In 1819 Irving Washington wrote “Rip Van Winkle” a story about a man who fell asleep for 20 years. Unaware of how long he had slept, he walked around the village where he lived. “The very village was altered, there were rows of houses he had not seen before. Strange names over doors - strange faces at windows - everything was strange. The very character of the people had changed” Irving’s story was more about more than a man who overslept; it was an account of the relentlessness of change in our world, a new nation in the throes of an industrial revolution. Rip was everyman, trying to orient himself to an unfamiliar world that seemed to have changed radically overnight. The enrolling class of 2006 is growing up in a comparable time.
The professional marketers understand the buying power of Generation Y and their parent. These children are becoming very adapt at sifting through thousands of marketing messages per day. Think of how sophisticated (and insulated) they will become to these messages by the time they reach 18