"Skills of a misspent youth. Or: a rather personal story about my generation" for BVH

Skills of a misspent youth. Or: a rather personal story about my generation (and the generations to come).© InSites Consulting Polle de Maagt (@polledemaagt) for BVH Conversation readiness 1

Hello. I am Polle de Maagt. I failed in most things during my life (including being a rock star) but am still trying to reach world domination. This time by helping companies change. Change to a company that is about consumers and driver conversations. Guess that makes me a change agent. Guess that makes Nike, KLM and Telenet my clients of change.© InSites Consulting Conversation readiness 2

Last year, I worked for a pretty modest advertising agencycalled Boondoggle in Amsterdam and Leuven.For Nike, Rabobank, KLM to name a few. BTW, this was my boss Gaston.

Read this manual. Seriously. Read it.This year, for a company that is committed to obtain worlddomination (whatever that means), InSites Consulting.Marketing research agency turned consulting agency.

Why? Because advertising is the slow lane towards worlddomination. And I fell in love with this girl.I moved from Amsterdam to Ghent and work from Rotterdam, London and Ghent.

Most of my friends change the world every day.Mostly not with a large corporation. Mostly not in The Netherlands.

We are products of our youthand the impulses we had whenwe were young.Just a quick example.

There is a reason why people in Northern Europe play withLego’s.And it has much to do with the way we raise our kids.

Think. For a moment.Without judging.Imagine how some things that arehappening now will influence thisgeneration.It may be good. It may be bad. But it IShappening.

What if you had a technology overload?.Laptops, smartphones, iPads, tablets, game-devices and even Nike+ and othertools. Don’t blame @ouilouis, @tijs and @mattijsd though. They are ubergeeks.

What if you could find everything about everything?Google, Wikipedia and even Twitter and Facebook.

What if you were trained to make choices a specific way?Kids are trained to make the best decisions under high pressure. They learn how toachieve goals and co-operate. They are trained to get instant rewards.

What if you faces a brand overload every day?Banners, product placements, targeted ads.

What if you were raised in a reputation economy?Likes, retweets and views. Popularity contests.

What if technology is the easiest way to keep in contact?Birthday wishes, old holiday sweethearts.

That would give you someadvantages and disadvantagesover other generations.Just to name a few …

1) Don’t bullshit us.Seriously. We can find everything abouteverything. We just know better.Be genuine.

We can find everyhing.Tripadvisor, Google, Facebook, Twitter, we will find any dirt on you.

We’re fed up with bullshit. We WILL strike back.Sander Spolspoel does a great job in telling Proximus what he thinks the value is oftheir ‘personalized’ messages (sorry, in Dutch).

No remarkable talks, remarkable acts.Advertising is great, really changing people’s behavior is even better. Nike launchedtheir Take Mokum campaign and City Graffiti application.

Albert Heijn doesn’t talk, it actually helps.Make notes, find recipes.

2) We’re changing the world,whether you like it or not.We know technology, we connect, wewill change. We are change agents.

Technology made things easier and opened up newpossibilities and niches, like TS2AS.org.Technology made things easier. Gave us reach. Made it easy to compare.

Using their skills to change a category.Wakoopa once was a geek tool, now a very promising marketing research tool.

A platform for even more creative talent.Lev Kaupas stimulates young talents to cooperate and even co-creates newbusiness models.

Influencing popular culture and branding.Nalden redefined ‘influentials’ and the way we transfer files with Wetransfer.com.

Changing the way businesses work.Nick de Mey helps creating and new business models. And showed the world whatfuture business models look like.

Change the way consumers and organizations worktogether.Tom de Ruyck is one of the world’s leaders in community research.

Gathering and networking.This is a group of twitter and Facebook fanatics called ‘Young Scum’. More athttp://youngscum.com

3) Don’t tell us where to workand when to work.We’re committed to change the worldevery day of the week.What is work, really?

I created this presentation here, from home in Ghent.Why work from your office if you can work from home?

But it could have been here, at Schiphol airport.Why work from your office if you can work from home?

Or here, for that matter, from a Starbucks in London.Why work from your office if you can work from home?

Or maybe even at my old collegues.Why work from your office if you can work from home?

4) Recognize our reputation andrespect.Yes, we respect you very much, but notbecause you’re older.

Yes, we respect others.One of my old heroes, the presenter of ‘De Wandeling’.

Books are a great way to build reputation.Ernst-Jan Pfauth wrote a book about blogging.

5) We want to be challenged.Yes, we respect you very much, but notbecause you’re older.

Show your skills.Nike challenged youngsters to prove they were better than Wesley Sneijder.

6) We want it maxed-out.We want to enjoy work, life, friends,holidays and all our side-projects.

Different projects.Boris Nihom is strategy director and DJ. Party-organizer and lover.

Work hard, play hard.Sam de Bruyn: radio DJ, musician and party-animal.

7) We’re better communicators,so let us join and give us stuffworth sharing.We want to enjoy work, life, friends,holidays and all our side-projects.

We’re pretty connected ...Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter ...

“Advertising is the fee for being unremarkable. “ Robert Stephens (GeekSquad)

Influentials.Adidas, Nike and other brands spend a lot of time adding memes and culturalreferences in their content, to make it more worth spreading.

Appealing to signals and traditions.Adidas, Nike and other brands spend a lot of time adding memes and culturalreferences in their content, to make it more worth spreading.

Organizing our own culture.Brands realized they had facilitate instead of shout.

It is about creating happy customers.Even in a procedure-heavy company like Starbucks, there is room to put a smileon customer’s faces.

8) Respect our privacy.We want to enjoy work, life, friends,holidays and all our side-projects.

Yes, we share a lot, but we have our private spaces.Renato Valdes Olmos is a pretty interesting twitterazi at @renn, but even more at@talktothehat.

9) Be worth working for.Be awesome.

Company culture makes a difference.Every company has it’s stories and ambassadors, like Nike’s Ekins. Capitalize onthese stories and turn your employees in an army of ambassadors.

Zappos doesn’t sell shoes, it delivers happiness.Customer service and great logistics do the rest.A small story about free shipping. Oh, and read Delivering Happiness.

You can forget most of the thingsI said in this introduction.But please, remember these 3 things.

1) We are products of our youth and the impulses we had when we were young. We’re seeing some radical shifts so it shouldn’t come as a surprise youth behaves in different ways.

2) This differences are both positive and negative. But respect them. They just are.

3) We WILL obtain world domination. Watch us hacking the system.

I hope I was worth sharing.Send me an email atpolle@insites.eu or find me ontwitter at @polledemaagt.Find the presentation athttp://polle.me/bvh11

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"Skills of a misspent youth. Or: a rather personal story about my generation" for BVH

by Polle de Maagt on Mar 10, 2011

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"Skills of a misspent youth. Or: a rather personal story about my generation" for BVH Presentation Transcript