I can hardly believe it, but this is my 300th post. Wow! Allow me to reflect a moment on how much has changed in the area of Millennial Marketing.
One of the biggest changes is the sheer amount of information available to marketers about Gen Y. Two years ago, there was little to draw on, so we did our primary research studies – on the workplace and on social media. No longer. There are mountains of free published information, and a lot of is is very good. Any marketer who needs to understand Gen Y (and who doesn’t?) should start with what is already published. True much of it will not be exactly what you need. A syndicated study doesn’t ask that specific question about your category or brand. But for context, many of these studies are better than what any one firm could do on its own.
Earlier this year we started keeping track of the best studies we ran across in a wiki, called Millennialmarketing.wikispaces.com. (Bookmark it!) Each study has been classified into one of a dozen categories. There are usually dozens of studies within each category, and new ones are being added nearly every day. (If you register, you can add your own finds as well.)
Millennial Consumer & Shopping Behavior
Millennial Lifestyle, Attitudes & Values
Millennials & Financial Services
Millennial Demographics & Economics
Presentations & Ebooks on Millennials
Generational marketing skeptics (yes, there are many) usually have two main objections.
The first objection is that Gen Y is really just like other generations at the same age. Any differences are due to stage of life – students and young adults naturally are different in their outlook, values and spending patterns. As they mature, marry, take on real jobs, have kids, etc. they will naturally lose some of their ‘distinctive’ qualities.
The second objection is based on the concern that sweeping generalizations about any age group can obscure important individual differences and be misleading.
Of course, there is a grain of truth to both claims. Lifestage is part of the puzzle and an important marketing variable — young people are different from older consumers. That’s why age is one of the first bases of most segmentation schemes, along with gender and ethnicity. BUT! It is a mistake to assume young people of your generation are the same as young people today. They grew up in a different time and were shaped by different cultural forces, not to mention different technology and prevailing parenting views. Do you think your parents were the same as you at the same age?
If this logic isn’t compelling enough, longitudinal research studies provide evidence of generational shifts. Here are several studies worth checking out. They compare young adults of today with people the same age at different points in time.
As for stereotypes I have addressed this before. Stereotypes and ‘profiling’ are problematic in most areas of life, but they are essential for marketers. Until we have tools that can target people individually (and that day is coming faster than you might think), marketers must aggregate people based on characteristics into segments and create profiles (or if you prefer, ‘persona’s') to keep their products, messages relevant.
Which brings me back to the value and limitations of secondary research. It provides an excellent starting point, but should be considered just that, a beginning. Marketers need specific information about how Gen Y thinks about their category, brand or marketing program. For that, there is no substitute for primary research.
Longitudinal Study of Young Adult Mental Health
Pew Research Reports: How Are Millennials Different than their Parents at the Same Age?
Girl Scouts USA Longitudinal Study of Values
College Board Student Poll of Incoming Freshman
DEMOS: Economic State of Young America
Happy 300th to me! Hope you enjoy the gifts.
I haven’t seen an iPad in person but I have watched a few video demos, like this one from Wired magazine at SXSW. I definitely want one, although not enough to be among the half a million people or so who have pre-ordered to the point that it is sold out. (Another nice scarcity marketing coup for Apple!)
Thanks to strong pre-order rates, Apple’s manufacturing partners now expect to ship 2.5 million iPads between March and May. Device sales are only the beginning for Apple of course. As with iTunes, the real money is in the ‘after sales’ – in this case revenue from content providers and advertising. Apple just announced its mobile ‘iAd’ platform for the iPad, which will bring Google and Apple face to face in mobile advertising. Things are starting to get intersting….
I am doubtful Millennials will be among the early adopters.
My students at Notre Dame show no interest. They have all the devices they need to listen to music or access the Internet. The $499 to $829 price is also a significant barrier. On the other hand, they may not be all that representative. Focus group research by Frank Magid suggests the appeal knows no demographic bounds. Consumers of all ages expressed enthusiasm. Even stronger evidence of Millennial appeal comes from a study by NPD, which suggests the iPad enjoys its strongest appeal among young adults and Apple owners.
