Is Marketing Desperate To Be "Cool" And "Hip"? A Millenial's Perspective

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A while back, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was trying to reach Millenials through the usage of Emoji’s to touch upon the topic of student loans and debts.[1] While I confess I missed out on this matter and just recently caught a glimpse of it at The Late Show of Stephen Colbert, which is fantastic, but while thinking a bit closer and ignoring the fact that this might have been a of use when I was talking about the tribulations behind Social Media Marketing, which you can find HERE, that it shows one thing that not only political marketing suffers from. Companies are trying to reach the Millenials by not pushing in example, but rather by attracting them through means that would set them on the same level. They are trying desperately to not only follow their own trends, but also those of the younger generation by trying desperately to bee cool and hip.

Before I get into the nitty and gritty, let me state that this is nothing new at all. Companies have commonly tried to reach younger or even older audiences by following the various trends that attract them. Some even have proven quite successful like trying to attract people through the usage of Selfies. I will not deny that this is a fact that has certainly proven itself to be effective with a specific audience, even if the before-mentioned example of Hillary Clinton backfired, which is something even Nestlé had to face with a German Social Media Hashtag campaign iwith #FragNestle that just worked against it in the end, turning the entire campaign into a shitstorm, which on a side note is still an such an odd and almost vulgar description to use.[2]

Any marketing campaign can fail, but looking at this strange behavior of companies trying their utmost to appeal to the younger audience just seems counter-productive to a certain degree. Trying their hardest to use things like Emojis on Social Media, famous YouTubers or Streamers to sell their products almost seems like some are losing their identity. One’s Corporate Identity can be muddled by trying too hard to sell yourself to a specific target audience. Could be that they want the younger generation to see them in a different way than the older? Yet could this be a generational problem?

Let’s take a trip back to the 80s or 90s were almost every toy commercial was trying to be as cool as possible. Back then even cartoons were created just to sell a toy, but we have moved on from those times with only small remnants of such advertising remaining. Suddenly the shift from child advertising has strongly moved towards teenagers. Yet the advertisers from back then and even the remnants still existing are an older generation trying to understand the younger one. It almost feels like the cliché of your “uncool” Dad trying to act like he was part of the younger crowd. In some ways, it is the way I feel about advertisements that try to sell to a younger audience by being hip and cool. It just seems a bit out of place and almost embarrassing. It is a risky endeavour for any business, but I wonder if the pay-off is worth the risk as if it truly goes downhill it will backfire tremendously.

This outlook may be the result of me myself being a Millenial, who simply doesn’t agree with most Millenials decisions. I even confess that I have a hard time with decisions by very young teams that seem to rather focus on the image of a campaign for a specific target audience rather than the implications as a whole. This is just a objective observation of course, but it simply makes me wonder if the generational issue is that we jumped from one extreme into a completely new one. While community Identity has found it’s footing more than ever, it seems rather like a loose guideline and our strong focus on customer-based content has obscured its place within a company. Something that should be internal and external, seems almost mainly to function internally with the outside being just as loose as the fictional city of Springfield from The Simpsons, which seems to change with each episode.

Could I potentially simply be nitpicking something? Absolutely, I am simply one voice of many and I certainly could not describe myself as an expert in the field. I simply wonder how the future ventures of companies will look like with more and more ads trying desperately to make companies look appealing to a wider audience. Like the new kid in the block, young companies try to do crazy things to gather attention while the older kids are trying to act as if they have always been rather cool and hip, so that everyone must keep up with them. Yet, the only one they are desperately trying to impress may or may not care at all.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Fight me on it and tell me your thoughts on the matter? Are companies too desperate to be cool, or am I just making it up as I go? 

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