Keeping up with the millennials

At the recently concluded Great Lifestyle Brands conference, hosted in Noida by afaqs!, millennials were on everyone's mind. So much so, that Navin Shenoy's presentation focused entirely on making sense of millennials and their behaviour. Shenoy is the marketing head at MTV and MTV Beats and his job profile needs him to stay closely connected to the pulse of the modern millennial.

His presentation was titled 'Keeping in tune with Young India' and Shenoy began his presentation by pointing out that young Indians are mostly optimistic about the future. These young adults also feel culture and tradition matters to them - they even place importance on it in terms of their identity.

"Despite that, millennials don't want to be seen as regressive," he said, pointing out that they tried to maintain fair and progressive views on social issues. "We noticed that millennials exhibit a certain behaviour - previously, they used to consider posting about relevant social media issues as equivalent to taking action for a certain cause. Today, millennials understand that a social media post is not enough and they try to see what action they can take in real time," Shenoy explained.

He pointed out that Reliance Jio had enabled internet reach in the farthest corners of the country and in return, it enabled millennials everywhere to access the internet. "As a result, there’s no lag between the content that someone in an urban area and rural region consumes. In fact, we're seeing our properties like Roadies and Splitsvilla being viewed at the same rate as OTT shows. it's not just consumption patterns, many millennials in Tier II and III cities are also reconsidering migrating to bigger towns in search of work since there’s a realisation that the quality of life in a city is not necessarily better than the life they already lead," he added.

Shenoy's presentation is based on data from MTV's Youth Marketing Report which is yet to be released, at the time of filing this copy. Watch the full session below.