NPD’s Apple iPad: Consumers’ Perceptions and Attitudes report found that awareness is highest among current Apple owners, (82 percent), consumers with $100,000 or greater income (80 percent), and 18-34 year olds (78 percent). Those demographic groups are the ones with the most interest in buying an iPad. Only 18 percent of all consumers surveyed expressed a real interest in owning an iPad while 27 percent of 18-34 year olds and 24 percent of Apple owners said they were extremely or very interested.
A lot depends on how much new functionality the iPad brings. If it just allows you do to more of what you already do, why invest in a new device and ongoing data plan?
Smart phone penetration is growing smartly. Penetration of smart phones like the Blackberry and iPhone was just 21% in Q4 ’09 according to Nielsen, but is expected to reach 33% by the end of Q4 ’10 and be half of all cell phones by Q4 ’11. With that kind of mobility in your pocket, many will certainly find another device superfluous.
There are suggestions, however, that the iPad will be ‘transformational’. I am especially intrigued by the announcement from MTV this week of a co-viewing app developed specifically for the iPad and mobile phones. They observed that 59% of people multi-task when watching TV, and are betting that tablet devices and mobile phones will be easier to play with while watching TV than laptop or desktop computers. This would mean true ‘interactive’ TV – you interact with friends while watching. IPad apps for “Beavis and Butthead”, “MTV News” and “VH1toGo” are due in April. I’m sure this is just the first of many ‘firsts’ we will see from the iPad (social shopping anyone?!)
Integration of interactive ads, social networks and cool, fast visuals could make the iPad a ‘must have’ for Gen Y, especially after the price comes down.
According to the NPD research, price is currently the main barrier. Among the 18-34 year old demographic, 57 percent of those survyed by NPD cited price as the number one reason they aren’t ready to buy, 25 percent more than the overall percentage of non-interested buyers. That discrepancy suggests there may be pent up demand that can be tapped by lowering the price. Given the pattern of start high, end low followed by the iPhone and iTouch, Millennials may in fact be the main sales driver for the iPad.
The Value of Rubbing Up
This week Brad Berens generously visited University of Notre Dame to deliver the keynote speech at the MBA-student sponsored event, the Social Media Symposium. I’ve ‘known’ Brad via email and Twitter for nearly 4 years, but this was our first corporeal experience. (Thanks, Brad. for enlightening me on how the word corporeal is actually pronounced!)
Brad Berens has what many Millennials aspire to – that is a ‘slash career’. He simultaneously wears many hats including blogger/ imediaconnection editor-at-large/Senior Research Fellow at USC Annenberg School for the Digital Future/event producer for DMG World Media. In his position as Chief Content officer, Digital Marketing Officer, his main focus is producing 18 marketing events each year, including AdTech, the CMO Executive Summit and iMedia Summits. In other words, he is well plugged in to what is happening in digital marketing and media.
Berens’ keynote, titled “Media Friction and Fragmentation”, was crowded with insights and ideas, but two ideas in particular stand out: “All Media is Social Media” and “Consumers Want to Increase Their ‘Social Friction’”. Together they provide a useful prism for evaluating the torrent of new digital marketing ideas.
All Media Is Social Media
Think about it: everything we do on the Internet is inherently social, or at least has the potential to be social. To the extent that media is rapidly becoming digitized, it follows that all media is inherently social. Most Internet sites and video games have a ‘share this’ option. Sharing can be asynchronous (i.e., an email forward or tweet) or simultaneous (Chatroulette, Call of Duty). Sharing is caring. The construct of the lonely person at their typewriter or the isolated computer geek has completely given way to the virtual social world of the connected consumer.
