Nook booths, picking up a basket with a Nook advertisement, I asked an employee to help me find a copy. Once we got to the author’s section, he said that they must not have it and that I could order one. The catch? It was staring us in front of the face the whole time.

With the increased reliance on eReaders and Amazon.com as a physical book suppliers, less tech savvy seniors may not be able to buy the books that they want. Even libraries, once a study source of physical books, are closing due to budget cuts. The same article states that the ones that do secure funding are encouraged to meet Wi-Fi and electronic needs.

As a bookworm, I couldn’t be happier to hear that my generation is getting more well-read. Here’s to continuing this trend! However, I would hate to think that seniors are missing out on an opportunity to read as much as they would like to. Anyone hear of any charities that are addressing this issue? As always, thank you for reading (hooray for reading!). Lindsey Kirchoff

**Disclaimer: I normally like to read the studies that I report on to really dig into the sample size, survey type, external factors etc. However, access to this study cost $799. This round I’ll be relying on secondary sources, unless someone wants to make a really big donation!