Newsan’s CMO discusses the challenges brands face in communicating with centennials and generating strategies to capture their attention
in what way centennials are entering the consumer market and how catch their atention? Can they be added as clients with proposals that do not leave out the rest of the consumers?
It is clear that the problem no longer involves adapting the content to the formats and screens that adolescents follow, but ratherunderstand them better as an audience. Young people are big consumers of content, in fact they exceed the hours of adults in that sense. But they look for short materials and on certain platforms. I like to call that attitude “It’s not that I want to see little, it’s that I want to see short“.
The kids watch more videos on Tik Tok than adults watch series on TV or streaming, but also to the point. For them, everything happens in instant format (in three seconds they decide if something arouses their interest or they pass by), they are voracious with similar material (trend fostered by algorithms) and step on the accelerator: they are capable of watching movies at 1.25X speed, which leads me to think that the directors, the actors, the creators of soundtracks must be in great anguish. We are living a stage that I call “put me in 2X“, paraphrasing the famous WhatsApp sticker.
And in those chosen worlds that centennials rally around their tastes, the biggest problem for brands is that they compete with content created by peers of their consumers (guys with 5,000 followers who upload videos, for example) and who are obviously more accurate because they belong to the same audience to which they are headed.
It is a huge challenge for brands, which are not credible in this area and are forced to do almost personalized proposals. Let’s think that until a few decades ago “They said it on the radio” or “I read it in the newspaper” were irrefutable arguments of truth. Today the boys of 11 years are hyper-informed and distrustful because reality is mixed with fiction: Pope Francis appears dressed in an AFA jacket, and it is difficult to know where the limits of false and true news are.
But, in addition, the brands start playing directly in the visiting fieldat -10 for capture the interest of centennials, since there is a natural resistance in them and them. For being anti-system, rebellious, reinforce their skepticism and put brands at a disadvantage. Only once they have gained their trust can they think about the content.
And how do companies get that approval? giving concrete samples of actions, not being declamatory but offering results. For example, the most boys wield a very big conscience for the environmentwhich we did not have, and the brands are obliged not only to accompany them but to demonstrate a real commitment.
They also have to have reflexes. The platforms mutate. LuzuTV looks like a podcast with an image but at the same time it is different because does not have batchhas his own scenery and at one point it refers to Twitch.
Another case is the phenomenon of gamers who broadcast via streaming and are associated with brands from the artistic side. No commercial breaks: everything is integrated, embedded in the talk. The influencers often manage to have the media entity and even more rating than some TV channels.
What will today’s children be like as adult consumers? Extremely demanding, demanding, with a strong level of consumption: boys are not very inclined to save but rather to live the day-to-day.
The centennials are going to have a volatile commitment to workbecause they will be very on the lookout for opportunities, to travel, to live experiences. “I enjoy today, then I see”, could be his motto, partly because the pandemic marked it that way. They will also be very attached to issues of quality, labeling, inclusion, sustainabilityall values that until recently the brands did not have on the agenda.
*Marcelo Romeo is CMO of Newsan, author of “Taming the Risk” (Granica, 2022). He led the campaign The Noblex Manager
