Generation Y and The New Media
Jun 27th, 2008 by Art Johnsen
Last week I was invited to speak to a class at Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management on “New Marketing Media.” The program, called Summer Accelerator, is a four-week high-intensity immersion into the business world through small group projects and presentations. The program is open to students nationwide. The 2008 program has students from probably 20 different universities across the U.S. and a few foreign students.
This is a terrific program for highly motivated, business-oriented rising college seniors and recent graduates.
The class has about 90 students. I started by asking them to quickly answer a set of questions that were part of a national survey conducted by Scarborough Research designed to identify the most “digitally current” cities in the US.
Eighteen digital behaviors or devices were listed and each student was asked to circle the ones that applied to them. Anyone circling eight or more of the 18 qualified as “digitally current.”
Almost 100 percent of the class had circled more than eight of the behaviors or devices listed. This is an indication of where Gen-Y is in the use of digital technology.
I then compared this to the national survey Scarborough conducted in which they identified Austin, Texas as the “most digitally current” city. There, 16 percent of the respondents were identified as “digitally current.”
My point in starting my presentation this way was to show that “not everyone out there is as digitally current as you are.” New Media has not replaced traditional media. It is not appropriate for all audiences, all products or all situations.
The tipping point in age seems to be about 35 years of age. Below that, MySpace, Facebook, SMS, VoIp, DVR, TiVo and other media use of cell phones better matches the Owen class. Above 35, usage, comfort and adoption of New Media technology and tools decreases the older you get.
This is not scientific, but generally it seems to be the case as far as I can detect.
This brings me to say that the New Media is just another set of tools to convey a message. What a discovery! As such, it is not a panacea.
The “right” media mix is still best arrived at by understanding the demographics and lifestyle characteristics of the audience, where the product/service being communicated about is on the Product Life Cycle, how involved the purchase decision is, how “serious” the product or service is and the campaign objectives.
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The Marketing Professor
About the author: Art Johnsen, a managing partner of Locomotion Creative, has taught college courses at four Tennessee universities over the past eight years as an adjunct professor. Along with his responsibilities at Locomotion, he teaches marketing courses at Vanderbilt University. Art has an MBA degree from the University of Virginia and is co-author of the book, Cases in Advertising & Marketing Management.
Thanks for posting the article, was certainly a great read!