AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerMillennials Are Changing Everything

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Millennials Are Changing Everything

The Millennial monsoon is beginning to be in season and those who are not ready will dearly pay the price–just ask a cab driver. 20170608_123141

This generation, like any target audience has unique idiosyncrasies that show up now and again.  All generational bubbles are disruptors, but millennials are moving the cheese of more than technology.

When millennial-targeted products do break the tradition barrier, it is with a sonic boom that shatters all sorts of glass ceilings and boxes. I saw one the other day, a can of wine. Forget the box wine, screw tops or synthetic cork alerts, this is 100% can of rose. Even worse, Whole Foods declared 2016 the year of the can wine. But what this tradition-killing trend says that you need to be on your game and incredibly flexible to survive in this new market.

The sarcastic tone of the advertising around can wine not only is unapologetic, it slaps at the traditionalists. For can wine producer The Drop, it’s website, it says, “The Drop has no time time for tradition.” The Drop website

I’m a wine lover, but I’m not a snob, so I will try the can wine. You should never judge a wine by its cover, although research shows we think expensive wines are better than inexpensive wines if we know the price (in blind tests, we don’t do so well). But I think for this generation of experience over possessions, there is no better experience than opening a bottle of wine a cork screw, decanting it and then pouring it into Riedel stemware and swirling it a bit before tasting.

However, I also know that convenience wins in the marketing world. It will just make the wine cellar look a little strange.  What’s your industry’s wine in a can?

Written by:

Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.

After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.

He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”

Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”

One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.

Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.

Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.