Brand Noise

Generational Synergy

I've been thinking a lot about generations lately, and specifically how developing pairing strategies of segmentation can offer new insights that are missed when looking at any generation alone.  The idea is that we often decide we want to reach a particular age group and we dive into that generation as the only source of data that will help unlock the code of reaching them. Could it be that the relationship generations have with other generations can be a way of opening up new ways of seeing them?  Developing pairings that unlock shared codes for specific tangibles and intangibles?

For example, there are opportunities to see where Gen Y is going by sometimes looking at their relationship to codes of their Boomer parents, and other times in their shared code with Gen X.  Codes of caution and status (Boomer) and codes of instigator and notoriety (Gen X). The reality is that generations are shaped by the ways they choose to assimilate or differentiate from the other generations in their world.

This idea of generational synergy can play out in all possible pairings between generations.  It can help develop bridges that broaden the market for products and brands.  It can help better identify as much the "i am" as the "i am not" when thinking about any given generation.  How they share and differ in translating trends that are impacting them as consumers. It can also help segment within those generations to see personas that give a better sense of where they may be going next.

An interesting current example is in the current political season.  When we see the poll numbers on Obama rising among Boomer independents, is this shift being propelled to some degree by how they see the way Gen X has embraced and validated him as a candidate?  Is there a point at which people see ideas from "the pack" hit a brick wall and start looking outside to see where we need to move next on certain issues? I think this is especially interesting as part of the essential DNA of Gen X is CHANGE.  They are the birth of the creative class and  invented sampling, tweaking and 2.0. Obama is the nuanced candidate - he is the first (at least in spirit) Gen X candidate.  While Obama is certainly popular with young voters, is the pairing of Gen X and Boomers the key to shaping the message that will likely result in  votes on election day?

Birth of a visual subculture

Want to trace the roots of American subculture in the 20th century?  There is no better place than the silver age of comic books as the subculture visual language that defines the secret pleasures of Boomer kids. The cultivation of visual cues is critical to the code of the fifties.  Image gains value over words and defines the struggle between idealism and disillusionment.  For Mom it is the visual vernacular of Betty Crocker cookbooks that define new ways we connect with food.  The picture is more real than the ingredients. The look of things is power - and can represent everything from the perfect apple pie (the key to your husband's heart) to...well the decline of western civilization.  Here is some interesting reading on the comic subculture of the fifties in a New Yorker review of a new book by David Hajdu titled "The Ten-Cent Plague, The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America".

(excerpt from New Yorker article) On April 21, 1954, at the Foley Square U.S. Courthouse (now the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse), in New York City,  a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee charged with investigating the causes of juvenile delinquency took on an imminent danger within: the comic-book industry. The hearings were televised.

“The controversy over comic books was neither a subset of the Red Scare nor a direct parallel to it,” as David Hajdu (author of "The Ten-Cent Plague") rightly says. McCarthyism was a populist attack on the élites; the campaign against comics, on the other hand, was “a kind of anti-anti-elitism, a campaign by protectors of rarefied ideals of literacy, sophistication, and virtue to rein in the practitioners of a wild, homegrown form of vernacular American expression.” Hajdu suggests that the lost war over comic books might be seen as a rehearsal for the glorious war to come over rock and roll, an evolutionary step in the formation of the youth culture that emerged in the nineteen-sixties. “Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry added the soundtrack to a scene created in comic books,” as he puts it. EC Comics died for our sins.  Read more

The Contrast of Gen Y to Boomer

(from Reveries.com) According to Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow in a new book tittled After the Baby Boomers the key differences between Gen Y and Baby Boomers include that the younger generation is "spending more time in school, remaining financially independent on their parents longer, marrying later in life, having kids later (and fewer of them) and changing jobs more often."

One noted upside of these differences is that, because of an "extended adolescence ... divorce is less common." He says they see marriage more as a "capstone" than a "starting" event. He also says that this slower path to adulthood gives them "more of a chance to finish their education and ... if they're middle class, a chance to decide from experience what kind of career they want." One downside, he says, is that they are sometimes "paralyzed" by "all these choices -- whom to marry, what kind of education to get, what kind of career to pursue." Another is a "dependency" on parents for such a long period of time.

Boomers, Misunderstood

They comprise nearly 24% of the population, have a buying power of $3 trillion, and include many of the country's current business and political leaders. But marketers misunderstand -- and inefficiently target -- this country's 78 million baby boomers.

According to a new 22-page survey of 1,320 baby boomers from Edelman found that marketers overgeneralize, misrepresent and sometimes ignore the generation, lumping them together and, in the process, alienating them. "We really set out to blow up some myths," said Jody Quinn, exec VP-general manager of Edelman's Boomer Insights Generation Group. "The longer that marketers keep treating [boomers] as a huge mass as opposed to individuals, the longer it's going to take them to enter the market."

"This is a generation -- because of the sheer size of their demographic -- for which the world has always changed to meet their needs," said Laurence Evans, president of StrategyOne. "Now [boomers] are finding that they're feeling a little left out by political campaigns, media and TV that are focused on younger groups."