Consumers Want To Increase Their ‘Social Friction’
In business friction is a bad thing. We want efficiency, not friction. But in our social lives, friction means we’re getting closer to others and that is a good thing. Visiting Disneyland is a high friction experience – you don’t go alone (or how sad for you if you do). Watching a movie or bowling can be either a low friction experience or a high friction experience depending on whether you have an opportunity to interact with others during the experience. Likewise with the Internet. It can be high friction or low friction. To the extent that we can make the Internet more like Disneyland and less like watching TV or bowling alone, it will be more compelling to users.
By combining these two insights, the logical conclusion is that the most useful and compelling social media platforms will be those that are high in ‘social friction’.
Social media is not just a way to communicate — communication is only the beginning. Social media is a form of entertainment that offers consumers new ways to literally be together online and even to enhance their analog experiences. Looking at some of the hottest trends in online media through this prism provides insights as to why these are gaining traction: they each embody the idea of high tech meeting high friction.
1. Location-based Platforms
Foursquare and Gowalla are two of the hottest platforms in what is known as location-based marketing. Each of them allow you to notify your friends who use the platform where you are by ‘checking in’ to different locations. There is a game-like quality to the applications by providing rewards for frequent check ins, but over time it is thought that the real power and appeal will be allowing you to know whether you know anyone in your immediate vicinity. You can also change your plans to be more likely to be where your friends are. No more accidental encounters. Twitter and Facebook have also recently incorporated location elements to their platforms. The new iPad will also provide location-specific advertising and marketing opportunities for social connection. (For more on how marketers are leveraging location-based platforms, see Mashable’s “Five Things You Need to Know About Location-based Marketing”)
2. Social Gaming Platforms
In the old days we had solitaire and Bejeweled. Then there were games you played online or within Facebook like Farmville or Scrabulous. Now console and online games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty are almost entirely seen as a way to interact with friends. According to a recent TIME magazine article, the next generation of games will take the idea of social friction to the next level. The next generation of online games — like the popular Bejeweled Blitz — will offer richer, more direct competition and game play between users. New platforms from iPhone and Facebook will allow players to share scores, statistics and and even add a personalized gaming highlight reel to their profile directly from Xbox 360 or Playstation.
3. Social Shopping Platforms
For Millennials, especially, shopping is ‘social glue’, whether it is done online or in-store. Millennials are more likely to shop with someone else, and they are ready to spread the word if they see a particularly good deal. According to Mintel, sixty percent of 18-34 year olds “read consumer feedback online about products or services before making a purchase”. Sixty-five percent of teens say when their favorite brand or store has a sale, they want to share the information with their best friend or sister. Sites like Storrz, ShopTogether and soon to be launched PlumWillow leverage the social side of shopping to allow teens to connect with their friends. There is a huge opportunity to combine the fun of a game with shopping. Deal sharing sites such as Groupon.com and LivingSocial.com reward you for signing up new users if they subsequently buy a deal. Groupon only makes a deal official if a certain number of people purchase it.
4. Social Viewing Platforms (The Back Channel)
The Academy Awards and Super Bowl viewing experiences were transformed this year by consumers connecting via Twitter on the ‘back channel’ as they watched the ‘front channel’ on TV.
The next generation of Web-connected TVs and software will include ways for people to monitor and interact with the conversation happening around an event, filtering live streams in real-time to display the most relevant discussions. According to TIME , an interview with Twitter founder Evan Williams at South By Southwest was wrecked by criticism on Twitter (more than a little irony there!). “Festival goers were unimpressed with the questions posed to Williams by moderator Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review and tweeted their displeasure before leaving the interview en masse. In a blog post later, Haque said he wished he had been monitoring the Twitter conversation from on stage.” The ability to have a discussion during a shared viewing event enhances the viewing, for better and for worse…
5. Social Action Platforms
There are many sites offering advice to non-profits on how to leverage social media to connect with their users, but I found very little about how to connect users to each other. The site, Act.ly, is a Twitter-based platform that allows users to start petitions and recruit like-minded individuals to support them. Twestivals are another way Twitter is being leveraged to bring people together in the offline world. The site allows you to attend events in your city by donating to worthy causes selected by the organizer. A key feature is begin able to see who is planning on attending. Look for more sites that connect people around causes to energize them to get off their computers and into their communities – together.
