Video Is No. 1 To Attract Gen Y...Not!

I've just spend the last two days watching a series of webinars on marketing to Gen Y, which was presented by a major CUSO. While I applaud their mission to educate the FIs about marketing to Gen Y, I disagree with their priorities of media to use. And it's not just me that would disagree. I'm sure the folks at Pew Research would also take issue with their choice.

Even though they produced 5 webinars to cover social media and the many user generated content choices, my overriding perception was that video was their number one choice, when it came to a Gen Y media strategy. That might well have been true a while back, but it's not anymore(according to Pew). Their research project, titled "Teens and Social Media", reveals two critical items that I didn't hear mentioned once in the blogs.

1. Social Media is increasingly being dominated by Gen Y women; to be specific, Gen Y girls. The only category where Gen Y men outscored Gen Y women in the study was in the production, distribution and downloading of videos.
2. These same girls, who have exploded in growth from 2004 to 2006, overwhelmingly prefer to use UGC other than video to create and communicate.

So, if the majority of Gen Y, Web 2.0 activity is centered around young women...and their chosen form of UGC is graphic and textual, why would you primarily employ video to market to them? You wouldn't.