SCABs

I’m a millennial and I’m special – thoughts from #cspresents By @MadDavison

Mark Davison

By Mark Davison

 

I’m a millennial and I’m special – thoughts from #cspresents

 

Now, before you say anything I know what you are thinking. “Oh god, please no, not another student telling me how he is Gods gift to the world.” Well relax, that’s not what this SCAB is about. This is just a thought that I had, triggered by going to #cspresents last night, and more specifically, a bone I have to pick with some of the speakers. *

 

“We need to hire young people”. – Every advertising agency ever

 

“We need to engage better with young people”. – Every marketing department in the world

 

I’m being unfair, but these are two things that I heard a lot of last night. You’d think I would be over the moon about it; after all I am a young person looking for a job. But as soon as I hear it, I immediately have to ask, who, and where, is this homogenous group of young people that you’re taking about? 

 

Statistically speaking, Millennials (God I hate that word) are the most diverse generation in this country. We come from more places, speak more languages, are interested in more things, and key to this post, have a collectively more disparate set of skills than any generation before us. So who are we talking about here, who do we mean when we say young people?

 

Do we mean young people who know about and get excited by technology, people who always know about the latest app, product and innovation? Do we mean young people who follow social influencers closely and can always tell you the latest news on social media, before it breaks? Do we mean young people who have grown up experimenting creating art, music, film, theater, literature, etc. in what has, because of technology, become an increasingly democratized world of culture? Or do we mean none of these and some other type of person that fits some, all, or none of these categories?

 

Being young is neither someone’s only, or defining personality trait. If you spend your time purely trying to speak to young people, you will miss the context in which they live their lives, and so fail to make them care. In a world where the list of what you can do with your time grows longer every day, it seems unhelpful and unproductive to group people simply by their age. It also isn’t going to help you speak to, or hire, the right people.

 

So don’t hire me because I am young, don’t hire me because I’m new and please please please don’t hire me because I’m fresh. Hire me because my skills as a creative, and my potential to grow and improve in your business can help you add value to your agency and to your clients work. After all, I’m not going to be young forever, and I don’t plan on retiring when I am 35.

 

 

* I’d like to point out that I really enjoyed #cspresents talk and would like to thank @creativesocial for putting it on. I learnt a lot of really useful stuff, I just wanted to write about this as its something I have seen a lot recently and was keen to make this point.

Related SCABs

Go back

Student Application

  • Fill out the Application Form below to be a part of our next Award-Winning intake.

  • MM slash DD slash YYYY
image