Transcript Ontario Credit Union 2007 Youth Marketing Platform

Youth 101
Culture in Transition
Introduction
Introduction: me
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I’ve got a 12 year background in
strategic planning, often on big
brands in the youth market
I’m one of North America’s
leading youth culture experts
(cough, cough)
I’ve hosted a youth issues talk
show, been quoted in the Wall
Street Journal and written a pop
culture magazine column…
And I bring that knowledge of
what matters in today’s culture to
your business every day
I am also really immature
Contents
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Demographics and Psychographics
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The Collective, or Me to We
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Culture in Transition
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Thought Starters for Education
Demographics & Psychographics
The 5 x 5 Factor
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The 10 to 34 age group divides into five equal five-year cohorts:
Age
Male / Female
Male / Female
(Number)
(% of Population)
10-14
2,079,925
6.6
15-19
2,140,490
6.8
20-24
2,080,385
6.6
25-29
1,985,580
6.3
30-34
2,020,230
6.4
Total
10,306,610
32.7
Home Offers Less
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80% come from families with only 1-2 children at home
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Families aren't traditional anymore
– 12% blended, 14% common-law, 16% single-parent
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60% of women work out of home
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“3:30 to 5:30 is my chill time…it’s the time for me alone at
home.”
And yet, 44% of 20-29 year-olds still live in the family home
Getting into Adulthood Earlier
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Average age of educational enrollment: <4
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Average age of 1st menstruation: 8-10 (vs. 12)
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Average age of 1st cigarette: 13
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Average age of “school-type” decision: 14
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Average age of 1st intercourse: 16 (vs. 18)
Precocious Puberty
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Precocious puberty—or early sexual development—is
a phenomenon that is occurring in young girls and boys
in North America, the UK and Australia:
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“While I always believed that little girls go through
puberty at around eleven, twelve or thirteen years of
age, something very strange was now happening to our
daughters. I was now being told that little girls are
considered 'normal' if they start menstruating at the
delicate age of eight!”
–
Nexus Magazine
Precocious Puberty 2
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A study from the (US) National Research Center for
Women and Families several years ago found that at the
age of 7, 27% of African-American and 7% of Caucasian
girls had the onset of secondary sexual characteristics
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While they are still eight years old, one in seven
Caucasian girls and one out of two African-American
girls start puberty
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Pediatricians are rethinking the very definition of early
puberty – and taking action (or not!) around this
But Fully Entering Adulthood Much Later
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Median age at graduation: 23 (vs. 22)
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Average age at graduation: 25 (vs. 23)
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Average age of 1st marriage: 28 (vs. 25)
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Average age of 1st childbirth: 29 (vs. 26)
Prolonged Pre-Adult Lifestage
The Big Six: Youth Values
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Relationships
Communication
Information
Diversity
Empowerment
And what sews it all together…Technology
It’s All Enabled By Technology
“We already knew that kids learned computer
technology more easily than adults. What
we’re seeing now is that they don’t even need
to be taught. It’s as if children were waiting all
these centuries for someone to invent their
native language.”
–
Jaron Lanier (Computer Scientist / TechnoCultural Theorist)
The Collective, or Me to We
What is it?
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“My friends are my family.”
“I can’t live without my cell phone.”
“Why do they spend so much time texting?”
“My daughter is on facebook all the time.”
“Don’t they care what’s out there about them?”
What’s the deal with the group experience? And
how is this regular connection to a youthful network
blurring the line between public and private?
What is it? (cont)
It’s no longer a world of Me…
• Welcome to the world of We.
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And It’s very much a youth-driven trend:
• To paraphrase the New York Magazine,this
trend is the “biggest generation gap since
Rock ‘n’ Roll”
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The Collective: Me to We
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Is a culmination of trends
looking at relationships,
communication, information
and technology that
represents a natural evolution
of group dynamics with young
people.
• It’s not just about being part of
the hive…
• …now, the hive is on
steroids.
It Used to Be: The Age of “Me”
(Boomers & Gen X)
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One person walking through life with peaks and valleys
Major life events considered the highest points of their
life and define “growing up” or transitioning to adulthood
Short period of time for this to happen
Difficulty connecting to a network of friends (or people
your own age) means a default to adults
Characteristics
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Strong focus on traditional
achievements
– Typically school, work,
or family-related
Important achievements
are socially-expected and
determined by tradition and
adults (or the passage to
adulthood)
Value placed on authority
figures like parents,
teachers and employers
What are you going to be
when you grow up?
How it is Now: From Me to We
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No clearly defined life path; a distant, uncertain future
High moments are not the traditional milestone events
Instant ability to connect to your network, your own
age
What do you want to be when you grow up has been
replaced by “What are you doing right now?”
