Loyalty Truth

Editor’s note: I was fortunate to moderate a panel at  Loyalty Expo 2009 this week titled Building Engagement with Millennials. The panelists were rich in expertise engaging and building brand with Generation Y as well as using email and social media as tools for communications. Bjorn Larsen Founder & CEO Edhance,  Atle Skalleberg VP Marketing Student Universe, and Ragy Thomas Co-Founder & CEO Aiti Solutions took part.

One of my fascinations with extending the Loyalty Marketing model beyond its traditional borders is in working through resistance and dissenting opinions. I partnered with Loyalty 360 to use Twitter during the conference with mixed results and learned that not everyone shares the same view on what it will take to build loyalty among Millennials or if it can be done at all.  Contributing Author Brian Kryzanski offers his view on GenY with this post “Generation crY”

Click here to see the connection between Generation crY and “You’ll Get Nothing and Like It”

Let the debate begin!

Generation crY

I want everything now, for free. I want to be treated with respect and don’t try to outsmart me, because you can’t. I want to come right out of college into the CEO chair because I know everything and always win. Simply put, I do not fail! Welcome to Generation crY- a generation of spoiled brats who were brought up in Never Never Land and told by their parents that they are no less than perfect. A trophy for everyone, no losers, no wrong doing, completely invincible, and everybody plays! What have the Boomers and X-generation created?

When I was growing up, and it wasn’t long ago, I was taught that hard work and determination is rewarded. I didn’t get trophies for simply showing up, and didn’t make the team if I wasn’t great or at very least showed 100% passion and effort. I was taught it was ok to fail, to lose, and it was just one step closer towards winning. My high school baseball coach use to say “second place is no place”, and if you were not first or the best, you were told you stink and no one sugar-coated it. You practiced harder, played tougher, studied more, and still were not guaranteed success. If you did bear fruit from your efforts, you then truly know what it is to be a winner, or successful, and appreciate the process.

Athletes are great examples of exactly what I am talking about. Pitchers pitched 9 innings and threw over 120 pitches “back in the day”. People played when they had bruises and bumps, and there were no such things as Social Anxiety Disorders. Why do we have that? Simple, when they get to the “bigs” and are not stellar, they cannot comprehend it. Rookie quarterbacks demanding multi-million dollar contracts before taking a snap in the NFL, or crying it’s not their team of choice – our fault!

We have made Never Never Land a reality! A place where our upcoming consumers are never fooled! The days of hard work and sweat equity are over, and we have created an environment that we are not only responsible for, but challenged as Loyalty or any other genre of marketers to succeed in.

We are told that we are too old and don’t understand the space they play in. Ah, but are fools being fooled? After all, we created Never Land and Tinker Bell has been hard at work creating a new Never Land called My Space, Facebook, and Twitter!

Are the Boomers and GenX marketers really worried, or are they simply still playing the game that they started years ago? We will continue to tell them how good they are as long as they continue to drink the cool aid. Maybe when the responsibilities of GenY increase they will realize that Facebook cannot warm the baby bottles and they actually have to get up and put it in the microwave! Don’t underestimate the X-Factor. We have built the technology and societies you play in, and hold the pixie dust that has been sprinkled among your communities. If all it takes is pizza and beer to hear how good our tactics are working, then we get off cheap.