Tips to Avoid Millennials Marketing Hype

I received, in my email, a solicitation for a webinar titled 5 Tips to Engage Gen Z and Millennial eLearners in 2020 and Beyond.  And, as you might imagine, it tweaked my sensibilities for the worse. My initial reaction is to provide, as a palliative, tips to avoid millennials marketing hype.

The content starts off with this scintillating line: “if you‘re searching for current, new ways to engage people online and keep your business thriving, look to your youngest learners.” What? Why do you want current and new ways to engage people? How about the evidence-based ways instead? Tested and validated ones. And why your youngest learners? Organizations need to be continually learning across all employees. Why not just your  newest employees (regardless of age)?

So, your first tip is to look for phrases like ‘new’ as warnings, and look for “research-based” or “evidence-based” instead. “Science-based” is likely okay, as long as it’s not neuroscience-based (wrong level) or brain-based (which is like saying ‘leg-based walking’ as someone aptly put it.)

Second tip: don’t be ageist. Why focus on their age at all? Deal with people by their knowledge and background. It’s discriminatory, really.

The ad goes on: “To future-proof your learning program, make sure your content is designed with these young professional learners in mind.”   What’s different for these learners? Their cognitive architecture isn’t fundamentally different; evolution doesn’t work that fast. So why would you do something just for them (and discriminate against others) instead of doing what’s right for the topic?

Next tip: avoid any easy and inappropriate categorizations. Don’t try to divide content or experiences in trendy ways instead of meaningful ways.

You should already be leery. But wait, there’s more! “On one hand, they can be distracted, overwhelmed, and impatient. On the other, they are highly collaborative, technically-savvy, and driven by fairness and storytelling.”This is like a horoscope; it fits most everyone, not just young people. We all have distractions and increasingly feel overwhelmed. And our brains are wired for storytelling.   These describe human nature! And that ‘tech savvy’ bit is a clear pointer to the digital native myth. Doh!

They then go on. “With this in mind, how can you effectively engage this digitally dependent group to attract, train, and retain them?” Um, with what attracts, trains, and retains humans in general?  That would be helpful!

Thus, another tip: let’s not make facile attributions that falsely try to portray a meaningful difference. Let’s focus on design that addresses capturing and maintaining attention and motivation, and communicating in clear and compelling ways. And skip mashing up myths, ok?

We’re not  quite done with the pitch: “how to level up your existing learning strategy to meaningfully engage your Millennial and Gen Z learners.” This is just a rehash of the tips above. Meaningfully engage  all your learners!

There’s also this bullet list of attractions:

• What motivates Millennials and Gen Z and how to tailor your learning strategy to keep them engaged
• Ways in which traditional learning programs fail younger learners and how you can prevent these common mistakes
• A step-by-step process for evaluating your instructional content, providing you with an actionable blueprint on transforming your content

This could easily be rewritten as:

• What motivates Millennials and Gen Z learners and how to tailor your learning strategy to keep them engaged
• Ways in which traditional learning programs fail younger learners and how you can prevent these common mistakes
• A step-by-step process for evaluating your instructional content, providing you with an actionable blueprint on transforming your content

And, for all I know, that’s what they’re really doing. That would be actually useful, if they avoid perpetuating the myths about generational differences. But, as you can tell, they’re certainly trying to hit buzzword bingo in drawing you in with trendy and empty concepts. Whether they actually deliver is another issue.

Please, avoid the marketing maelstrom. Follow these tips to avoid millennials marketing hype, and focus on real outcomes. Thanks!