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  • Marketing Tips: What Makes Gen Y Consumers Tick

    As we noted back in May with this post , Gen Y has taken over the mantle of the largest generation. That does not mean they have surpassed the buying power of their parents, the Boomers, but any company that wants to grow needs to connect with Gen Y consumers as they move through college and beyond. Kit Yarrow --Professor of Psychology and Business at Golden Gate University, and co-author of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail--spent a year doing focus groups, surveys, and interviews with members of Gen Y, and she gained some important insight into their unique motivations and interests. Marketing Sherpa 's Adam Sutton shares some of the top-line findings from the research. Here are the top five insights of the research: Insight #1. Visuals and symbolism resonate Insight #2. Gen Ys want to be appreciated and understood Insight #3. Innovation attracts attention Insight #4. Gen Y wants faster processes Insight #5. Gen Y craves drama and emotional connections We think the fifth insight might be particularly instructive to marketers. Here is how Sutton elaborates on the insight: Gen Ys respond better to messages and content that is emotionally intense. Yarrow points to widely popular reality television shows and the Twilight book series as examples. Marketers should add more drama to their campaigns when targeting Gen Y. Products should be featured in the context of a story, and that story should include emotional connections that Gen Ys can relate to. Marketing campaigns do not always have to dwell on the benefits of their products. Yarrow points to a recent series of successful commercials for men's bodywash. "The product was the subplot," Yarrow says. "The real plot was the connection people have with the spokesperson and his quirky way of doing things. There isn't that much talk about the product itself." Read more at Marketing Sherpa, here .

  • Gen Y and Boomer Employees After More than Money

    It's not that Gen Y and Boomer employees don't care about how much they are paid, it's just that they want "a whole bunch of other stuff," and sometimes that "stuff" is even more important than the money. That is what Sylvia Ann Hewlett , Laura Sherbin , and Karen Sumberg found in researching the particular needs and desires of the two dominant generations (at least in terms of numbers) in the workforce. And as Hewlett, Sherbin, and Sumberg point out in the most recent Harvard Business Review , managers need to understand those needs and desires because they are driving workplace culture today: The combination of Generation Y eagerly advancing up the professional ranks and Baby Boomers often refusing to retire has, over the course of a few short years, dramatically shifted the composition of the workforce; each of these generations is roughly twice the size of Generation X, which lies between them. More important, Boomers and Gen Ys are together redefining what constitutes a great place to work. As we will show, they tend to share many attitudes and behaviors that set them apart from other generations. These shared preferences constitute a new center of gravity for human resources management. Here is Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, discussing the findings in a Harvard Business Review interview: Read an abstract of How Gen Y and Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda from the Harvard Business Review here .