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Know Thy Enemy: Infiltrating the Thoughts of Gen Y

The collective experience of any generation forms their shared values and perceptions. Every dramatic event molds mentalities, and advancement of technology sets the standards of expectations.

The assignation of such prolific civil right leaders as John F. Kennedy (JFK) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped to form a generation of progressive-thinking hippies. Not content with their parents’ status quo they sought, and often succeeded, to enact social change, through mass protest. The events they witnessed growing up established a rebellious mind-set in the Baby Boomer generation. Had they grown up in a less turbulent time, they may not have been so apt to open and constant rebellion.

When most Baby Boomers were entering their impressionable teenage years it was the 1960s, which was a time of great and swift social windfall. Perceptions on equality and human rights that had been virtually untouched for generations came crashing down in the span of one decade. Women were finally seen as equals, and not as stereotyped into gender roles. African Americans were finally able to realize many of the rights that had been denied to them for so long. In fact, the first African American president, Barack Obama, is a Baby Boomer.

During Gen Y’s more formative years much of the dust had settled on social change. The new revolution was a technological revolution. It admittedly was not as cool as the revolution in the ’60s; instead of bra burnings, we had adolescent boys who spent so much time sedentary and eating junk food in front of computer screens that they ended up needing bras! The hippies sought to change the world and we sought to change the World of Warcraft. Even though our revolution may not have left us with anything as cool as CCR or John Fogerty songs playing over clips of Vietnam, it was ultimately much more dramatic and world changing far beyond what anyone could have ever imagined!

This push toward interconnectivity on a global scale can be exploited for the purposes of marketing and can build brand awareness faster and more efficiently than could be done any other time in history.

1. A Truly Interconnected World

In keeping with our parents’ hippie mind-sets, the world of Gen Y has become surprisingly unified. I have spent years traveling around the world. I have been on all the continents, and the thing I have found most amazing is how unified Gen Y’s world truly is.

As of the writing this book I have been in 30 different countries. Now I do try to learn a little of the local tongue, nothing mindblowing, usually just niceties such as, “How are you?” and “Cheers” and “Thank you.” I learned enough that when I meet someone from that country again I can impress him or her. You may have noticed though that none of the phrases I learned have any chance of getting me the basic necessities I need to stay alive. You can say “Salud” till you are blue in the face in Argentina, but nobody will bring you a steak. How did I manage not to starve to death in a Moroccan gutter during my years overseas? The reason is if you meet anyone who is a Gen Y member anywhere in the world, odds are they can speak English. Think for a second how profound that is. The result is many Gen Ys can communicate with each other. I have had many dinners where more than ten different countries from three continents are represented at the table. My mini-UN dinner parties aside, this serves as an exemplification of the globalized world that was ushered in during Gen Y’s formative years. Now add to the equation the inclination, or rather addiction to social networking, and you can see what an amazingly intertwined global community Gen Y is. This is a very important fact to remember because this push toward interconnectivity on a global scale can be exploited for the purposes of marketing and can build brand awareness faster and more efficiently than could be done any other time in history.

2. Immune to Traditional Marketing

In a way it is almost impossible to reach Gen Y not using new methods. It is because Gen Y grew up in a world where target marketing was the norm, and as a result they have become very desensitized to traditional marketing techniques. Since the 1980s, when Gen Y was born, an individual going about his or her routine is subjected to more than 3,500 advertisements daily. Considering Gen Y has literally been inundated with these marketing techniques since they were toddlers, how many of the ads do you think actually get through to them? They became immune out of necessity.

The way most advertisers approached this problem was to inundate them with even more traditional marketing campaigns. The rationale behind this is rather dizzying, the equivalent of trying to binge eat until you are skinny. Out of desperation most advertisers became even more invasive, like obsessive stalkers, doing whatever it took to garnish even a moment’s worth of attention. We responded by filing a restraining order stating that the stalk-you-tisers had to stay 50 yards away at all times and could only show their ads on TV that we TiVo and then fast-forward through, and radio stations we never listen to. The fundamental flaw for the advertisers is the same mistake most stalkers make, a failure to communicate and actually understand the desires of the one you are pursuing. Metaphorically speaking, we only wanted to talk and get to know Brand X better, but then Brand X started calling 50 times a day to tell us how much it needs us, and freaked us out.

The point is, you must work on being the kind of company Gen Y can love if you really want to reach them. You need to establish what is important to them, and reach them in a way that is appropriate and noninvasive.

