7. Where are they coming from? Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Older teens (15-17) Generation Y (18-28) Generation X (29-40) Trailing Boomers (41-50) Leading Boomers (51-59) Matures (60-69) Generation Next (16-25)
8. Different values, different needs Beware of generalizations—Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are both Trailing Boomers, born within 60 days of each other in 1946. Generation Y (18-28) Generation X (29-40) Trailing Boomers (41-50) Leading Boomers (51-59) Matures (60-69) I want to make a difference—tech entitled I want to strike a balance—flexibility matters I don’t trust institutions—it may get worse I respect experience—not authority I respect authority—money is recognition
11. If you build it, will they come? “ I reckon about 20 percent of a brand is it’s physical attributes, like a logo, color, letterheads. The rest is all about behavior. Employees bring a brand to life: they are it’s ultimate custodians.” --Ian Buckingham, Interbrand
A study of more than 260,000 college freshmen released this year by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute found that 66.3% of freshmen surveyed last fall said it is "essential or very important" to help others, the highest percentage to say so in 25 years. Gen X-ers were the latchkey kids of the 70’s—they don’t want to make the same mistakes as their parents. The baby boomers were the first group to be raised with televisions in the home, and television has been identified as "the institution that solidified the sense of generational identity more than any other." [8] Starting in the 1950s, people in diverse geographic locations could watch the same shows, listen to the same news, and laugh at the same jokes. Television shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver showed idealized family settings. Later, the boomers watched scenes from the Vietnam War and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy , Martin Luther King, Jr. , and Robert F. Kennedy . The boomers found that their music, most notably rock and roll , was another expression of their generational identity. Transistor radios were personal devices that allowed teenagers to listen to The Beatles and The Motown Sound . Baby Boomer cohort #1 (born from 1946 to 1954) Memorable events: assassinations of JFK , Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, political unrest, walk on the moon , Vietnam War, anti-war protests, social experimentation, sexual freedom , civil rights movement , environmental movement , women's movement , protests and riots, experimentation with various intoxicating recreational substances Key characteristics: experimental, individualism, free spirited, social cause oriented Baby Boomer cohort #2 (born from 1955 to 1964) Memorable events: Watergate , Nixon resigns, the Cold War , the oil embargo , raging inflation, gasoline shortages Key characteristics: less optimistic, distrust of government, general cynicism
What’s Your First Message? What the first thing you want audiences to know about your organization? Well, I would argue that it’s that they are welcome. No, you don’t have to say it explicitly, but it couldn’t hurt. Take a look at the Philadelphia Zoo’s first message, “America’s First Zoo.” I find a lot of arts organizations starting talking about themselves in terms of precedent, history, or quantity: “We were the first to . . . ” ” The Theatre was founded in . . .” “The Museum has over 100,000 . . .” Now these points are certainly differentiating and unique, but are they beneficial to audiences? Do audiences care about these aspects? Are they relevant to the experience they’ll have? Not to pick on the Philadelphia Zoo, well maybe a little: It may very well be that the Zoo is proud to be first, a primacy of timing of sorts, and maybe they’ve even found through study that this message is important to audiences as well. And if that’s true, more power to them, they’ve done their due diligence.Benefits not Features. I would argue, however, that audiences don’t care about precedent, history, or quantity. These are secondary or tertiary messages after more primary ones such as: How is this experience going to make me feel emotionally? What is it going to do for my long-term mood? What am I going to get out of it that has a lasting effect that will make me want to come back? With precedent, history, or quantity, an audience’s initial thoughts could be: this organization is old, stuffy, dusty, out-of-step, and is going to take a long, long time to go through because of how much stuff they have. Sure you may have visuals that counter those thoughts, but aren’t messages and visuals supposed to be hand and glove?Look at Your Stuff. What does the “About Us” section on your website start with? On Twitter? On Facebook? On your blog? How about your brochures? Where’s the paragraph about the organization overall? Oh, you say you never thought of including that or “there’s never any room for that.” Hmmm. Now look at the last paragraph in your news releases? You know the one, that short 50 to 100 word paragraph about your organization. Don’t have one or it begins with, “The organization was started when . . .”