Online anthropology master degree

The Class of 2000 - the leading edge of the huge Echo Boom - is about to graduate from college. Can they teach marketers a few lessons about e-commerce?

the beach in Panama City, Florida, is probably the last place you'd expect to find a corporate recruiter, let alone more than 50 of them. But there they were during Spring Break, gathered under a huge white tent on the sand, trying a bit desperately to attract that most elusive of quarries: talented, motivated members of the Class of 2000. It's enough to give a class a swelled head.

And yet, according to many observers, this year's crop of graduating seniors seems blissfully unaware of the clout they wield in the job market. In fact, when asked, they typically underestimate their worth and overestimate the difficulty they'll have finding a job. "Students seem to be less informed than I expected them to be, even the seniors," says Brent Lewis, a recruiter from Quantum Corporation, a Silicon Valley computer hardware manufacturer, who attended the Panama City career expo. "They believe they'll have a hard time finding a job. I tell them the door's wide open - all of the West Coast is struggling to find people - or else, why would all these companies be on the beach?"

job fairs on the beach are just the latest clue that Generation Y - also called the Echo Boom - is about to change the way business does business. Just as their baby boomer parents are about to redefine the "senior" consumer for marketers, this generation of 70 million will redefine for American business how consumers apply the Internet in their daily lives. Generation X helped popularize the Internet by making it more accessible; Gen Y will define how we integrate it into everyday life. This year's graduating class, in fact, represents the first wave of consumers who grew up with new media. As teens, they used the Web because it was cool. As adults, they'll use the Web whichever way it fits into their lives. And that has huge implications for all sorts of marketers.

Currently, most marketers see e-commerce as a way to target a specific group, or simply as an extension of their existing sales operations. But as e-commerce matures, marketers will need to do more than just enable consumers to buy online. Eventually, they'll need to make online buying/returning/asking for help as seamless as it is in a store. "Retailers and manufacturers are really going to have to service the needs of this group," says Pamela Smith, vice president of online research for The NPD Group in Port Washington, New York. "That will be expected of most businesses, not something some companies occasionally offer."

Likewise, marketing methods will need to evolve, too. These newest adults have seen as many as 20,000 commercials every year since they were old enough to sit up. Banner ads or traditional ones aren't likely to impress this crowd, experts say. Rather, they are more likely to respond to anything that makes their lives easier. "This group responds best to integrated marketing that doesn't strike you as advertising," says Renny Gleeson, senior vice president of marketing at Iturf Inc., an Internet network for 13-to-24-year-olds. "The most effective advertising is not an interrupter, but a facilitator."

Actually, the Class of 2000 is much more likely to become interested in products through word of mouth or "buzz" than any traditional media outlet. A 1999 survey of 500 college students conducted by Strategic Mindshare, a Miami-based research firm, found that students preferred to learn about Web sites from friends (followed by magazines, links from other sites, and television). Ikea, the Swedish home-furnishings retailer, found that out firsthand with a recent e-mail promotion. The company offered $75 off purchases if customers sent Internet postcards to their friends announcing a store opening. The idea: that the messages would have more credibility coming from a friend. Within two weeks, the promotion generated 37,000 referrals, although Ikea voluntarily suspended the campaign in the wake of complaints about privacy. But the strategy succeeded in its mission to attract customers.

Why should marketers care about the preferences of this year's newly minted degree holders? Simply this: These young men and women are not only the first wave of the Echo Boom to hit adulthood, they make up more than one third of the 3.3 million born in 1978. About 1.2 million of them will receive college degrees this year. What's more, some of these recent college grads may be wealthier than previous generations. EdVenture Partners, a consulting firm in Berkeley, California, last year polled 270 students at 20 colleges and found that 31 percent had money invested in the stock market. "We tend to think of college students as not being retirement-minded," says Pamela Horick, president of EdVenture Partners. "But we forget that this group watched their parents get downsized out of middle management jobs in the late '80 and early '90s. This group is much more savvy. They're starting to make big decisions earlier than ever."

Take, for example, Janet Hemphill, a senior at Hiram College. Armed with a degree in sociology and anthropology, the 22-year-old already has a life plan: She's engaged, but doesn't plan on marrying until the end of 2001. First she wants to concentrate on her career. Several big companies are courting her, and she says she'll probably earn a mid-$30,000 salary when she graduates this month. "Being financially sound is very important to me," says Hemphill, who plans to earn her master's degree while working full-time.

Hemphill grew up surrounded by brands and marketing - and instant access to just about everything. Time, she says, is her most valuable commodity. And "fast," she adds, is the one adjective that describes her needs, from retail purchases to research. The Internet holds no mysteries for her, nor does e-commerce. "To keep me as a customer, businesses must have Web sites to answer my questions and view new products," says Hemphill, who gets irritated with slow downloads from cyberspace. "This interactivity is mandatory."

As this generation has matured, its disinclination to respond to celebrity endorsements and to idolize established market leaders has shaken the confidence of many once-unbeatable brands, including Nike and Pepsi. Even auto manufacturers discovered they were facing a whole new kind of car buyer, one that wasn't impressed by television ads of cars zooming down empty roads, but related instead to a mix of practicality and individual self-expression. Toyota was one of the first automakers to aggressively chase the Echo Boom with its "Genesis initiative," which included cheeky teen magazine ads and its Web site, isthistoyota.com. There, young drivers can watch video clips of a car full of their peers getting down in an Echo, MR2, or sleeked-up Celica, complete with words you can't say on TV. And now, even more companies are in for a big attitude adjustment.

For businesses, now's the time to get the attention of this influential group. The Class of 2000 is at the very end of what Eric Weil of Student Monitor LLC calls "a weaning process." Thanks to the largesse of parents and grandparents, who've raised the weekly gift and allowance bar to a stratospheric $9 billion a year, these soon-to-be grads have made many consumer-goods decisions on their own since high school, from fashions to personal-care products to gas for their cars. Once they hit the job market, they'll have more money than they know what to do with, and complete freedom to spend it as they please. "If you can target the transition, you can really create some long-term brand loyalty," says Weil.

Brand loyalty is very strong among graduating seniors, according to a 1999 survey by Student Monitor. This is especially true for health-and-beauty aids - more than 80 percent of seniors said they'd found a brand of deodorant, toothpaste, or shampoo they would stick with; 67 percent of seniors expressed loyalty to a specific brand of breakfast cereal. In fact, loyalty to these products was considerably higher for seniors than for the student body as a whole, implying that these decisions, once made, only become more settled. On the other hand, seniors were less loyal to items such as soft drinks and snack foods.

not surprisingly, these graduates' foremost concern - for now - is getting a job. What is surprising, though, is how uncertain some feel. Twenty-one-year-old Rowan Balagot, who will graduate from Smith this spring with a bachelor's in psychology, is one of the students who considers herself "clueless" about the job market, and is somewhat concerned about her prospects. She'd like to head out to San Francisco but worries about what she'll find there - or anywhere she decides to search. Still, like most of the members of the Class of 2000, she's cautiously optimistic: "I think it might be hard to find a job, but I'm sure there's one out there for me."