Wise & Young: The nuances of Gen-Y marketing, branding, advertising, trends, & more

Since 2005, I've been a huge evangelist for Facebook, I loved the simplicity, speed, and the privacy. Furthermore, the thing that made me glued to Facebook compared to the other social networks was the ability to keep on top of all my relationships.

I'm one of those types that only adds Facebook friends that are truly my friends in the real world, which helps me keep connected to everybody and relish in their recent experiences. Anytime I see one of my friends, I always have something to bring up; for example, "Scott, how was that trip in Idaho? I saw the photos on Facebook, looked a lot of fun!"

This was all great and dandy, until Facebook released their ad network system. I understand what they're trying to do, make ads that resonated with me and my life and made me feel more connected to brands — they thought they found the holy grail to internet advertising.

Blah.

It's just one giant mess, which I feel seriously hurts Facebook the website and the brand. They are interrupting my Facebook experience, my human experiences, and my life in general. It's like a noisy bee that you swat away. I finally turned it off, but now you have branded pages showing up and noisy marketers trying to get you to buy something.

Their authenticity has certainly taken a beating and I must say Facebook made a wrong-turn, and better flip a "U" and get back to being that quiet, respected social network who allows their users to make the decisions and not corporations. What do you think Facebook should do? How would you fix the mess? Do you think they messed up?

I love the new Skype feature/partnership on Myspace. The simple feature allows users to visit their friend's profiles and call them up just like they were sending a message or an IM.

This move is great for both, due to the different markets each service controls. For example, Skype is a huge phenomenon overseas, and for one reason or another, has not taken off in America — especially with Gen-Y. By connecting Skype to Myspace users, Skype has a great chance to expand on the gen-y American market.

However, I think Myspace was the brilliant one here, because it gives them a huge handle on a massive overseas market that Myspace still hasn't conquered. I feel they are at the end of their essential first run in America, there isn't much they can do to add any other American users.

Murdoch has known of this problem since he bought Myspace, and from at least 2006 and on he's pushed for Myspace to cater to European, Asian, and other lager foreign markets for good reason - at least 800 million more possible Myspace users! By adding Skype, they have one more enticing reason for overseas users to sign-up or leave other weak networks like Bebo and hi5.

Lets hope the new Myspace Developer Tools work just as well, I want to see a blood-thirsty competition between Myspace and Facebook!

Since 2004, Arcade Fire has demonstrated the power and dynamics of the web. It helps that they have a great product and superb brand (band) execution on all fronts, furthemore, you have to commend them for continually coming out with innovations left and right.

Their latest innovation is the future of the music video; an interactive website featuring their single "Neon Bible." You can view that here: b eoNline B. This is the only song from the album that was turned in to a "music video" and it's an exciting approach and something that should have been established a while ago. As most know, MTV and VH1 have almost completely stopped playing music videos, leaving musical artists paying millions of dollars in hope their video gets a good amount of YouTube hits.

With Arcade Fire's model, fans can interact with the video and create an emotional connection to the music. In essence, the music video has become a viral website! I wouldn't be surprised if many others soon followed and dropped the video format altogether. However, I feel others will make their videos easier to share, post, embed, and otherwise viralize.

Hail to the thief! The music industry is changing!

As most of you know by now, Radiohead today blew the doors off the recording industry, by announcing their new album will be out in 10 days (label free). The price for their new digital album is whatever the consumer/listener would like to pay.

The decision stunned and astonished critics, who felt it was revolutionary. Gen-Y'ers are as happy as can be, and ready to shell out their hard earned money (even if it's a buck or two). This is the future, no kidding, the artists are in control of their destinies now and no dirty middle men to stop their creativity (or paycheck).

However, a few weeks ago, Rick Rubin in the NY Times Magazine had a different idea on the future of music:

Rubin has a bigger idea. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set.

It's not going to work Rick; Radiohead is going to lead the way! Even though most musical artists don't have the money to imagine highly produced albums; home recording and word-of-mouth are going to save music (think Feist). Gen-Y'ers do not want subscriptions, locks, barriers, bills; they want their free Mp3s! They want the music whenever the artists wants to release it, they want their music on any device, and they want to support their favorite artists' creative talents for the rest of their life.

How is that for trusting your brand and fan base!

Influx had a great post the other day about the fading use of consumer generated content in advertising and other marketing functions. They make a point of where we are going with online social/virtual worlds is exactly the opposite of where marketing and advertising firms are headed.

They then state something brilliant:

The killer application is finding a way to tap into consumer thinking and creativity through the social network, but to do it in a way that doesn’t involve classical advertising.

Agencies need to find a way to make this happen for their clients or someone else will.

If you view some of the top Facebook applications, I think a lot of people are getting close to what Influx is stating is necessary for brands to tap in to consumer-generated creativity and content. This is a very exciting time and it feels like a wide open market for advertisers, marketers, and even small brands to make a huge splash.

Anybody have a favorite Facebook application or widget that demonstrates what Influx is stating above? Something getting away from classical advertising?

MarketWire had an interesting article today; the most important information from the article was the following:

The good news for marketers is that most virtual worlds are capable of offering detailed information about how their users interact with brands and advertising. "The bad news," says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst and author of the report, "is that it is difficult to know what all this virtual interaction really means. What value is there in a person's avatar drinking a Pepsi? Or wearing a shirt bought from a virtual store? What if a person's virtual activities have no bearing on their real-world activities?"

It would be interesting to see how online virtual brands (brands only in the internet/virtual worlds) reacted/behaved with users compared to "real-world" brands trying to infiltrate virtual worlds. I have a feeling these infiltrating real world brands are shunned or looked down upon by the virtual world users. Does anybody have any input or links to more data?

The problem is based in the fact that Gen Y is entering the stage where they're really creating pop culture for themselves and those younger than them. Anything that is really and truly pop, not artificial pop, is based on the work of people age 25 and under.

Because the Boomers and Gen X have such a death grip on upper management positions (and, truth be told, the desire to not listen to Gen Y OR to hear what they want to hear, what they know, and what's easy) mainstream pop culture in general is dying. There are no icons. There are no posters. Icons and posters require mainstream institutions. In fifteen years, Gen Y will a) have started to take control of those institutions that already exist (due to having finally worked their way up the ranks), and b) have built up their own mainstream pop institutions. But for now, we're stuck. All anyone can do is wait out the continuing period of trash culture created by old people for people they don't inherently "get."

Well it just seemed like the right thing to do. There's no clever science behind it - it's just an effort to make you smile, in exactly the same way Cadbury Dairy Milk does. And that's what we aim to continue to do; simply make you smile. So if a drumming gorilla's not enough, wait until you see what else we have up our sleeves.