Marketing to Adult Millennials by Michael Kallenberger

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The Next Generationof Craft Beer Drinkers:

Julia, a 23-year-old graduate student, is working hard to meet her goals

in a pretty competitive environment. She has big plans, and big expec-

tations, for her future. She’s not really the “work hard, play hard” type,

but she does enjoy de-stressing on the weekends by hanging out with her

friends and having a beer or two.

When one of them has a party, they usually get a keg of inexpensive beer,

but more often than not there are some craft beers in the fridge, too. Julia

always visits the fridge before the keg, just to see what might be in there. “I

find myself gravitating toward the other people who drink craft beer, too,”

she says. “It just seems like they would be more interesting people.”

Julia is a member of the Millennial Generation. The first Millennials were born

somewhere around 1980, give or take a couple of years. They’re also sometimes

known as Echo Boomers or Generation Y, but many observers reject these names,

largely because they can reinforce some misconceptions: Millennials aren’t “Mini-

Me Boomers,” nor are they “Gen X Revisited.” They’re as different from Boomers

and Gen Xers as those generations are from each other.

Adult Millennials are currently 21 to 27, and the ranks of this age group will

continue to be filled by this generation for a decade or more to come. Developing

an intuitive understanding of Millennials is therefore key to long-term brewery

growth. The good news is that many, like Julia, may have more than a little

natural affinity for craft beer.

Understanding MillennialsWhy are Millennials the way they are? A lot has to do with the parenting styles of the 1980s and 90s. Unlike Gen Xers, who grew up in an era when self-reliance was often emphasized from an early age, Mil-lennials have benefited from increasing levels of parental support and protection. The downside was that during the Millen-nial childhood era, unstructured time for kids reached an all-time low. Studies have found that, compared to Gen Xers when they were growing up, today’s adult Millen-nials had far less time for free play, with big increases in the number of hours spent on household work and studying. Another difference from the Gen Xer experience was the tone of the times in the larger world as they were coming of age. In the 1980s, there was a widespread sense that the institutions that had once guaranteed employment security were fail-ing: unions were declining in power, and the decade likewise saw the first-ever mass white-collar layoffs. In contrast, Millennials grew up in heady times: the dot-com boom was driving the stock market to new highs seemingly every day, and the Berlin Wall had fallen, creating the sense that the world had been opened up to free market ideals.

As a result of these and other factors, Millennials tend to share some core values, including achievement, optimism, creativ-ity and knowledge, and they’re looking for brands that reflect those values. They’re also the most multicultural generation in history, and for them, technology is like oxygen: ut-terly essential, and yet so ubiquitous that they completely take it for granted. All of these traits offer craft brewers some intrigu-ing opportunities.

Marketing to MillennialsHistory doesn’t repeat itself, but the value placed by Millennials on achievement may mean that at least one element of old school beer marketing may make a comeback: the idea of a beer as the best reward for a hard day’s work. This was the central idea driving some classic beer advertising in the 1970s. The premise faded in relevance in the years that followed, largely because Gen Xers were more interested in social bonding than rewarding themselves. Now, however, adult Millennials may well feel a need for a little validation when they indulge in a beer, espe-cially a more expensive brand. For market-ers, there may be subtle ways to remind Mil-lennials that “You’ve earned it” when they’re contemplating what to drink.

The optimism of this generation, in terms of both their personal lives and the larger world, also has implications for marketers. Millennials will from time to time feel less of a need to make socially safe choices by go-ing along with the group. They’re not a “go it alone” generation—far from it—but they do have the confidence to break free of the mainstream occasionally, and they idealize a spirit of independence. Brands that reflect an optimistic independence in their per-sonalities may have an advantage for adult Millennials. But there is one note of caution: Millennials’ notion of independence is usu-ally less defiant and more free-spirited than that of Gen Xers. Another way Millennial optimism is rel-evant for marketers is in the causes they as-sociate themselves with. Millennials believe in our collective ability to make the world a better place; goals that might have seemed naïve to Gen Xers a decade ago are seen as achievable by today’s 21- to 27-year-olds. Brands that demonstrate a commitment to doing their small part for a worthwhile cause will find supporters among the emerg-ing generation. It’s hard to overstate how important cre-ativity is to Millennials. If you ask them who they admire and who they’d like to be like—

