Reaching "Young" Adults

On a flight earlier this week, I sat next to a lady who offered to share with me one of her recently purchased fashion magazines - a genre of publication I don't usually find worthwhile to read. However, I accepted her offer, and spent part of our time airborne browsing through photos of overpriced clothing, interviews with up-and-coming celebrities, and reviews of new television shows, movies and books.

One of these reviews provided some interesting commentary on 21st-century American culture. It discussed a new reality show - one of several, I know - about a few sets of young married couples. These particular couples use expletives to show affection for their newborns, are more likely to play video games than watch the news, and, at thirty years old, exhibit parenting styles closer to those they watch now on Teen Mom than to those they grew up watching on Full House.

The show reflects - albeit in a somewhat extreme fashion - a cultural shift toward lingering "youthfulness" into a person's twenties and thirties.

In the mid-20th century, western society perceived a young person as an "adult" when he or she graduated high school (and usually entered the full-time workforce, got married, and started a family) around age 18.

In the early-21st century, this transition to adulthood has been delayed. Young people now tend to report that they don't feel like "adults" until age 25 or 26. Studies indicate that contributing factors include the proclivity of Generations X and Y to pursue college and graduate school; to switch career paths early; and to get married later.

(For more on this phenomenon, see studies such as these.)

So, how do marketers respond to this emerging set of "early adults" (as distinct from adolescents and full adults) and the tendency even of middle-aged adults to continue to enjoy youthful activities?

A few have opted to appeal to the fun, youthful side of our adults, while recognizing and applauding their adult responsibilites, such as...

...raising a family...

(see more on the Toyota Sienna at youtube.com/sienna)

...and maintaining digestive health.

(see more on FiberOne's "magic" brownies at fiberone.com/magicbrownie)

Has your organization adopted any means of simultaneously appealing to the youthfulness and the responsibility of 21st-century adults?

Managing Busyness

I've concluded that if too much busyness is what drove me to regrettably stop blogging and stop reading a year ago, then perhaps I can use all the help I can get in learning how to better manage busyness.

I've been trying to glean wisdom from authors and mentors about managing busyness, and in the process, a few thoughts have surfaced in my mind:

• Busyness in itself isn't a bad thing, provided that it doesn't rule our lives. As with everything else in life, busyness needs boundaries. Healthy human beings know how to be productive and to make the most of their time, but they also know how to rest, enjoy life, be at peace, and build relationships with those they care about. They give equal importance to both busyness and stillness. They manage their busyness; their busyness doesn't manage them.
  


• We ought to be busy about the right things. Highly motivated and highly competent people, perhaps most of all, seem prone to pursue too many things at once - because they see that those things are good ideas, because they believe that no one else will do those things correctly if they themselves don't, or because they fear missing a good opportunity. But not every good idea is the right idea to pursue. Healthy human beings know how to say "no" to some good ideas in order to say "yes" to the right ideas.

An Inc.com article from yesterday offered me some good insight about this last point. Please enjoy the wisdom from this brief conversation between Inc.com writer Marla Tabaka and author Peter Bregman: "Mastering Distraction in 18 Minutes"

Ideas. And the Return of Haley's Marketing Blog.

Dear readers,

It's been a long time - a year, in fact - since I last wrote to you of any ideas surfacing in this young, developing marketer's head.

After a year's hiatus, I now return. I look forward to sharing with you some of the things I've learned over the past year, and many more things that I will continue to learn as I recommence exploring marketing ideas with you.

For now, let me share just one thing I've learned during my break from blogging - the reason for my return:

When we stop growing, we start dying.

I'd heard this adage before, and thought it applied mainly to biology: when a creature stops growing (for humans, around age eighteen), it slowly starts to die. I didn't realize how much this maxim applied professionally.

When we as professionals stop learning and observing and growing, our ability to contribute and improve and add value in our profession starts to die.

Business professionals must keep growing and learning if we're going to keep contributing value. When we stop learning from new ideas, and start relying on our old thoughts and ideas and ways of doing things, we stop being effective and relevant in the work we do.

I stopped blogging last September because I felt that the busyness of life was causing my blog to suffer, and that it would be better to step away from blogging until I could reduce the busyness and more fully devote my attention to searching out and writing about fresh ideas in marketing. I thought this decision would help me to stay sane (or at least, get enough sleep at night), be happier, and improve the quality of my work all around.

I was wrong.

Quite the opposite happened, actually. For when I stopped blogging, I stopped reading the marketing journals and magazines that inspired my blog posts. When I stopped reading, I stopped learning. When I stopped learning, I stopped discovering fresh ideas to apply to my work. When I stopped discovering fresh ideas, I stopped contributing as much to my organization, and stopped feeling as happy at work.

This year has reminded me how important it is to keep learning. In their book The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen, Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer emphasize that successful professionals continuously and intentionally "hunt" for ideas: they observe, they ask questions, they take a deep interest in diverse subjects and people, and they immerse themselves in the ideas of others. They "sell" the best hour of their day to themselves for the purpose of learning, searching out, and discovering ideas.

It makes sense. We can't make something out of nothing. Everything - whether an organism, an automobile, or a manufacturing plant - requires inputs in order to produce outputs. If I'm to produce new ideas that will improve the quality of our products, the efficiency of our processes, or the way we serve customers, then I must first - and continually - take in ideas from the world around me.

And so I've returned to blogging, partially to continue serving you with ideas, but mostly for selfish reasons: I want to start generating ideas again, and blogging is my impetus to read, observe, and receive the inspiration that will let my ideas start flowing again.

I encourage you to join me in searching out ideas. Ideas that will serve your industry, your organization, and your customers. And as a result, your career.

It's good to be back.

Cheers,
Haley