‘Social friction’ is a useful concept for marketers who want to engage Millennials.
Marketers wishing to engage Millennials would be wise to leverage these social media platforms to help Gen Y’ers do more of what they want to do – spend more time with their friends and to make that time as rewarding and fun as possible. Why? Young adults and teens are adamant that their digital world is no substitute for real interpersonal relationships and interaction. Millennial, Angela Stefano, describes her wish for less digital, more analog life succinctly in The Next Great Generation blog:
“I, for one, would much rather be at a party with my friends than at home reading tweets and text messages about what a great time they’re having. … If anything, our analog lives are made more complex by our digital ones. …Not to mention, your digital world wouldn’t be very exciting if your analog one wasn’t filled with people and activities. Without those first connections…well, you’re kind of just a creeper looking for friends in a chatroom. When it comes down to it, our digital lives complement our analog ones. And it should never be the other way around.” – Angela Stefano
I’ve always loved word games, so it was a natural decision for me to study ‘intrinsic motivation’ as a graduate student in Psychology. My master’s thesis attempted to show a relationship between enjoyment of a game and the presence or absence of feedback, and whether or not that feedback was tied to performance.
I hypothesized that pay to play would diminish internal enjoyment and motivation. Because I was a starving graduate student, I tested this theory by creating and programming a crude hangman game (in Fortran) to create the various conditions of performance rewards, no rewards and random rewards. An elegant design, I had high hopes of an experimental breakthrough. I wasn’t able to prove my hypothesis, but I did pass my oral exams and got the degree. Off I went to a career in advertising, then marketing.
In one of the many ironies of my life, I now realize the real breakthrough was not the findings but the hangman game itself.
Talk about lack of vision! This was 1978, right about the time Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were busy changing the world. The Google Guys weren’t even born yet. Yet, I was so busy mastering SPSS, Fortran and other mysteries of experimental design that I totally missed the point that the game itself was the point, not just a vehicle to gain a degree. (If I could turn back time….)
It was apparent to me even in 1978 that computer-based games were literally “sticky“.
My measure of ‘intrinsic motivation’ was how long subjects stayed and played after I told them their contribution to the experiment was over (no more cash) and they were free to leave. I casually added that they could stay and play if they wished. This was a strategic error as it cost me a lot of time waiting. Some subjects had to be told to leave after an hour. The average ‘persistence’ was 20 minutes.
Fast forward 32 years and electronic games have become a worldwide obsession. 24% of U.S. and U.K. Internet users play social games like Scrabble and Farmville online at least weekly. The profile is very broad, in terms of both age and gender. E-Marketer reports that as of March 2010, gamers spend an average of 8 hours a week playing games, up from 7.3 hours in 2009.
Gaming has become so important a ‘media’ that Nielsen tracks it along with radio, movies and TV. According to Nielsen, the most popular PC game is World of Warcraft, with The Sims a distant second. WOW is played on average 524 minutes a week.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
In March, Activision’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 hit a record 25 million unique players across all platforms, XBox360, PS3 and PC’s. I asked my twitter friends to enlighten me as to what makes this game so addictive. The answer appears to be great storylines and graphics.
Interactive games have become a ‘social media’ in their own right. A July 2009 Mintel Report (“Gaming in the Interactive World) explains that console is the most social, with more than a third of users play these in person with other. Remote is common on social networking sites, as would be expected, as well as online sites. 18-24 year olds are the most likely to be social when playing games – 41% say it’s more fun to play games in person compared to just 25% overall. 31% of 18-24 year olds say playing games online is a great way to meet new people and 22% say they would like to play in tournaments. Older gamers are much less likely to agree with the more social aspects of gaming.