Me Characteristics
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There is always a “solo”
moment: in fact, some of
the really important
moments need removal
from the group...
...and connecting to the
group all the time is
impossible, anyway
We Characteristics
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Moments and
achievements are
celebrated with the hive,
not outside of it
The “We:”
– Creates social
support
– Provides a sense of
validation
– Provides opportunity
– Can be anyone who
has come into their
life at any point in
time
But it’s not just about the network
It’s also about what we’re comfortable doing in,
or in front of the network…
• ….and what is going to get back to our network
anyway, regardless of how we feel about it
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Boomers
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Think back to your
first love…
• If you grew up in the
60’s or 70’s you may
have done something
like this in a parking
lot or at “make-out
point.”
• A separate moment
only between two
people.
Generation X
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If you grew up in the 80’s
or some of the 90’s you
may have had the
comfort of the “group
date,” but still sought out
private connections away
from your friends.
And while PDA still is
PDA no matter how you
cut it, it only seems
different…
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…because everyone can see you do it!
There is very little separation from the collective and
private moments happen in public ways
We’re not just living in a looser society, rather, the looking
glass is clearer thanks to technology
Instantaneous and easy ability to share things with large
groups in the collective
The Big Change
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Because young people have grown up with (and
in) the public sphere their whole lives, the
collective is a totally normalized experience for
young people
• The line between public and private lives just
doesn’t exist
Why?
Because they’ve
grown up with
constant
surveillance...
• …constantly
surveilling…
• ...and it is a two-way
relationship
• The network is the
message and you
are the network
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Recognize This!
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So “private” (read: entirely internal) may have less
value to this generation “it’s not really real until
it’s in my facebook status.”
The break-up announcement that isn’t announced
(but your facebook status changes)
The wall posting: “what are you doing tonight?”
“25 Things”
Tweeting and twittering: the rise of the microblog
And the way that all of this has an impact on the
rest of their lives – including school and work
…because how you communicate
to this generation – as family,
students, as customers, as
employees, as anyone or anything
– is completely connected to they
connect to each other, and their
schools, and their brands, and
workplaces, and their culture, and
everything else
for the first time ever
Culture in Transition
The Burning Question
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What everyone wants to know: “How do we engage
young people?”
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Young people the world over are leading the charge
in how we create, consume and manage culture,
whether we—or they—realize it or not…
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…and this is having a massive impact on anyone
trying to connect to them
Culture in Transition
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We need to look at media, culture, and communication in
aggregate…
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…as there has never been such a huge shift in media
and communication habits as over the past decade
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And culture and communications—the two most
important things to young people—have been totally
transformed
Culture: The 3 Cs
1. Change: Constant pace of rampant technological
change
2. Charge: Young people are in charge of when and how
they communicate and interact with culture
3. Challenge: They challenge traditional models of the
way culture and communication work
1. Change
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Then:
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Then to Now:
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The first few decades of youth culture were pretty consistent!
Technology changed slowly, adults controlled youth culture (or at
least youth culture distribution) and that wasn’t changing
Technology changes quickly – more quickly with every change
Prices drop quickly (which matters more to young people)
Leads to a huge change in how youth culture is distributed
Now:
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Huge speed of change is regular
Big organizations find it hard to keep up with that change
Technology in Transition
And They Adopt it Quickly
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Culture and Communications:
– The $399 Desktop PC
– The $49 DVD Player
– Video on your cell phone
– TV with a hard drive
(DVR/PVR)
– Video on your PC
– Video on your iPod
– Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and
PS3
– And more…
2. Charge
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Then:
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Then to Now:
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Culture and Communication involve little personal control
or choice
Someone else’s schedule, delivery devices, tech: You have to
watch ads, be home, call the radio station, go to a store, etc.
Internet and digital culture changes everything
Culture-on-demand! Communication-on-demand!
Now:
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“Infinite” choice of what to consume, how to connect
Control shift: creators to consumers, adults to youth
2. Charge (cont)
Culture & Communication control:
– Napster to Kazaa to LimeWire
to BitTorrent…
– …to iTunes
– MSN Messenger
– The PVR
– Pay-As-You Go / discount
wireless
– Downloading TV and Movies
– DVDs of TV series
– Facebook
3. Challenge
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Then:
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Then to Now:
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Everything is top-down
Corporate machine creates culture; youth absorb it
What’s happening at street level drives and dictate trends
The Internet enables anyone to create culture
Now:
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Young people either directly create culture…
…or set trends that the corporate world replicates
And even invent or distribute some of the most significant
changes in youth culture—or all culture!
3. Challenge (cont)
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Cultural creation:
– Who invented
Google, Napster,
MySpace, and
Facebook?
