The sophisticated child
I’m working on a campaign to sell banking products to a Gen-Y target audience, and it’s an education for a guy like me who was raised in the 1960s and 1970s. When I was a kid, the nation was still inventing itself according to a baby-boomer ideal of American life. From an early age, I took all my self-image cues from advertising. I was successfully programmed to want Slinky, (the Fun and Wonderful Toy), PF Flyers (so I could have the same adventures as Jonny Quest) and Campbell’s Soup (Mm! Mm! Good!) I confess that this morning when I saw Elsie the Cow’s face painted on the side of a truck, I had an urge to buy some Borden’s milk. In “my day,” advertisers told us how we should feel about ourselves, and we obediently fell into line.
My son, now 13 years old—at the tail end of the Gen-Y classification—has an instinctive distrust of everything he hears in advertising. He gives you a clear sense of who he is, from day to day, but as soon as you try to take advantage of this knowledge, he changes. Try to tell him what he should do or how he should feel, and it’s bye-bye audience interest. His mind is too subtle to be tricked, and his cynical wit is sharp enough to slice tomatoes.
On the banking campaign, my creative partners and I are being careful not to tell the target audience what to do. Instead of saying, “Here’s how you can be cool by using our products,” we’re saying, “Here’s how our products can be cool by fitting into your life.”
Is Gen-Y unique? An anomaly? Nah, they’re the vanguard—the early adopters—of this sophisticated attitude. As surely as easy-listening orchestras eventually start playing old rock songs, the rest of us will follow the example of the young.
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Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
–Dorothy Thompson
