Generational Marketing and India - Part I

The latest buzz word - Gen Y, what does that mean? Ever since I've set foot in this land, GEN Y is one word that has been thrown around quite a lot, atleast in my field of of work. For the first time I heard it, I was not quite sure what it meant and now here I am writing a post on it. For the benefit of those who are wondering what this means, like I did the first time I heard it, here it is:

Americans have divided their generations into 3 major demographical groups called the Baby boomers, Gen X and Gen Y.

Baby Boomers (1946 - 1960) are those people who were born post world war II and account to about 70 million people. They are the largest demographic section due to the fact that the veterans who came back after war had nothing to do but produce babies.

Gen X (1960 - 1980) also referred to as baby busters owing to the sudden decline in birth rates, account to about 35 million approx. This was may have been the time when contraceptives (aka condoms aka rubber) was in vogue.

And finally our generation GEN Y also referred to as the 20 somethings. There is a lot of confusion in the birth years of this generation and so for this post we shall consider them to be people aged 18-28. This was generation that grew up on technology and is hooked up 24/7/365.

Having explained these demographics, the next question is "so what?" ....Well Ill tell you what, there are 2 basic questions that came to my mind when I started thinking about it.

a) How are these guys (US) using these demographic classification?

b) Is there such a classification back in India? and if so, what are they doing with it?

I got the answer for how these guys utilize that data. If I was to explain that, it would become a thesis in itself. Demographic classification is one of primary data and a vital tool used in marketing. The amount of research that happens among these generational classification especially GEN Y is amazing.

Though we don't have to have such fancy names for the generational classification in India, being the world's largest in population (thanks to Tushar who updated me on this info) what have we done????? Gen Y in particular are being researched by so many companies because of the fact that they hold the key to the future of the brand. Their lifestyle and the market potential that they hold is immense. I agree we do targeted marketing, but is there a method where we try to engage GEN Y in trying to make them customers for life and building a brand image at the same time?

The power of word of mouth, especially with this generation and popularity of social networks are so immense that it can make or break your brand. Companies have started deploying MySpace, Facebook etc as a means to reach to GEN Y. Orkut is one of the biggest "adda" (hangout) of the Indian Gen Y community, but I haven't seen much marketing happening there and even if there is some bit of marketing, there aren't any Indian companies. It is high time we moved away from our traditional marketing cliches are tried innovative methods by making use of Web 2.0. But have we????

I am closing this post with a series of questions and no solutions, the only reason being I haven't thought of any. When I come up with a "killer idea" I'll post them. BTW, when you start your own business, please make sure you address all these questions.

My next post is not gonna be this serious or even this big. I had to do justice to my blogger name.