Even against stiff competition—such as Textbook.com and Amazon.com—Malat says the company’s research has allowed it to engage with millennial and Generation Z students in the company’s 770 campus bookstores across the U.S.

“I’m finding over the past two to three years, the whole customer understanding piece of my job has played an important role,” she says. “We established a dedicated research platform two to three years ago where we have a group of 10,000 students—called our student point of view—who weigh in on a lot of issues with us. It’s what has been driving our business lately.”

Marketing News spoke with Malat about how Barnes and Noble College engages students through research.

Q: Is most of the research you do online, or in-person as well?

A: It’s a mix. We have a powerful online platform, Vision Critical, which we leverage as our backend provider, which allows us to do a lot of neat things like setting up a dedicated panel, so we can build relationships with these students. We reach out to them two-to-three times a week with everything from quick polls … to larger strategic studies about learning and overall engagement. Generational research really helps us plan for the future. What’s interesting about our business is it’s not just helping us plan ahead … but it’s also helping our higher-education partners.

Q: How does it help partners in higher education?

A: We’re a strategic partner to the universities we serve to help them realize their goal of increased student retention, graduation rates and overall student satisfaction. We do that by listening. We do that by having this deep understanding of students and faculty, and we do that by creating initiatives, programs and partnerships that are aligned with, not only our mission, but the mission of higher ed.

Q: As a CMO, how do you balance between working with the customer and working with the C-suite?

A: What we learn from living with students every day on campus, as well as the research we’ve done, is how millennials [and] how Generation Z really want​ to engage with brands or with the businesses they choose to do business with. Millennials and Generation Z want to develop a relationship with businesses they visit, so the research we do allows us to make those connections and deliver more of an experience to the students.

A few years back, we wanted to take a deep dive into incoming freshmen. How can we do a better job connecting with them and driving our sales? The college bookstore wasn’t the only choice anymore. We were the only game in town for so many years, and then suddenly there’s the internet and all these textbook players online. We learned that students were coming to college very overwhelmed, very stressed out and looking for support. It was from aha [moment] that we realized we cannot be and we will not be just about a retail transaction. We have to become a complete support system for the students. We communicated to the new students all this information about what it’s like to transition to college, tips about how to get along with your roommate, how to set up your dorm room or how to save the most money on textbooks. … We were able to get to “Yes” on about 500 of our campuses giving us the freshman list. And that has been unprecedented in our industry. Now we’re able to communicate with the incoming freshmen from acceptance level on.

Q: Is that extra step—giving customers help, incentives or assistance—now necessary in all modern transactions?

A: I think so. If you’re going to just compete on price or if you’re going to look at yourself as a retail transaction, you’re going to lose, especially with this generation. The brands that do well are the brands that are able to build experience, build relationships and add more value to the equation. Brands that align with students’ values and can deliver a relevant message to the consumer at the right time, as we were able to do with the freshmen.

Q: Is that the way to go with Generation Z moving forward?

A: Yes. Generation Z is looking for the same things in terms of relevancy and experiences. They’re definitely more independent in their thinking. They trust their own instincts. We found millennials tend to share more [and] rely on their parents heavily. Generation Z is just a little more buttoned-up in what they want to do. Both generations absolutely speak to the experiences. No one is looking at ads, so how do you get your message across through a more immersive, fun and interesting experience? We have become a social and academic hub. We have an event calendar that we run year-round that’s customized to the schools, but it kicks off with our VIP shopping nights for incoming freshmen. They can come in and get the help and support they need from our student book sellers. Our research shows that the majority of millennials prefer shopping in the physical store. Although we have seen an increase of our online sales for textbooks, more than 70% pick up in store. They want to come in and be in the physical space, pick up additional items they need, ask questions and just feel good about starting the school year.

Q: It seems like the younger the consumer, the more essential it is to find out their desired experiences. Is that what marketers can take away from this?

A: Exactly. The whole premise of listening is making sure you’re hitting the mark. Even with our freshman program, it’s been out there five years or so, but every year we go back and talk to new students and say, “What do you think? What other information do you need?” through recurring surveys and polls. We continue to elevate the program, especially as millennials start to graduate and Generation Z comes in. The importance of listening to these insights and making your business decision based on the voice of your customer is the big takeaway.

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A typical response to adversaries is outward silence, ignoring their existence in public while staking out advantageous positioning behind the scenes. Yet, several case studies show that there are high-profile exceptions to this rule, in which advertisers have found success at the expense of their competitors. With that in mind, we reached out for some expert guidance on using marketing to define the competition. 

Any attack ad needs to be pitch-perfect with the rest of a brand’s identity, experts say. Any messaging needs to fit within the nebulous parameters of authentic representation of brand identity. In other words, marketers need implicit permission from customers to throw shade.

“Consumers are incredibly attached to brands. They take them very personally, and when a brand does something that they don’t believe a brand should do, it can create a surprising backlash,” says , chief content officer at brand consultancy Interbrand. “If you are not a brand that is naturally a challenger, or that people see as a challenger, it can feel quite inauthentic. It can do more damage than good because people aren’t expecting it, or may begin to associate negativity with your brand rather than anything positive.”

Norambuena stresses that marketers need to “understand the stretch of their own brand”—the market-facing boundaries that consumers draw around products, services and organizations. “The minute you understand where that barrier is, you can figure out either a very smart way to push over it, or you understand that that’s your limit, and if you push any further you might actually lose sales as opposed to gaining preference,” she says.

After sussing out that boundary, Norambuena says marketers then need to determine what about the category needs instruction. Is it becoming amorphous, with everyone saying the same things? Does your brand require clarification or differentiation in relation to your competitors?

Only when you’re confident about what direction to proceed and how much “permission” you have to grow in that direction is it time to start mapping out a campaign sizing up the competition. Here, again, there are many hurdles to navigate. The first being: Do you name the brand you’re talking about? Many experts, Norambuena included, say, “No.”

“There are really only a few brands that get away with that. Typically, when they do that, it has to be built either on a humorous approach to things, so that it isn’t alienating. Or it needs to fall back to blind taste tests where the product is speaking for itself. It isn’t just me saying, ‘I’m better.’ There’s real proof behind what I’m doing,” she says. “My personal preference, and it is an oldie but a goodie, is Apple versus PC. They never said Microsoft. It was always just a PC. Machine against machine. But the characters were individually loveable, so it became a cult.”

, creative director and managing partner at Los Angeles advertising agency Forza Migliozzi, goes even further than Norambuena. He believes the era of direct callouts is largely over.

“Coke versus Pepsi went on for decades. Pepsi was the one that tried to put itself in the same room with Coke, [as] an alternative to Coke. That came with a very big spend and was done during a very traditional time period,” Migliozzi says. “The only way the consumer was able to voice their opinion on it was at the store. Now they can voice their opinion on social media and you could end up with an army of folks screaming back at you on behalf of the brand that you’re attacking. The dynamics have changed. If you’re just sitting back in 1986, watching television, and it’s Coke versus Pepsi, you may not even talk about it to your friend. But now in 2016, you’ll go on your Facebook, your Instagram, your Twitter and say something about it.”

In place of naming the brand you’re going after, Migliozzi says it’s common to instead call out an attitude, or emotion, clearly occupied by your competitor. “Let’s say, for example, you’re not going to see Nike turn around Reebok when they were adding bells and whistles to their sneakers,” he says. “They attack the fad.”

Trend-shaming is one of the most popular forms of going after the competition. To combat changing tastes, many brands brainstorm campaigns that act as collective eye rolls against emerging preferences. Look no further than Budweiser’s advertising at this year’s Super Bowl for an example. The spot, which took several veiled shots at craft brews through intense action-like sequences of brewery and party footage accompanied by a bass-blasting soundtrack. The commercial defiantly states what Budweiser is with visual cues and uses text to emphatically state what it’s not. According to the beer giant’s own marketing, it’s not a hobby, not small, not sipped, not imported, not a fruit cup, not following anyone else. Or, in other (unsaid) words, not a craft brewery.

These ads can arouse strong feelings in consumers who feel slighted by evolving popular tastes they would prefer not to adopt. “You’re empowering them. They’re not falling behind on a trend by drinking Budweiser,” Migliozzi says.

Other times it’s challenging the collective. Think, “Think Different.”

