Carol Phillips is the president and founder of the brand strategy consulting firm “Brand Amplitude.” She is also a Professor at the prestigious University of Notre Dame.

Carol began her career as a market researcher and strategic planner at Leo Burnett. Later, as an Account Director, she led agency teams at four different agencies – Y&R, Leo Burnett, Mullen and JWT – for a variety of clients including Sprint, Nextel, Ameritech, Heinz, 7UP, and Philip Morris.

In an exclusive interview, she shares her thoughts on how the millennial generation is changing the art of Marketing.

Ines: On your blog you write about how your interest in the millennial generation began 5 years ago, when they began to enter your college classroom. You explain that it was impossible not to notice how different this generation was. Can you talk about the differences you noticed back then and the differences you see today?
Carol: I think one of the first things was that they didn’t deal with ambiguity very well. They wanted a lot of structure, and they wanted to know exactly how to do it right.
I think one of my blog posts was called “The Professor’s Lament,” and I joked that if you asked them to memorize the alphabet by tomorrow, they would come back and ask you “which alphabet?” “Do you want it backwards or forwards?” “Can we sing it?” They need a lot of assurance that they are doing it right. I also found that I couldn’t make any changes, like I couldn’t say, “Oh, I found a new way to do this…”
I think the biggest surprise was how little they actually knew about Marketing. I was teaching “The Basics of Marketing.” As the most marketed-to generation, I expected them to be much more sophisticated, and they weren’t, and I found all of this really surprising. I jotted down some thoughts, and sent them to “Ad Age,” and they published it. This was in 2006…that was when some of the first articles started coming out about the millennial generation, so I just joined the conversation.

Ines: In your opinion, how should businesses successfully market to the millennial generation? And what exactly does it mean to reach this generation by being “quick,” “meaningful,” and “shiny” as your blog suggests?
Carol: I didn’t create that set of words, I found it in a Gen Y article by a young Canadian planner, and she’s fine with me using it. I think that it does kind of summarize what Gen Y is about. They’re pretty suspicious of advertising and distrustful. They look at everything with a cynical eye. They’re much more trusting of information that comes from their friends, or other sources, than they are from advertising. I think what they don’t realize is that advertising isn’t allowed to lie. So I think there are some implications there for marketers: don’t spend a lot of time making elaborate claims. They’re not going to pay any attention to them. You really want to spend more time building a relationship based on something that matters to them. And they have a lot of things that matter to them, particularly in the area of “cause marketing.” That’s what I mean by “meaningful.” So it’s not only relevant to the product, but also relevant to other things that they’re interested in. Also, I think I was quoted as saying “There’s a special place in branding hell for brands that say one thing, and do another, with the millennial generation.” They value authenticity.
When you look at the brands they like, some people are surprised to see they’re the brands that everyone likes: Apple, Coca Cola, Vogue Magazine. Well, there’s a reason for that. These are brands that have a long history of being authentic, and saying what they’re going to do.
As far as the “shiny” part goes, they love things that are flashy and new, like the latest technology, so you don’t want to come at them with the simple, tired, stuff.

Ines: In the article, “Millennials: Clued in or Clueless,” you find that “…students take it as a matter of faith that advertisements mislead consumers about the truth of a product’s performance…and are all too ready to believe that ads use a host of subliminal messages to improve product perceptions.” More so, we know that this generation prefers listening to their peers, rather than relying on a brand, and that they are quite skeptical in general, which is also very clear in your article “What Millennials think of Social Media.”
Are we moving towards a world where it’s more about the “person” behind the brand and a sort of “peer-to-peer,” “word of mouth,” marketing?
Carol: I think it’s always been about the person behind the brand. I teach my students that your brand has a message, but it also has a personality. The personality is not what you do, it’s how you do it. The most important thing with personality is to be consistent. There’s a great F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, “…personality is nothing other than consistency and gesture.” And it’s really true. I think what we’re finding now with the “personalization,” of everything on the web, is that the brands that do have a consistent, recognizable, personality, are the ones that are going to succeed the most.
I had a blog post where I said that one of the reasons brands struggled on Facebook initially, was that they were still behaving like brands instead of a person, and you go to Facebook to learn about people. So brands needed to talk about the parties they’re throwing, and show pictures, and do things that people do, not talk in terms of “brand talk.” I think they’re starting to get it, and that’s why Facebook is becoming profitable finally!

