How do you offer products that are going to have multi-generational impact? For example, can you create a day care center that also has a primary care center for baby boomers? Can you help millennials keep up with their extended care families?

Here’s the challenge for marketers today: How do you respond to similar demographic changes in different ways? Millennials and boomers both had to transport their extended families to different events. Boomers had minivans. What will millennials choose?

This is a perfect opportunity for marketers to go opposite and stand out from the crowd. In a future blog, we will share Daniel Burrus’s Law of Opposites to come up with new innovative marketing concepts. The simple answer is that your millennial customers don’t want the same experience as their parents. Marketing is not a static event, but constantly evolving, thanks to hard trends. Are you prepared to create a different millennial customer experience while solving a similar challenge?

Today, mobile devices are being used to monitor vital health conditions of patients with a simple patch that provides the caregiver with instant medical information on anyone in the family.  Cost on these new technologies continues to decrease. In the future, healthcare organizations may provide them for their patients. Millennials expect to leverage technology to provide the people they care for with better, less costly options for their healthcare.

As costs continue to decline for Internet of Things technologies, you one day might see them allow you to set your home up with remote healthcare centers that can monitor the activities of your children, parents, and even grandparents. All from you watch or mobile device.

Now think about retail.  Today, signage is designed for customers. As millennials continue to age, they look to their mobile devices help them find the things they need faster.  Can you plug in your shopping list and have your device direct you through the store, helping you find the best prices and making suggestions based on your personal preferences?

For the less shopping friendly, you can set up a delivery or pickup right from your mobile device. Mini-distribution centers stock based on demographics and the buying habits of the people in your neighborhood.

Imagine technology that remembers who you are, what you bought, and makes suggestions on what else you might need to find the clothes you need for your son’s school uniform. Pencils, paper, and iPads are just the beginning. Now, what if your parents go shopping to help you out. You just clone your shopping list and they go to store and are directed to the items you buy for the family. Even the gluten free pasta for your tween.

The store display signs are scalable and customizable. They can be read on mobile devices and put in context of the customer’s needs. Marketing goes from one to many to one to one with almost no additional cost.

When your parents or children pick up a product and the sign reads the demographics of the person looking at the product.  It can ask simple questions to help the person through a buying decision.  Then stores that information for the next time the person goes shopping. Millennials love personalized experiences.

Imagine sending your children to stores with a preapproved list of items that they can and cannot buy. At some point, your store may send out an autonomous car to pick up your children and take them shopping. If there is conflict, the mobile device calls you and asks through voice recognition for you to approve a purchase and payment.

We know that millennials are going to have more demands on their time. They still expect, or maybe even demand, an excellent customer experience. They are a demanding group of digital consumers. Are you preparing for the next big purchasing wave with the products and services you create for the aging millennial market?

I hope I got you start thinking about the possibilities. Your future is only limited by your own creativity and innovation. I’ll share some ideas on how you can develop these capabilities in your people.

See you next week.