Ford Taurus: Chasing the Shadow Game
With games this popular, it’s little wonder marketers have caught on. Many participate in popular games as sponsors, while some create their own games. Ford Taurus is featured prominently in the USA Network hit show, White Collar. They have extended this placement to White Collar’s male skewing audience with an online game that mimics one of the show’s FBI-crime solving episodes called “Chasing the Shadow”. The game is said to be fairly sophisticated, more like a console game than an online game. It also features the Sync interface, “which may be the most important element of the game, since players spend a good deal of time using it to make and receive phone calls, text messages, and so on.”
Marketing Daily (Jan 20) described it this way: ”While driving the Taurus, the trainee uses features like Ford Sync technology (to receive text messages, voice messages, make calls, and get clues); SecuriCode vehicle access; adaptive cruise control; and collision warning….Ford Taurus branding frames the game window, and vehicle features are also touted via text messages and voice messages from headquarters.”
That is certainly a far cry from hangman, and well beyond anything I could have ever imagined in 1978. The Ford Taurus provides a great example of how marketers can leverage the inherent ‘stickiness’ of games to involve young consumers in their stories and products. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of these types of efforts in the future.
I only wish I had the vision to imagine what they will look like.
Today Brand Amplitude officially announces our decision to launch a Millennial Marketing unit. That may seem like a yawner to you, but for us, it is big news. This new effort officially recognizes and operationalizes what we have been saying for the past three years:
Millennials require a different approach.
Until now, we handled Gen Y marketing issues with the same approach and ‘toolkits’ we offer our brand strategy and market research clients, a ‘best practices’ approach to developing consumer insights and translating those insights into brand strategies and activation plans.
There’s nothing wrong with this approach, and we’ve experienced a lot of success in generating insights for clients that way. We are especially proud of our work for Vogue magazine, TGI Friday’s, University of Notre Dame and others. Increasingly, however, we’ve come to recognize that Millennials are different and our clients will need to experiment with new approaches to engage them in research as well as in marketing.
Our vision is to fill the gap between understanding Millennials and developing programs that connect them more passionately to brands. Our clients tell us they want to get beyond ‘insights’ to generating ideas that resonate with Millennial lifestyles and values.
To do this we’ll leverage our understanding of Millennials from our secondary research resources and proprietary research as well as our deep network connections with Gen Y marketers, PR professionals, bloggers, former students and colleagues. In order to reduce risk and optimize for success, we plan to to leverage our knowledge of online research tools for concept testing in order to reduce risk.
To learn more, read today’s press release or visit our web site.
St. Patrick’s Day is my least favorite day of the year to teach. St. Patrick’s Day at Notre Dame is like a spring version of Halloween. This year, it happened to coincide with the first day of sunny warm weather after what has felt like a really brutal winter. The whole day felt like a major holiday. There was even free food all afternoon. I also suspect there was a lot of drinking going on.
I first became aware of the issue of campus binge drinking when I read the terrifying 2005 novel by Tom Wolfe, “I Am Charlotte Simmons“. As with most of Wolfe’s books, it is anthropological exploration disguised as fiction. The book was based on years of research on elite college campuses. The documentation of the ‘student-athlete, hook-up and drinking culture was an eye-opener.
Academic research on the culture of college drinking is not hard to find: “It is far more pervasive and destructive than many think” was the conclusion of an extensive 3-year investigation by the Task Force on College Drinking, commissioned by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism(NIAAA). The problem begins in high school, with thirty percent of 12th graders, reporting heavy episodic drinking. (Slightly more report having ”been drunk”, and almost three-quarters report drinking in the past year.)
By the time they get to college, alcohol consumption is considered a necessary “rite of passage. Traditions and beliefs handed down through generations of college drinkers serve to reinforce students’ expectations that alcohol is a necessary component of social success.”
