[1]Strategic branding is based on insights about the audience you want to reach. To create a meaningful brand, you first need to understand what is meaningful to your target.  For Obama and the Republican Presidential candidates, The Occupy Wall Street movement reveals a lot about what the Millennial market is thinking.

By Guest Blogger, [1]Judy Hopelain

Recently, I was in a conversation about student activism.  Participants were mostly folks who remembered the '60s fondly. The majority view seemed to be that student activism is dead..that most of today's students don't want to make waves, and are more concerned about paying off loans and getting a job than about the quality of life in the world around them.

I think they have it  completely wrong.

[1]The constant stream of media updates on social networks is seen by some as evidence of generational narcissism a desire on the part of Millennials to be a celebrity in their own world.

What makes someone attractive? When do couples break up? Who is happiest? Turns out social media data  analysts have been tackling these questions and more.

[1]  Like many other Millennial researchers, I’ve been fascinated by the response to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear last Saturday in Washington, DC. The rally was organized by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and attended by [2]over 200,000 people, more than the Glenn Beck rally that inspired it.

Perhaps one of the more lasting ways that Millennials will shape our culture is the way that they think about their lives, career and work.

Where  Boomers thought  of career in terms of one or two  employers  and a series  of jobs  with  increasing responsibility and pay, Millennials think of their career as something  more personal and proactive.