Becoming the Millenvy of the Publishing Industry

A new advertising medium?

We now have a name for the malady that plagues publishers who fret that they’re not getting their fair share of the young-adult audience: millenvialism.

Symptoms include desperate attempts to “generate content” (“writing articles” is so 20th Century) that appeals to the coveted twenty-something audience.

Seeking to understand this notoriously fickle group, frantic sufferers of millenvialism often try to tap into the Millennial mindset, spouting phrases like “Netflix and chill” without understanding their full meaning.

Victims also have an annoying tendency to hang out on the same social-media sites as their kids. Today’s etiquette hint: If you have a mortgage and use Snapchat, you are officially a troll. (“Better go check your Friendster account, old man!”)

Publishers are obsessed with Millennials because advertisers are obsessed with millennials.

That may seem odd, given that Boomers have all the disposable income, while Millennials spend all their bucks on data plans and paying off student loans. Besides “advertising” is a trigger word for Millennials, who have raised ad avoidance to an art form. No one under 30 is going to see your ad unless it’s embedded into a Poké Ball.

It doesn’t matter. Advertisers still want to target the kids who are cool rather than the old farts who have actual money to spend. They have listened to the marketing consultants pontificating about the need to create “omnichannel brand conversations.” And they figure Millennials are the only people naïve enough to think anyone cares what they post about their favorite toothpaste.

After all, the experts tell us, the aim of advertising in this post-rational age is to leverage two-way transparency with data optimization to create immersive, game-changing experiences.

Stupid me. I thought the purpose of advertising was to sell stuff.


This is the 19th issue of our 31-part Publishing Word of the Day series, which features such game-changing, cloudsources terms as denialsizing and Facebump.