- Approximately 70 percent of college students consumed some alcohol in the past month.
- 31 percent reported symptoms associated with alcohol abuse (e.g., drinking in hazardous situations and alcohol-related school problems).
- 6 percent reported 3 or more symptoms of alcohol dependence (e.g., drinking more or longer than initially planned and experiencing increased tolerance to alcohol’s effects).
The immediate consequences of alcohol abuse in college are troubling, and include death, injury, assault, unsafe sex, suicide, health problems, and more. Immediate consequences also include negative impact on academic performance. About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall.
The short-term impact extends even to ‘second-hand effects’ on other students, and the campus community. “Students who do not drink or engage in low-risk drinking are affected by the problem drinking of their fellow students. These problems can range from disrupted sleep or study to caring for an intoxicated roommate to even being humiliated or assaulted.”
There are also longer term consequences. While most high-risk college student drinkers reduce their consumption of alcohol after leaving college, others may continue frequent, excessive drinking, leading to alcoholism or medical problems associated with chronic alcohol abuse. A 2008 CDC Report, “Health United States with a Special Report on Young Adults 18-29,” notes “The period between ages 18 and 29 sets the foundation for future health behaviors and health status, and may be the time in life when health education and preventive care may arguably have their greatest impact”. This report provides troubling details that suggest that ‘foundation’ may not be all that solid.
Last February, Lesley Stahl reported on the problem for CBS 60 Minutes. The student interviews reveal a high degree of peer pressure to drink. Drinking is equated with having a good time, and not drinking means you are nowhere socially.
The problem appears to be peculiar to college students. The NYT reported last June that information collected over a 27-year period by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, found “binge drinking by men between 18 and 20 years old who did not attend college dropped by more than 30 percent over that period but remained statistically unchanged among similar-aged men on campus. There was no difference between college and noncollege women in the 18- to 20-year age group but a big upsurge in binge drinking by older college women.”
No one seems to know why this problem has been particularly difficult to address among college students. Millennial have proven remarkably prepared to make good choices in other areas of their lives, but appear to resist efforts to break the culture of college drinking.
Grading is the part of teaching I dislike the most. Classroom time, office hours, even pre-class preparation are all preferable to grading papers and essays.
I assign weekly papers or case analyses in most of my classes. I’ve learned it is about the only sure way to ensure students read the assigned chapters or articles — and read with purpose. That translates into few hours of grading papers on Sunday nights, trying to make distinctions worthy of a Olympics judge. (Was one student’s double salchow equivalent in difficulty and grace to another students triple toe loop?) By the 45th paper, it’s certainly tempting to just give everyone an A and be done with it.
My university watches the average grade by individual teacher, by college or department, by level, even by type of professor (adjunct vs. tenured). The figures for individual schools are guarded, but the fact that grade point averages are slowly ‘inflating’ for most colleges and universities is widely acknowledged.
The average GPA for U.S. colleges for the 2006-2007 academic year was 3.11. In the 1930s, the average GPA at American colleges and universities was only 2.35.
The upward trend in grades has not been smooth. Instead it has gone in fits and starts over the years. The chart above tracks grades from over 160 colleges and universities in the United States with a combined enrollment of over 2,000,000 students. The authors observe there have been two periods of rapidly rising grades – the 1960′s which correlated with “the social upheavals of the Vietnam war” and the 1980′s. This is thought to be related to the ‘kindness of teachers’ toward students who would otherwise be eligible for the draft.
While the grade inflation of the 60′s ended with a decade of static to falling grades, the inflation of the 80′s has continued with no end in sight. The rise for private schools has been more pronounced than for public universities. The authors note that the same trend is not evident in community colleges.
There are many hypotheses about why grades have inflated, but affirmative action and increases in student achievement have been pretty much ruled out.
