• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, September 18, 2014

Millennials -- what's the fuss all about? Like any other journalist who writes about marketing with a bit of business issues thrown in for good measure, I've probably played my part in passing on surveys that show what millennials like in a brand or an employer which then offer advice on how you can attract people who are just starting to enter the workplace or are in higher education.

Yesterday was a case in point as a story about millennials wanting brands to look after the environment and they sometimes resent cynical marketing tactics.

The thing about this whole millennials fad we seem to be going through right now is it's one of those corporate messages that doesn't quite pass my common sense filter. That's why it's always useful to speak to SMEs, or SMBs if you prefer, and talk to people who are spending their own money and, of course, in most economies employ far more people collectively than the corporate sector.

Among entrepreneurs there is a serious amount of head-scratching that can be summed up very simply as 'so I'm going to give you a job, train you up and some consultant is telling me that first I need to change everything to fit in around you?'

So while it may be very useful to keep up with yesterdays's news that millennials like brands who are eco-friendly and represent values they associate with, there are some serious points that bring us back to reality.

Here goes -- if you're a consultant who has been earning a fortune telling brands how they have to change everything to appeal to millennials, you might want to look away.

Millennials may well have never known a non-digital world, but that doesn't mark them out as unique. Plenty of people of all ages have taken to online and then mobile without any real issue. It's not as if CEOs or CMOs are banging the desk wishing they could send an email but their date of birth prevents it. 

Millennials may well want brands to be good corporate citizens, but hang on a minute -- we're already there, aren't we? Look at the adverse publicity Starbucks got for its tax, shall we say, "planning?" Just look at the great lengths major brands go to tell us how they're doing good deeds -- Sky is a true leader here, and it's even forming a large part of their advertising campaigns. Most large companies have a corporate responsibility team to ensure that staff are seen clearing out local ponds and most companies of all sizes have a charity they support or a good deed they are committed to. It's not because people who have never wound a tape back in to a cassette with a pencil before are suddenly entering the workplace. It has been happening for a long time as people of all ages have come to expect brands to be, for want of a better word, nice.

Millennials will obviously require training, but then, if you're the type of company where it comes as a surprise that you need to develop your people, then you're not exactly going to change that opinion to get in a twenty-year-old. So who on earth are the endless reports about the need to train people or miss out on first jobbers who need a lot of training actually aimed at?

The real rub -- and it's the one marketers should really take account of -- is incredibly simple. Millennials are going to be first jobbers and the majority will not be on great money. Many will still be living at home, or at best, renting a room in a large house -- and if they're lucky, driving around an old banger. Nothing wrong with that -- it's how we all started. But then, not many of us had consultants telling marketers they had better focus on us or we'd take our overdraft to another bank, change our beer to the second-cheapest on the bar's list or use a different laundry detergent, if only we knew what it was.

I don't blame millennials for one second for all the nonsense that is spouted off on their behalf about how CMOs need to radically overhaul what they're doing, focus on good deeds and up their training budget. It's the consultants who have a new fad to back up the GBP500 day that I blame. The same sort of people who told you that you needed to get all your computer equipment under your own protection in your own server room before turning round to tell you that is just so Victorian, time you launched in the cloud, once you've settled the consultancy bill.

Millennials, of course, are important because they are the future workforce, but let's not forget anyone who used to press the Play and Record button on a cassette recorder to tape "Top Of The Pops" has quite a lot to offer them too. There's a good place to work, BUPA, training and career advancement for companies that are generally already recycling, supporting their local hospice and buying fair trade tea.

A lightbulb moment for me was talking to some entrepreneurs about how millennials are supposedly causing companies to rethink and requiring that they now need to have a kitchen and a shower or else miss out on... you already know the rest. 

Every entrepreneur I spoke to, for a nationals article, questioned where the consultants thought they'd been making coffee for the past twenty years and had they not noticed that all companies have showers now. Not for a millennial recruit, but for the army of middle-aged men in lycra who've taken to cycling in each day.

So do hug a millennial, but don't think you have to reorganise your marketing strategy to dip into the coppers they have left in their pocket after a big weekend.

Yes, I know they're the leaders of the future and the bosses of tomorrow, but cast your mind back to being 21 and contrast that with when you were late 20s, had a better wage and were spending money on the things marketers were trying to flog you. Did you honestly not buy an item for your new house or choose a car or holiday based on how you were marketed to nearly a decade before?

Don't worry, the consultants will go on to something else soon. My bet, if history is anything to go by, is an acronym for non millennials who are puzzled at why there's so much fuss about hiring and appealing to people who are -- albeit temporarily -- unqualified and broke.