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whether among celebrities or among their own friends and acquaintances—it’s likely they’ll tell you about someone who’s strong on creative self-expression. Brewers are al-ready tapping into this through extreme beers, seasonal releases and even their Web sites, but it will pay to be on the alert for new ways to express creativity. A sort of unpretentious sophistication has always been important to high-end beers, but the definition of sophistication is evolving. If someone wanted to be seen as sophisticated, it used to be enough to emu-late what other “sophisticated” people were doing—drink what they drink, and the so-phistication factor will rub off on you. It’s different for Millennials. They want a little substance with their sophistication, and they definitely don’t want anything that smacks of pretense. They may not be oozing beer knowledge—at this point in their lives, few could explain the difference between an ale and a lager—but they do want to be able to back up their choices with good rationale. In other words, it’s no longer about know-ing who to emulate and what to drink, it’s about knowing how and why some choices are better than others. So it’s important to promote product knowledge, but also to keep it non-intimidating and practical. If you

report on your beer’s specs—IBUs, original gravity, Plato—without letting them know why they should care (in other words, what it means for the experience of drinking the beer) then you might be missing an oppor-tunity to help a Millennial feel smart. A little education delivered in a subtle way can go a long way with this generation.

The Craft Beer CultureAs mentioned, this is the most multicultural generation in history—not just in terms of sheer numbers of ethnic Americans, but in terms of the overall mindset of even white Anglos (who make up less than two-thirds of today’s 21- to 27-year olds, a figure that will continue to decline). In surveys, nine of 10 Millennials report that they have a friend of a different race, and half say they socialize equally with people of their own race and people of other races. Increasingly, the main-stream is multicultural. Yet the culture around craft beers argu-ably lacks a multicultural feel. If that culture ever starts to seem less than fully inclusive, that could actually become an impediment to cementing the relationship with Millenni-als of any and all ethnicities. At the very least, brewers should start giving serious thought to the question of how to address the largely

untapped potential of craft beers among Af-rican-American, Hispanic and Asian-Ameri-can beer drinkers. The payoff could be huge.

Tapping Into TechnologyWe all see how rapidly technology is chang-ing these days, but it’s also changing the way people interact, socially and with me-dia. Some observers claim that use of digital technology is actually changing the way our brains process information. Obviously, it can

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Brewers are already tapping into this through extreme

beers, seasonal releases and

even their Web sites, but it will

pay to be on the alert for

new ways to express creativity.

the way people socialize. For this generation, cell phones have virtually eliminated the need to make plans before going out. If you’re a Millennial hang-ing out at a bar and having a great time, you call (or text) your friends to come and join you. If you’re having a lousy time, you call or text your friends to find out if things are better where they are. What if beer drinkers (who’d opted in) could receive a text mes-sage from their favorite brewer on a Friday night, letting the recipient know that their latest hard-to-find seasonal release was at a certain bar right now? They might well show up—with a large group of friends. We’ve all seen people in coffee shops setting up their laptops and surfing the Web or doing other work for hours. A scene like that might seem out of place at a bar, where people hang out to be social, but Millennials don’t see any conflict between being online and being social. Offering wireless service in a brewpub (or sponsoring it in partnership with a bar) could be one of many technolo-gy-related ways for brewers to show Millen-nials they get it. The kind of relationship an individual wants with other people is often similar to the kind of relationship he or she wants with a brand. Some people want their rela-tionships to be comfortable and supportive; Millennials like Julia are more likely to want their relationships to be interesting and even stimulating. They’re likely to find that kind of relationship in brands that share their values of achievement, optimism, creativity and knowledge. But they also want people and brands to be authentic. Fortunately, the craft brewing community as a whole, more often than not, would seem to share those values quite naturally. The easiest and best way to connect with Millennials could be nothing more than a matter of reflecting those values more clearly and consistently. The harder (but potentially more rewarding) tasks will be to close the gap among multicultural Mil-lennials and to find even better ways to con-nect through technology. Of course, many in this generation are still only dabbling in craft beers. But three in 10 say they expect to drink more craft beers in the future. Still, Millennials won’t neces-sarily follow through on that expectation automatically. But if craft brewers take ad-vantage of opportunities to reinforce those intentions, the future looks very promising for their relationship with the next genera-tion of craft beer drinkers.

Michael Kallenberger is the Consumer Intelligence Manager at Miller Brewing Company. n

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be hard to keep up, but Millennials are al-most always ahead of the curve, and so the best advice anyone can give a marketer on

the technology front is to never stop paying attention. But there are already a couple of specific ways we see technology changing