Gunpowder Chronicle posted on June 25, 2008 1:01 AM | Rating:
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As many of you know, I just finished a 30 month stint working for a marketing agency based in Florida. So I have some insight to the issues of branding and marketing in the 21st century. One of the big trends in marketing and branding has been targeting "millenials"-- those born from around 1980 and later, who came of age and graduate high school right around the year 2000. These folks are considered the "key demographic" for marketers now, and have supplanted "Generation X" as the goto generation.
But I wonder if marketers -- in their current brand strategies -- aren't starting to miss their mark.
I put before you the current MasterCard commercial featuring, of all people, Mr. Bill. This icon of early 80's Saturday Night Live skits is now the latest in a long line of hucksters for MasterCard.
But here is my big question: is there a millenial alive that knows, or appreciates, the Mr. Bill iconography? I raise that question because I work at an institution with a lot of millenials. (And boy, does that make me feel old). These are folks who don't remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the 1980 Olympic Hockey Team, who never saw Star Wars (or its sequels) in a theatre on original release, for whom "Nadia's Theme" is only a soap-opera soundtrack, and were most likely infants the last time the Orioles won a World Series, and the Colts left town.
How in the world will they know Mr. Bill?
It makes me wonder what Creative Directors are thinking these days.