by Simon Nicholson, CMO.com

What is a Millennial, and why should a marketer care? That was the question addressed by Brian Solis, Principal Analyst at the Altimeter Group, in a live chat hosted at Adobe Summit EMEA in April (Adobe is CMO.com’s parent company).

Solis is a digital analyst, business strategist and futurist, and he was speaking as part of the Innovations and Thought Leaders track at the Summit. He also took part a live chat on the topic of ‘Millennials’, and specifically how this group related to marketing. And given that we were talking about Millenials, we thought it was fitting to also stream the chat on Periscope.

The definition of Millennials is imprecise, with the consensus being they’re aged around 18-34. But one of the key points Solis made in our discussion is that marketers shouldn’t think of Millennials as a generation based on age, but on living a connected lifestyle.

He uses the term Generation C (for connected). This would include ‘Millennials’ who have grown up pinching their screens, but also the older generations that have adapted from the heavy bricks with buttons to the connected lifestyle enabled by modern technologies. It’s an important distinction because as a marketer you may be creating your campaigns around mobile and tablet usage, but your target demographic might be older. Where we see brands getting into trouble is where they have lost this distinction, and have started trying to act cool without regard to whether it’s appropriate for their audience. Solis mentioned ‘Brands Saying Bae’ as an example of this, and it’s certainly worth a look.

We also discussed whether brands need Millennials on their marketing team, how brands are adapting their campaigns to suit Millennials, and how marketers can succeed if they’re not from the Millennial generation.

You can watch a video of the live chat below.

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