“To quote a really classic one, it’s what ,” Norambuena says. “It took on a nameless, faceless entity. Most people understood it was IBM, but they never called out IBM.  They called out a problem that was affecting humanity rather than saying, it’s me against this brand. Then, if you’re challenging the collective, you’re naturally setting yourself apart.”

One area where Migliozzi believes it might make sense to go after a competitor directly is in a mature market. When there is zero or low growth of new customers, your only option for expansion is poaching users away from competitors. This dynamic plays out often between cellphone carriers. The big names in the space have been attacking one another by name for years, comparing plan details in ads and showing purported coverage maps of the other operators. Recently, Sprint recruited Verizon’s former pitchman in a particularly petty broadside.

“That seems to be a pie that’s been sliced up, so everyone is trying to grab another brand’s part of the pie, because it’s not growing,” Migliozzi says. “In that case, that brawl is going to continually take place. And that does make some sense because it is ever-changing in terms of their coverage, features and pricing.”

Whatever the strategy, the goal needs to be the same as a straightforward pitch: turning consumers toward your brand at the expense of the rest of the category. Arguing against the competitors can be an effective mechanism for facilitating that movement, but only if the criticisms are something that consumers will actually care about.

“The mentality here with a leading brand, or a brand looking to be a leader, is not acknowledging your competitors, it’s acknowledging your consumers’ needs and wants,” Migliozzi says. “If you can answer that better, that’s all you need to speak to.”

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There’s something illusory about marketing materials given to prospective university students. Shiny pages featuring shiny smiles with shiny white teeth in the foreground, cloudless blue skies in the background and copy that promises fun times today and bright futures tomorrow. But is this actually what the college atmosphere is like? What, exactly, do students do all day? Prospective students want genuine answers to important questions about where to spend their college years. 

Action

To answer these questions, Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown University launched , a first-person video series curated by Georgetown students. The campaign, which launched its third year at the end of September, altered the school’s entire social media strategy, according to Laura Wilson, director of digital engagement and social media at Georgetown University.

Beginning in 2014, the social media campaign followed 12 students, who filmed their experiences across the hilly campus. Videos were posted on popular platforms such as Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag . 

Initially, the goal was to keep a connection with donors and alumni. However, there was a more lucrative group to target: incoming freshmen.

This year, the campaign follows 16 Georgetown students from the mundane events of college life—studying at the library at 2 a.m., doing laundry and walking around campus—to fun, and sometimes once-in-a-lifetime, events—attending football games, on-campus concerts and events with U.S. Olympic gold-medal winners.  

As quick-hitting videos on Snapchat and in-the-moment photos on Instagram gained cultural clout, the campaign shifted its goal toward attracting prospective students with “a first-person, raw perspective” ethos. This is done in the hopes of a Georgetown student sharing a story that allows a potential Georgetown Hoya to feel a connection to life on campus. 

Georgetown Stories’ transition to a younger audience occurred naturally, Wilson says, as high school and college students are heavy users of Snapchat, an app with a monthly active user base of 800 million. 
“All the evidence was that typical prospective undergrad students in the U.S., meaning high school-age students, were spending a ton of time on Snapchat,” Wilson says. “A lot of schools were not really leveraging it yet. We thought this was a good opportunity to do something different.”

Approximately 23% of Snapchat’s user base, , according to Statista. This is the demographic Georgetown Stories is targeting. However, the vast majority of Snapchat users, 37% (296 million), are between 18 and 24 years old, the age range of the Georgetown students telling the stories of life on campus. This, in a big way, has expanded the target audience and led to much of the Georgetown community following the hashtag. 

Students were natural social storytellers for the school’s target audience, Wilson says, as the campaign was already “almost exactly the behavior people take on Snapchat.” In fact, shooting video and taking pictures in this way is likely how many millennials and members of Generation Z communicate in their free time.  per day, according to Bloomberg, with approximately a , Business Insider reports. 

“That’s what they do anyway,” Wilson says, adding that they likely give Georgetown Stories videos a different lens for public consumption than they would with friends. “We just asked them to make sure they take an extra minute and capture something [at events], but 99% of the time it’s something the student is doing anyway. We want it to be authentic to the person.”

Wilson’s team hunted for a Snapchat dashboard to help them gather data. They adopted , a tool that measures analytics, allows Snapchat stories to be scheduled and manages user-generated content on the app. In turn, Snapchat has become central to the Georgetown Stories campaign.

Thomas Harding, co-founder of Mish Guru, says Snapchat can be a blessing and a curse for marketers. Snapchat stories bring gaudy engagement rates, sometimes north of 75%, but most marketers can’t measure or track followers. With analytics in place, he says Georgetown Stories learned which Snapchat stories followers enjoyed and which they skipped. By controlling which pieces of student-generated content go up as a story, Harding says the university gains the advantage of “being authentic, peer-endorsed and truly crowd-sourced.”

“That’s especially important when communicating with audiences known to be distrustful of traditional advertising,” Harding says. “They might not trust an ad telling them something is good, but they’ll trust one of their peers endorsing that same message.” While Snapchat is the engine that drives Georgetown Stories, it is not the sole focus. Georgetown’s social team and storytellers have spread content across Instagram posts, Pinterest pins, Spotify playlists and YouTube videos. 

On the world’s most popular social network, Facebook, Georgetown Stories has become a screening area for alumni, as well as parents of current and prospective students. Wilson says parents are very engaged and prominent in Facebook comments since , according to Statista. 

“The parents have a huge influence in deciding where their child goes to school,” Wilson says. “In many cases, they are either the sole funder of their experience or are paying for a good portion of their child’s education. It makes a huge difference to have parents engaged from the standpoint of prospective students.”

A quick scroll through Facebook video comments will show many proud alumni (“My lovely Georgetown <3” and “Missing my second home”) and even prouder parents (“You are growing so much already!” and “Pretty sure my Hoya just touched the [Olympic gold] medal”). 

“They probably learn more about what their student is doing watching videos and things than they do from their child,” Wilson says, laughing as she recalls her own college-aged parental coyness. “The parent engagement is really important. That’s a really active demographic on Facebook.”

Results

The first two years of Georgetown Stories has paid huge dividends. The focused goal of targeting the incoming freshman class led to 7,027 students sending in early applications in 2015, a record-breaking number for Georgetown. This is up from 6,840 in 2014 and 6,624 in 2013. This increase does not correlate entirely to the student-generated content of the campaign, of course, but Wilson says she believes much of the surge in applications can be tied to the increased engagement with prospective students. 

Perhaps the most telling success metrics from the campaign came after its first year on social media, as the school saw a 2,007% increase of engaged users on Instagram and a 348% increase of engaged users on Facebook. While the second year of social growth wasn’t quite as large, it was still sizable: Instagram saw a 162% increase in engaged users and Facebook saw a 105% increase in engaged users. 

So far, Wilson says the adoption of Mish Guru has paid off, as the analytic dashboard shows a total of 165,000 Snapchat story views during the 2015-2016 academic year. This means the tool and Snapchat will continue to play a big role in the campaign in coming years, Wilson says.

“We stumbled upon some magic here, but the future of the project will only continue to evolve,” she says. 

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The central challenge facing brands is that consumers cannot spend as much currency engaging with marketing as they once did. It looks like marketing resistance, but it’s not. Rather, it’s an engagement cost of time and attention that consumers simply can’t afford anymore.

Worries about consumer engagement have been heightened by the growth of ad-blocking apps. Ad-blocking apps may be recent, but the phenomenon of skipping ads is not. Harvard Business School professor  and found that the percentage of TV ads people watch attentively has dropped steadily from almost 100% decades ago to less than 20% today. Whatever the medium, consumers are doing everything they can to spend as little of their currency of time and attention as possible on marketing.

Resistance to marketing is often said to be a problem of trust. Consumers are more suspicious of marketers than ever, but what’s at work is more than skepticism—it’s a problem of capacity. What consumers are doing is what people do whenever they lack the wherewithal, which is to do less. It’s time- and attention-starved consumers trying to cut costs. The consequence is ever more blocking, skipping, avoiding, ignoring and clicking away.

In time, Tapscott believes individual riders of taxis or renters of rooms could trade peer-to-peer using secure blockchain technology. Customers could avoid paying the aggregator, agent or intermediary their percentage because the technology will promote trust between individuals. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could hail an Uber electronically and the fare was lower and all the fees went to the driver? Tapscott believes this is coming.

