New Book on Pop Culture: Strategies for a New Generation of Consumers- Strategies in music, movies, television, the Internet, and video games

A huge generation and cultural gap has opened between entertainment industry executives and the young people, the Millennial Generation, they seek to entertain, according to authors of the ground- breaking book "Millennial Rising (200) Neil Howe and William Strauss.

By the late 1990s, the music industry began to lose young consumers. More recently, movies, concerts, and celebrities are losing their appeal to the Millennial (born from 1982) crowd while video games and web-based entertainment is booming.  Howe and Strauss's new book Millennials and the Pop Culture: Strategies for a New Generation of Consumers analyzes the gap and explains how and why Millennials have grown up to be so different from what everybody expected, and how marketers may turn this youth tide to the entertainment industry's advantage.

According to Strauss and Howe, Millennials are nothing like the preceding Boomers and Gen-Xers. The Millennial generation was already replacing Xers in the early teen bracket by 1997 and is poised to turn the entertainment industrial complex upside down. Strauss and Howe discuss strategies in music, movies, television, the Internet, and video games, as it related to this new generation of consumers.

The sooner the entertainment industry stops fighting high-tech Millennials and focuses on ways to monetize their skills and tastes, the better the outcome. According to Strauss and Howe, legal maneuvers against teenagers who download and share songs has set the stage for a long time of damage control by the music industry.

The question of the "Millennial Wallet" has long-term stakes as well. Entertainment pricing is sky high for younger consumers and the entertainment industry is feeling the backlash. In their day, Boomers could afford pop culture products on a teen's income. Now, only more affluent Millennials can afford such entertainment. Today teens have become expert at weighing costs and benefits and making quick purchasing trade-offs. A video game can provide many more hours of fun as compared to a music CD. One DVD movie shared by five friends is cheaper than a trip to the theater. 

And, why should a teen attend a concert when it probably involves Mom and Dad's credit card, and often, their presence at the show?  Besides, since today's music celebrities have lost the iconic power of old, attending a commercial event won't later rekindle nostalgic memories like Boomers and GenXers have. The entertainment industry needs to treat Millennials as active users of culture, not as passive consumers.

In 2001, advertisers were rocked by a free-fall in ad revenue across all media, mostly due to a shrinking younger audience. Instead of rethinking their approach, they blamed the kids for not reading and listening to what older people want them to.

In 2002, the music industry encountered its worst single year in a decade long famine in youth sales. The typical American under age 25 buys barely half the CDs and tapes that the same age American bought 15 years ago. 

In 2003, reports came of a dramatic drop in TV viewing by guys in their late teens and early twenties. It was more evidence of long-term erosion in youth interest in television.

In 2004, Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" triggered a blast of parental outrage over sleaze in popular culture. Today's teenage consumers tell pollsters they are six times more likely to trust parents than pop celebrities on important issues.

In 2005, largely due to growing youth resistance, U.S. movie box office receipts were down (from the prior year) for 19 straight weeks, the worst downturn for theaters in two decades.

Surveys and ratings spell out the uncomfortable bottom line: 30 or 40 years ago the entertainment media had a deeper reservoir of trust among youth than today.  Strauss and Howe understand the best way to learn about Millennials is to watch them in their own setting, doing what they enjoy, and what they're good at, and watch them with an open mind. Millennials are rising. The popular culture is changing.  According to Strauss and Howe, 20 years from now, we'll look back, and it will all seem so obvious.

About the Authors

Neil Howe and William Strauss, best-selling authors and speakers, are authorities on generations in America. They have together written several books widely used by businesses, colleges, government agencies, and political leaders. Their remarkable blend of social science and history, and their in-depth analysis of American generations, lend order and meaning, even a measure of predictability, to social change.

Their first book Generations (Morrow, 1991), is a history of America told as a sequence of generational biographies. Generations was photographed on Bill Clinton's White House desk, quoted approvingly by Rush Limbaugh and New Gingrich, raved by Tony Robbins, and cited by economic forecasters from Harry Dent to David Hale. Then Vice President Al Gore sent a copy to every Member of Congress, calling it, "the most stimulating book on American history I have ever read."

Millennials Rising (Vintage, 2000) has been widely quoted for its insistence that today's new teens are very different from Generation X and, on the whole, doing much better than most adults think.

Strauss's and Howe's theories are based on their profiles of generations, each reflecting distinct values formed during the eras in which its members came of age. They have observed that similar generational profiles recur in cycles driven by a rhythmic pattern of non-linear shifts or "turnings" in America's social mood. This cyclical pattern has been present for centuries, and not just in America. History shapes generations, and then generations shape history.