My colleague Jennifer and I recently had the good fortune to deliver a report to the Talloires Network’s Advisory Board in New York City. It was probably the most fun workday I’ve ever had, and the eight hours or so flew by in what felt like ten minutes. So much energy and enthusiasm shared by all on hand—what’s better than passionate clients who are committed to funding noble ventures in the developing world?

The project was fun from start to finish, and was executed in a ten week whirlwind. We recruited young people who are currently studying at or recently graduated from universities in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia and India to conduct interviews among their peers and business/community leaders on the topic of how university education succeeds and comes up short in terms of preparing young people for the workforce. We then conducted an online dialogue with our interviewers as well as Talloires’ Youth Advisory Board members, probing further on issues that were raised in the interview stage.

With all of the fieldwork wrapped up, we then reviewed all of the content in order to untangle some key narrative threads and then drafted a report from which our presentation to the Advisory Board was created. It offered a snapshot of how schools can tweak their curricula, internship/co-op programs and extra-curricular activities to better prepare young people to find good jobs and create entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves. We were also very happy to report that the initiatives that are already underway at universities in the Talloires Network fit perfectly with what our interviewers would like to see implemented at their respective schools.

Hard to believe that from start to finish, this fascinating project took all of 10 short weeks. Hats off to Jennifer at Talloires for tying this all together, and kudos to our team here at DECODE for delivering some seriously cool work.

(Matt Michels)

Smartphones, tablets, QR codes, location-based apps and a myriad of other emerging technologies have whipped marketers and advertisers across all sectors into a frenzy. The allure of our increasingly digital world is the promise of greater reach and easier means with which to build profitable customer relationships.

The market research industry has supported this promise with innumerable articles and studies on adoption rates, forecast models and new segmentations for this brave new world, and with good reason: a recent CMO study by IBM reports that 68% of CMOs claim to be unprepared to manage social media (ranking second on a long list of competing priorities) so they must be looking for answers. Yet the nature of this research and the conversations permeating trade media seem to be heavily weighted towards measuring the effectiveness of individual devices and platforms, rather than the strategies that tie them together or the people using them.

Making this new environment even more challenging to understand is the false perception that young people are not at all like the generations before them. After all, they are “the digital generation”….”growing up never knowing of a world without the internet,” so they must be completely different, right?

What’s new is the technology, not the people using it: just as there are social people offline, there are social people online and visa versa. In the concrete world, the needs of students are often very different from the needs of parents of young families – social media hasn’t changed this.

In DECODING Digital Connections, a recent exploration of social media and young generations, DECODE observed some other parallels of the past and today, including:

1. Brands looking for reach will still benefit from understanding their most influential consumers as 80% of social media networks can be addressed through 20% of its users;

2. Even though the majority of young people are on Facebook, very few of them (11%) will actually go to Facebook first when tracking down a rumour about their favourite brand – so brands that are looking for engagement need to maintain a relevant presence in multiple channels; and

3. Purchase drivers, influencers and behaviours can be significantly different by gender, life stage and location (urban / rural). Segmenting matters.

So CMOs feeling unprepared should take comfort in their past successes, as the elements of smart marketing strategy haven’t changed: design for your target consumer and their needs, not for the technology they use. Ironically, it seems as though our attraction to new, leading edge technologies is stumping our abilities to relate to our target audiences and the principles that have made us successful marketers in the first place.

(Scott Beffort)