Millennials still matter, high impact on consumption and trends

'We used to talk about it so many years ago, about how paranoid this city is, about its people and its foibles, two discos and a hundred and six pharmacies'. This is the passage from one of 883's most iconic songs, powerfully back in the news in this autumn of 2024, which seems to take us back thirty years, moving the hands back to those '90s so mythologised by the collective imagination. Sydney Sibilia's Sky Original series 'They Killed Spider-Man - The Legendary Story of the 883' as its first season is the most watched in the last eight years on the Sky platform. The first two episodes have amassed over two million viewers since their debut and each week the new episodes have intercepted almost 1.4 million viewers. It is a story of music and friendship. A story of the provinces, of illusions, of courage. A story of overwhelming, unexpected, unpredictable success. But behind the two underdog boys from Pavia, there is a generation that until recently was neglected under the weight of Z and the more mature silver. That of the millennials, also known as Generation Y.

But millennials are still good business. Strategic because they affect business and marketing plans. Let's start with the numbers, which show strong purchasing power and the ability to generate interactions directing consumption. Those born between 1981 and 1996 in the world are 2.3 billion or 28.6% of the entire global population. A large and often underestimated cluster, millennials have outnumbered boomers and, according to Pew Research Center estimates, their purchasing power worldwide will reach four trillion dollars by 2025. "The millennial is a specific generational cohort composed of individuals who are now between the ages of 28 and 43. A demographic group that came after the indefinite and hybrid X and that has been able to take on certain characteristics over time. Those who belong to it have a good purchasing power, although not as high as that of their parents, and play a game on several tables. Thus spending is spread over several product categories that become central to consumption. These are clothing, travel, electronics. But not only that. It is a generation with a strong ability to influence the other groups: it influences the consumption of its parents, the boomers who are conditioned by technological products, but the influence also extends to the Z generation,' says Geraldina Roberti, associate professor of sociology of cultural and communicative processes at La Sapienza University in Rome and author of 'Vite da millennials. Culture e pratiche comunicative della generazione Y' published by Guerini. After all, it is as if the narrative hype was exclusively about zoomers, alphas and boomers. "It is as if this middle group has been neglected and then finally rediscovered. For example, the more mature ones today are more active, enjoy leisure time and have high purchasing power. Instead, Z represents the future of consumption and has basically rekindled hopes of social and civic engagement. It is a sort of antidote to the individualism and narcissism of the millennials, who are particularly self-centred, but over time have become an expression of greater attention to sustainability issues and the search for models of extreme personalisation,' Roberti points out. So for brands there is a need for a rediscovery of this generation, to be integrated into marketing strategies and positioning campaigns. "There are two closely interconnected keywords that should guide this reorganisation. There is authenticity and there is transparency. Organisations must represent certain values in a consistent and non-artifactual manner. This discourse of trust is fundamental in the choice of brand ambassadors, i.e. in identifying figures who know how to represent trust,' says Roberti.

It is the 'me-me-me generation'. That is how Time defined the Y in a cover story that has gone down in history, with that expression of individualism repeated three times. This was also pointed out by Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego University, in her bestseller 'Generation me'. An identity manifesto of a band (at the time) of more self-confident, assertive, conceited and inevitably more unhappy young Americans. On the other hand, a key junction is linked to extreme personalisation, which becomes a reflection of a certain way of thinking of oneself in the community. From family life to friendship spheres, from work time to free time: with the Y everything is redefined and can be done. "We are facing a phenomenon that links the end of the great unifying collective narratives to more individual logics. Products and services are being tailor-made. Just think of the success of Spotify's personal music schedule, built around individual consumption and becoming central to this generation. But this individualism does not necessarily imply a lack of engagement because we are looking at more conscious and consistent consumers. Millennials are the ones who have pushed the accelerator on sharing, favouring access over the logic of possession, which has become central for younger people. They are also more critical of unsustainable consumption. This explains the boom in slow fashion or the search for organic products. And then they are inclusive in their worldview. A coherence between proclamations and actions linked precisely to their greater economic availability, while Generation Z discounts that gap between attitude and behaviour,' Roberti concludes. So between saying and doing there is the market. Once again, it is the consistency between theoretical choices and concrete actions that marks the gap between generations.