How To
Millennials revolutionizing trends – How Social Media turned consumers into producers
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat… It’s crystal clear: social media is evolving on a scale that just a few years ago would have been unimaginable. Its influence seems to be spreading to all aspects of our lives, with an unstoppable force that is reshaping everything: from the way we interpret time and space to the way we form eating habits and define fun.
From Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to Snapchat, social media platforms have spread all over the world and established high value in the minds of their users. And when we say “users” – we mean Millennials, of course. As the biggest social media consumers – as well as the biggest trendsetters (especially in the nutrition and wellness sector), they have evolved from being mere users and moved to a more active role of small scale producers. And the success rate surrounding this phenomenon only shows how skilled they truly are in spotting and catching new waves of opportunity.
But when did this transformation happen, and more importantly, how?
What seems to lie beneath this newfound success of small size, sometimes even individual start-ups belonging in the health and wellness category is the shift of trust from big brands towards small scale consumers-turned-producers. Today it seems that the smaller and less known the producer, the faster the hype spreads around their product. This shift is most easily recognized in all things “artisan” or “craft”: artisan bread, artisan coffee, artisan pasta, craft beer, craft candy…the list goes on.
The role social media plays in this phenomenon is the one of information providing. These days you can find just about anything and everything, as long as you are well equipped with skills in the social media department. The access to information we have today has not only led to a decrease of popularity of many big brands that literally stood on top of the food chain for a very long time, but has also contributed to the rise of the small scale local producers. These days, “I’ll believe it when I see it” seems to be running the show, and those who recognized it are now reaping the benefits.
Whether it’s Kombucha in Sweden or green juices in the US, craft beer in Germany or artisan coffee in London, when it comes to newly established producers, smaller is definitely bigger (and pricier). And who is the wheel that made the first turn? Once again the arrow of success points right back to the Millennials. Being the consumer who goes beyond “liking” the product, they have developed skills that transformed them from being passive consumers into becoming active producers, turning into the vessel of change in the food world as we know it. And their secret weapon? Knowing how to use social media to learn, develop and grow their passion product and turn it into the next best thing nutrition has coming.
Original article was published in Healthy Marketing Team Blog.