By and large, the response of marketers has been to push harder, especially with digital technologies and real-time data streams. Unfortunately, this means more of what consumers want less, so consumers are using their own digital technologies to move in the other direction.

Kantar Media data show a 120% increase in the number of ads appearing in all media since 2008. Yet over that same period, eMarketer data show only a 24.2% increase in the total amount of time people are spending with media. In other words, ads alone—not to mention promotions or events—are outracing consumers by nearly a factor of five.

The costs of time and attention are rising because there is more marketing than ever. Whether measured by bulk or by merit, the costs of engagement are rising. At the same time, people have less time and attention to spend. Life is busier. People are pressured. There are many more things competing for the currency of engagement.

Every marketer can point to an ad that has worked extremely well. There is no question that consumers engage, but that engagement is fewer and farther between. The key question, then, is how best to negotiate the balance consumers are trying to strike between entertainment and relevance.

Marketers rarely think about the costs of engagement. Instead, marketers say to themselves, “If I can just make this ad more entertaining, absorbing, emotional, participatory, relevant, immersive or appropriate, then consumers will spend time and attention rather than blocking, skipping, avoiding, ignoring or clicking away.”

For marketers, benefits are first and foremost. For consumers, though, costs come first. Marketers and consumers put top priority on different parts of the value equation. Marketers are trying to boost benefits to increase net value. Consumers are trying to take out costs.

Some marketing solutions have never gained much traction, like paying people to watch ads or securing private data in exchange for better-targeted ads. The benefits of cash or security for greater engagement don’t offer enough benefits to offset the higher costs of engagement.

Similarly, the much-hyped industry-wide priority in the early 2000s around the concept of engagement was all about making marketing more entertaining and absorbing. It didn’t pan out as hoped because spending more “currency of engagement” isn’t how consumers want to spend their time.

The objective should not be increasing engagement, but increasing disengagement—facilitating less time and attention, not more. The strategic imperative must be one of taking costs out. That means reducing the currency required without imperiling the relationship between brands and consumers.

It’s a new challenge, and not an easy one. But going forward, it is the key to ensuring a rewarding connection with consumers.

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The ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř’s first intellectual agenda is meant to serve as a source of guidance and inspiration for marketing professionals as well as academics. In it, we lay out the “seven big problems” marketers face in the boardroom and in the marketplace. These problems are a large part of that intellectual agenda, and will help us hone in on how we inform and inspire you, the marketing community.

Here, we dive into the questions that stem from each of the seven problems. ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř thought leaders discuss the “what” and “why” of each pillar problem, while we leave the door open indefinitely on the “how.” After all, marketing is about rolling with the punches.

Randy Guard

EVP and CMO at SAS

For most companies, businesses that offer similar products or services are no longer the only competition. To maintain customer loyalty in a crowded marketplace, it is important to forge relevant partnerships with other companies in your space. An auto manufacturer can no longer be solely concerned with other car brands; now, it must be aware of the rapidly growing popularity of ride sharing, for example. When partnering with new market participants, data is the common thread in how companies interact, and smart analysis of this data is the key to success.

Richard Labot

Global Director of Network Operations at Geometry Global

In the global professional services sector, creating teams of partners in a new market efficiently fills talent and capability gaps that would normally take time and investment to fill when going it alone. Like any ecosystem, balance is key to success and those involved have to be aligned to a common goal. There need to be clear responsibilities, rules of engagement and a financial model that encourages participation and collaboration of all parties. Previous experience working together, familiarity with the inter-company process and like-minded corporate cultures round out a best-in-class ecosystem.

Ravi Prashad

SVP of Strategy at GALE Partners

Shaping the future isn’t easy—it requires ambition, humility, and expertise. Objectively understanding the risk-reward equation will help winning firms place the right bets. Global experts living in the future are invaluable if they tailor their expertise to the individual firm. Too often, so-called experts trot out popular trends without an objective understanding of what might work for a specific client. Winning firms partner with global experts who apply innovation, understand their unique business and build marketing solutions that emphasize operational capabilities.

Kurt Hawks

SVP of Cross Device and Video at Conversant

To better predict competitive shifts in our marketplaces (or create them), companies must be laser-focused on the behaviors, needs and preferences of the end consumers within those marketplaces. As such, companies must strike strategic partnerships that best enable them to gain a single view of their consumers, seamlessly identify consumers across all devices and channels and measure the incremental effectiveness of marketing programs in real time. True consumer insight results in the ability to anticipate the future needs of consumers and create competitive shifts rather than react to them.

Rand Fishkin

Cofounder of Moz

Transformation, like any major upheaval, is going to be a serious struggle for organizations that don’t embrace learning and evolution. The type of competition companies faced in the past is different from the competition and disruption they now face due to technology. Companies in sectors such as transportation, media and retail have been learning harsh lessons throughout the past decade. Meanwhile, plenty of incumbents in areas such as health care, finance and energy are feeling invincible, but I suspect they will have the same tough comeuppance in the decades ahead. Digital media moves fast. In just the past 10 years, we’ve seen the rise of multiple platforms that touch millions (Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn) or billions (Google, Facebook, Whatsapp). That requires digital marketing teams to move fast, too.

Mary Hinesly

Professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business

We can see that digital technology is changing how businesses are run and expand globally. Globalizing your company requires a different approach to thinking about how value is created. There are many companies that require a digital audit to learn what is currently being used and how it is being used in their organization to nurture globalization. Mobilizing and inspiring employees through a cooperative culture will streamline digital technology roll outs and help your company to globalize more quickly.

Christopher Vollmer

Principal at PwC

In leader organizations, senior management has a compelling point of view about what the future looks like and how they must transform to win in it. Brand purpose is injected into the key moments valued most by users. Content, products and services are available where users can easily find them. Digital is integrated with the physical. Their organizations know how to team, partner and work across traditional silos. Tough calls are made regularly on legacy businesses, talent and infrastructure to invest for growth and drive the company forward. Leaders recognize that digital is more than a clever reallocation of marketing spend. They see digital transformation as an opportunity to win in a world where every brand interaction is just one step from purchase.

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Worry set in for Polina Haryacha. She had two marketing degrees from Ukraine—a bachelor’s and a master’s—a marketing certificate from UCLA and a marketing job in America that she loved, but lawyers told her there was a 50-50 chance she’d be forced to leave the U.S.

“I got really sad because I liked the job, and I wanted to stay here,” she says. 

Haryacha’s coin-flip odds to stay stateside came because of the . Her attorney, , received an expansive request for evidence from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that asked why Haryacha’s role as a marketing product manager should be considered a “specialty occupation” that requires “technical or theoretical expertise,” all H-1B requirements. Haryacha’s heart sunk; “It was really bad,” she says, figuring the request meant her chance of staying had dropped. 

It’s not easy to be an international marketer attempting to secure a U.S. visa, which is “won” via a lottery. Each January, Brook starts working with clients to file their applications, a time-consuming process that can cost between $4,000 and $5,000. By April, they’re filed; applicants’ fates are not determined until June or July. 

“You don’t know where you stand,” Brook says. “You don’t know if you need to give up your apartment, your car, your friends, your accounts. If you didn’t make the quota, you have to make alternative plans, either to change your visa or … a lot of clients will just study further, just extend their student visa.”

In the end, Haryacha was lucky. She was one of 85,000 who won the H-1B lottery (65,000 of whom were bachelor’s degree holders or those with equal work experience, and 20,000 of whom had a master’s degree or doctorate) and works as a senior product marketing manager at My.com. 

However, with the number of H-1B applications on the rise, odds for future marketers to win may be shrinking. In 2014, 172,500 applications were submitted to USCIS; in 2015, it was 233,000, and in 2016, 236,000 applications. 

All told, there’s a one-in-three chance at success for foreign marketers who want to chase the American Dream.

Win Some, Lose Some

TJ Lim was lucky, too; he won his visa while working as a senior analyst of marketing analytics at Fidelity Investments. Lim arrived from the Philippines after being accepted to Yale University, then earned his master’s in marketing analytics at Bentley University before going to the  for his MBA. 