3. Doing a Common Thing Uncommonly Well

An example of a company that Gen Y loves is Threadless.com. I recommend checking out the site if you are not already familiar with it. Threadless.com sells t-shirts; not exactly a groundbreaking product, but like Henry John Heinz, the founder of the famous Heinz Ketchup, so eloquently stated, “to do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.”

How does Threadless.com peddle garments to make them so appealing to Gen Y? Well, the primary difference between Threadless.com and other traditional apparel companies is Threadless.com’s customers are also their designers and marketers. Essentially, how it works is graphic designers from all around the world submit their best designs to the site for other users to vote on. The shirts that receive the highest rating get a cash reward and the designs become available for purchase through the website. The designers create the very best designs they can so they can proudly display their work to the Threadless.com community. The shirts are even linked to the designers’ profiles giving added incentive to become one of the top designers.

To get a higher vote count what would you imagine is the first thing any designer might do after submitting a design? They go on to every social networking site they can and try to direct as many people as they possibly can to Threadless.com to vote for their shirt, so they can get a higher rating and possibly win the cash reward. Does Gen Y mind taking up the majority of the duties of designing a new product and then promoting the product for free on Threadless.com? Quite the opposite; they love doing so. They feel they are actually part of the site, and they see themselves as members of an online community; not as its exploited free workers.

User-generated content sites have enjoyed so much success among the Gen Y demographic; it plays on a fundamental principle that both motivates and infatuates most members of Gen Y.

3.1 Gen Y loves to show off talent

Threadless.com illustrates quite well several important points to remember in trying to market to Gen Y. First, Gen Y prides themselves on their creativity, often in the face of having no discernible talent. Seemingly, any members of Gen Y with sufficient upper-body strength to lift a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera fancy themselves as professional photographers.

The statistic increases exponentially if they are overseas at the time. I find myself constantly dodging tourists who feel quite content holding up crowded sidewalks to painstakingly get their “perfect shot.” Then they proudly post massive collections of these uninspired pictures on their Facebook or Flixster profiles. Friends then leave comments, and the whole vicious cycle continues.

The actual merit of some of these creations notwithstanding, it is important to note that Gen Y loves expressing itself, and reviewing and commenting on other people’s creations. This is why user-generated content sites have enjoyed so much success among the Gen Y demographic; it plays on a fundamental principle that both motivates and infatuates most members of Gen Y.

3.2 Gen Y loves a sense of community

Furthermore, Threadless.com gives Gen Y something else they constantly crave: a sense of community. The need to belong to something bigger than themselves is probably a by-product of an overall sense of interconnectivity. Gen Y loves to build themselves up within a community, and have a strong desire to belong. They enjoy seeing comments, often from complete strangers. They proudly display a Facebook page that has well over 1,000 friends and yet they might not be able to get four people to come over to their house for a game of Monopoly.

In this way, it is a real quantity over quality complex. Gen Y would rather have their profile seen by ten virtual strangers than two people they have been friends with since grade school. So any site like Threadless.com that gives them the chance to reach out and connect with more and more people, especially people with similar interests, is quickly embraced by Gen Y.

It is important to note that there must be a degree of similar interest. Online communities don’t generally congregate for the sake of congregating; they congregate because they are all members of the North America Congregators’ Advocates Association. If you are unfamiliar with all the great things this very fictitious organization is doing I recommend subscribing to their online newsletter. The point being, a common goal or interest is essential to achieving an online community that Gen Y will both embrace and market for you.

At the end of the day, if you want to achieve the kind of unprecedented success Threadless.com was able to and become an overnight sensation, it is important to remember that modern marketing has to be more of a dialogue then a monologue. It is not enough to simply talk at your customers these days, they expect more, especially Gen Y. Because of modern technology this conversation has become relatively straightforward. Companies have the chance to give their customers a voice and to induce communities based around their products or services learn what their customers actually want. However, much like a staunch paroled stalker, they have just been paroled, and are back to thinking of over-the-top gestures they can do to just make Gen Y love them. Showing up at all hours of the night with gifts that Gen Y neither wants nor will accept. It is important to break the cycle and learn to communicate with Gen Y, and discover how to reach them in a way that they will appreciate.

You must learn to fill Gen Y’s needs and discover what they want. Much like the actual dating world, this can be a tedious process, but it is a necessary process if you want your company to actually be in a solid relationship with Gen Y and not be the creepy stalker calling them over and over again as they’re out dating other companies and ignoring your calls. Albert Einstein said it best when he said insanity is the act of “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”