The Mind of TCHO

. . . Coca Cola did some iconic advertising:

That was then, this is now --

The two most important concepts in marketing are segmentation and positioning. Segmentation means picking out the consumers you intend to market to; positioning means how you sell your product to your target segment.

Up to now, dark chocolate has been sold to everyone, on the basis of a vague collection of attributes. We intend to speak to a specific segment of the market—Millennials—and market the product as modern. We decided to focus on Millennials because they fit mostly clearly our psychographic profile (media savvy, extreme sports oriented, future forward), because they are relatively unbranded since they’re relatively new consumers, and because they represent the future of the business (grab ‘em early, keep ‘em for life).

But who are these Millennials we glibly talk about?

One of the most influential books on my thinking has been Howe and Strauss’s Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069. It’s an incredibly insightful examination of America’s history by looking at how each generation of Americans was formed and then how they influenced America’s development.

This is how Howe and Strauss, in 1992, described the demography of this stage of the Millennial era:

[S]ometime around 2003, each generation will fully occupy a new phase of life. The surviving G.I.s will be very old, the Silent in elderhood, Boomers in midlife, 13ers in rising adulthood, and Millennials in youth. The generational alignment will match the constellations of 1924, 1855, 1766, and 1673. At all four of these moments, Americans perceived their social life to be fragmenting into centrifugal and uncontrollable wildness. The Boomer and 13er cultures will by then be moving into self-contained camps: loud, moralizing agressors on the older side, and atomized, pleasure-seeking victims on the younger—a vindictive age polarization America has not witnessed since the Roaring Twenties. Looking down the age ladder, elder Silent will express dismay at growing signs of tribalism, nativisim, social intolerance, and just plain meanness. Boomers will voice exasperation over the inffective leadership (however well-intentioned) of their next-elders and fury at the help-myself nihilism of their next-juniors. Looking up, 13ers will sense among older generations an utter impracticality, an inability to see the world for what it really is.

As America moves into the ensuing Crisis era, long-deferred secular problems can be expected to reemerge with fearsome immediacy. The aging Silent will participate eagerly in the new search for institutional solutions that work while reminding their juniors (something few will then want hear) that the solutions should be fair as well. Boomers, their first-wave cohorts frowning on the ‘Golden Age’ sales brochures beginning to arrive by mail, will turn up their moral megaphones to full blast. If ever there were a time to turn Pepperland into reality, many Boomers will be thinking, that time is nearing. On the brink of midlife and now beginning to tire, 13ers will sense their party boat drifting toward a waterfall—and will start thinkiing about which way to leap, and when. Millennials, busy transforming college life, will astound and delight elders with their friendly, optimistic, and team-playing attitude.

So what characterizes Millennials?

[T]his generation will show more teamlike spirit and more likemindedness in action that most Americans then alive will recall ever having seen in young people.... Millennials will carry out whatever crisis mission they are assigned—as long as they can connect it with their own secular blueprint for progress. If crisis brings war, soldiers will obey orders without complaint. If it involves environmental danger or natural resource depletion, young scientists will make historic breakthroughs. If the crisis is mostly economic, the youthful labor force will be a mighty engine of renewed American prosperity. Whatever their elder-bestowed mission, these rising youths will not disappoint. Assuming the crisis turns out well, Millennials will be forever honored as a generation of civic achievers.