Before you segment, you need to understand what you’re segmenting
Originally published in 2017, updated in 2026.
Millennials. A much maligned term that inspires cringes from some and excitement from others. Definitely the most talked about generation in marketing and dare I say in general. Many people are sick of hearing about us millennials. In recent years I’ve read multiple articles criticising the marketing conversation about this generation. Why? Because it would appear that many marketers are treating millennials as a single segment, and the consensus of these articles is that it is silly to do so.
My response to that is YES. It is bloody stupid for most businesses to treat any generation like a single segment. I’m not on board with anyone who thinks generational labelling is the end of the line for their market segmentation. But here’s where the critics lose me: dismissing the generational conversation entirely is just as lazy as oversimplifying it.
So why do brands like us contribute so heavily to the noise of millennial marketing? Because millennials are a tough nut to crack before you even get to segmentation, and one that marketers have been fumbling with for years. So tough that some brands have given up altogether. There is such a big barrier to entry at the macro level with millennial consumer behavior, and so many foundational lessons to be learned, that they deserve heavy consideration before exploring the micro. You shouldn’t be diving into the deep blue sea before learning the fundamentals in the swimming pool.
Why marketing to millennials requires a different playbook entirely
What makes millennials different to generations before us is part evolution, part revolution. And you need to understand both before any segmentation strategy makes sense.
Baby boomers were born into the golden era of advertising where a commercial interrupted your show and told you “our product is great, consume our product” and people listened. Many boomers will even attest to the advertising interruption being a welcome part of the TV experience. That, like many cultural imbalances of the Mad Men advertising era, was bound to change. And change it did.
Millennials are a product of evolution. When marketers got louder and started competing harder for consumer attention, our impressionable boomer parents became impressionable no more. We inherited that immunity. So on evolution alone, we as a generation already present a frightening prospect to marketers: an inherent, almost genetic resistance to traditional advertising. This alone warrants serious discussion at the generational level before anyone touches a targeting parameter.
But the revolution compounds it further.
Millennials as digital natives: what that actually means for your strategy
Millennials are the first generation born into the internet revolution, and the internet changed everything. Not some things. Everything. One only needs to look at what Amazon did to traditional retail to understand that the internet is, by and large, the state of commerce now. Millennials have been the number one consumers of the internet and social media for years running. We grew up in it. We didn’t adopt it, we absorbed it.
This systemic shift has had enormous implications for millennial buying habits at a macro generational level that businesses ignore at their own risk. Because digital nativity isn’t just about where millennials spend their time. It’s about how they process information, evaluate trust, make decisions, and relate to brands. A millennial who grew up with Google doesn’t think about researching a purchase the way a boomer does. A millennial who grew up with social media doesn’t trust a brand claim the way previous generations did. These are structural differences, not surface preferences.
Being the early digital adopters, millennials also tend to act as a crystal ball, defining consumer and marketing trends before they hit the mainstream. What works on millennials today tends to work on everyone in five years. Which is a pretty compelling argument for getting it right.
The macro before the micro
At the end of the day, there is a lot that is silly about focusing on a generation as a marketer. Your actual customers are individuals with specific needs, specific contexts, and specific reasons to care about what you do. The work of real segmentation, understanding psychographics, purchase intent, lifestyle drivers, is where the real returns live.
But you cannot shortcut to the micro without understanding the macro first. If you don’t understand why millennials are structurally resistant to interruption advertising, your segmentation strategy is built on sand. If you don’t understand how digital nativity has rewired the trust equation, no amount of demographic targeting will save your campaign.
The generational conversation exists for a reason. Not because millennials are a monolith. Because understanding what shaped an entire generation’s relationship with brands is the context in which all the more specific work has to happen.
Get the macro right. Then do the work.
— E.
If you’re trying to get the generational conversation right before going deeper, that’s exactly the kind of problem worth having a conversation about.