Lim’s Wharton classmate Shin-Yi Lim (no relation) wasn’t as fortunate. She came to the U.S. from Malaysia and received a bachelor’s degree in biological chemistry from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Wharton, where she specialized in marketing and operations management. After accepting a job from Microsoft in 2013, Shin-Yi Lim applied for the 2014 H-1B lottery. After months of nervously waiting for good news, she was not selected in the lottery. 

Shin-Yi sighed when asked about the process, betraying her frustration and uncertainty felt during the process. 

“For a country that’s run on merits, it’s hard to process and comprehend that it all comes down to a lottery, a blind lottery, and it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been here,” she says. “I spent seven years of my adult life in the U.S. … I waited all the way up to the end of May before my lawyer said, ‘Yep, almost definitely you aren’t getting the visa.’”

She shifted to “Plan B,” moving to Canada to work at Microsoft’s Vancouver office, but found the country’s visa process would take too long. On to “Plan C”: Microsoft’s Singapore office, where she stayed for 15 months before winning a spot in the following year’s H-1B lottery and moving to Seattle. She considers herself lucky to have a job, especially at a large U.S. company, but remains frustrated by the lottery.

The Importance of H-1B in Modern Marketing

The H-1B is America’s “secret weapon,” said . 

“Without the H-1B, the scientific establishment of this country would collapse. Forget about Google, forget about Silicon Valley, there would be no Silicon Valley without the H-1B. And you know what the H-1B is? It’s the genius visa,” he said. “The United States is a magnet sucking up all the brains of the world, but now the brains are going back. They’re going back to China. They’re going back to India and people are saying, ‘Oh my god, there’s a Silicon Valley in India now! There’s a Silicon Valley in China now.’ DUH! Where did it come from? It came from the United States.”

Marketing’s scientific and technological growth has been undeniable in recent years. As tech grows, data scientists and techies are drawn to the industry by its lucrative uses of Big Data and its desire for innovation.  found the average company will increase its marketing analytics budget by 73% in the next three years, an expansion that is closer to 100% for big B-to-C companies. 

Globalization has also become a focus in marketing as international companies evangelize their brands across the world.  that when companies visit college campuses to meet with graduate and doctoral students, they often find that more than half the study body is foreign-born. While there are no marketing-specific statistics, . Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, ranked as the No. 1 marketing graduate program by U.S. News and World Report, says more than 30% of its students are from outside of the country. Wharton at University of Pennsylvania, ranked No. 2 by the same report, boasts an alumni network across 153 countries and six continents. 

“Would it make sense for U.S. companies to ignore such a large pool of talent if they want to compete globally?” Anderson wrote. “It is a reasonable question, and most companies would say it would not make sense to ignore this talent pool.”

Marketers know the follies of randomly carried-out or poorly planned campaigns. Pick an arbitrary campaign slogan, color scheme and target audience? Be prepared for terrible ROI. However, in the ultimate irony, the visa that allows students across measurable fields to work stateside is predicated on a randomized lottery. Degrees, work and knowledge only matter to a point; after applying for H-1B, randomness reigns supreme. 

The Process for Marketers to Win an H-1B Visa

Filing for an H-1B visa is difficult for well-qualified STEM professionals, and it’s no different for marketers. 

Haryacha’s application process was so frustrating that she  after she won the lottery to give other international marketers hope and advice on improving their chances. 

“Make sure your immigration lawyer has substantial experience with filing H-1B applications for marketing positions,” she wrote as a general tip. “It’s even better if he or she has a track record of success stories involving RFEs [requests for evidence] for complex marketing cases.”

Brook, her attorney, has that desired track record, as she’s represented a multitude of marketers in H-1B cases. Brook “knows the pain” of the immigrant worker, as she came to the U.S. from South Africa years ago on an H-1B visa. 

Historically, marketers have a tough time obtaining an H-1B, Brook says. They often receive thick booklets requesting evidence for why marketing or public relations positions are “professional.” Brook says USCIS requests would ask, “Why do you need a degree?” or “Can’t someone who is really sharp and has years of experience do the same job duties?”

“I haven’t seen that lately because the industry has evolved so much,” Brook says. “Digital and social media has made it very specialized. Immigration now sees that you really do need people in these kinds of professional positions​.”

H-1B visas require candidates to have a bachelor’s degree, or foreign equivalent degree, or equivalent work experience. This ends up being a “complicated formula,” Brook says, which makes the process especially tricky for marketers, who don’t necessarily need a specific marketing degree to get a specialized job in the field.

After graduation, with a year of visa-free optional practical training between, young hopefuls file for the H-1B visa. Sometimes, they’re accepted. Two-thirds of the time, they’re rejected straightaway.

“[I] go back to [clients] and say, ‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t accepted. It was a random lottery.’ Then they have to scramble,” she says. “Do they leave? Do they study more? Do they look at other options? I’ve had people change to tourist visas, I’ve had people get married. You really have to scramble to get yourself in status. People don’t want to break the law.”

A lottery win means people are cleared for work for three years with a three-year extension available without having to re-enter another year’s lottery. Green card applications for permanent residency can be filed during the six years of the H-1B. If these applications are filed before the fifth year, Brook says the H-1B can continue to extend beyond six years. However, this can be a double-edged sword, as she’s had clients on H-1B visas waiting for a green card for more than a decade due to backlogs from their home country, most commonly China or India. 

“It’s very frustrating,” Brook says. “They’re stuck in jobs. Obviously the expense and ability to travel and so many things are impacted. But it is a bridge and it will allow you to extend your H-1B if you filed it in time while you wait for your green card.”

Marcelo Barros, international career expert and author of , says he’s seen more marketers win H-1Bs in recent years as companies focus on globalizing. This has led to a greater need for marketers who know the international market.

“Marketing is all about analytics these days,” he says. “Analytics is statically driven; it’s math-based. A lot of international students will play very well in that space. They’re very strong in that. … I do feel the trends in marketing—analytics, globalization—completely favor international students.”

How can international marketers take advantage? Typically, it starts when candidates find a job that aligns with their interests, he says, usually with a company that is expanding into new markets and knows an international marketer may have expertise that’s “worth sponsoring.” These jobs have become easier to find with the increase of corporations and worldwide marketing initiatives, Barros says. 

Even so, the rising ease in attaining marketing jobs gives an advantage to students only if they “fully exploit those opportunities,” Barros says. Some do, some do not. 

“The students who don’t succeed are often not maximizing the opportunities that are there for them,” he says. “Either because they’re not aware of [them], or they’re not being coached in the most effective way possible. Or they’re just simply unprepared to capitalize on what’s available. … This means a lot of networking and identification of high-growth companies that have a need or want for international expansion.”

Preparing for Life After University 

Many international workers start their training in U.S. universities. NAFSA: Association for International Educators found there were , up from 886,052 in 2013-2014. To put that in perspective, there is a total of 20.5 million students attending universities in fall 2016, per the National Center for Educational Statistics. 

Angela Lee, chair of Kellogg’s marketing department, has a simple philosophy for preparing students for life after school: “We teach them, that’s how we prepare them.” This preparation needs to be based in reality, as international students must know about the uphill battle they face to stay in the U.S., Lee says.

Some companies simply don’t want to take the risk of hiring a visa worker. If an American and a foreign marketer are in the running for a job, it will likely go to the American, Lee says. No company will admit this due to the possibility of discrimination, but cheaper transition costs matter; it’s a “huge investment” for companies to hire, train and apply for H-1B visas for foreign employees, she says. 

“Now, of course, if someone is clearly better and is an established team member of the company, then companies would be willing to go out of their way to help this candidate apply for the work permit or residency,” she says, adding that different companies have their own hiring practices.

TJ Lim, who now works as director of client strategy at UBS, says Wharton was honest about what he’d be up against in the U.S. job market. The school gave him access to search engines to seek jobs that sponsor international students but warned him that there was a chance he could still lose the lottery, even if he did find a job. 

Shin-Yi Lim, now working as a campaign business manager at Microsoft, painted a different picture of Wharton’s preparation, saying it took a lot of online searching and speaking with other international students to try and “piece the puzzle together.” Brook says she’s sure “there’s a lot of chatter on campus,” as students she encounters learn the most about H-1B through word-of-mouth and designated student officers. 

