Social Marketing to Millenials by Charles Hull @charleshull #sbs2011

Charles Hull leads the company Archrival. They connect brands to youth culture. And study how young adults think, process and consume.

His talk is about millennials. Some numbers:
Gen X: 40 milion in US
Gen Y: 70 million in US

Millennial themes:

• life tracking: millennials leverage technology to collect, categorize and diagram personal stats to better understand themselves. E.g. patientslikeme.com, mint.com. mon.thly.info.
• Middle class of fame: the 15 minutes of fame ideology has gone from an aspiration to an expectation.
• Digidentity: Youth use their social channels to establish their identities and demonstrate their social currency.
• Tech-eyed view: Millenials see the world through a social media lens making every moment sharable.

Just to show how different millennials are, take a look at what they answered to the following question.What would you rather give up? Give up internet or sex? 33% would rather give up sex than the internet...

The implications
What are the opportunties for marketeers?

• lifetrack - provide fun ways to do that
• fame - give them opportunities to be publicly recognized
• digidentity - give them ways to share their achievements
• techeyed - give them the tools to entertain, assist and inform

Charles wraps us his presentation by giving us insight in how they developped a successful social game around a Redbull event.

UPDATE April 6, 2011: Corrected text, added pictures and links.