Marketing To The Millennials Suzy Menkes Summary

In her article “Marketing to the Millennials,” Suzy Menkes addresses the controversial topic of how companies and brands are changing the way they advertise to reach “younger” consumers. Menkes believes that finding a way to reach a generation that is so involved in social media and technology is the “focus of every smart luxury and fashion brand.” (Menkes, 497) She suggest that instead of the advertisement trying to sell the product, the marketers should be focused on what the consumers have to say. Although technology plays a big role in the 21st century, it is not always efficient in marketing and advertising, due to the fact that millennials are constantly using social media and technology for self-entertainment rather than marketing.

She uses exemplification to provide her reader with examples of how technology plays a part in the marketing industry; for example the Louis Vuitton’s updated website and the commercial advertising the hair spray. Menkes uses rhetorical question to keep the reader interested by causing them to think about the an answer she later provides them with; for example she questions how do the designers get involved with technology, the designers responded by saying they “stay out” of topic of technology because it distract them, which Menkes believes is a contradiction because the marketing of their products is what’s able to keep their product alive. (Menkes, 498) Although she strongly uses these techniques, in other ways she fails by weakly applying some strategies to her opinions and statements. For example, in her thesis she uses the appeal to ignorance by assuming that “all” brands are trying to take the same approach to market to the millennials. Also, Menkes makes a false analogy by explaining that the millennial is the generation who expects everything, or is entitled to all. When Menkes describes or discusses the millennial generation, she involves an abundance of fallacies such as, Hasty or faulty generalization, False analogy, and Stereotyping. One thing all of these fallacies all have in common is that they all use only one example

There’s very little factual evidence that plays part in this article which is another reason this article is weak. In an article called, “The Efficacy of Television” by Gary Rudman, Rudman states that marketers are paying little attention to the marketing efforts made in television, he also adds to this statement by stating that because of their eagerness to advertise, they only focus on connecting with teens through media that is often used by the millennial generation. According to the GTR report in this article, “When it comes to options for advertising, traditional TV advertising resonates best for teens,” The reason for this is because most teens spend their majority of time at school, leaving very little time for internet access which makes the television top prize for advertisement; teens are constantly using and are often more likely to encounter advertisement on a television rather than surfing the web or having their focus on a internet game. “Teens are visually literate, and a good television ad will engage them. They remember funny, interesting, engaging, unique ads. In fact they like them [so much], they will look for them online to forward them