Generation text

This last week has seen the views of Matthew Robson, the 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley, causing a little concern in boardrooms across the world. The reason: a three page report he had been invited to put together detailing the media and communication habits of his peer group. In some quarters, this straw poll of one has since been elevated to the Gospel of a Generation.

The headline take-aways are that teenagers:

• ignore and despise advertising
• don't read the news
• don't listen or watch much radio or TV
• don't pay for anything if it can be avoided
• don't use twitter because of the cost of texting (an investment best reserved for texting their mates)
• we should all be worried because this casts a shadow over current notions of how the world works.

So what's new? Not much. But for twitter, a relatively new addition, it was ever thus. Teenagers have never had that much disposable income. They've always looked for ways of having fun without having funds. They've never really wanted to do much other than be with their friends, listen to music and watch movies. And it doesn't have to be a particular movie, As Robson says in his paper,

"Teenagers visit the cinema quite often, regardless of what is on. Usually they will target a film first, and set out to see that, but sometimes they will just go and choose when they get there. This is because going to the cinema is not usually about the film, but the experience – and getting together with friends."

In effect, the rest of the world is inconsequential to the extent that it doesn't impinge on their world.

As a group, their attitudes and media consumption habits will change. And some of that change will be driven by the rise in the levels of their discretionary spending.

The comment about twitter is a case in point. Robson cites that the major lack of appeal of the medium is the cost of texting and having better things to do with their 'free' texting allowance. This is a slightly parochial signal that only really applies in Europe - the US service having struck better deals with home turf carriers which effectively removes the cost argument - at least as far as service delivery. And anyway, modern phones have wi-fi internet access which makes tweeting free within a free access zone. It's the availability of free access to the internet and not the service, be it twitter or anything else, that would seem to determine, for a 15 year old, whether or not it's worth bothering with.

Hence it comes as no surprise that they've taken to VOIP in a big way. They're not footing the bill that provides the core internet access on which their game console will be running. So of course they use the voice chat facility on that - it's free.

And as for advertising, who do you know in any age group that admits to being in the slightest influenced by advertising. You can probably count them on the fingers of one hand. Everyone likes to think that they've arrived at their decisions via more 'respectable' routes. There's an awful lot of advertising out there and most of it, one could be forgiven for thinking, isn't aimed at anyone in particular. And most of the advertising that is targeted, isn't targeted at you. For the average (there's a weasel word) teenager, is it any wonder that most advertising is annoying or irrelevant. It's either untargeted, poorly targeted or not targeted at them.

So should the board members be concerned? Probably not, unless the organisation is paying for a lot of poorly targeted advertising. Will 15 year-olds take their free-loading habits into their twentys and thirtys? Possibly some of them will take some of those habits. And there will certainly be a lot more free stuff available by the time they reach twenty. But most will earn enough to buy themselves better options than those that are freely available. And most of them will grow up to have a wider range of interests than music, games and movies. And advertising, in the broadest sense of the word, will be helping them make their decisions. But it probably won't be advertising purely in the mass media forms most of us are familiar with.

If you haven't seen it, the full text of Matthew Robson's paper is available online at The Guardian.co.uk It's free. No need to buy a paper. Get stuck in.

A virulent infection in adland?

The latest VW and Audi ads seem to be evidence of a virus infecting the advertising world. The disease leads agencies and their clients to believe that they must make ads with lots of people busily building something related to their brand, in some suitably inventive way. Except they're all looking distinctly uninventive now.

The latest from VW:


The latest from Audi:


From Honda:


From Guinness:


From Orange (complete with hideously patronising oh-so-friendly Scots voiceover):


From Skoda:


I suppose it all started with Cog:


But why must a wheel, once invented (or at least ripped off), be reinvented so many times, for so many different brands? How lazy can you be?

Just brilliant enough

Leading by example, and making a big impact at the same time: genius.

(Via the always interesting Billboardom.)