An announcement from Ypulse President Dan Coates:
Last month Ypulse celebrated our ninth birthday. For the past nine years, we’ve been thinking about, talking about, writing about and researching members of the Millennial generation or, as we used to say much more often than we do nowadays, Gen Y. As we look back, it’s gratifying to see how what was once a niche topic that required a great deal of effort in order to attract attention has since become central to the marketing plans of so many marketers and communicators.
During the course of the nine-year dialogue, Millennials themselves have changed. They’ve “aged up,” with the midpoint of the generation now 20 years of age. They’ve faced the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. They’ve watched their parents struggle to support them and their families. A conversation that was once adolescent and teen-centric has developed a number of new facets as Millennials catapult toward adulthood: politics, education, economy, career and, most recently, parenthood. These emerging frontiers of the Millennial experience are new, exciting and challenging. While we feel that we’ve developed a pretty solid understanding of the fundamental values of the largest generation in American history, it’s both energizing and rewarding to see how our understanding is pressure tested daily as Millennials evolve.
While Jake Katz has already written about our plans to name the generation that will follow the Millennials, we’re really excited to follow that conversation with one that will shed new light on Millennials themselves. At our Ypulse Mashup: Millennials Reassessed event on June 27th, we’ll reveal the details of a massive psychographic segmentation that we’ve undertaken that will break up this monolithic generation into smaller chunks. We’re leveraging some of the groundbreaking research that MTV has conducted to identify the new milestones along the path of the Millennial generation. We’re re-examining the media landscape, focusing on areas that are changing with blistering speed: mobile apps, TV and radio. We’re shining a light on changing gender roles within the generation, and we’re wrapping up the day with a keynote from Randi Zuckerberg.
If ever there was a poster child for the Millennial generation, their last name would surely be Zuckerberg. Back when Randi was managing Facebook’s marketing efforts, she and Ypulse founder Anastasia Goodstein would debate when and where to include stats from Facebook’s polls into the Ypulse Daily Newsletter. As Facebook soared, we would stare at her name among our list of subscribers and ask ourselves, “that Zuckerberg, really?“
As an early executive at Facebook, Randi created and ran the social media pioneer’s marketing programs. She led the company’s U.S. election and international politics strategy and created Facebook’s live streaming video capability during the 2008 Presidential Inauguration. Randi was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2011 for her innovative coverage of the 2010 mid-term elections that integrated online and TV coverage in unique formats. Since starting Zuckerberg Media, Randi has produced shows and digital experiences for BeachMint, the Clinton Global Initiative, Cirque du Soleil, and the United Nations — and most recently, Randi signed on as executive producer of a new show for Bravo, titled Start-Ups: Silicon Valley. We’re excited to hear how the life of this particular member of the Millennial generation has not only been shaped by the events of the last 30 years, but has had a hand in shaping the world in which we all live.
Whether you’ve been following the discussion from the early days or are a recent student of Millennials, we’re certain that joining us at what has become the premiere Millennial marketing event will prepare you to communicate with the generation that is, literally and figuratively, taking charge.
