Marketers still miss mark with millennials

Buzzback.com, the online marketing and survey company, provided some new data on food-purchasing preferences of millennials. Summed up simply: “Gen Yers are particularly interested in experimenting with food, creating experiences around dining, and sharing the occasion with others.”

The Buzzback study also found that nutritional claims made by manufacturers influence consumption less than the leading factor, taste. This research also suggests that millennials do not respond well when targeted by marketers with a broad brush. They want the opportunity to customize their dining experience. As such, Buzzback praised TGI Fridays restaurants, which recently introduced mix-and-match meal options to lure millennials.

But this, and similar marketing strategies, are temporary, cheap, easy and ultimately weak attempts to reach millennials.

In December, the Trends Research Institute introduced Retrograde 2.0 as a top trend for 2015. The institute’s research showed that millennials, born into a world largely defined by economic downturns, constant war and corporate mergers and takeovers, “yearn for any port that provides emotional respite from the constant fear-and-hysteria storm that politicians promote and the media sell. They will be tapping in to a new cultural-profit trend with long-term potential.”

Retrograde 2.0 stresses quality, uniqueness and authenticity, not formulaic approaches, as the means to inspire this demographic.

“Savvy marketers and entrepreneurs understand that by winning over leading-edge millennials, the rest will follow. Those in the fashion, art and entertainment worlds that respond to this trend early will set the stage and the tone for Retrograde 2.0 — retrofitting the best of the past to create the future with enhanced levels of quality that are 21st-century unique.”

Extracting easy – and quick – product and services ideas from surveys falls well short of mining the enormous potential of reaching millennials in lasting ways.