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

Dave Knox, head of brand management at P&G, uploaded this superb slideshow on Gen-Y and the future of marketing in general.

What he presents is beautiful, clear, and accurate. A lot of these points I've mentioned in the past on Wise & Young; but please, read these over, study them, and know them — they will guide your marketing activities from this day on.

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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?

Yet as of last week, the income segment with the highest percentage of visitors to the iPhone site was 18 to 24 years of age, earning less than $30,000 per year. Could Steve Jobs have been aware of that when he lowered the price of the 8GB iPhone to $399 on Wednesday? We can only guess.

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."

My favorite bands are only on MySpace, but aren’t signed to a record label. These bands have sold out shows on Sunset Blvd and all throughout Western America, but they don’t have a manager. These shows are full of people that love the music, but would never buy the record.