Quick summary
Millennials’ favourite brands when surveyed are:  #1 Apple, #2 Nike, #3 Samsung, #4 Target, #5 Amazon, # 6 Sony, #7 Wal-Mart, #8 Microsoft … (etc).  In other words, big/popular brands.  Like the ones we all buy.

Introduction
We all keep hearing about how different Millennials are to other generations.  And that they’re a super important segment, because of their large spending power.  Many firms are apparently creating new brands to accommodate them – for example, Air France created Joon.  Apparently, Millennials want ‘more meaning’ from brands, and this is the way to do it.  But if Millennials really are a segment, then they really should have different brand preferences than other people.   What’s the evidence?

Survey
A large survey of US Millennials about their favourite brands was conducted by ad agency Moosylvania, and the results were published recently in Business Insider.   Right at the start of the report, you’re struck by the wide age range of this supposed group:- 17 to 37 years old.  Who in their right mind would stereotype such a diverse group as a market segment?  And that’s just diversity in age.

Results
Anyway, the favourite brands of Millennials were ranked in this report from 100 to 1, with 1 being the most favoured.  Now a common story about Millennials is that they resist or reject older, established brands.  If that were true you would think we would see unfamiliar brands popping up among their favourites.  But we don’t.  These are the top 10 favourite brands among Millennials.

1 Apple
2 Nike
3 Samsung
4 Target
5 Amazon
6 Sony
7 Wal-Mart
8 Microsoft
9 Coca-Cola
10 Google

Leaving aside the fact many of these are technology brands (which always tend to come up high in brand popularity surveys among any population), these are all (big) well-established brands!  There are no brand-new upstarts.

A common theme in the report when trying to explain the brands’ popularity with Millennials is, ‘lots of Millennials buy this brand’. Which is a circular argument, and furthermore misses the point that lots of EVERY demographic buy these brands – that’s why they’re big.

Some other rationalizations are quite amusing in the report.  For example, Van’s is popular in this group “because it [Van’s] went mainstream” and Kraft is hot with Millennials because – wait for it – it got rid of artificial colourings in its macaroni and cheese.

Moral of the story: Millennials most favourite brands are big, established brands. This gives no support to the idea that corporations must create new brands to accommodate Millennials.