Analyzing the millennial brand aestheticfrom @eugbrandstrat

Transcript

The Millennial Rank Era is officially dead. Now there's a few things that define the Millennial Brand Era. Millennial brands lean into hyper aestheticization, so trying to turn ordinary commodities into design objects. Inoffensive pastel or neutral brand identities that lean into consistency on digital brand applications, and excessive earnestness or warmth in their tone of voice. These brands desperately want to be a bestie. You can spot a millennial brand in almost any consumer category in Australia, whether it's it's millennial furniture brands like Koala, or millennial luggage brands like July, millennial alcohol brands like Highwater, or the million millennial skincare brands like No to and all of its knockoffs. Aside by yes, I am a little sick of people asking, rank you make us a little best more like Go to? It already exists, do something else. And of worse, gotta give a shout out to Australia's most millennial commodity, who gives a crap toilet paper. The problem is, what made many of these brands successful in their time, is not what's gonna make a brand successful now. Many of these millennial brands aren't actually brands at all, there's no central idea beyond the aesthetic. It looks good on a flat lay is not really a strategy, and it only really worked when people were consuming brand content in a much more static way. Millennials are now entering the phases of their careers as marketers, where they're finally getting to make decisions about brand identity, art direction, packaging. This is just a gentle reminder that those aesthetics you might consider to be examples of great and modern brand design, might just be a representation of your own tastes and preferences, from that brief cultural moment when we got to be in the spotlight. And those people that are rebranding to chase a more youthful audience may find that perfect modern aesthetic might actually be regarded as contrived, by consumers who are embracing much more expressive and eccentric brand worse, with much more dynamic content. As always, good brand managers are the ones that are able to see beyond what they might personally like, to anchor their brand worlds and what's really happening with their customer, their category, and their channels. RIP to the millennial brand, I'm wearing my ankle socks at half mast today.