Young adults, or millennials as this generation of them is often called, are often a key target market for advertisers. They’re old enough to have their own income and their own defined needs and wants, but they’re often in a life-stage before they have children, which means that if they are in work, they tend to have a high level of disposable income. In London, which attracts a lot of young adults who want to kick-start their careers, this demographic can be huge for marketers. They are active in the housing market (generally either as renters or first-time buyers) and often lead a lifestyle which is characterized by the words convenience and experience. They like having food delivered and eating out, they also like buying quality products and hanging out in places like gyms. It’s little wonder that companies of all sizes often go out of their way to attract these customers and, up until recently, the prevailing attitude was that digital advertising (particularly via social media) was the way to go and paper was for an older demographic. Our experience has suggested that paper does very well in getting the attention of millenials and figures from the stationery industry are backing us up.
Millennials love quality paper items
If you ever want to see how millennials integrate paper products into their digital world, go to YouTube and do a search for “planning videos” and/or “desk organization” or something of that sort. You’ll find countless videos of millennials happily showing off their organizers, journals and notebooks, many of which have been lovingly decorated, some of which to the point where they have become legitimate works of art. Old-school companies such as Filofax and Moleskine are doing very well in the digital world, thank you very much. In 2015, Moleskine registered a turnover of €128M – as compared to €53M in 2010. Only about 10% of this income was from its leather goods range, the rest was all from paper. Moleskine has even, famously, brought out its Evernote notebook, which links the paper world with the digital one. Use the notebook as an ordinary paper notebook and capture the contents seamlessly to Evernote. The millenials posting these videos are thoroughly familiar with the digital world, they are using computers, tablets and smartphones on an everyday basis and are some of the most social-media aware people around and yet they still love paper. Want more evidence? Search on Instagram for #filofax or #moleskine. Look at the number of posts and their quality.
The key word is quality
Mainstream stationers are struggling. Former behemoth Staples has just essentially given away its UK outlets to a restructuring company and is shedding locations in the U.S. This has nothing to do with online competition (Staples also has an online presence) and everything to do with the fact that the market for basic paper items, such as printer paper) is now shrinking at a rapid rate. In other words, if you want to sell to millenials, your product better show its quality in every way. This is essentially what we’ve long said, here at The Private Postman, which is why we offer our customers all the help they need to get their leaflets absolutely perfect and to ensure that each and every one of them is delivered in perfect condition each and every time. That’s the Postman’s promise. The letter box really is future-proof.