– GarageBand
– Indie movies
– Homemade TV and
movies
– Blogging
– Wikipedia
Young Canadians in Control
Control
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Institutions of all sorts are all brands and have to stop
thinking that they control their “brands”
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Good brands share themselves with their consumers—or
control is taken away
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If they don’t like your message they will invent their own
Control (cont)
Control (cont..)
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Can a student-run or student-co-run school be
far behind?
• Can a student owned school be far behind?
• It might not look like anything that’s out there
right now
• …but it’s coming, in one form or another.
lessons for education, culture
and communications:
learning, and the learning
environment, is changing: “who
goes to the library to find stuff
out anymore?”
1. Goodbye, Main Branch
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People no longer need to go to one physical,
central repository (a library, a school) to get
the knowledge they want…
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…those physical spaces are limited
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The net – the networked world – opens up
unlimited access to knowledge and new
methods of accessing it
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…in eBooks, Podcasts, and everything else
1. Goodbye, Main Branch (cont)
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So the school library is no longer a repository…
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…if it’s networked, it’s a gateway to all the
knowledge and culture out there that exists
beyond its walls, and beyond the school, and
beyond your town or country
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But, umm, so is your bedroom at home, probably
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Oh! And how does your teacher of professor
compare to every other piece of information
our instruction out there in the world?
1. Goodbye, Main Branch (cont.)
1. Goodbye, Main Branch (cont..)
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More freedom to get educated differently…
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…as long as it’s seen as viable for a career or
forward-thinking
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More and more of this is going to be expected to
be handled remotely
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This also means more parents getting more
involved from a distance – and maybe even
trying harder to compensate for busier lives than
previous generations!
1. Goodbye, Main Branch (cont…)
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Good learning materials are going to have to
incorporate new technology!
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Official sources are very slow to do this!
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Integrating technology into traditional textbook
based learning is important, for instance…
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How old is the traditional classroom model?
How little of the technology that exists now
was around then? So why don’t we change?
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This may also be relevant for evaluations!
2. Hello, (opinionated) Card Catalog
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Managing all of this culture and content is
something different entirely
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We need to organize, but also to make sense
of what’s good or real and what isn’t – is this
the new role of teachers?
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How early does self-directed learning start
now? When does media and culture literacy
training begin?
2. Hello, (opinionated) Card Catalog
(cont)
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We need to help young Canadians in how they
can approach the internet
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We can’t do this from a position of fear
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Instead, we need to give them the tools to
work through a world of information and
communication that truthfully didn’t really
exist until about a dozen years ago, if that
2. Hello, (opinionated) Card Catalog
(cont.)
But remember…
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In areas of digital media and digital culture students
might think that they – or other people their age – are
ahead of their teachers or schools
With so much information, choice and culture out there,
staying ahead of the curve in these areas is especially
critical to success
3. The Cooler School
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Content facilitators need to be content improvers
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It’s not enough to just have something (because it’s
probably somewhere else) – added value is important
“Official” sources need to get ahead of the curve:
the most important and interesting developments
are coming from students and not institutions
3. The Cooler School (cont)
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Facebook – you all know Facebook – is
probably the premier school-based networking
system in North America – if not the world – so
why was it invented by a student and not by a
school?
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Why haven’t all schools embraced it? Why
does all the interesting activity on facebook
occur at the student level?
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Where are the essential-for-retentionschool-created community-building tools?
So what’s next, then?
Barriers Are Dropping
Your [Whole, Networked] Life is News
next!
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We’re moving everything we used to do offline to the on-line world
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A world that doesn’t see the same kind of
boundaries or divisions:
work/school/commerce/culture/communication
all come together…
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…putting young people in control of their own
lives in a way that’s simply never happened
before. Will they demand this level of
control in their schools as well?
10 thought starters for
Education…moving forward
10 Thought Starters for Education
1. They are used to networked communication
2. They are more collaborative than any previous
generation…
3. …and have a different definition of “plagiarism” or
“copying” too, because of it
4. We’re on the cusp of the $200 laptop…can we
keep it out of high schools much longer?
5. Which means you can’t keep media of any sort out
of schools…and by the time they get to college, it’s
simply expected
10 Thought Starters for Education
(cont)
6. So some learning will just have to be on-line
7. Will “What if you don’t have the ‘Net” be the
equivalent of “What if you don’t have a calculator?”
20 years from now?
8. What’s the value of an “official” source right now?
Who determines what is official any more? How
does this change to role of parents? Of teachers?
9. What’s a career now, anyway? And what is the
“right level” of education for that career?
10. Remember that you have expertise and
experience, and these matter a lot!
Young people have redefined the
music store, the search tool, and
the social network; they’ve had
the walkman, the television and
the credit card redefined for them
because they wanted it.
So what’s next for schools?
Will they change…or will they
be changed?
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Thanks