Market Research: Young People Neither 'Hate' Anything Nor 'Love' Anything
Marketing research firm Civic Science was forced to recalibrate its survey scoring system after finding that "millennials"—children born between the late 1970s and early 2000s—don't feel particularly strongly about anything. Not true! Want to know what millennials hate?
Civic Science discovered that when given five options—"love," "like," "neutral," "dislike" and "hate"—millennials (pictured above) will rarely choose any option other than "like" and "neutral":
When we looked at our first month's worth of data, we found almost NO contrast among brands. Not only do the Ms not dislike anything. They seem to think that "Love" is too strong of a feeling for a brand. Our 5-point scale quickly turned into a 3-or even 2-point scale. It seems that "Neutral" is about the most damning way these Ms can feel about anything.
Millennial Index chalks up millenials' inability to feel strongly about brands to the classic millennial "ever-postive, uber-idealistic" world view. Whatever. As a longtime millennial, and professional voice of my generation, I know all too well that millennials have strong feelings about "things" and "issues" and "other stuff." Way more than Generation X, the goateed, Smiths-listening losers whose cultural apex was Reality Bites! In fact, we are the caring-est damn generation yet! Here, to aid the science of marketing, are the Official Lists Of The Things That Millennials Hate And Also The Things That Millenials Love, as determined by myself, King of the Millennials:
Things Millennials "Hate"
- Old stuff
- Mayonnaise
- Reading a book
- Bluegrass music
- Movies that are mostly talking
- Being sober at school
- People who have never been on TV
- Having opinions
- Losers
- Math
- Having an emotion
- Animals
- Not being on Facebook
- Virgins
- When your mom makes you talk about your day at the dinner table
- Murders
Things Millennials "Love"
- Texting
- Sexting
- Twilight