Advertising to millennials? Avoid these two mistakes

Millennials: Winning them over is every beer marketer's dream

Beer brands bend over backward these days to lure the millennials, coveting business from this newest young-adult group. But the beer marketer's most common lament has been how difficult it is to connect with these hipsters. So brewers turn to ad agencies, consultants, and a host of other know-it-alls who promise insights on how millennials can be brought into the fold. But with all that, no major beer brand would profess to have yet cracked the code.

Not for lack of trying...

In these two ads--and more like them--every aspect of the portrayal of the millennials seems to have originated from one of those glossy consultant presentations. Just count all the millennial-specific devices and images baked into 30 seconds, every one designed to hook the tricky audience. So we get: Beards. Tats. Hip music. Clever banter. Outdoorsy activity. Downscale dress. Low-budget fun. No makeup on the ladies. Overall, a minimalist zeitgeist.

And yet, as we said, no major beer would claim to have made any impressive inroads with these 20-somethings. Ads like the ones above apparently yield no appreciable results. 

Maybe the consultants should be fired.

An instructional video on advertising to millennials

As a rule, we generally avoid citing cross-category case studies. But since we made that rule, we get to point out the occasional exception. Especially when that exception's so much fun to watch, and more important, so brilliant.

Here's a just-released long-form ad from the good folks at Chevrolet. The target for their new Cruze automobile? Why, millennials, of course. But just look at how Chevy's (purported) advertising efforts to capture and identify with the millennial crowd fail miserably... and then triumph magnificently.

Avoiding mistake #1

Just holding an advertising mirror up to millennials is not effective, and may well be counterproductive. As the Chevy ad cleverly demonstrates, they do not react well to being stereotyped. That's probably true of any demographic group, but this latest bunch of young adults seems to particularly dislike it. Patronize them with ads offering only superficial renderings, and be prepared to see see them ignore your brand. Had the Miller High Life and Leinenkugel's folks understood this, they might have made better, more effective ads.

More important: Avoiding mistake #2

What did the young adults respond to in the Cruze ad? Hipness in its language? The "feel" of the ad? An emotional hook some clever ad guy came up with? Nope, nope, and nope. Instead of ad-agency flim-flam, the distinctive features of the automobile were the key. Said another way, the millennials' interest was captured by the distinctiveness of the product. 

Could it be that provocatively presenting a beer's distinctiveness is the very best way to bring millennials to your brand? That an honest, but still engaging presentation of what makes one beer brand more desirable than another will (gasp!) sell beer? That substance counts more than style?

Wow. Wouldn't that be something?!?

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