5 TO BE OR NOT TO BE A MILLENNIAL If you would believe some pundits, journalists, marketers and sociologists, Millennials represent a distinctive and unified tribe, the agents of an unprecedented transformation in the world. Well, I have been as guilty as any of them in bandying about the word “Millennial”. The thing about labels is that we use them because they are easy. We’ve been through Generation X and and now we have Generation Y, otherwise known as Millennials. Next to come are the Centennials. Oh, and to complete the collection, we should perhaps label older people as Generation S. Needless to say, each of these cohorts are different in certain key respects. I guess if one were to be even slightly cynical, that is hardly new or surprising. And various commentators have pointed out how much of the language used by Gen X to derogate Gen Y has in turn been used by Gen S to do the same to Gen X. Labelling generations is useful only if it serves our understanding of each cohort. Millennials grew up amidst a Digital Revolution and have defined their lives differently as digital natives. Gen C, who are hot on their heels, were “born digital”. We’re yet to see the impact they will have on the world. But what does make Millennials very different is that they are the generation which has coincided with the Digital Revolution. They are the first digital natives. Well, not even that really: at the upper end of the age spectrum, their experience might have been denominated by a Sony Walkman (the iteration that played CDs, not cassette tapes) or dial-up internet access. They were in at the primitive beginnings; and it’s the Centennials – born after 2000 – who represent the real natives. In fact, just as it is difficult to pin down Millennials in any useful way as one digital cohort, so it is also challenging to see them as homegrown in other respects. The first