'Gen Y' Defined by Creativity not Technology

Many new marketing  campaigns  are harnessing the creative energies of young people.

Dunkin’ Donuts is crowdsourcing new donut ideas via social media. A three day campaign/contest asked people to help ”Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest earlier this year. Engagement time online was more than  nine  minutes,  there  were  130,000 contest  entries,  333,000  donuts created and 3 million  Facebook impressions.

Vitamin   Water  is   asking  consumers  to   help them  decide  what  the  next  flavor  should be  via  a Facebook application called  ’Flavor  Creator Lab’. Vitaminwater’s  Facebook page grew by over 11 % just in the  past  week.   Since  March, when the  page launched, it has grown to more than 400,000 fans.

Mountain  Dew just  launched a new site  called ’[5]DEWocracy’ inviting  consumers  to  create  the  next flavor. As with Vitamin water there is also a [6]Facebook app.

A  segmentation  of people  on the  web  based  on involvement  with  social  media put  forward  by  For- rester (described on its blog, [7]Groundswell.com) puts the group they call the ’Creatives’ on the top rung. Creatives are those who actively write blogs and web sites and upload audieo and video files.  The next rung down are the ’Critics’, ’Collectors’, ’Joiners’, ’Spectators’ and ’Inactives’ who participate and comment but do not contribute original material. According to a cool interactive profiling widget, 46 % of 18-24 year olds in the U.S. are ’Creative’ vs. 24 % for the population as a whole.

All  this  leads  me to  suggest  that  Gen  Y  has been  poorly named.  They should be  called  ’Gen C’ for ’Creative’.

Young people  dislike  any kind  of label and they  especially  dislike  Gen Y.  Can you blame  them  for not wanting  to  be  known as  ’the  generation after  Gen X’ ? The attempt  to  rename  them  the  Digital Generation or even Millennials fall short of being adequately descriptive, as they put the emphasis on the shapers of their generation rather than the result.  In contrast Creative seems to suit them very well. Who wouldn’t want to be known as creative?  In ad agencies, the ”Creatives” enjoy the most elite status for a reason.

There is evidence that creativity and self-expression are core Millennial values.

When we  asked women in their  twenties  to  select  three  values  that  best  describe  them  from a list  of twenty, ”Creativity” is the value chosen most often by far, followed by ’Adventurous’.

I have  long maintained  that  the  motivation  behind Social Media is  less  about  the  need  to  be  social than it is about self-expression (some say narcissism, but I disagree).  What is a Facebook page than an ad for oneself ? And what is MySpace about other than sharing one’s passions for music and all things artistic. Little wonder FB users spend so many hours studying others’ pages and updating their own.

Millennials  are famous  for  their  visual sophistication  and appreciation  of good design.   They  choose products  based  on design as  well as  function  (think  MacBook).   They are comfortable  talking  about ’layouts’.   I have accepted  the  fact  that  my student’s  papers  are always  going to  look more professional than my client reports.  You can always tell a Gen Y blog by its design. A favorite Gen Y art sharing site, [8]Deviant Art,  is the 67th most trafficked site on the web according to Alexa and skews heavily to 18-34 year olds.

Millennials’ are strongly interested in fashion, cooking and the arts. Recently I wrote of the influence [9]young fashion bloggers like Bryan Grey-Yambao ([10]BryanBoy.com) and Tavi Gevinson ([11]stylerookie.com) are having on fashion. The  popularity  of the  Food2 channel, farmers  markets  and cooking classes attests  to their  interest  in cooking for reasons other than  sustenance.   Six-five  percent  of 18-24 year olds  say they consider cooking a ’pleasurable hobby’. The likely popularity of the ’new’ movie, Fame, as well as TV shows featuring creative  people and characters  like  Project Runway, Glee and American Idol all attest  to  their interest in fashion and the performing arts.

I don’t  expect  the  name  ’Gen  C’  to  displace  Millennial  or Gen Y  anytime  soon,  but  as  a descriptor useful to marketers, I think it offers great potential.