Does ‘y’ = “derr!”

They’ve impolitely been referred to as “air heads” and sure, most are big spenders and they live in the extravagance of a throw away society but before we other generation guardians start on poor young Generation ‘Y’ let’s take a step back and look at some of the excrement to which
they’re subjected.

Take a look at some of the so called products they are being peddled. It’s hard to believe we’d sink low enough to actually market ‘Ring Tones’, ‘Mobile Wallpaper’ and ‘Speed Dating’. It’s enough to make you go “derr!”

I thought I’d pretty much seen it all but recently, a television advertisement alerted me to the fact that the ‘Gen Y’ or the ‘flower of our future’, as I like to call them, have been bombarded with a product that even I, as a marketer, can’t believe. The product concerned lays claim to being able to, “predict your one true love!” by using your mobile phone. Now in any one’s language that has to be the most outrageous claim since ‘Dr. Bailey’s Medical Balm’. Surely this ranks with medicine men and Filipino cancer cures.

Despite the products obvious total lack of credibility, our regulatory bodies and associations have managed to allow this fraudulent claim to make it onto our TV screens. According to CAD’s website, [CAD is the regulatory body which screens all TV commercials] they exists to, “classify all television commercials and infomercials before they can be broadcast.” So God knows how this little beauty got past the eagle eyes of our own regulatory body? Nonetheless, it did! My point is less political and more human. Understanding that no product can survive without the existence of a need I wonder how the intrepid originator of this crass idea concluded that our Generation ‘Y’ needed such a limp crutch. What self respecting 18 year old is so desperate that they would use a mobile phone service to identify their “one true love”? I hope not many. I want to see this little scam go down the drain as fast
as possible.

To all you ‘Y’ Gens, sure I may sometimes have a go at you, but I never under estimate or disrespect you. You’re all smart, you’re all socially confident and the majority of you are without doubt decent people. So don’t let crap like this get a hold. Treat it with the contempt it deserves and bombard the indecent con man who dreamed up this exploitive scheme with
your complaints.

We, in the noble profession of marketing need you to know that we are not all manipulative skunks who exploit others in a moment of weakness. Some of us are honourable and we know that finding the truth, especially about people you care about, lies in experiencing them not in the digits of some mobile phone. The only love you’ll find on the phone is likely to be ‘a phoney’.
See ya later!