We have all been segmenting Millennials the same way for years, and I have built plenty of those cuts myself. Credit band, income, tenure, life stage.
Our latest consumer research asked Millennials something simpler. Have you achieved what you expected by this point in your life?
58% say yes.
The Ascended ask what your brand stands for.
The Ascending ask who you are.
The 42% who say they are still on the way earn, borrow, and spend exactly like the rest.
The 4 key elements that determine Ascended against Ascending: a home, a partner, a child, and a graduate degree.
64% of Millennial homeowners say they have achieved what they expected. Among renters, 35%. Married or partnered, 62%. Parents, 62%. Post-graduate education, 73%.
Home ownership makes the widest difference. 29 points.
3 of those 4 anchors are bank-financed.
Millennial median wealth grew about $71,000 between 2018 and 2023, and $45,000 of that came from home equity.
You already sell 3 of the 4 things that decide the answer. The mortgage, the family account, and the student loan help a customer arrive. The 4th one shows up on its own schedule.
Give the two groups intuitive labels, and the strategy emerges.
The Ascended have the home, the partner, the child, or the degree. They rank trust in the brand at 46% and better long-term value at 44%. They buy the institution, and a familiar name does most of the work. Chase, Bank of America, Citi, Capital One, etc.
The Ascending are on the way. They rank personal values at 27% and who they are buying from at 23%. They buy the sender, so they want to know who is behind the offer, what that company believes, and whether someone like them already said yes.
The labels matter as they change how we speak with these audiences. A brief written for the Ascended and a brief written for the Ascending give a creative team two clearly different jobs.
Same age. Same income. Same credit band. Two different questions.
Which of our segments is defined by something the customer feels rather than something a bureau reports?
I coded the 100 highest-spending marketing creatives among the 15 largest US card and deposit lenders.
31% speak to trust. 13% speak to value that builds. 9% speak to values and access. 47% lead with a bonus or a rate.
The count of whom I am buying from is 0.
Brand advertising and the acquisition piece do the jobs they always did. We may have missed whom we are speaking with. We still don't fully understand them.
The same creative reaches an Ascended prospect and an Ascending one. Today, we speak with the Ascended to perfection.
The Ascending awaits a creative that actually understands them.
Trust is well presented. Provenance is entirely absent, and it can make the biggest impact.
5% of Millennials name no trigger at all for trying a new brand. Among Gen X and older, 23%. Millennials will change brands more readily than any other age group.
The Ascended respond when the brand promise reaches the acquisition piece intact, so the reason they chose you survives the handoff.
The Ascending respond to pre-selection, plain fee terms, a real customer as proof, and a straight answer on who you are.
4 issuers already speak that way. Ally puts fairness in the brand line. Wells Fargo leads Reflect with pre-selection and interest relief. Discover uses a creator, so the proof comes from a person. Rocket Money opens on control of what a household already pays.
Each found a different door into the same 42%.
One more reason this cohort matters more than its balance sheet suggests. 33% of younger Millennials buy for their children, and 28% help their parents decide. One customer, 3 generations of financial products.
When an Ascending customer asks who we are, what does our next creative tell them?
The Ascended already know your name, and they want to know what you stand for. The Ascending have never met you, and they want to know who you are. Answer both questions, and you win the whole cohort.