Ines: In the book, “Next: A vision of our lives in the future,” the authors express a paradox about this generation, characterizing them as individuals who are nostalgic for a past they haven’t lived. This is seen through the ways they cling to old music idols like Mick Jagger and Madonna, or even Michael Jackson. The authors argue that a paradox lies in the way this generation values some things from the past, while completely rejecting other things.
Do you also see this generational paradox? If so, how does one go about marketing to this ambiguity, thus having to reconcile the past and the future?
Carol: I watched “That 70’s show” last night with my 15-year-old son. I had never seen it before. He loves that show. The 70’s was my childhood, and yet he does relate to that. I think that with the millennial generation, their values are not any different from traditional values, but they’re more culturally liberal. They still value honesty, creativity, family, and success. There’s really no difference in terms of what they value. What they’re doing, is putting a different spin on it. They’re redefining what success means. They’re redefining the role of creativity in their lives, of self-expression. They’re redefining what family means.
I think one of the brilliant things about the “ABC Family Channel” is that it gets that! If you watch those shows, they’re not the way they were even 3 years ago. They’re multicultural, they’re dealing with issues that real families are dealing with, and they show multiple generations liking each other! There’s been a shift. So it isn’t that the values are different, it’s just a different interpretation.

Ines: Where do you think the relatively new art of blogging is headed? Are blogs a way for companies to speak and advertise to the millennial generation?
Carol: Absolutely. A lot of millenials blog, but not all of them, but they do read blogs. There’s a great site, “Brazen Careerist.” Penelope Trunk is amazing, she’s created a community of Gen Y bloggers, and I think we’re going to see more of that. Her community is around work, but I think there are other communities that are going to spring up, and are springing up. I mean, look at “Deviant Art.” There are communities around cooking, wine, and very specialized interests. All marketers have to do, is rather than create a community, just join it, join the conversation…

Ines: More and more, we see advertising campaigns that are pretty interactive, like the “T-Mobile sing along.”The consumer becomes a participant, rather than just a passive buyer. How do you see the role of the millennial consumer evolving?
Carol: I think we are going to see more and more of that. At first, there were very few campaigns that were participatory like that, now there’s a lot. Last Christmas, Starbucks did their “Project Red Campaign.” Now we’re seeing a lot of crowd sourcing which is interesting. Dunkin Donuts had huge success with “Design a Donut.” I think we’re going to see more and more things like this.

Ines: In Sao Paulo, I’ve recently noticed that there have been a few “temporary stores” opening.
The design is extremely elaborate, and nothing implies that this store would be temporary. Yet, they open with the intention of being open for a couple months, clearly a way to advertise their brand, on a well-known street. Are we moving towards a world that’s like our online world, where things are more and more temporary, including physical stores?
Carol: I think the Temporary store is a really interesting phenomenon. I think Jc Penney did it first in Times Square, and they got a lot of attention with that. It’s a really another form of advertising, it’s just much more experiential. It’s not cheap but I think it has incredible impact. It’s a great way to reach young people who aren’t likely to pay attention any other way.

Ines: You talk about how this generation enjoys somewhat sophisticated pleasures, and “living large,” at least in terms of wine and gourmet foods. This doesn’t seem to change even in a recession. What do you think the desire for these products says about this generation?
Carol: Well I think it says a lot about the way they were raised. They grew up in a very economically prosperous time. Their parents were better educated than parents had been before. They got exposed to very sophisticated things early on, and more of them have traveled.
I think the whole interest in things like cooking, wine, and fashion, is driven partly by self-expression, but also those are things you can share. They’re incredibly functional. You can talk about wine, and you can talk about food. It’s an experience that’s communal.

Ines: But you also present a paradox. Most of the college students you know, if not all, consider themselves poor, but still indulge in these pleasures. What are your thoughts on that?
Carol: I think they do think of themselves as cash-strapped, even the ones who by normal standards are living pretty well. I don’t think they are ever not going to think of themselves as frugal. They’re careful shoppers, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t buy things that they perceive as a “need.”
I think that’s the challenge for marketers. Move things out of that “nice to have” and into the “must have” category.

Ines: That’s why you also mention that it’s not smart to position your brand as luxury?
Carol: I don’t think so, though there have been several brands that have been doing just that, and are enjoying some success, so maybe I’m wrong. The Burberry campaign with Emma Watson seems to be successful. And a Burberry coat is a luxury, by any standards! You know, girls want the fancy bags. How I reconcile that is I think they move that expensive bag into a “must have” category, so it’s not a luxury for them. In the same way, that a Mac Book, is a must-have, as opposed to something half the price, which is just as functional.

Ines: How does your role as a mother and Professor impact, shape, and influence, the work you do? It’s interesting because both these roles make it so that you’re very connected to this generation. Do you see this shaping what you choose to study, and the lens through which you perceive and examine things?
Carol: Absolutely. I was putting together a presentation for a major entertainment client. One of the things they commented on, on my draft, is that it pulls on everything. It pulls on my own experience in the classroom, and with my kids. It pulls on anecdotal data from Gen Y blogs and Twitter. It pulls on secondary research, and it pulls very heavily on my own research. We [Brand Amplitude] do a lot of client work, about the millennial generation for major brands. Also, we’ve done a lot of studies for ourselves, like the one on social media, and the millennial generation in the workplace.
So I think we’re at the cutting edge of a lot of these things. And that’s partly because I’ve got my ear to the ground, both personally and professionally.

Read more about Carol Phillips: http://millennialmarketing.com