Everyone wants to know who millenials are. And everyone wants to sell to them.
But figuring out how to market farm and food products to millenials isn’t easy, people at two agriculture conferences heard.
“They’re not a single group of people,” said Canada Bread’s Connie Morrison at the Canadian Global Crops Symposium, April 12.
Millenials are roughly defined as people between the ages of 19 and 35, those born from mid-1980s to late 1990s. They are the bulge of babies born to the Baby Boomers and an important demographic in the eyes of food and consumer goods marketers.
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Morrison spoke about the challenge of needing to appeal to both boomers and millenials to sell the same products. The two groups often look at things differently.
For instance, a boomer often becomes focused on the healthy aspects of food products after they’ve had a medical scare, and think about food in terms of how its components affect their health.
Millenials see health and wellness far more broadly.
“It’s less about the nutrients …. The health and wellness attributes they’re looking for are things like less-processed … more artisan-labeling, more local, all those things they believe are healthier foods,” said Morrison.
That’s the challenge for marketers, with the millenials having broader and more complicated demands than was common amongst their parents.
The hog and pork industry is dealing with the same factors.
“It’s not just price and quality, but (they) look very closely at animal care, food safety and environmental sustainability,” said George Matheson, chair of Manitoba Pork Council at its meeting April 13.
Millenials expect the food brands they buy to exhibit the “values” they expect and hold themselves, Morrison said.
“They’re also expecting us to do the right thing,” she said. “Brands have to be authentic, because you have to stand for something.”
Millenials are noted for being distrustful of anything big, whether it’s big business, big science or big brands. Marketing to them is a tougher challenge than selling to their parents, she said.
“They want that local, word of mouth, discover-new-things (idea) and they will meet their friends and their community on Facebook.”