At scenarioDNA, we've been watching the schism from Baby Boom to Gen Y for some time now. It's time to move beyond age and look at more unifying factors, like passions and how that drives behavior. There are lots of synergies that ally Boomers with Gen Y. The groups are as closely aligned to each other as X'ers are aligned with the GI Generation.

Read our Generation Synergy Report.

Kids Will Be Kids, Have Been for Centuries

Despite exhibiting some signs of self-obsession, young Americans are not more self-absorbed than earlier generations, according to new research challenging the prevailing wisdom.

Some scholars point out that bemoaning the self-involvement of young people is a perennial adult activity. (“The children now love luxury,” Plato wrote 2,400 years ago. “They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”) Others warn that if young people continue to be labeled selfish and narcissistic, they just might live up to that reputation.

“There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Kali H. Trzesniewski, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Ms. Trzesniewski, along with colleagues at the University of California, Davis, and Michigan State University, will publish research in the journal Psychological Science next month showing there have been very few changes in the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of youth over the last 30 years. In other words, the minute-by-minute Twitter broadcasts of today are the navel-gazing est seminars of 1978.

And we couldn't agree more...read the whole article from the NY Times.

What's in a name, Engelbert?

What happens when a name gets co-opted? Does the co-opter gain the credibility of the original name owner? Or does the co-opter taint the name? All depends on which side of the fence you’re sitting on.

Take Engelbert Humperdinck, for instance.

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921). German composer, best known for his opera, Hänsel und Gretel (ca. 1891). Humperdinck was greatly influenced by Richard Wagner, and worked as his assistant. In his melodrama Die Königskinder (1897), Humperdinck became the first composer to use Sprechgesang, a vocal technique halfway between singing and speaking.

Hmmm…which Engelbert were you thinking of?

British-American pop singer Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold George Dorsey, 1936) who rose to fame in the 1960s with his deceptively easygoing casual style after adopting the name of the famous German opera composer. Prior, his impression of Jerry Lewis prompted friends to begin calling him Gerry Dorsey, a name he worked under for almost a decade.

You tell me...

Ralphie Represents Pop-Culture Shift

America has a new favorite Christmas movie. A Christmas Story, the 1983 tale about Ralphie, a 9-year-old in 1940s Indiana, and his lust for a Red Ryder air rifle, is everything Wonderful Life is not: satiric and myth-deflating, down to the cranky store Santa kicking Ralphie down a slide.

In a 2006 Harris poll, respondents from 18 to 41 years old named it their favorite holiday movie, while their parents and grandparents picked Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street.

This is one of those little pop-cultural shifts--football overtakes baseball, salsa defeats ketchup--that signal bigger changes: here, in the relationship between the community and the individual. In a traditional Christmas story, the larger holiday is a social good. Here, the Christmas celebrated by the greater society is crass, stressful and risible.

In the end, the characters discover an authentic holiday outside the usual traditions. It's the individual Christmas that matters.

It's the nostalgia of its Gen-X and -Y fans, who remember childhood in terms of divorces and bad haircuts…Ironically, Christmas Story takes place decades before they were born. But [Ralphie] and his friends don't twitter about bells and petals and angels' getting their wings. Christmas is about the kids' getting their due. It's a time of disappointment and bullies but also of dreams…

(This points a direct line to Depression era holidays when my grandparents, for one, decorated a box instead of a Christmas tree. Once again connecting Gen Xers with the GI Generation where honest humor is appreciated.)

Read the whole story.

Generational Gap in Coffee Consumption

The biggest makers of grocery-store coffee. Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods are facing sluggish sales for their hallmark Folgers and Maxwell House brews—and the demographics are moving against them. Youngsters drink far less coffee than their baby boomer parents, and, when they do, it's more likely to be on the go. Only 37% of young adults between 18 to 24 drink coffee, compared with 60% for those between 40 and 59 and 74% for Americans over 60, according to National Coffee Association data.  Read more (BusinessWeek)

Entertainment Farming

"In the past 20 years, corn mazes have become big business not only in this country but all across Europe," writes Jane Garmey in The Wall Street Journal.  The idea of planting maize as mazes is generally credited to "Adrian Fisher, an Englishman who for 20 years has not only created mazes but has turned them into a form of popular entertainment." Then there's Brett Herbst who will design any kind of maze you want, starting at $4,500.  Some of Brett's mazes attract as many as "50,000 visitors in a season that typically runs for less than two months."  Brett refers to his vocation as "entertainment farming.”

We liken that to agricultural tourism.

(Photo: Dole Plantation Maze, Hawaii.)

Read more.

A Word on Baby Boomers and Irony

As the first wave of baby boomers edges toward retirement, a growing body of evidence as put forth by the US Census Bureau suggests that they may be the first generation to enter their golden years in worse health than their parents.

While cautioning that the data are just starting to emerge, researchers say the findings track with several unhealthy trends, notably the obesity epidemic. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and those extra pounds make joints wear out more quickly, boost cholesterol and blood pressure, and raise the risk of a host of debilitating health problems. And despite all those gym memberships, baby boomers tend to be less physically active than their parents and grandparents, their daily routines often dominated by desk jobs and the drive to and from work.

That said, boomers are healthier in some important ways -- they are much less likely to smoke.