The Next Generation of Marketers?
My son arrived home from school about a month ago with a letter from his Grade 5 teacher entitled "Junk Mail". Naturally the hair (what little of it I have) stood up on the back of my neck. It turned out to be the beginning of an assignment on, yes, "Junk Mail". The teacher was requesting that our child collect "Junk Mail" over the period of a couple weeks and bring it in to school for discussion with the class. Their assignment was to evaluate it. What is it? What is being communicated? What is the consumer expected to do? There was no judgement about whether it was a good or bad thing. It was just about discovering another form of communication. (I was surprised and a bit amused to learn that some parents "from the industry" did take the teacher to task for using the term "junk mail".) The class would ultimately be asked to develop their own "Junk Mail" for a product of their own choosing.
Before I knew it, and at my son's urging, I was on email offering to come into the classroom to explain the difference between "Junk Mail" and "Direct Mail". After a couple of emails back and forth with the teacher, I agreed to discuss some of the "tricks of the trade", talk about the process of creating advertising in all forms and put some history and context around their assignment.
What I found once I entered the classroom was a group of about twenty-five 10 year olds completely enthralled by the notion of advertising generally, and even by the "Junk Mail" they collected specifically. They were more aware, and I must say savvy about marketing than I was at that age. They asked intelligent questions (How do you find the names to mail people?) and could recite verbatim everything from the Sleep Country jingle to the Frank and Gordon Bell Commercials. They understood that the difference between junk mail and direct mail was relevence. Well, they understood once I explained that if they received something in the mail about the Wii, they'd probably want to read it. They agreed.
I came away from the conversation with my son and his classmates realizing that the world is a very different place than it was when I was their age. I was reminded that they are indeed consumers and influencers at their young age. I came away hoping that at least some of them would become advertisers and marketers one day. It's hard to tell how their exposure to so much media today will impact who they become and what they do. But I can't wait to find out.
