The
Battle For Coca-Cola
Rages On.
Ain't
Nothing Like
The Real Thing, Maybe.
I
Don't Mean To Say
I Told You So, But...
Are
Consumers Smarter
Then We Are?.
The
Four Great Myths
Of Global Branding.
Mr
Bevis Butts Heads
At Mitsubishi
The
Best Laid Plans
Of Mice And Men.
Dare
to Be Great:
The Mad Genius of "The Matrix""
Mitsubishi's
New Marketing Boss
Out Of The Frying Pan.
Concept Is Stronger Than Fact.
Value
Perception In A World
Gone Mad With "Cool"
The
Future of Advertising
The Brand
The
Future of Advertising
The Targets
The
Future of Advertising
The Grid
The
Future of Advertising
The Swarm
Technology
Making The Message
Meaningful
The Only Business That Matters Is The One You're In.
What
Ever Happened To The
Big Idea?
The Post-Advertising Era Is Here
Confessions Of A" Liar For Hire"
Good, Bad and Ugly At the Moment of Truth
A Post-Advertising "Big Idea".
The Value Of A Paying Pustomer.
Emergence Of the "Empire of One".
All customers Are Created Equal
Playing God An Other Atrocities
the
City That Spawned
The Age Of Advertising..
Fear And Self Loathing In Advertising.
The Greatest Success Metric Is Sales.
Foot In (Word Of) Mouth Disease
In the Begining, There Was The End.
The Rise And Fall
Of The Creative Class
What's Love Got To Do With It?
Champagne Brand
Beer Marketing Budget
Amtrak: Third World Nation On Wheels.
New Music Means
New Marketing.
Automotive Advertising Hits A Dead End.
Has Advertising LostControl Of The
Creative Process?
If AdvertisingIs Meaningless,
What Comes Next?
|
Gen Y Bother? "Don't know much about his-tor-y, |
|
|
|
For those of us who have to sell shit for a living, this poses a problem. How do you get a message in to somebody who has decided to tune everything that doesn't matter specifically to them...out? Well for one thing, trying to shout louder doesn't work. In fact, this entire generation has decided that nothing we have to say is worth listening to, no matter what our clients may believe to the contrary. Gen Y never met a suit it didn't ignore, right off the bat. |
|
I think that the email messages in your blog are far more interesting than the stuff you write about. -David B. San Diego Good. Then you won't mind answering them, now that I've forwarded them all to your mailbox. – hw |
|
Looking at absolute birthrates, if Gen-X represents the "baby bust" decline in births in the US after the 1950s boom, then Gen-Y can be described as an "echo boom" of rising births after 1975. At least this is how marketers and advertisers have focused on the differential size of these two audiences. More births. More twins. More fertility drugs. Whatever the generational division, there is agreement that these fools are indeed something new. In fact, many demographers are claiming that Gen Y is actually TWO generations. According to Strauss and Howe, in their 1991 book Generations and more recently in Millennials Rising. These younger, so-called "Millennials" diverge from older Gen-Y models in several key aspects: Millennials are more likely to consult with their parents on major decisions. So if we can't break through to them, we can certainly target their parents on big-ticket purchases. The input of these "helicopter parents" makes all the dif between Gen-Y(a) versus Gen-Y(b)'s receptivity to marketing messages. Can you say "back door" boys and girls? Supposedly, Millennials show greater interest in family, religion, and community -- at the expense of celebrity role models and their associated brands. In fact, their celebrities are more likely to say "fuck you" to the press, then welcome them with open arms. Edgy brand associations may sometimes fail to appeal to the increasingly conventional younger segment of this generation, which looks for social consensus instead of pushing the limits of taste. In the words of Generations at Work author Claire Raines, "If the Gen-Y concept is about extra edginess, then, yes, it's got to go. Marketing efforts targeted at today's teens and young adults that are based on that picture will be totally misguided." Girlfriend got that right. Under constant pressure by their parents and society to achieve, Millennials find little common ground with the "slacker" archetype of Gen Y(a). Advertising lampooning hard work and celebrating the accidental success of airheads will probably not speak to GenY(b). But when they finish with their cramwork, it's off the grid they go. In contrast to ultra-individualist X-ers, Millennials are group-oriented -- They run in packs. This is why we have seen the rise of text messaging "thumb tribes" that have little or no verbal contact other than their cryptic SMS electronic squibs passed between each other. Millennials appear to be using this rapid-fire communication via wireless and other peer-to-peer media to build their inclusive "smart mobs " from wildly diverse origins. In fact, they input so much culturecrap it's a wonder how they manage to retain any of it. Their icons have a shelf life of a box of condoms on a Friday night in West Hollywood. These are all pretty radical observations, but the fact still remains that these jokers are leaving the real world farther and farther behind for a place in time and space totally fabricated by technology. So when they watch television it's with the sound off and some trance tune blasting in their earphones, while they are deep in an IM conversation with somebody on another continent. Go figure. The other big issue is that these guys are the first generation to consider themselves "active" users of media rather than "passive" viewers of media. This means they pick and choose what messages they want to receive. If they don't choose to receive advertising (which is generally the case) there is nothing we can do about it. Nada. Why bother with the Y(b)s? Because there are so damn many of them. The advertising business model hasn't changed in 50 years. It is still based on the one-to-many paradigm. If more and more of the "many" start to tune out, then what happens to the "one"? It becomes irrelevant, that's what happens. The only thing that is relevant to these puppies is what they hear from their friends. If we can't get to their friends, we can't get to them. Do you speak Emo? We can't get to them unless we gain control of their environment. This is not as easy as it might sound. That's because more and more of them are starting to "live" in their heads, rather then in their homes, schools, malls and cities. When a 16-year-old spends six hours a day on myspace.com...When a noun becomes a verb ("Do you myspace?") the beginning of the end is near. When a multi-player game like "World of Warcraft" becomes the basis by which hundreds of thousands define themselves, something ain't right. That's the conclusion we came to the other night, sitting around the Square Table at the Red Room. Teresa Chang, our very own genius-in-residence, was the most up on the Y's. She told us that the Y's think they are individuals, even though they work hard to be exactly like each other. Chhun from Designory told us about their desire to customize everything they own. One of my partner's former students, Nadine, felt that viral advertising would eclipse everything else when it came to reaching the Y's. Since word-of-mouth rules, she may prove to be right. All in all, I'm figuring that we better get busy and figure this thing out. I mean, we can put all of our clients in Vice magazine, but that would get pretty old pretty fast. Nope. We have to go deeper than that. From where I stand, that's gotta be the first order of business in this here Post Advertising era we keep droning on about. Stay tuned.
|
 |
|
MARKETERS
FROM P&F COMMUNICATIONS ADRANTS BANK
OF AMERICA ESTEE
LAUDER COMPANIES WELCOME
And You. *All
IP addresses confirmed by Urchin WebStats |
|