Filed under: Future of Work, Futures, Gen Research, Gen Y, Macro trends, Oz research, Oz stats, Uncategorized | Tags: bernard salt, demographic trends, generation y, Global Skills Convergence report, global skills shortage, kpmg, skilled and unskilled labour, social trends, trends
For those of you data nerds who love a good bit of research, Bernard Salt and the smarties at KPMG have just released another ripping report titled ‘The Global Skills Convergence’.
‘In the report KPMG presents the thought-provoking notion that growth in the supply of skilled and unskilled labor in the developed world may slow in the next decade as Baby Boomers exit the workforce. More people exiting then entering the workforce leads to what author Bernard Salt describes as a ‘demographic faultline’.
Interestingly, one of the common themes emerging from the interviews in this study was the challenge of recruiting and retaining 20-somethings otherwise known as Generation Y.. here is a generation that requires – perhaps even demands– transparency of leadership and the development of individually tailored career plans.’
You can download the report from KPMG here
Filed under: Advertising, Brand, Digital culture, Gen Y, Innovative advertising, Innovative promotions, Street art, creativity
Well Scion have done it again. After being the first car manufacturer to stage a virtual care launch in Second Life in 2006, this time they’re letting users design their own crests for the car. A new campaign put together by Strawberry Frog [based in NY & Amsterdam], lets users pick from a range of graffiti inspired symbols designed by Triston Eaton and put together their very own coat of arms. Users can print out the images, save them to a gallery or [for for a few thousand dollars] actually get them customised for their cars.
Check it out at scionspeak.com
Filed under: Borrow this, Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Futures, Geek stuff, Gen M, Gen Y, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Social, Social media, Trends stuff, Work Futures, content communities, creativity | Tags: business week, experience the message, online consumer trends, online stats, online trends, US online internet usage
I tend to take in information best with my peepers, I’m not great at listening [although I try very hard] and I really like to see things mapped out rather than a huge truckload of words. Which is why I love a good model, a good graph, schematic display – anything which represents information in a stimulating visual way. So here’s another one. This one comes courtesy of Business Week, spotted by one of Max’s colleagues & posted on his blog Experience The Message in the middle of last year. It’s a stormer for presentations & workshop stimulus so eat up friend.
You can check out Max’s original post here
The original Business Week article can be found here
Filed under: Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Futures, Geek stuff, Gen M, Gen Y, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Telco research, Thinking, Trends stuff, USA
Few would deny that media play a central role in the livs of today’s children and adolescents. Their homes, indeed their bedrooms, are saturated with media. Many young people carry miniaturized, portable media with them wherever they go. They comprise the primary audience for popular music;
they form important niche audiences for TV, movies, video games, and print media (each of these industries produces extensive content targeted primarily at kids); they typically are among the early adopters of personal computers (indeed, of most new media) and are a primary target of much of the content of the
World Wide Web. that connect to the Internet and do most of what any digital screen will do.
Here’s a great report on Generation M: media habits in the lives of 8 – 18 year olds
Filed under: Designers, Digital culture, Geek stuff, Gen Y, Innovative advertising, Innovative marketing, Innovative retail, Nice products, Social, Trends stuff, Urban lifestyles, creativity
Call me a nerd, call me a super geekazoid but I love the idea behind Startup Schwag™ . This little pint sized beauty is a web2.0 startup schwag tshirt of the month club. Bucking the trend of oh-so-cool fashion logos, most of us reach for the unbranded threads that fly under the radar of the try hard cool club. The Sabas or the Alannah Hills or the Edwins, where logos are vulgar but anyone worth their weight in coke can tell where it’s from just by the cut or the fabric or the way it hangs….
Well subtly is out and logos are back in nerdtown. Startup Schwag™ is based on a simple, wonderful idea recently abandoned by RubyRed Labs in San Francisco: Valley Schwag.
You pay a monthly fee and every month you get sent a logo t-shirt of one of the hottest web startups around. Whether it’s del.icio.us or Techcrunch or Digg, you get to be the first to wear a nerd brand splashed across your chest and who cares if no one knows what it means? That’s not the point is it? So go on…talk nerdy to me..
