We are five months into VM’s Millennial Project and in just a few weeks we will be hosting our first VM Live event, Power in #s, Maximizing the Potential of the ‘Hashtag Nation.’

I’ve been living and breathing all things Millennial since December and I’ve learned A LOT. I hope I’ve conveyed a good amount of that education to you, because experts on this generation are not overstating things when they say that you cannot treat Millennials the same way you treat the rest of your customers.

If you take away all the data about how this generation is different and what you should be doing to engage them, you are still left with the fact that there are more than 80 million of them in the U.S. alone. Nearly 60 percent of them already use some form of vision correction and that number is only expected to increase as they age. Simultaneously, the customers you are used to working with— Silent, Boomer and Gen X—continue to age out of the population.

A “this is the way we’ve always done things” mentality is a recipe for failure. You can absolutely ignore the articles and experts that say you need to change the way you do things and how you communicate with Millennials and succeed…at failing.

If you haven’t been paying much attention to VM’s Millennial Project or the needs of this generation because they are “young,” “fickle” or you just don’t get them, you are doing your business a disservice. This isn’t something you can figure out later when it impacts your bottom line. By then it will be too late. They are loyal to the brands and retailers that “get them,” and latecomers will not be able to lure them away.

I urge you to visit www.visionmonday.com/MillennialProject to catch up on what you’ve missed and register for one of the two VM Live events, Power in #s, for a crash course in all things Millennial at www.visionmonday.com/HashtagNation.

dcarroll@jobson.com