• NY Times, Monday, January 23, 2006 11:45 AM

The New York Times' Tom Zeller Jr. takes a shot at summing up the challenge that faces marketers eager to reach millennials--those born between 1980 and 2000--a generation so tapped into technology and its own social whirl that shared opinions and group-generated instincts can change literally overnight, thanks to nonstop feedback loops. How to reach this very large group? Prime-time TV programming is not enough. Instead, advertisers and others are sending messages via iPods, mobile phones, the Net. "We think that the largest single differentiator in this generation from previous generations is the social network that is people's lives, that part of it that technology enables," says Jack McKenzie, a senior vice president at Frank N. Magid Associates, a market research and consulting firm. "What's hard to measure... is the impact of groupthink." Bottom line: Count on seeing a greater emphasis on content delivered via alternate platforms, which affords a better chance of finding the millennials where they live--in a fast-paced, constantly morphing mobile world.

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