Marketing to Millennials

We are no longer “making way” for millennials – we are literally creating space for them. As in precious, expensive real estate allocated for their consumption. As well we should.

Millennials are not only a particularly dynamic demographic, they are the ones with disposable income – as in no monies yet earmarked for roof replacements and orthodontic bills. At the end of the day, dependent of course on your product or service, don’t we need to appeal to the sector spending the money? Or are we in denial?

How Millennials Are Manifesting

Although it is patently unfair to compare your marketing budget with that of a Major League Baseball team, we’re going conceptual.

Consider the cost of removing 5000 to 6000 revenue-generating seats in a 20+ year old stadium to appeal to millennials. That’s one of the strategies employed by the Cleveland Indians in their aptly named Progressive Field.

This hollowed out section was used to contemporize the aging stadium by bestowing upon it some edge: a two-story bar featuring indoor and outdoor seating and countertops for leaning; allowing plenty of navigation space for socializing.

To give the park a trendier vibe, they also took great pains to reconstruct the stadium to make it more representative of the experience of living in Cleveland – integrating the ballpark and incorporating the millennials.

This organization didn’t only facilitate the ability to buy beer and food without having to step over a row of people or wait for a vendor to appear toting a heavy cooler of hotdogs. They opened the space to set the millennials free.

Make Your Marketing Plan an Inclusive One

Modern architecture in general has literally opened its arms so it no longer embraces rooms, but releases them. Open, airy, unrestricted – in real estate and structural design, space is the new black.

Many MLB teams have answered the call to outfit their stadiums with all manner of roof top party decks, kids’ clubhouses, batting cages, and water slides. With all their newer updating, good ol’ Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets is now Citi Field. The exterior facade was designed to pay homage to the famed Ebbets Field. Visitors enter from the parking lot via the Jackie Robinson Rotunda and from the subway over the pedestrian walkway, Shea Bridge.

The objective is to get people and their families to the games and fill the coffers, but doing it by making today’s ballparks destinations. Ones where families can spend the day and the out later and louder crowd can remain into the evening for headlining musical performances under the stars and exhibitions like fireworks displays.

Baseball is a microcosm (and imparts a lesson for us all) of how to appeal to existing customers while tapping into newer generations. A blend of the old and the new beckons all fans and non-fans with the sentimental touches of the traditional, and plenty of nuance left over that screams “We’re still relevant!”

Look to the exorbitant wads of cash these MLB organizations are forking over to make room for the millennials, and then take another look at how you have positioned your company on the youth continuum.

A couple social media accounts and a “Like Us on Facebook!” plea alone makes for a sad little song. The millennials have LEFT that building.