Marketing to the Modern Millennial: Investing in advertising with a multicultural emphasis isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s good business too.
By: Avidan Grossman
Tags: Style, Diversity, Advertising, Millennials, Fashion

Marketing to the Modern Millennial: Investing in advertising with a multicultural emphasis isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s good business too. Avidan Grossman Sep 3, 2019·4 min read

A still from the 2017 Pepsi campaign. Image courtesy of The New York Times

In early April of 2017, Pepsi released a now infamous commercial starring Kendall Jenner as a sad simulacrum of a social justice warrior deescalating a tense standoff between a crowd of demonstrators and police in full riot gear by handing an unsuspecting officer a chilled can of soda. Initially uploaded to YouTube, the video debuted to an immediate and extensive backlash including criticism from members of the Black Lives Matter movement who claimed the soft drink company was blindly appropriating imagery reminiscent of recent protests for the brand’s own benefit. The commercial features Jenner, who boasts well over 100 million followers on Instagram alone, boldly wiping off her lipstick and ditching a photo-shoot to join an impromptu protest populated by a group of generically attractive young people who look like they walked straight off the front cover of a college brochure. A little over a day after the commercial was first released, Pepsi pulled the advertisement from the video-sharing platform and issued a public apology for very clearly “missing the mark.”

Image courtesy of CNBC

Large legacy companies like Pepsi have long struggled with capturing the increasingly valuable attention, and spending power, of the millennial market. For many brands, emphasizing their commitment to embracing diversity has been the easiest way to indicate to young shoppers that they’re in-the-know when it comes to sharing the same values as their family and friends. Among big-box retailers and boutiques alike diversity has become the buzzword of the moment, catalyzing a cavalcade of content trotted out alongside campaigns expressly appealing to the millennial market. Yet far too many brands still persist in pushing the same stale agenda, perhaps hesitant to make as public a screw-up as Pepsi, or blithely unaware of the increasing importance millennials place on accepting all forms of surface and deep-level diversity.

A snapshot from the Fashion Spot’s seasonal diversity breakdown from a roundup of the Spring 2019 fashion campaigns. Image courtesy of the Fashion Spot

The racial tapestry of the United States is rapidly changing. By 2050, whites will no longer be the statistically dominant race within the US. America will soon be a majority-minority country, and the millennial generation is the most racially diverse in American history. More than four in ten millennials are nonwhite, and as a cohort they’re expected to have the most spending power of any American generation, with expenditures over $200 billion last year within the US alone.

Image courtesy of the Pew Research Center

Millennials, more so than the generations before them, tend to vote with their dollars by supporting brands that purport to share their guiding principles. Many brands have thus taken it upon themselves to diversify their seasonal campaigns in authentic ways, including models of different shapes, sizes, creeds, and colors. Other brands, however, lag woefully behind, or worse yet, merely pay lip service to what they think their customers want to hear. The modern consumer is increasingly well-informed, and millennials are especially savvy shoppers. As a general rule, making a push to cultivate a more “diverse look” is really only valuable when it’s supplemented by a similar effort to embrace diversity on a macro level. Otherwise, retailers run the risk of being called out for shamelessly attempting to touch on all the hot-button topics of the day without really saying anything substantial at all.

The Gap Logo Remix campaign, a rare instance of a brand getting it right. Image courtesy of the Gap

The diversity that represents a defining feature of the largest generation in the US is conspicuously absent in much of the marketing done to attract its attention. Although significant inroads have been made to correct these glaring omissions, there’s still a serious dearth of diversity when it comes to minority representation in advertisements across a broad array of platforms, from leading digital media players like Snapchat and Instagram to the traditional print advertorial found in the pages of publications like Vogue and Vanity Fair. For brands that have already established themselves as champions of progressive causes, touting an authentic commitment to advancing diversity is a no-brainer. Standing idly by is no longer a viable option. The companies that can capitalize on this reality in a way that best allows them to form meaningful relationships with their millennial customers will not only survive, but thrive, in the fashion industry of the future.