How the young and restless view the global community

Recently, we looked at the three most important motivations of young people. All over the world. From Bujumbura to Boston. From The Go Down to Gollywood — Ghana’s nascent TV production community.

It’s important to remind marketers at every turn that human values and motivations are becoming more universal as the months pass.

Here in Africa we are still apprehensive about cross border marketing, and that is slowing our progress.

Let’s start from the basis that humanity is homogenous, and then consider functional overlays like language and culture, and even facial characteristics.

Let’s have fewer conversations about the perceived differences between nationalities. That just makes marketing more complicated than it really is.

I referred to McCann Worldgroup’s latest study The Truth about Youth; a global study, sampling 7,000 young people in Southern Africa, Brazil, India, Spain, Mexico, China, US and UK.

This revealed that the three most common global motivations among young people are:

The need for justice.

The desire for community.

The demand for authenticity.

Today, let’s explore how young people have evolved the notion of community. They have moved it forward in a way previous generations have been unable to. And you know why.

McCann says that for young people, technology is more than a useful tool or an enabler. It is truly their fifth sense.

Where older generations start with, “what will this box allow me to do?”, young people start with, “what do I want to do? Where can my imagination take me?”

Technology enables young people to sense the world and make sense of the world. It is this deep relationship with technology that is shaping their attitudes towards community and truth and allowing them to re-imagine justice for a new era.

Given a list of things (including cosmetics, their car, their passport, their phone and their sense of smell) and told they could only save two, 53 per cent of those aged 16-22 and 48 per cent of those aged 23-30 would give up their own sense of smell if it meant they could keep an item of technology (most often their phone or laptop).

In Africa we know that the smart phone, retailing for as low as 50 dollars (about Sh4,000), is already the way most people access the Internet.

So, there’s more evidence of global homogeneity.

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