There’s a huge difference between a 13-year-old and a 30-year-old, but there is one thing that brings them together: sharing the role of bookends to the demographic group known as the Millennials. 

Now two years into its run with Madonna's Material Girl collection, repped by her blogging daughter Lourdes and Mick Jagger's model daughter Georgia May, Macy’s knows that this big swath of humanity is where the money is, and it's working hard to get more of them in the store. That's why the retailer is launching 13 new brands and expanding 10 other existing labels that it believes will resonate with millennials, as AP reports.

Molly Langenstein, group merchandise manager for Millennials for Macy's, told WWD that "We're serious about this and we're aggressively going after this consumer. This is not a test."

This youthful focus has been going on since March when the retailer’s merchandise team was restructured to pay or more attention to that age group. Ch-ch-changes are expected to continue over the next three years that include integrating tablets and other user-friendly tech into the shopping experience as well putting different displays on the shopping floor more often.Continue reading...

Growth in auto sales may be slowing in China from the breakneck pace of a year or two ago, but it's still the most important long-term car market in the world. That's a main reason Chinese consumers are now seeing a new TV and print campaign for the updated Beetle.

China is Volkswagen's largest sales region — recently passing the US to become its top region for its luxury Porsche and Bentley brands — and has been a driver for the automaker's global sales volume and profit. Volkswagen sold 2.3 million vehicles in China alone in 2011, up 17 percent from 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company even reshuffled top management last summer in part to make sure it wasn't losing any traction in China.Continue reading...

Campbell Soup’s new line of Go Soup ready-to-eat meals targets the ethnically diverse, sophisticated tastes of the millennial generation, for whom the staid red and white chicken noodle soup of their parents holds no charm.

The new product line hits stores next month. Choices come in stylish fuchsia-and-white pouches retailing for $2.99 each, featuring fare that ranges from chorizo and pulled chicken with black beans to golden lentils with madras curry.

Positioned as gourmet, with fresh ingredients and ready to eat in minutes, this upscale move for the brand, the first in twenty years, is largely defensive. Campbell’s share of the domestic soup market dropped from 52.6 percent in 2006 to 49 percent in 2010.

CEO Denise Morrison’s challenge is to preserve the best qualities of the 140-year-old brand while reaching a new audience. "Campbell's research shows that young consumers ages 18 to 29 are 15 percent less likely than the average consumer, and far less likely than middle-aged boomers, to buy soup. They eat out twice as often as their grandparents, and when they cook, they value easy preparation and fresher, more exotic ingredients over canned staples." Continue reading...

Many car brands may be scrambling and scratching their heads to figure out how to appeal to the elusive and automotively nonchalant Millennial generation, but at least two brands seem to be closer than some of the others.

Kia is bringing back the popular hamster characters for its Soul minicar on the basis of how well the campaign has played with Generation Y. And Chevrolet already is seeing an encouraging interest by twenty-something consumers in its new little Spark model, which is just hitting showrooms at prices as low as below $13,000.Continue reading...

Sharpie loves fan input, evidenced by last year’s takeover of YouTube’s home page with user-generated art in an interactive mosaic ad that generated more than 62 million impressions in one day.

This year, Sharpie is inviting fans to create artwork for a music video for indie-pop band, California Wives, making their debut at the MTV Video Music Awards in September, in a campaign from Draftfcb Chicago.

Now through August 6th, submissions are open via the brand’s Facebook page and website. “What we’re really about is putting fans at the center of our story,” Ryan Rouse, global director of marketing for Sharpie, tells Marketing Daily. “It’s not about ambushing an audience with an ad; it’s about taking the passion within our community and amplifying that.” Continue reading...

The Millennial generation is hugely important to the future of brands and culture. And many of the characteristics of this group — representing about 75 million people just in the U.S., ranging from 18 to 32 years old — have emerged pretty clearly.

"Generation Y" is fascinated by digital technology, but not so much by cars; it's by far the "greenest" age cohort in the United States; they value collaboration and informality above rugged individualism and corporate conformity; and — to marketers' chagrin — they're not exactly flush with cash, suffering more than any other generation from the Great Recession and the not-so-hot economic recovery following it.

That's why Newsweek has come up with a new handle for the generation that, the magazine argues, "have been screwed by their parents' fiscal profligacy and economic mismanagement." Hence the moniker, "Generation Screwed." And the best way to appeal to them? Humor. And money.Continue reading...

Automakers have been panicking throughout the recession that Gen Y is abandoning the American dream of car ownership (forget home ownership). The answer: create buzz and a cool factor by targeting the creative class. The above photo doesn't look like a custom publishing project by an automaker, and that's the whole point.

Mercedes-Benz is positioning The Avant/Garde Diaries as a digital project, curating interviews, video and photos promoting its events appealing to not-always-affluent but certainly influential creatives in key cities. It all kicked off with the brand's Transmission 1 event in Berlin, continued with Movement Copenhagen then the recent Transmission LA - AV hybrid arts/music/digital happening in Los Angeles curated by the Beastie Boys' Mike D.

Last week saw the opening of A/D's editorial office, at the corner of Broome and Mott Streets in New York's Nolita neighborhood, whith hipster fave photographer Cobrasnake on hand to photograph the 700 guests who attended.Continue reading...

Chevy's new TV ad for its Sonic subcompact, "Night Swimming," is one of the industry's best spots so far this year because it effectively targets the Millennial generation whose interest is so crucial to the success of any car in that segment.

There are a few reasons why, including how the commercial highlights the myChevrolet app after the driver has locked his keys in the car. “The all-new Chevrolet Sonic, with the myChevrolet app,” intones Tim Allen in the voice-over, as the spot's happy swimmers drive away. “From ‘close call,’ to ‘best night ever.’”

Two other big reasons are the director, Jason Reitman, and the soundtrack. It's not unusual for automotive OEMs to snag big-name directors for their commercials anymore. For example, Paul Feig (The Bridesmaids) and Rob Cohen (The Simpsons) helped Ford pull off its highly successful Focus Doug online video campaign last year.

Reitman, of Juno and Up in the Air fame, was attracted to the idea of helming the "Night Swimming" spot in part because of the creative possibilities, Matt Scarlett, Sonic advertising manager, told brandchannel.Continue reading...