2 posts tagged “gen y”

Today has been an interesting day for me; a colleague of mine, albiet one who lives all the way on the other side of the hemmisphere to me in San Fran, Luca Penati - Managing Director, Global Technology Practice at Ogilvy PR  - pointed me in the direction of a blog post annoucing that traditional PR is running on thin air.   Wow, haven't i heard that before.. and sure enough, traipsing though a few old blog posts, i certainly had.

Luca and even one of my very own account directors, Emilio Robles, had a bit to say in the comment part of Tom Foremski's post and it struck me that while so many people were constantly saying.. PR is dead... most PR firms aren't approaching new media in a new way... it seemed like all ancient history to me. Not just history - like something i had been through and could relate to - but ancient histroy, in that i couldn't relate to it.

I have been in PR for over six years and during my time, i have always had to think about how to reach out to new media. Media that doesn't necessarily think of themselves as media and don't react to things like the dreaded 'press release.' How often do i write a press release? Less than once every three to four months and i work for the second most recognised brand in the world. There is certainly a time and place for a press release, but i would surprised to meet a PR professional today who thinks they are the end all and be all.

Is this a Gen Y thing? Are we more open to new ways to engage our audiences? Is it just engrained into us because of our Gen Y 'mindset' that enaging with online communities is just expected? (side note, my favourite quote of the week about Gen Yers that we are "spoilt by wealthy parents, stuck in a vacuous "I want it now" mindset and unprepared to make the sacrifices that their parents did" of course we are... and would i change it?)

As one of my previous posts said - the internet is always the first thing i turn to when i have an issue/question that needs solving. Why would what i do at work be any different? 

So who are these PR professionals stuck in issuing out hundreds of press releases each day and bothering journalists with the dreaded 'did you recieve my press release' call that Tom discusses? As for his comment on PR thriving... we bill our time in increments of less than 3 minutes.. clients obsess over all agency spend... PR is no different. 

PR is dead... yeah right. What is dead is journo hacks finding yet another reason to rag on PR professionals

On Sunday evening my lovely friend Lindsay stopped round for some quality Sunday mooching and somehow our conversation got to people who live in isolated communities. Lindsay spent some time in and was educating us on Ni’ihau, an island that is generally off-limits to all but relatives of the island's owners (approximately 160 permanent inhabitants, nearly all of whom are Native Hawaiians) and I was unsuccessfully trying to educate the moochers on some island.. I knew it was filled with the descendents of some mutiny… arrggg… why can’t I remember the name of the place...  

Bless search engines. It took me about 30 seconds to stretch my arm out and drag my laptop from across the floor, boot it up and start typing in a few search terms… “island”+ ”mutiny”+ ”indecent assault” … and up came Pitcairn… I didn’t even have to leave the comfort of my bean bag.

Which in around about, albeit very educating, way brings me to today’s blog entry. I recall reading somewhere (and please excuse the fact that I can no longer find the article or even remember where I read it… I blame Saturday nights bourbon) an article that described how Generation Y onwards will have long term memory problems because all manner of information is available at their fingertips. As a Gen Yer, I don’t see the downfall in this. I actually enjoy having a wealth of knowledge at my fingertips, if anything I feel like I know more. How easy was it for me to pull up an article on Pitcairn and read through a big chunk of information? It took me about… hmmm… 2 minutes.

In my search for the article that triggered this brainwave of a blog, I found an article from November last year in Director Magazine by Richard Leyland entitled  The world at their fingertips  that points out how this new wave of accessible knowledge will affect the workplace. The article reports that for Gen Yers (or millennials) knowledge or access to it is assumed. Today's workforce is expected to fit this model, with mixed results. The good news is that our millennials are ideally suited to this new knowledge economy. Millennials tend to be skilled at multi-tasking and making complex, immediate connections, rather than single-issue concentration…

Multi-tasking,… assumed knowledge….360 degree view… I like the sounds of that. Check out the read… it’s an interesting one.

On the other side of the coin… access to info could be getting a little ridiculous as well. It was at my house just recently that we used video calling to call one flatmate who was upstairs on his computer to show us what the Pizza’s at Pizza Hut looked like on its website so we could pick what we wanted for dinner.. Now is that tech overload.. or just plain excessive?