As for interviewing, networking and other career services, Lee says Northwestern’s International Office has resources that professors simply don’t. Barros agrees; most professors consider career help to be outside of their scope. Career offices are a better resource, but it is a rarity to see companies post job listings for international employees on a university website, he says, let alone forming a relationship with universities for this purpose. 

However, Kellogg does this by bringing recruiters to campus who are interested in and open to hiring international students in the U.S., according to Lee. Some may be a poor match, but it’s a vital tool in the uphill battle for legal status. 

Economy and Controversy

One big worry—and many say the visa’s Achilles’ heel—is how many companies try to game the H-1B system. For example, some companies apply for multiple H-1B visas for the same employee under different subsidiary names, Brook says, which is not allowed under the visa’s rules. Those who are found out are disqualified, but many are successful. 

The New York Times reported that in 2014,  that provide temporary workers for companies like Toys ‘R’ Us and Disney. These firms included Tata Consultancy Service, an IT consulting firm based in India, which won 5,650 visas (6.6% of total H-1Bs) in 2014, and Infosys, also an IT consulting firm based in India, which won 3,454 visas (4% of total H-1Bs). Both firms, which saw their shares of H-1B workers rise nearly 100% from 2005 to 2012, ranked toward the bottom in terms of wage distribution.

(EPI), says the H-1B is not serving the country as it was intended and is in need of reform. Somewhere between 40% and 50% of the visas are given to “offshore” work at a cheaper rate, he says, as companies bring H-1B winners to the U.S., train them and send them back to their home country, mainly India and China. Companies may save in excess of $20 per hour, but he says they hurt the economy and legitimize the program’s negative reputation of stealing jobs from American workers.

“It’s been gradually building over time; it’s been going on more than the past 10 years,” he says. “We first started writing about this problem back in 2006 and it was already a large problem back then.”

Instead of continuing in this way, Eisenbrey says immigrant workers should have a sensible path toward permanent residency, the shady tactics of outsourcing companies should be quelled and companies should not be allowed to hire at substantially less than the prevailing wage for the area, industry and position. 

“If you’re a company looking for a software developer, and the prevailing wage in the area is $120,000 and you advertise for the job at $70,000, your chances of getting somebody not very good are very good,” he says. “You could make the case that ‘I tried to find someone and I couldn’t find them,’ then you bring someone in from overseas at $70,000. You’re undercutting the labor market, you’re denying people who put in a lot of education and have a lot of experience, and this is not a small matter. The chances of discriminating against older employees, women and racial minorities goes way up.”

Eisenbrey says if H-1B was working as intended—to fill a gap in the economy that cannot be found stateside—it would complement U.S. workers. This, in turn, would increase productivity and bolster the economy.

“But if it’s really just bringing in somebody who is cheaper, then it’s not helping the economy,” he says. “It’s depressing wages and increasing unemployment here, and it really doesn’t have a benefit to anybody but the company that is getting the higher profit by virtue of using the cheaper worker.”

Should Randomness Stand?

One commonality among most who discuss the H-1B process is a disdain for the lottery’s randomness: if a certain number pops up, citizenship is granted for the next three years. If it doesn’t, better luck next time. Brook believes this system works to keep some of the brightest, U.S.-educated minds out of the country.

Brook suggests dropping the “random quota” as an improvement. “They need to make it all [based] off merit or increase the cap, and maybe they can increase the fee so they could make sure people are serious about applying and not having multiple applications. There’s a lot that can be done, but [it needs to] start with it not being a random number.”

Shin-Yi Lim, who initially suffered bad lottery luck, agrees the luck-of-the-draw approach casts too wide a net and misses many talented individuals. The system does not weigh whether a worker has any familiarity with the U.S., she says, so visas are granted to many without stateside experience. 

“That happened to me, too; I was in Singapore when they put me in the lottery,” she says. “But at the same time, it’s the idea that the number [accepted] has not been revised and reviewed in more than a decade. It’s frustrating.”

TJ Lim suggests a system based on supply and demand. Is there greater need for data scientists or marketers one year? Grant that group more H-1B visas. A need for biologists in another year? Allow them more visas. This, he says, would ensure both the quantity and quality of the immigrants entering the U.S. The world is different now, he says, more measured; changing times call for a changed system.

“Right now, the reason why things are so oversubscribed is there are certain companies that apply like crazy the minute the process is open,” he says. “A, it’s not fair and B, it’s gaming the system, but it’s also very inefficient for the economy. 

Not all hope is lost for international marketers looking for work. Haryacha’s story isn’t an exception, Barros says: “There are a lot of stories like that. It depends on the student’s ability to capitalize on what’s out there.”

However, Brook says the randomness must be addressed and “brought into line with modern times.”

“They really need to start again with it because they’re keeping out really top people,” Brook says.

SIDEBAR: H-1B’s History

The H-1B visa program began as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 (IMMACT). Congress initially set the number of available visas to 65,000, but that number expanded to 195,000 in 2001, according to VisaNow, before shrinking back down to 65,000 in 2004 by order of former President George W. Bush’s administration. Many people believed H-1B took jobs away from U.S. workers. 

Bush also signed the L-1 Visa and H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004 into law, which is a salary standard set by industry expectations to quell those intent on hiring foreign workers at a lower rate.

An additional 20,000 visas are available for those who graduated with a doctorate or master’s degree from a U.S. university. Most end up going to STEM fields—science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

SIDEBAR: Lottery Lawsuits

There have been at least two lawsuits filed against USCIS in the past year in an effort to better understand H-1B’s lottery. 

In the most recent case, filed in 2016, Tenrec, Inc. v. USCIS, Parrilli and Renison’s EntryLaw.com website says: “The purpose of the class action lawsuit is to allow those with rejected H-1B petitions the opportunity to re-submit petitions and receive a place in line ahead of those who file for the first time at a later date. This remedy would provide ‘priority’ for next fiscal year’s H-1B numbers to those who had filed for an H-1B this year, or in previous years, and were not selected in the random lottery.”

Another lawsuit, filed by American Immigration Council and Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. in 2016, seeks more information about how the electronic selection process of the H-1B lottery process works and if all the lottery numbers are properly allocated.

SIDEBAR: Alternative Options to the H-1B for International Marketers 

There are alternative visas (or options) for international marketers looking to stay stateside, Brook says. For example:

• Non-immigrant NAFTA Professional, or TN, visa for citizens of Mexico and Canada 

• H1B1 visa for citizens of Singapore and Chili 

• E3 visa for Australian citizens

• Specialty occupation H-1B visa for those with exceptional work experience

• Certain positions are exempt from the quota, such as work at nonprofit organizations, research education facilities and university work

• J-1 visa, or Exchange Visitor non-immigrant visa, can work for those accepted into work- or study-based exchange visitor programs. This visa, however, is much less permanent than the others; J-1 visa-holders would have to return to their home country for two years before finding a bridge to permanent residency.

• O-1 Visa for “individuals with extraordinary ability or achievement,” which Brook says is for those who are distinguished in their field via presentations, awards, articles or innovation in research. This is a three-year visa for people with a U.S. job and who “already have a good career and have made their mark.”

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It’s a map for marketers, which can capture the precise moment the recent past becomes the distant past, and suggest a path toward the future.

Roughly two decades ago, Cadillac bowed to changing market preferences and unveiled a full-size luxury SUV called the Escalade, while a French-born Iranian-American working in California launched a digital swap meet website called eBay and HBO debuted a new sitcom that unabashedly explored the sex lives of four single women living in New York. It was also around this time that the college class of 2020 was born.

The current crop of freshmen have grown up in a world where the aforementioned products, once hailed as revolutionary, are now considered part of the establishment, or even passĂŠ. Underclassmen might note the existence of these items in passing—relics of the period of mass folly when their parents were considered cool—but they are certainly not wowed by them. Five years from now, incoming freshmen might not even be aware they existed.  

Such is the raison d’être behind , a 19-year look at the frame of mind possessed by America’s youth the moment they came of college age. The list is the brainchild of . The list is a compilation of historical events and chronological bookends occurring around the time college freshmen were born. First released in 1998, the list has been updated every year since and has captured the attention of professionals from all lines of work, marketers included. And though it purports to be an authoritative roadmap of modern youth identity, its intended target has always been adults.

Mindset List Creators: Tom McBride, Charles Westerberg and Ron Nief

“The list was not initially designed to be targeted at the students it was talking about. It was for the professors, and that continues to be true,” Westerberg says.

