As a b-boomer I have alot to learn much about Millennials, their insights and buying power. Millennials are the generation born between 1981 and 2000 (although years vary over different resources). They are engaged online more than any generation and have changed our ways of messaging. They are driving collaborative consumption in that they want involvement in new products, but not always from the ground up; they’ll leave it to someone else to design as long as their input is considered.

Two thirds of Millennials firmly believe they will become famous. They thrive in hives, building communities around friends who think and live within similarities. They’re adept at projecting marketing messages and can detect bullshit. They possess nearly a trillion dollars in spending power.

Millennials also like firsts. They want to be firsts at anything, they want to see firsts in online content. Chevy took that cue to develop their campaign, which shows their cars skydiving, bungee jumping, doing other stunts. The online campaign was up for five months, with cars selling out. Enjoy the ride.

Chevy teamed up with MTV/Scratch to re-imagine the automotive experience from concepts to ownership and recently put young buyers in charge of product planning through two concept coupes. Taking a cue from the software industry, the Chevrolet concepts serve as prototypes to start a discussion, to iterate and co-create the future of transportation. In order to do so, they crowdsourced students from UCLA, Pepperdyne and high schools to find out what they want in a car. The findings shows that youth want total connectivity in an automobile, low cost, high performance, 2-door with 4 seats. These concept cars are two interpretations of the results. Which would be yours?

The sessions targeted to youth over the last four days really illustrate how messaging has changed and will continue to evolve in order to engage and mesmerize this highly intelligent, independent segment of the market who know what they want.  These peeps are smart and the challenge to provide them with unmatched user experiences lies ahead.