“While local increases in student quality may account for part of the grade inflation at some institutions, the national trend cannot be explained by this influence. There is no evidence that students have improved in quality nationwide since the mid-1980s.The influence of affirmative action is sometimes used to explain grade inflation. However, much of the rise in minority enrollments occurred during a time, the mid-1970s to mid-1980s, when grade inflation waned. As a result, it is unlikely that affirmative action has had a significant influence.”
Also not at fault is easier grading on the part of professors (whew!). Instead, the author of the study, Stuart Rojstaczer, believes that the underlying reason is a pervasive ‘consumer culture’ on campuses. ”Students are paying more for a product every year, and increasingly they want and get the reward of a good grade for their purchase. In this culture, professors are not only compelled to grade easier, but also to water down course content. Both intellectual rigor and grading standards have weakened.”
Although I have yet to hear a student complain about an ‘A’, I also know that students have more respect for professors who demand more of their students. David Heiser, today wrote a blog article titled, “Take It From a Millennial: Stop Taking It Easy On the Millennials!” where he argues that a softer approach is not what his generation wants or needs:
“We Millennials may be guilty of putting in the least amount of effort we could in order to succeed in school (I know I was guilty at times), but we are NOT fragile. The real problem is that the epidemic of grade inflation that has permeated the education system has made the vast majority of students complacent. If a 3.0 is seen as an acceptable GPA for a student and he only has to work 30 minutes per day to earn it, he’s not likely to do anything more. We need teachers to require kids to put in some serious effort to achieve the minimally acceptable levels. The fact of the matter is that, when it comes down to it, students want to be pushed. If you tell us how we can do better and challenge us to do the best we can, we will.
Ask just about any former student who his favorite college professor was. It won’t be the professor who passed out completed study guides before the tests and didn’t have an attendance policy. It WILL be the professor who challenged him intellectually in the most engaging way. My favorite professors were always the ones who returned my papers with the most red ink on them. I didn’t always love the grades they gave me, but I always appreciated that they took the time to actually read my work closely and showed me how I could do better.”
My 16-year old son has been struggling all week on a history paper. It is now 2:30 AM and he just finished it. To say it has been an ordeal is an understatement, but he is proud of the result. He is smiling again, and the world looks a little brighter. Despite the pressure he considers his history teacher to be both his hardest and his favorite teacher. There’s a lesson in that for all of us.
Phil DeFranco, 24, YouTube Celebrity
I asked my daughter what’s hot among her college age friends and she immediately replied Philip DeFranco. Philip Who?
Apparently I am among the last to know about this mega-YouTube personality. DeFranco, 24, video blogs four days a week to his fan base of nearly 1 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, sxephil. Here is today’s installment, fresh from the SXSW meeting in Austin. It is a rapid fire monologue, closely editted quick cuts of DeFranco’s extemporaneous thoughts on (roughly) the topic of Internet freedom with some celebrity gossip thrown in.
Apparently he ends each segment with, “My Name is Philip DeFranco, and you’ve just been Phill’d in.”
DeFranco is certainly prolific. In addition to the daily post on sxephil, he has a second YouTube channel (Totally Awesome) and an active Twitter account with over 110,000 followers (@PhillyD).
According to Wikipedia, Philip “DeFranco” Franchina is from New York and has been blogging since 2006. He appears to be to YouTube, what Jon Stewart is to television, a ‘don’t miss’, daily dose of hip, funny commentary on current events.
Now that I’ve been “Phill’d In“, I only have one question: Why am I the last to know about him? I suspect we haven’t heard the last of this genuine Gen Y Internet celebrity.
If you have a spare 15 minutes, check out this video interview. DeAndre Upshaw of Gen Y Live, invited me to share my thoughts about Millennials for his audience of credit union professionals. The interview was conducted Thursday, March 11 via Skype.
