Toyota is just one of many companies trying to woo urban youth, a segment admired by marketers for its substantial disposable income and trendsetting tendencies. Pedro Pacheco, spokesperson for Toyota Europe, sums up the attraction. "The urban youth segment is attractive to us because it can successfully influence the whole of the youth sector, and it allows us to attract customers to the brand at an earlier stage," he writes by email. "We want these customers to 'grow' with the brand, by offering them products that will adapt to each stage of their life. In other words, these customers give Toyota the opportunity of establishing a life-lasting relationship."

Simon Roberts, research director at an ethnographic research agency called IdeasBazaar, agrees. "People say 'Here's the youth category and here is a list of its characteristics and properties.' But I find the thing rather false. Aren't we just listening to a list of adjectives? It is clichéd because all the same characteristics and attitudes are found in other groups. Youth is an overstated category. A lot of attitudes are attributed to young people, but [those attitudes] are not the sole preserve of the youth."

Nevertheless, Pillot de Chenecey notes that all youth do tend to have one thing in common: a lack of loyalty. "Young people tend to chop and change consumption habits far more than over 35s. Your average 17 year old has little loyalty. They are a promiscuous consumer, which is exactly why all the advertising is directed at them. You have to constantly talk with them, and if you're not as good as your competitor, they will ditch you. The stats look impressive when they say the youth market is worth X billion, but the over 45s segment is worth many times more than that."

So is youth marketing a necessary expense, a valid strategy or totally misguided? Researcher Roberts thinks it makes much more sense to target particular generations rather than age brackets. "We've got three generations at the moment. There are the baby boomers, generation X, and millennials who [came] of age around the turn of the millennium. Attitudes and behaviors are much easier to identify and generalize in these groupings."

Roberts has been involved in a large-scale ethnographic study of the millennial generation, also called Generation Y or the echo generation and commonly characterized as those born between 1980 and 1990. "They are about self-navigation. A lot has changed in the world and it is now about making sense of it. Certainties have gone. Gone are the days where you have a regular career for 30 years and a good pension at the end. This is a generation brought up in an age of technology and globalization."

"You can talk about youth and the enduring truths about what being young is," says Roberts. "Talking about millennials tries to tie things down to a specific juncture in history."

"Youth is a mindset," states Pillot de Chenecey. "Remember that today's 70 year olds bought 'It's Alright' by Presley. They lived though the 60s youth culture. The attitudes they had then are the ones they have now. They don't want to be treated like a bunch of old idiots."

Generational marketing is a better long-term strategy, Pillot de Chenecey argues. "Companies lose track of customers when they go through age stages because they ask 'What do 15 year olds want?' rather than 'What do the people we talked to last year want?' "

Of course, that does not mean that the highly targeted branding of Aygo, Boost and other urban youth brands will fail. But how will they fair in the long term? Will their funk and freshness feel right to the youth of 2020—or should they be allowed to grow gracefully into middle age along with their current clientele?    

[27-Jun-2005]