informsly

INNOVATING CRAFT

A friend of a friend toured with Crystal Castles a few years ago, but then moved to Detroit to live in a feral house and start a super arty mobile taxidermy truck. He is literally selling stuffed animals. They’re cute-mazing. And SPOILER ALERT: they’re also filled with weed.

ARTISANAL ASIAN EGG POP-UPS

My friends Clark and Bronwyn know a gay couple who recently transformed the decimated remains of a heavily-radiated Staten Island mental hospital into an Asian-themed artisanal Bloody Mary bar and pickeled egg pop-up. 

It’s called Pyong Yegg. 

It’s open every third Wednesday from 5-10am. The whole crew checked it out last week after the crowdsourced all-night Shia Laboeuf docu-musical in Red Hook. We were hand-harvesting the rubble-grown celery swizzles (it’s a DIY joint) when out of nowhere Clark pretended to shart. And then he sharted for real. And we were all like... laugh emoji face. But IRL.

CARPE-ING THE NOW LESS TRAVELLED

Millennials don’t do generic. They don’t do big box. They don’t do canned, pre-made, synthetic McSperiences.

What they do do is ignore reality, have untenable dreams, get shit-canned on a toxic mix of booze, self-righteousness, and bad decisions.

But —this is important — they don’t do it the old way. They do it with innovative technology, expensive coffee, and vintage bicycles. They do it in bespoke clothing in out-of-the-beaten-path places they saw on a Celebstagram feed.

SPIRIT ANIMALS

Millenials are NOT about status. They are not about titles, actual achievement, or any other old person way to try prove your importance.

Millennials are about mystery, adrenaline, and EXPERIENCE. The bolder and authenticker the better. I’m talking things like free climbing, meditation, and riding a motorcycle across a super authentic country filled with poor people.

GIVING

Millennials are doers. They will not be slowed down by things like negativity, HPV, or legally binding contracts. They will not read some boring thing when they could be living boldly and authentically. Which is why they will always sign the terms of service without reading them.

And here’s the bonus: millennials are also influencers. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers (wrongly and sadly) imagine themselves to be 25 also, so they blindly adopt many key millennial behaviors.

TECHXPERIENCE

In the same way that boomers were born connected to an overinflated sense of importance, and X-ers were born connected to an odd sense of superiority-masked-as-cynicism, milllennials were born connected to technology. 

So if you are going to make market to millennials, you need to put the messages where their eyeballs are: on their phones. They will literally never see anything anywhere else.

AUTHENTIMAGERY

I recently heard an art theorist discussing humans’ primal memory of their first experience of light while exiting the birth canal, which was disgusting because he was old and his ideas were gross and boring.

So we left and went to a barge party where Earl Sweatshirt and Dakota Fanning were spinning hard house and chillwave until 5am.

When the sun came up I was making out with Adrian Grenier’s cousin, who then took us back to Adrian’s industrial loft space in Bed Stuy where his maid (?) served us fresh-baked blackcurrant scones.

GRAFFITI

It’s all about authenticity with millennials. And nothing’s more bold and authentic than the culture of the “streets.” 

Problem: actual poverty ridden streets are super sad. 

STREET COUTURE

Let’s talk about the real reason for the season y’all: shopping, spending, and showing it all off:

Millennials keep it positive. They aspire to disrupt the status quo and achieve outrageous success because they are somehow cosmically special. Which is why even though they are saddled with historic crippling debt from college loans, and despite the fact that they can’t find work, they are practically addicted to buying exorbitantly priced casual wear.

From $78 t-shirts and ball caps to $150 hoodies and $500 sneakers, anything that a cynical, fussbudget Gen-Xer might get for a ten-spot at Target, can be purchased from a condescending hipster for 10-100 times the price in a white-walled boutique that has 10-15 items artfully arranged on one small rack in the middle of the room (or, more likely, on an app that has been modeled to mimic that experience via mobile).

What you don’t get in quality is more than made up for by a cool logo and the fact that someone saw Tyler, The Creator was wearing the same thing in at an afterparty-themed advertorial on Thrillist.

THWARTING CONVENTION

Millennials don’t just think outside the box, they live outside the box. If they knew about the box, they’d smash it instantly with some clever social/digital innovation, BUT THEY DON’T BECAUSE LIKE I SAID ALREADY THEY THINK SO FAR OUTSIDE OF IT THEY DON’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT.

This means instead of doing boring stuff like office work and getting tested for chlamydia, they’re doing bold stuff like motocross and authentic stuff like going to countries where everyone is poor and celebrating the photogenic blight on Instagram.

ADRENALINE

The same old same old won’t do for millennials. They crave bold new experiences that push the limits. Which is why they can’t get over the thrill of the virtually murdering the bejesus out of everyone and everything on their computronic gaming systems.

HARDCORE TASTE-TENSITY

MUSICAL TRUTH

Millennials are not sad cowards. They don’t settle for whatever. They like pushing things to the next level. 

Which is why their music of choice is EDM -- a genre consisting primarily of extended 14-hour synth orgies composed entirely by algorithms from space.

VINTAGE AESTHETICS

Millennials love authenticity. And nothing’s more authentic than some vintage contraption that looks really cool as a decoration in a high-priced boutique or restaurant in a neighborhood that was once a ghetto.

CONNECTIVITY

If you want millennials to live your brand promise, you can’t just speak at them. You have to engage them.

They’re not half-deaf old geezers who fought in some dumb war. They’re open, they’re creative, and they’re always connected. Boldly, authentically, digitally, and intimately connected. 

SPARKLERS

It’s not enough to know what millennials like. You have to know how they talk about what they like.

Case in point: millennials love drug-fueled sex parties in the desert. Not because of the drugs and sex, but because it’s an optimistic, hand-crafted bold and authentic experience. So instead of showing DMT-and-GHB-powered sandhumping, we show this: sparklers.

BOLDNESS & AUTHENTICITY

Above and beyond everything else, millennials love boldness and authenticity. Unlike every other generation, they are uninterested in things that are boring, lame, and cowardly. 

They like bold people, authentic objects, and bold and authentic ideas and action. That’s why they’re always saying things like, “I love how bold and authentic that was,” “My best friends are all really bold and authentic,” and “Let’s go be bold and spontaneous. And also authentic.”