Honors Program

Fine and Performing Arts Honors

Date of Award

5-2012

Thesis Professor(s)

David Dixon, Scott Contreras-Koterbay

Thesis Professor Department

Art and Design

Thesis Reader(s)

Stephen Marshall

Abstract

To many marketers, the second Gold Rush has come. The Millennials are on the rise and marketers are ready to strike; but “How?” has become the question. For many marketers, it has taken years of trial & error and data research to understand this target group that is considered to come out of 1981-2000 (Crang, p.1). The biggest hurdle marketers have to overcome is taking their thought process from traditional platforms to the digital technology that this group has grown up on. On top of joining the digital world, marketers have to be more creative than ever. With this group, they have been creating before they could talk, so they know what has been done and what is refreshing. And if that did not seem like enough on the marketers’ plates, Millennials want interactivity and personalization from every brand.

To the average person, this seems incredibly demanding; but a few companies were willing to take on this challenge. Old Spice, Doritos, and Syfy found a way to connect with the Millennial audience through incredible creatives and received Effie Awards in recognition of their hard work. This report investigated each brand’s case study and what made their creative so successful. Throughout it, similarities were found, and differentiating elements were discovered, which resulted in why each case received the level of award they did. By the end of this paper, a clear picture of what resonates with this target audience should be painted to inform other researchers in the Millennial targeting field.

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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