The genesis of the Mindset List came about with the rise of the world wide web. In those early days, Nief and McBride happened upon several chain e-mails disparaging Generation X over their ignorance of obsolete technology and long-ago cultural touch points.

“We were seeing these lists constantly, and Tom and I started sharing them and laughing about them, and then we realized that this is all wrong, that this is not what they don’t know. It’s what they have never experienced,” Nief says.

The generational put-downs being circulated on the early web created a eureka moment for Nief and McBride. What if they compiled a list of events and cultural changes occurring right before the birth of incoming freshman in order to pinpoint the “Big Bang” of their worldview? By keeping track of where students entered America’s cultural time line, schools could prevent the so-called “hardening of the references” that were prone to tenured graybeards of academia. 

McBride had witnessed the generational erosion of collective recall unfold in his classrooms firsthand. “I first came to Beloit and taught Shakespeare during the Watergate scandal. The Watergate scandal had a certain Shakespearean grandeur to it. I thought it was just great, it was a great time to teach Shakespeare, but 20 … 25 years later I couldn’t use those references without explaining them, and even if I did explain them, they just didn’t have the resonance,” he says. 

“The past is a foreign country,” adds Nief.

Enter Brandman

The first Mindset List debuted in 1998, chronicling disarming factoids about the life experiences of incoming underclassmen slated to graduate in 2002. The first three entries were:

1. The people starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1980.
   
2. They have no meaningful recollection of the era of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and did not know he had ever been shot.
   
3. They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged.
   

For a nation still steeped in the cultural legacy of the 1980s and early ‘90s, which could vividly remember the mass media event accompanying its first incursion into Iraq, the list struck a chord. Here was evidence of a creeping irrelevance enveloping the freshness of the collective past, standing in sharp relief when contrasted against the hordes of freshmen matriculating through institutions of higher learning

And it wasn’t only politics that comprised the list. Since its inception, the list has included items about consumer trends, prominent brands and technological changes. Without necessarily meaning to, the Mindset List identified marketing as a major driver of culture over the past two decades. 

“It very much indicates that brands have a tremendous hold on culture. If you look for examples of the leading American brands in 1964 or 1970, you would say, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, General Foods, General Electric, maybe IBM. What is it now? Amazon. Microsoft. Google. Walmart. Facebook,” says McBride. “You can trace what’s happening in our culture by looking at leading brands now, as opposed to leading brands then.”

Almost immediately, the media took note of what Nief and McBride were doing. Soon, they were being flown to New York for sit-down interviews on the “Today Show.” Marketers were a mere half-step behind.

Nief can recall the first time an adman contacted him, shortly after an initial round of press interviews. It was a marketer with MTV, and he wanted to use the Mindset List as part of his presentation to Ford. 

“It was the first serious phone call that [told me], ‘Something is clicking here, something has made an impact,’ ” Nief says. “He explained that they had been trying to sell MTV to Ford for quite some time, and … that they had to get across that Ford had to advertise in a different way to this MTV generation.”

Today, the Mindset List is still capturing young people’s attitudes toward automobiles, noting that, while the Escalade, a status symbol SUV, has been around throughout the entirety of their lifespans, freshmen just aren’t that into it, or any other type of car. 

“This is a big marketing issue. [Millennials] are not an ownership generation. They’re not interested in owning things,” says McBride. “They’re interested in having experiences and using things. They’re into sharing things. One of the things that studies are showing is that millennials will save to go on a trip. Once upon a time you saved to buy a used Pontiac or a used Oldsmobile. They’re not saving for that,” he says, noting that many millennials live in urban areas where a car isn’t necessary. 

Another request came from Neiman Marcus. Former CEO and chairman of the board, , then in his 90s, reached out to Nief and McBride personally. 

“He indicated that he saw great value in the list for the training program for new sales personnel in his stores. He wanted permission to distribute the list to all his employees to remind them that if they wanted to reach a new generation of consumers, they needed to be cognizant of change,” Nief says. 

Since then, they’ve learned it’s not only MTV and Neiman Marcus that care about young adults. The trio has kept an active calendar of speaking engagements, delivering presentations about the Mindset List to audiences that range from the NCAA to NASA to hedge fund managers.

Rise of the Millennials

The freshmen Nief and McBride first reported on in 1998 fell into the tail end of Generation X and are now approaching 40. Since then, the Mindset List charted wave after wave of the subsequent generation: millennials.   

The quest to understand millennials has become a cause célèbre for marketers for close to a decade, and a quick look at the numbers reveals why. “There are about 70 million millennials right now, and if each one of them over their lifetimes spends a million dollars commercially, that’s $70 trillion. That’s a lot of money,” McBride says.

It’s not just the size of the millennial generation that has marketers scrambling. The changing values and notions of success are shaking up traditional marketing models. “If you go back to the generation that, before millennials, was the most troublesome and generationally solid, that would have been the boomers,” says McBride, who is a boomer himself. “How did I interact with commercial life? I sat on the couch and waited for a TV commercial to hit me. … In terms of marketing, we were dogs. They came to us said, ‘Here, Fido. Bone!’ But these millennials, they’re cats. They come to you on the internet.”

“When they’re ready,” adds Nief. 

While millennials are pickier about responding to brands, or at least the products they are attached to, the generation is far more engrossed in branding relationships than any who have come before.

“Millennials live in a world of brands. Instagram, BuzzFeed, Facebook, Twitter,” says McBride. “I don’t think young people lived on General Motors. I don’t think young people lived on Sears. They bought things from General Motors, they bought things from Sears, but General Motors and Sears were, relative to today, ancillary to their daily lifestyles. This is not true of the big high-tech companies and websites. … It’s the difference between buying a product and living on a product.”

The immersion is creating both heightened expectations and apathy from millennial consumers. “Many people understand that millennials really like authenticity. They don’t like phonies. But trying to figure out what is authentic is very hard,” he says. 

Things Fall Apart

As tempting as it is to paint all upcoming generations—millennials, especially—in large blocs with broad brush strokes, that doesn’t mesh with what demographers are seeing. In some ways, the bonds of generational status and worldview transcend the most historically significant dividers, such as language, ethnicity and class. Once in a while, this looming uniformity will pop up in the Mindset List. In 2010, the list noted that few freshmen knew how to write in cursive, which elicited media requests from around the globe

“One afternoon I did back-to-back interviews with Cape Town and Hong Kong,” Nief says. “They thought the disappearance of the ability to write in cursive was a local development there, and they were surprised to find out this is true in Beloit, Wisconsin, as well as in China and South Africa.”

But in many ways, millennials aren’t only different from preceding generations; they are estranged from one another, too. This year’s list notes that for every year the class of 2020 has been alive, more than a million Hispanics have been added to the U.S. population. The same navel-gazing that’s going on at the national level about America’s evolving cultural heritage and shared points of identity is playing out every year in Beloit as the list is assembled. 

“There’s an extent to which the Mindset List, in the name of trying to have a wide outreach, might be a little too general and a little too ethnically vanilla, if you will. That’s certainly one limitation,” says McBride.

An indirect acknowledgment of the distance between the list and many readers’ realities shows up in the form of Mindset List variations. In the past, the authors have helped put together specific Mindset Lists for African-Americans, Mumbaikars, New Zealanders and Jamaicans. These culturally curated versions, reminiscent of city- or college campus-based editions of Monopoly, suggest the greatest touch points in many populations exist outside the predominant culture.

“If you’re going to market to this particular demographic cohort, you might have to learn stuff that is very unique to them, and make references that are quite unique to them. There are probably a lot of parallel cultures around this country. For all of the internet connections we have, we are, in many ways, in these different cultural and demographic channels,” McBride says. “This is a nation that now lacks th at kind of central cultural authority. Everything is up for grabs in terms of multiculturalism, diversity, identity politics and so forth and so on. …  I don’t think we should be surprised that e pluribus unum doesn’t work the way it used to.”

Another radical departure in common cultural focal points comes from the loss of shared experience of media or entertainment. Nief, McBride and Westerberg have identified this year’s freshmen as the first class of students to grow up without appointment infotainment—the need to be in front of a screen at a specific time in order to watch a specific program. As they write in their guide for the class of 2020 list, “Thus millennials may be the first generation that does not have to show up on time.”

