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Millennials???

Having heard the news that Apple Pay will be with us within a month.

Gavin Tadman Joint MD

Gavin Tadman11.06.2015

I turned to my 13-year daughter and expressed my amazement at this momentous leap in technology, enthusing how I’d witnessed the decline in cash, the rise in credit cards – and even being amazed at contactless payment.

Her reaction….”So what?”.

As you weren’t there, you might take this as a typical reaction from a teenager at any enthusiasm shown by the older generation, but as I was there, the tone of her voice said to me, “So what,…this is what we expect, nothing amazes us.” And then you think about it. She was born in 2001 and has never known any significant shift in technology – just technology surrounding her. I then went back a few weeks when I first showed her Periscope – “Wow, look, someone walking their dog on the beach….On the Ivory Coast…right now”. Apart from a little recognition about how this was quite cool, the same reaction, “…..This is what I expect”.

And why not? Raised on a diet of Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, getting their homework scheduled via Show My Homework, encouraged by school to conduct their research via Google and Wikipedia, not watching any live TV, but consuming Netflix and YouTube, why should anything new in technology amaze them.

Delving deeper into the research on millennials, it all makes sense. They are in control of their education, there are no barriers to their learning – the web exists as a research and sharing tool. They feel unique and can tailor their needs to their exact likes and dislikes. They are visual thinkers and learners (think YouTube, Instagram) and don’t do blocks of text (think Twitter and Facebook). They never, ever use the phone (anyone that is my age remember that we were never off the phone to our friends, to an extent that some of us had locks on the phones at home to stop us) and as for emails – forget them. I know my sons do.

Although my daughter is of this century, remember that when targeting or communicating with this generation, that the definition (and all that applies above) of a millennial is a person reaching young adulthood around the year 2000, meaning that anyone under 35 fits in. In other words, many of the generation that we target on a daily basis. If you got to the end of this block of text then you are probably a bit older.

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