Millennials' prefer face-to-face to social media

By Tom Ryan

SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

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Millennials are indeed highly social but it's not all driven by social media. According to new research from Keller Fay Group, 84 percent of Millennials' word of mouth (WOM) impressions are the result of offline conversations, primarily face-to-face.

The marketing research firm dedicated to WOM cited its TalkTrack findings from May 2013 to April 2014, which found 71 percent of brand WOM among Millennials takes place face-to-face, followed by the phone, 13 percent. Social media rated only three percent and IM/text, six percent, while e-mail accounted for four percent of WOM conversations.

Keller Fay said Millennials account for a whopping 689 million (WOM) impressions about brands per day and those conversations cover a pretty wide span of categories. For example, Millennials are more than 50 percent more likely than the rest of the population to engage in daily conversations about technology and 25 percent more likely to talk about technology brands. Beyond technology, they are a third more likely to talk about categories such as shopping and retail or media and entertainment.

They are also about 10 percent more likely to discuss media or marketing when they talk about brands than other Americans.

When it comes to what sparks their conversations, digital media is far and away number one, with fully 25 percent of Millennials' conversations including references to things they have seen on digital media, vs. 19 percent for non-Millennials. For the rest of the public, digital media and television are about equal when it comes to their role in word of mouth conversations.

Magazines, email marketing and radio all play a smaller role in the conversations of Millennials relative to digital media and TV, but they are still talked about in larger numbers by Millennials than by those who are 35+.

"The Millennials are a digital generation and sharing online is a part of their DNA," concluded Keller Fay Group. "But the key is to understand that is just that — "a part" of their DNA; it does not define who they are. They are not singularly committed to communicating via social media."

Interviewing a nationally representative sample of 36,000 Americans ages 13+ each year, TalkTrack measures over 350,000 conversations about brands annually.