Haters Gonna Hate

So much stock has been placed in the list over the years (and its seemingly random collection of vaguely relevant minutiae) that it’s generated its share of pushback from detractors. Satirical news site The Onion has created for years, which the team wears, without irony, as a badge of honor.

A more scathing critique of the list emerged via WordPress, on the website . The central argument of the authors, two anonymous writers claiming to be college professors, is summed up under a tab called . “In fact, the List is a poorly written compendium of trivia, stereotypes and lazy generalizations, insulting to both students and their professors, and based on nothing more than the uninformed speculation of its authors. It inspires lazy, inaccurate journalism and is an embarrassment to academia,” the authors write.

Attempts to contact the authors of the site for this story were met with requests for anonymity, which were not granted.

Nief, McBride and Westerberg respond to this line of thinking by saying the list was never intended to be anything beyond a conversation starter. The significance of societal change and the impact of lost touch points was something they were pointing out, not divining grand meaning from.

“Everyone is trying to figure out or orient themselves around the list, and given the breadth of speaking engagements and interest groups, anyone who is conscious of these generational shifts has a take on the lists, whether for good or for ill. But that’s the evolution: understanding this starting point and how it’s morphed over time,” says Mindset List newcomer Westerberg. “People are going to react to it differently, and one of the things that I enjoy watching is when someone says, ‘I really like this item,’ and someone says, ‘Why? That one seems stupid to me.’ Then what we hope happens is happening because they’ve taken the bait.”

How will the tectonic cultural shifts and accelerating fragmentation of American culture affect brands’ ability to target and connect with the next generation of consumers? By their own admission, the authors of the Mindset List don’t know. They’re just asking questions. It’s up to marketers to answer them. At least with the Mindset List, they will have a map.

The post The Mindset List is Taking Marketers Inside the Minds of Future Generations appeared first on ÂÜŔňÉçšŮÍř.

The technology likely to have the greatest impact in the next few decades has arrived. It is not social media. It is not Big Data. It is not robotics. It is not even artificial intelligence,” says technology futurist Don Tapscott. “You’ll be surprised to learn that [the technology that will have the greatest disruption] is the underlying technology of digital currencies like Bitcoin. It is called the blockchain.

“It is not the most sonorous word in the world,” continues Tapscott in a recent TED Talk. “But I believe this next generation of the internet holds vast promise for every business, for every society and for all of you.”

As a marketer with an eye on innovation, technology and disruption, I’ve learned to pay attention to Tapscott. His books—including Paradigm Shift: The New Promise of Information Technology (1993), Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation (1997) and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006)—have always given me a leg up on disruptive technology trends that will soon confront me as a marketer. Marketers need to be ahead of the next wave of technology, not behind it.

If you are a financial services marketer, you need to know about blockchain technology in the same way marketers from hospitality and transportation companies needed to know about the so-called platform technologies that power Airbnb, Uber and Lyft before they went to market. 

I picked up a copy of Tapscott’s book Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World and read it twice. To be honest, to understand it, I had to read it twice.

Blockchain Revolution is not the easiest tome to comprehend, digest and internalize. It helps to both read his book and go to the web, download one of his TED Talks and do some online research. You’ll learn that Bitcoin is a crypto-currency, but there’s a difference between blockchain technology, the technology that enables Bitcoin, and blockchain. Bitcoin is an application of blockchain technology. There are many other kinds of applications or solutions that can be developed relying on blockchain technology.

You’ll learn that, “A blockchain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of records called blocks secured from tampering and revision. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block.”

You’ll discover that in the future, this technology could enable individuals to securely conduct financial transactions without costly intermediaries such as banks or securities exchanges. If you’re trying to send money to a developing nation, you won’t need Western Union or an intermediary that takes a big commission.

—earning royalties that they, not music companies, create. It might enable the creation of complex contracts that can be relied upon and cannot be contravened.

Or, if you’re concerned about the provenance of raw materials—like avoiding blood diamonds from conflict zones in Africa or tainted wallboard from a poor producer in Asia—this technology could pave the way to authentication.

The wildest thing you’ll learn from Tapscott’s book is that blockchain technology : Uber, Lyft and Airbnb. Right now, the backers of those companies earn fortunes, says Tapscott, but they are ultimately centralized databases and intermediaries, not truly distributed, democratic enablers.

In time, Tapscott believes individual riders of taxis or renters of rooms could trade peer-to-peer using secure blockchain technology. Customers could avoid paying the aggregator, agent or intermediary their percentage because the technology will promote trust between individuals. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could hail an Uber electronically and the fare was lower and all the fees went to the driver? Tapscott believes this is coming.

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If you think these ideas are outlandish, do some research on Linus Torvalds, the Finnish software engineer who decided to upend the Microsoft Windows operating system by inventing Linux and creating a movement toward open-source solutions. What Tapscott predicts has happened before.

Blockchain technology is complex and hard to fathom. In Blockchain Revolution, Tapscott explains the core ideas of blockchain were “defined by a ,” following the financial crisis of 2008. Nakamoto (or a group of writers using that moniker) laid down the protocols for blockchain technology but have not been heard from since.

You’ll read about how Nakamoto’s principles inspired an ecosystem of geeks to experiment and create new technology that just might alter our future society. You’ll discover the power of a globally shared ledger of data that can be accessed anywhere, at any time and never be erased. Once a transaction is entered in a blockchain, it can never be altered. 

Tapscott describes how blockchain technology might eliminate, where fraudsters try to spend their money more than once online. Tapscott suggests blockchain technology might even reduce cybercrime and lower cyber risk.

I interviewed Tapscott and asked him why blockchain technology might be important to marketers. He says, “This second generation of the internet is going to be a big deal for every function within the corporation. We’ve had the “internet of information” for a few decades and now we’re getting the “internet of value.”

“Blockchain creates a whole new set of opportunities and challenges for marketing executives,” he writes. “Blockchain will change the structure of our firms. It will alter the cost of transacting and doing business. And blockchain will lower the cost of establishing trust outside the boundaries of a firm. Trust between buyer and seller is the sine qua non—the indispensable and essential ingredient—of marketing in the digital age.”

In the past we’ve needed intermediary institutions such as banks, insurance agents, brokers, stock exchanges and title companies to assure trust. “We will have a new global technology platform where trust is achieved not by powerful institutions but by cryptography, collaboration and clever code,” he says. “And the implications are pretty staggering for every marketing executive.” 

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This is the classic value trap—provide more benefits to extract higher prices. Another approach—cost-plus pricing—relies on providing customers with justifications for price increases; justifications such as increased labor costs, inflation and higher raw-material costs.

Price increases, done incorrectly, often result in customer dissatisfaction and brand switching. It’s no wonder raising prices is a stressful, contentious and unpleasant process. When harried, some firms avoid raising prices by taking “self-harming” measures, such as reducing head count, lowering product quality and reducing services.

Such drastic actions may not always be necessary. Research on consumer reaction to pricing has identified several factors that can help firms to decrease customer price sensitivity. Reducing price sensitivity can enable firms to raise prices without negative side effects.

Four Levers for Raising Prices

1. Time your increases wisely.

Several studies have examined customer price sensitivity relative to economic cycles. The main result of a major study in the U.K. was that long-term price sensitivity of customers tends to decrease during economic expansions. Customers are more price-sensitive during economic contractions. These results have also been documented in a meta-analysis, where researchers summarized results of 81 different studies. While this may seem intuitive, firms often fail to take advantage of economic cycles to manage their pricing strategy. Firms may be more prone to give price cuts during recessionary periods to retain or gain customers, they should also recognize decreased long-term price sensitivity during expansion periods.

Especially in cyclical industries, such as oil and gas, firms should implement price increases during economic expansions. During these times, firms may want to tilt their focus toward managing customer value through non-price mechanisms. Lowering prices to retain or gain share may only train customers to become more price-sensitive. The costs and benefits of such a strategy should be carefully evaluated. 

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2. Focus on customer satisfaction.

