How to Tap Gen Y

Newspapers, television, the music industry, politicians — they're nearly all baffled by us.

The millennials, and the technology we've grown up with, have thrown a ratchet into the wheels of outreach and culture consumerism. This is a generation that worships personal achievement and credits the success of business for launching America to its present prestige. But it also heavily favors regulation and government oversight, and is the age group most likely to say that the government should provide jobs to willing citizens. We advocate increased federal funding for education yet simultaneously support school choice and vouchers.

So let's try to shed a little light.

A 15-year-old intern at Morgan Stanley in London has written a report outlining the tech habits of teens that has gone viral in the last few days. It's hardly a scientific study, more a collection of observations, but they confirm what the older half of Gen Y has already demonstrated.

Touch screens are in; Twitter is better for following celebrities than it is for peer-to-peer communication; you may have killed Napster but we still don't pay for music; we're as likely to binge-watch entire seasons of shows online for free than sit down religiously each week; and radio — save the few of us that commute by car — has gone the way of the platypus.

So what reaches through the generational divide to speak to us? Perhaps because we've grown up with the fixtures, advertising of old — huge billboards and banners on busses — seem as much a part of the landscape as trees or mailboxes. Pop-up windows and ads before YouTube videos are more likely to annoy us than draw serious interest — they are the telemarketers of the 21st century.

The answer: cleverness. Comically, visually, ironically, lyrically — these are the ways to speak to the young and the listless. Give us something real and insightful, something that's humorous and memorable. A clever 30-second video can have a much more palpable impact than a million-dollar ad campaign — if it links into the network.

Gen Y spends its daylight hours inches from a computer screen; multitasking is quite often a way of life. The clips we watch and the websites we visit are a function of where our current reads and friends send us, through links, away messages and status updates.

The second answer: adapt.

Musicians have traditionally made the bulk of their income touring rather than on record sales. The recording industry, on the other hand, has obviously been reliant on record sales to turn a profit. Although we've all but quit buying CDs — total album sales have fallen from 785 million in 2000 to 428 million in 2008 — concert ticket sales rose at least 7 percent in the last year to $4.2 billion, according to Pollstar. With the evolution of the mix tape and intrepid efforts to keep illegal downloading operable, the recording industry needs to adapt to the new market, probably by working its way into the performance side of revenues. The news industry, too must adapt. Consumption of news is peaking as circulations plunge.

So what does this mean? Collectively, this changing demographic means you need not peddle your wares unless they're new and brought to us in a creative manner. Barack Obama broke through the wall of monotony — he wasn't an old white man with grey hair that spoke like a grandfather. He effortlessly hit threes in dress shoes, spoke with the cadence of a king, and showed us a family that made us all a bit jealous.

We're a generation that shuns division and approves overwhelmingly of a wide range of lifestyles and families: We're twice as approving of gay marriage, and are the only age category to support gay adoption. Politically, it means you must offer us solutions rather than divisive language. We're a generation with very little tolerance for violence, crime and disorder of really any kind. We adore structure and ease; we're in search of compromise and commonality and, most importantly, ideas and politicians and law that make things work more efficiently.

So you want to reach this generation? Two steps: First, make us laugh; then, make our lives easy. Google, Macintosh, Barack Obama — all three have succeeded with us, and all three made things simple — whether using our e-mail, taking our music on the run or volunteering at a phone bank.

Most politicians that have tried to step out into the blogosphere have ended up looking like grandmothers at a rave — sorry, congressman, you just don't belong. Most companies that have treaded into the digital age have done so with the content of the analog era — sorry, seniors, it's time to adapt.

Brian Till, one of the nation's youngest syndicated columnists, is a research fellow for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington. He can be contacted at till@newamerica.net. To find out more about the author and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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