Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Gen Y Marketing

There is a marketing survey of sorts making it's rounds on the internet how Gen Y is different than previous generations. Here is my take.

I do have cable, but only basic. This is augmented by dvd's from netflix and watching tv online. Considering there are only 4 or 5 shows worth watching, I don't think I'm missing much.

I don’t have a landline telephone. In fact, with the exception of work and calling my family on occasion, I don’t speak on the phone much at all.

I do text, a lot. If there were a plan offering unlimited text but pay extra to talk, instead of the current unlimited talk and pay extra to text phone plans, I would sign up immediately.

I do listened to the radio, but only for about 5 minutes in the morning. I do use pandora to listen to music at work though.

I don’t read a physical newspaper or magazines. Sadly, people give me magazine subscriptions and they just sit on the table unread. Even when I'm interested in the subject material, I have little desire to read the magazine.

I do read books though, and they are usually bought from Amazon.

I don’t ever text in for special offers/promotions, I'm worried it's a scam and I'll get charged or my number will get put on some list and I'll start getting text from them. I don't want either of those things.

I don’t try a new restaurant/salon/bar without reading the reviews on Yelp, and if the reviews aren't good I won't go.

I don’t play games on corporate/brand websites, really, why would someone do that? They make you register with all sorts of personal info and contact information so they can spam you forever and then after all that the games usually suck anyway. No thanks.

I don’t buy full albums of music, even on iTunes. Sometimes I get a CD as a gift but I really have no idea when the last time I bought an entire full length CD was - 10 years ago maybe?

I don’t carry much cash, usually less than $40. I put everything on my credit card. Why carry around a bulky wad of paper (linen more accurately) bills when a little plastic card is all you need?

I do multitask, maybe more than I should there is something to be said about focusing on one thing and doing it well.

I do get 99% of my information online. I love my google reader and get most of my daily news online. I love being able to go read the best content at each of the daily papers, though with most papers just reissuing AP news reports there are fewer and fewer quality writers anymore.

I don't like calling and waiting for customer support. Companies should have web chat based support or at least an automatic call back feature so you are called when a CSR is free instead of keeping you on hold. On the recent celebrity apprentice (a guilty sunday night pleasure) a Norton Antivirus exec complained that there was no phone number on the ad generated by the women's team: Note to Norton, we don't want to call you to order your product. You should have asked where your web page promo was. I'm assuming you can download Norton and the million updates that will come with it, so why not just send people to the web site?

I do find that companies/brands worth following in the social media space are few and far between. There are a lot of companies trying to get into this space and it's resulting in a lot of space being taken up without a lot of quality content. But:

I do believe that if you can engage, entertain, and/or teach me, I will value what you have to say, come back for more and buy your products. I look for value in anything that I do. If a company is providing me with a service that adds value to my life then I'm going to want more of it and be willing to pay for it.

What do you do or don't do and how does it compare to other generations?

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