​In a classic study based on the  (ASCI), the research team examined five years of data from several firms to determine the association between overall customer satisfaction and customers’ willingness to tolerate a price increase. Results showed that an increase in overall customer satisfaction decreased price sensitivity: “A 1% increase in customer satisfaction should be associated with a 0.60% decrease in price sensitivity.” Interestingly, the study also found an effect of competitiveness, as measured by industry concentration. It found highly satisfied customers of companies operating in highly competitive markets are less likely to tolerate a price increase. Identify customers who are highly satisfied, because they should be relatively more receptive to a price increase. If you decide to increase prices, do it in a way that analyzes and accounts for potential competitor responses. If you are in a market with many competitors, proceed with caution. 

3. Build brand equity through advertising.

We all understand the difference between advertising and promotion. Advertising is communication designed to build unique, positive and strong associations with a brand in the minds of your customers. Promotions—discounts and giveaways—stimulate purchase behavior.

A long-term study of grocery store buyers showed that advertising helped build brand equity, customer loyalty and repeat brand purchases. In contrast, promotions prodded customers to become progressively more price-sensitive, harming long-term profitability. This is also consistent with another result: Price sensitivity for generic brands is typically higher than national brands, presumably because the latter have higher brand equity than the former.

Manage pricing strategy in conjunction with your advertising and promotion strategy. In many firms, especially B-to-B firms, pricing may be determined by the sales function while advertising is run by the communications group. Close cooperation between the two groups can be beneficial. 

4. Tap into customers’ local identity.

A forthcoming paper in the showed that consumers with a stronger local identity are willing to pay more for products because of a sacrifice mindset. Once activated, a sacrifice mindset leads to lower price sensitivity, regardless of the origin of the products under consideration. As an example, management at a grocery store communicated with half its customers to activate their local identity. Then it raised prices for organic eggs, rice and milk. Results from this field experiment on actual purchase behavior showed that purchase quantities were less sensitive to price increases for the local identity group than for the global identity group. 

Firms can use simple communication materials to prime a local identity among their customer base to decrease their price sensitivity. Global companies can execute these strategies without resorting to the costly approach of localizing production or positioning the company as having local roots.

Raising prices can be difficult. By linking price increases only to increased product performance, more features and higher value, firms may set themselves up for a vicious spiral of higher costs and higher prices. This can lead to feature fatigue, which can confuse and irritate customers. Raising costs can also erode long-term competitiveness.

Moreover, such an approach takes a very mechanistic and cognitive view of the customer. By expanding and linking their pricing tool kit to brand equity, customer satisfaction, customer identity and market factors, firms can view customers as complete human beings. These factors, when integrated into your pricing strategy, can build a longer-term approach to managing and mastering price increases. 

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A report from American Express and Dun & Bradstreet titled “” found the growth in the number of middle market legal services companies increased 284% between 2011 and 2016. Middle market legal firms have also led in employment (+471%) and revenue (+432%). The report suggests that the majority of middle market enterprises are found in manufacturing (18%), wholesale trade (17%) and business services (11%). These three sectors also include several industry subcategories that are generating a particularly large amount of growth.

According to the report, younger middle market firms are more likely than those that have been in business for 50 years or more to be in business services; however, these older firms make up 25% of middle market legal services companies, compared to 2% of firms that have been in business for less than 10 years.

The Catalysts of Growth

The report is the sixth by American Express and D&B, and the second to focus on the time period after companies had a few years to digest the post-recession economy. Nalanda Matia, lead economist of econometrics solutions at Dun & Bradstreet, suggests the regulatory climate of this period may be one of the reasons legal firms have seen such growth.

Source: Middle Market Power Index: A Detailed Look at Top Industries

She says that many companies, particularly banks and lenders, are still adjusting to new regulatory expectations post-recession. The result has been a greater need for legal services. “There are so many regulations just in the financial sector,” Matia says.

She also suggests the post-recession upward trend in mergers and acquisitions has boosted the need for legal advice for a variety of companies.

While Matia points to the regulatory climate and M&A in the past five years as the reason for middle market legal services growth, Jay Jessup, CEO of , a public relations and legal talent marketing agency, offers two other possibilities.

Jessup says his clients’ compliance practices and regulatory-related billings have shown only moderate growth during the 2011-2016 period, and that increase is in response to growing companies rather than more regulations.

Instead, he suggests the growth in middle market legal firms in terms of number, revenue and employment can be traced to post-recession companies that have had to find new efficiencies and be smarter about their costs, along with an increased pace of U.S. business, particularly entrepreneurial companies.

To his first point, Jessup says legal services that post-recession companies consume and pay for have been a visible piece of their efforts to be more efficient.

“Legal work that has historically been handed to the mega firms—for reasons no longer relevant—has instead been assigned to the most efficient legal service providers, in many cases the middle market law firms,” he says.

In time, Tapscott believes individual riders of taxis or renters of rooms could trade peer-to-peer using secure blockchain technology. Customers could avoid paying the aggregator, agent or intermediary their percentage because the technology will promote trust between individuals. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could hail an Uber electronically and the fare was lower and all the fees went to the driver? Tapscott believes this is coming.

Jessup explains that middle market legal firms don’t have the bloat that comes with mega-firms, such as legions of high-billing associates and enormous overhead. He says middle market firms’ boutique-style practice groups are leaner and, thus, often more agile than their big-firm counterparts.

“Midsize law firm leaders spotted and marketed to the need for efficiency and cost-savings while the big firms were still busy trying to survive in their old models in many cases,” he says.

To Jessup’s second point, he suggests anyone can look to increased construction and new technologies to see the growing pace of business in the U.S. The executives of these economy-drivers, he says, do not need the brand value of the mega law firms, but instead require the cost-effective work done by great lawyers.

“Midsize law firms, either regional or sector-specific or both, fit the bill,” Jessup says. “And the entrepreneurial company’s growth drives the revenue and employment numbers you see in the report. Growing companies consume more and broader legal services.

“If you track the economic recovery, following the initial Armageddon, you’ll see the midsize law firm growth follow very closely.”

The Age of Growing Middle Market Legal Firms

Matia says the regulatory climate also may be cause for legal firms that are older—those in business for 50 years or longer—to make up a greater portion of a sector. The companies in need of legal advice in relation to regulatory issues are turning toward these older legal firms.

“It’s because they have more experience than the smaller ones,” Matia says. “I think even if we analyzed the smaller legal businesses, I would suspect that they are also having a little less or a similar kind of growth because of the regulatory scene in the U.S. right now.”

Source: Middle Market Power Index: A Detailed Look at Top Industries

Matia says middle market legal firms have been in the market for a while, and many of them have familiarized themselves with regulations and rules that came prior to 2008.

“That’s why they are so much better-equipped than smaller businesses to cater to the needs of the financial institutions,” she suggests.

Although Jessup disagrees with the regulatory climate being a key driver in middle market legal services growth, he does agree that legacy firms have a big advantage in their markets.

“When big consumers of legal services make their selections, many of the factors they previously used to justify using mega firms still come into play,” he says. “Firm longevity of 50 years justifies the move from a large law firm to a regional or sector-specific firm.”

In the time line of the most recent Middle Market Power Index, Jessup says there has been a lot of M&A activity among mid-sized law firms. He says older firms are most often the players in this landscape, and he says he wonders if the report’s numbers are a bit skewed by the M&A activity. In other words, if a law firm nabs 50 new lawyers from another firm and it shows powerful growth, particularly as they come with books of business, does this distort the growth findings of the report?

“At least on our client roster, with substantial representation from newer firms, we have seen some high trajectory and, in some cases, explosive growth during this time line,” he says.

Jessup says small to midsize entrepreneurial firms are good at scaling. Younger firms tend to be more entrepreneurial and more inclined to use creativity in growth strategies, he says.

Jessup provided a few marketing tips for middle market legal firms:

• Showcase some personalities: “Americans hire a person or small group of people, not a law firm,” Jessup says. “The firm and its reputation get you on the short list, but it’s a single lawyer, two at the most, who are going to win the business.” He recommends branding and promoting individual practice leaders. Turning 10 such professionals into national thought leaders may mean losing one or two, but the others will feel respected and trusted, he says.
• Embrace content marketing: Done right, that is. Jessup says content marketing can help bolster the thought leaders’ status and make the firm’s practice the logical go-to provider.
• Brand individual practices nationally, rather than regionally: Jessup explains that middle market law firms are often regionally based, but it’s actually easier to build a national brand, especially if the company is branding the practice group, rather than the firm.

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