Smart Phones: You Are Assuming You Know Millennials.

I was in the middle of reading a post I made on our company blog from about two years ago. When Millennials started become a big buzz word in marketing. It hit me, marketers are lazy. They are creating a category of monetizing millennials now, based on smart phones. Marketers are laying claim that the shift in media consumption, among the population, is due to smart phone usage. I completely agree. By why is there then a jump in logic, which says smart phones + increased usage = must be millennials (oh and we must shift our strategies now to reach them).

Sorry that is wrong. Yes there is a huge shift in mobile usage and on-demand media consumption.  But it is by all generations that are online. As I have stated in previous blog posts, my 4 year old loves YouTube, he watches some of the most outrageous videos on toys that he is currently interested in. So like the millennials, are we going shift our marketing efforts to 4 year olds - 13 year olds (insert whatever clever name we will put on them). What happened to baby boomers? Gen Xers? When I look at all the research out there right now on millennials, it is apparent - mobile usage is the fallacy followed by marketers in creating this vast demo of potential dollars. At the macro level, is there us not enough research being done outside the millennial world? I feel like we are already jumping off the GenX ship to the millennial madness craze. When I was in college it was all about marketing to Baby Boomers - and this was only 10 years ago!

I am just not certain why we are so fixed on getting ahead of the curve on a generation that is still not resolute on who we are. Are marketers trying to create a neat little path for us to fit in to? Are we looking through the forest and not at the trees?