Check it out here :: Startupschwag
As we all know, Gen Yers have grown up in a world where anything and everything can be custom made to exactly the way they want. Whether it a brand new made to order computer, or a pair of Nike running shoes with their name stitched in them, Gen Y loves having their personality expressed. The Mars Company recognized this concept when they launched a new online promotion for M&Ms candy. The M&M website links to a site called, BecomeAnMM.com, prompting to visitors “There’s an M&M in everyone. Create an Inner M character that looks just like you!” After entering the site the user can create any kind of M&M they want, making it look like themselves, or a friend, allowing them to customize the shape, color, facial expression and best yet, accessorize! After creating your M&M you can continue to make more, or take your creation into a photo shop to place it in funny photos, make a movie out of it and play games. The viral capabilities are endless because the site will allow you to create as many custom candies as you desire and give the user plenty of options to e-mail the creations to whomever they’d like. After the recipient receives the message they are invited to create their own, hopefully sending their M&M to more people with them doing the same and so on.
Check it out :: Become an M&M
This story was written & borrowed from mindcomet
To see how mainstream 20 – 30 yr old males and females will behave tomorrow, we need to take a fresh approach to understanding how the youth mindset of today operates.We need to look closely at why brands play a key role in young people’s lives.Where do new trends come from and how are young people individually and unanimously inspired?What we know is that every youth movement and trend starts life underground Effectively, today’s underground will shape tomorrow’s mainstream.
We can learn a lot from these emergent brands because they usually operate outside the normal parameters of mainstream brands and create customers like fans among the core youth audience.
Underground youth culture is constantly being referenced and appropriated to provide substance and credibility to mainstream brands and their communications. It’s important to be connected to the energy and originality of underground brands and subcultures in Australia and around the world, in order to create more effective communications, targetting and consumer relationships
The topic of youth culture seems to be everywhere; features appear in weekly newspapers, weekend supplements, books and magazines. Yet the inevitable consequence of such mass exposure more often leads to the dissemination of sweeping assumptions and misinformation, than to informed understanding and intelligent insights. The generalisations are there for all to see: young people take drugs, they go to clubs, they’re media literate and can see through our marketing strategies.
In other words, marketers like to think that they are all the same.
But making the assumption that young people fall into one homogeneous category does not count for all the elements that go towards making youth culture so complex and powerful.
What about creativity? Individuality? Distinctiveness? Rather than looking for common denominators, it’s better to view youth culture as a fluid phenomenon, which has it’s own social codes.
These ‘social codes’ have numerous combinations and are protected from outside interpretation. Much in the same way children invent secret games in the playground, where they can experiment, use their imaginations and explore new ways of behaving, youth culture creates a myriad of private clubs, codes and movements
These ‘codes’ are hard to crack but their building blocks are somewhat easier to identify – the codes are created from fashion, politics, behaviour, communication, rituals, interests, music and expression. Youth operate within a street culture we generally know little about.
Think about renegade media (street media). Certain streets (such as Greville St and Brunswick St in Melbourne) are covered in mysterious signs and symbols and codes. Young people love the appeal of these codes. New signs and codes are often created as a form of resistance to the mainstream. Their appeal is related to their semi-legal and semi-subversive status.
Today’s youth culture is shaped by speed of change, novelty, weight and variety of stimuli and choices. Underground brands adopt an instinctive methodology born out of the need to promote themselves with limited resources – although occasionally they achieve a level of notoriety which is hugely disproportionate to their investment.In a fast moving world where youth consumers are constantly ‘surfing’ for information and ideas, surface information can still be a powerful force.
Increase the feeling of discovery – this may mean limiting availability or producing less visible marketing messages. This encourages ‘youth’ consumers to use their intelligence to discover what you’re saying for themselves. If we look at the evolution of brand identities over the last 20 yrs we can see that today there is a greater importance placed on labels, notably clothing labels, worn as a badge by youth consumers. Brands have become more central to young people’s lives as a way of communicating who they are. Brands convey identity; they have the ability to unite like-minded people.
Labels convey both individuality and belonging. Brand identities and labels transmit covert messages about who ‘youth’ think they are, where they belong, and who they want to be. What shoes, trousers, tattoo or record bag they have displays an allegiance to a music scene, attitude, football club or city. Brands play a key role in young people’s lives so look at influences beyond the mainstream category, and even the country you operate in.
Remember good ideas can come from anywhere. Look outside your normal competition to see where future threats may lie. To really be in touch with youth today, you’ll need to develop entirely different antenna.
Exploring Gen X, Y & Z in the workforce
A table of lifestyle differences between boomers, Gen X & Gen Y
YPulse is a marketing site devoted to Gen Y
