Real generations or not, wouldn’t the audience for targeted movies fit exactly into the kind of cubbyholes that would matter tremendously to advertisers and marketers? If they didn’t exist, wouldn’t they be under huge pressure to create them?
Many people without much education do not consider reading to be a useful or productive activity, often going so far as to equate it with self-importance or a poor work ethic.
So you’re getting angry people are talking about marketing classifications in a thread about… marketing and marketing classifications? How exactly did that play out in your head?
Who said anything about being angry?
Annoyed, then. Engaged enough to post a message denouncing it.
Try “skeptical.” My point is that few people fit neatly into these classifications, and the purchasing patterns of people are more complicated than simply belonging to a “generation.” I conducted a seminar about this at Berkeley, and two of the guest speakers (one of them Tod Gitlan) said that a lot of what advertisers say to their clients is mostly hocus-pocus (in order to seem like they completely understand each behavior of every consumer–remember psychographics?); manufacturers don’t want to take a chance, so they go along. And the big ones can afford it, anyway. It’s not much skin of their nose if it isn’t effective. Think of all the products that sell perfectly well without any advertising at all. But some companies think, “Well, it can’t hurt, and it might help.”
The terms “X-generation” and “Y-generation” seeped out to the general public, and voila!, a meme was born.
ETA: Being engaged neither indicates anger nor annoyance. This is an appropriate forum to address the topic.
I agree that the idea of generational groupthink is overhyped but I think there is some truth to it for the people we’re talking about here. Outside of the family, the main social group for people between the ages of approximately five to twenty-one is the school group - and your peers in your school group are the people who happened to be born the same year you were. So until they become adults and go out into the workplace, most people do predominantly socialize with other people who are the same age as them.
There’s nothing new about that. But after 18, most bets are off. You can’t really say with much authority that, if So-and-So was born is such-and-such year, s/he will want to buy our product if we can present it in such-and-such way.
It’s not a mathematical formula. But they wanted to make it seem that way by using “X” and “Y” as though they were using algebra to absolutely determine potential buying patterns.
Did you fail Berkeley or did Berkeley fail you? (It’s Todd Gitlin, BTW.)
[Moderator note]
This kind of insulting remark is not appropriate for GQ. Because it’s fairly mild, I’m making this a note instead of a warning. But let’s avoid this in the future.
To the other participants in this thread, let’s try to make your points without excessive snark.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Not to mention that it’s completely beside the point and ad hominem.
But if Exapno is so concerned about my academic record, it was graduation cum laude. Not that it’s any of his or her business.