I’ve spent the past week meeting with everyone I could grab 10 minutes with and I learned a lot about the perceptions of youth culture. These are three completely different thoughts, but wanted to share:
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#1 Why Study Youth Culture?
I met with a friend and talked about my goals regarding youth culture research and youth marketing. The first criticism is why youth culture? Are you going to dump an entire demographic as they mature? It’s a known fact that older demographics have more disposable income, etc. The more I thought about that the more I swayed my focus. Why? Because experience is influential and persuasiveness is a bitch.
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Then I thought about it. Young adults – my specific interest – are a group of people who are just beginning to craft their identities. They’ve left the households of guardians who guided purchasing decisions for them. They were propelled into a commercial world where they needed to form their own brand relationships. These relationships dictate their brand affinities as they mature. Plus, it’s an entire group of people finding themselves. Most of the time defining themselves through products. Why wouldn’t you want to study this? I definitely want to be right there learning how young adults craft these identities and perhaps offering some words of advice as we all move along.
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#2 Just Another Facebook Kid
If you’ve checked out my portfolio, you may know I am a bit of an entrepreneur. I’m still not sure why. I didn’t grow up in a house of entrepreneurs or with the slightest resources to cultivate that kind of personality. I just know I get tingly feelings when I can improve the way we live our lives. The return is greater than a 9 to 5 where I leave the office and my work stops.
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But as a young entrepreneur with a kick ass idea, I keep bumping into a wall. I call it the Scooby Doo Syndrome. You know the classic line, “I would’ve made it if it weren’t for those meddling kids”. The Scooby Doo Team would have just completed solving complicated problems and battled ghosts/goblins/creepy clowns — and still they were reduced to “meddling kids”. For young entrepreneurs, we are considered “meddling kids” who should just shut up and get jobs. That is, of course, until we do something right. That’s when we become heroes and exceptions.
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This is in no way bitterness. It’s excitement. The doubt makes the journey much more thrilling and provides a higher return after you’ve made it. But I did want to offer my thoughts on the fickle perception of young entrepreneurs.
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# Frosted Lightbulbs, Inconceivable
One of the other chats I had last week was with an older friend who was very supportive of my endeavors (and any young entrepreneur for that matter). We discussed youth culture and he told me a story about frosted lightbulbs.
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Apparently, there was a running joke amongst the engineers who developed lightbulb technology. The joke was to give the young, new engineering staff a project that was impossible and watch as they shrank into silly putty. That project was to frost a lightbulb. So, one day yet another team of young people were given the assignment and to everyone’s dismay they created a frosted lightbulb.
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The key here is the senior engineers obviously had the talent to discover this. But sometimes maturity and too many life experiences create barriers to imagination. That’s the beauty of youth and that’s why youth culture fosters innovation. We lack barriers to imagination. And that’s why I study us.
