The Entitled Generation

I recently read an article in the NY Times entitled, “She’s Famous (and So Can You)” (Guy Trebay, October 28, 2007) that really got me thinking about a group of consumers and how they view not only themselves, but their place in society. The article goes in depth about a new type of celebrity that can gain fame (or is it notoriety?) without talent. We seem to be infatuated with famous people who have done nothing special (Paris Hilton, Tila Tequila) – and some have even become famous for being shockingly un-talented (William Hung).

All that aside, it got me thinking about this group of consumers – the millennial* consumers, who are increasingly fascinated and captivated by these “celeb-realities”.

And my question is, “how can we create an emotional connection with a group of consumers who feel entitled and truly important themselves?”

As Guy mentions in the article above:

When Jake Halpern set out to write “Fame Junkies,” his book about what is now a universal obsession with celebrity, he was surprised to uncover studies demonstrating that 31 percent of American teenagers had the honest expectation that they would one day be famous and that 80 percent thought of themselves as truly important. (The figure from the same study conducted in the 1950s was 12 percent.)

This is truly fascinating – millennial consumers see themselves as truly important and fame as an option. In the past, depending on the product, we have been concentrating on consumer targets such as Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. These generational cohorts have their own nuances when we try to create emotional engagement. For example, with Baby Boomers, we are talking to a generation that has grown up with larger than life experiences and now wants her buying habits to be centered on an experience or a feeling. They grew up seeing other people in the limelight and want to experience larger than life sensations.

Since we are in the beginning stages of targeting this millennial group with advertising, I predict a large shift in the way we communicate with this group. Since they want to feel entitled, we will have to find ways for our brands to fuel this feeling of entitlement. I could be wrong, but I expect we will see more campaigns that are centered on identifying influential members of this group and a more “celeb-reality” approach to brand building.

*The dates of this generational cohort are often disputed, but for this article I am assuming those individuals born somewhere between 1980 and 2000.