Upshaw (@Deandresays), an energetic Gen Y’er himself, blogs for Young & Free Texas, a youth marketing program for credit unions. He go the job by winning a contest. U.S. News and World Report wrote a great article March 10, about Millennials and financial services, titled“Gen Y to Banks: Do Better”. Here is how US News describes Upshaw’s introduction to to the world of credit union marketing:
“The Texas Dow Employees Credit Union hosts an annual contest for a gen Y spokesperson who finds free things to do around Texas and shares them on the campaign’s website, www.youngfreetexas.com. (The campaign started at a Canadian credit union and has since made its way south.) Armed with a $30,000 annual salary, a Toyota Prius, a MacBook, and a high-definition video camera, last year’s winner, DeAndré Upshaw, a recent graduate of Baylor University, posted videos and blog entries on financial literacy, budgeting, and other topics relevant to his peers. Website visitors can click through to more information on the credit union’s offerings, but advertising products is not the focus of the site.
The campaign seems to be working. Young and Free Texas’s Trey Reeme says that in the past two years, the 18-to-25-year-old demographic has been its fastest-growing segment. “I think [the campaign] builds trust,” says Reeme, who is 29. Upshaw, Reeme adds, seems more like a friend than a banker, and the annual contest sends the message, “We want to learn from you, as well as help you—not just take your money.”
For more, on the Young & Free program, check out my post from January, “Why Credit Unions Are Winning with Millennials”.
Upshaw asked great questions and has tremendous charisma and energy, not to mention technical skill to pull off a live skype video interview with tweeted-in questions. I answered them all as best I could, but refused a request to dance.
The Flipchart, a 1960's Teaching Innovation
“Portable, economical, versatile, the flipchart would get many teacher’s votes as the most useful teaching tool. With a little prepartion and imagination a teacher or leader can reinforce visually the idea or story he is trying to communicate.
What is a flipchart? It is simply a series of sheets of paper bound together which can be flipped over, one at a time, to show a series of thoughts, pictures, outline points, questions, cartoons, symbols, or almost anything that helps teach the lesson.
Probably the most popular permanent flipchart is an artist’s large sketch pad, available at art supply stores. Spiral bound and large enough for use with groups, it has good quality durable paper. Felt-tip pens, crayons, heavy pencil or charcoal can be used on it. With some you can even use tempera or water colors.
The want ad section of the newspaper clipped onto an easel with metal clips is an inexpensive, quick flipchart. Make sure the news type is solid across the page and is too small for any of the audience to read. Mark with a dark felt-tip pen.
Sheets of wrapping paper may also be clipped onto an easel or bound to a piece of cardboard with binder rings. Wrapping paper can be cut to size to fit the size of the group. Any felt-tip pen or crayon can be used if the color contrasts enough with the paper.
Loose leaf or unruled spiral bound notebooks may be held horizontally and used with small classes. Several sheets of vrious colored construction paper can be punched and bound with binfder rings for larger groups. Some felt-tip pens may blur because of the porous paper, but contrasting crayon colors work well, as does white or colored chalk whose tip has been dipped in a little water.”
Source: “Some Variations and Uses of The Flipchart”, The Standard, January 15, 1968
Wow. The flipchart revolutionized education by introducing the idea that a teacher could ‘reinforce visually the ideas or story he (ouch) is trying to communicate’. The homely, homemade flipchart was literally the technological ancestor of the interactive whiteboard and Power Point presentation.
The classrooms at University of Notre Dame are well equipped with the latest classroom technology. While I occasionally make use of an HD Flip camera, there isn’t a flipchart or ‘felt-tip marker’ in sight. Instead, each room features multiple sliding blackboards, computers, high speed Internet connections, computer projection systems, DVD players and sound, LCD photo projecters, laptop connection. Technology assistance is a phone call away. Lighting is completely adjustable. Students enjoy wireless access on their own devices in the classroom.
Students of today would find a classroom of the 60′s primitive. I wonder what students forty years from now will think of our ‘modern’ classrooms? But more than that, I wonder if learning would be enhanced much more by the latest technology than it was by the flipchart in 1968.
