I am currently sitting at the New Marketing Summit and I just heard Timothy Young speak about Collective Creativity & Gen Y. When I first read the write up about what Timothy would be speaking about my initial reaction was “here we go” let’s put Gen Y in a box and tell those of us at this conference how to market to “them (me)”. As Young was speaking I realized that since he was indeed one of “us” his generalizations weren’t too far off. I am a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to this. It doesn’t bother me as much when a Gen Yer tries to generalize us.

So here’s my generalization – don’t put Gen Yers in a box, don’t try to generalize us, it’s our uniqueness that is our box. We are a generation about being who we are and if you try to label or categorize us it won’t work. To test my theory I made a list of 9 of my close girlfriends and myself to have a list of 10 Gen Y – twenty something females.

Here’s what I know about just 10 Gen Y women:
• 3 are married, 2 are in committed relationships, 5 are single (2 of which were engaged in the past but did not get married)
• 2 are parents – 1 of which is married and the other is a single mother, and another of the group is currently trying to get pregnant
• 3 of us are bloggers
• 1 of us (me) is on Twitter
• 2 are vegetarians, 2 others have been vegetarians in the past
• 3 are sports fans
• Professionally: 1 entrepreneur, 1 student, 2 teachers, 1 stay at home mom, 5 work full time for a company
• 3 are blondes, 7 are brunettes
• 5 of us are artist/creative types
• 6 of us have unlimited text messaging plans
• 8 of us are on facebook
• Education: 1 with a masters, 1 with a bachelors currently working on a masters, 6 with bachelors degrees, 1 currently working on bachelors, 1 with no college degree
• 3 currently in debt

I could go on for days and while I was coming up with this list I was trying to think of things that I could say that would generalize all 10 of us. And what I came up with is we are all 20-something women. I’m going to send this to all 9 of the other women to see if they can come up with another commonality but I’d venture to say my group of friends is a pretty great example about why Gen Yers should not be generalized.

So here’s my 2 cents for those of you trying to market to us – let us know your company’s uniqueness. Yes Gen Y is a collective group of people but we are all individuals and some of us like to feel like we aren’t just one of the masses and therefore feel more comfortable working with companies who recognize that about us.

So Gen Yers … does it both you when your read/hear generalizations about Gen Y? Do you have any generalizations that ring true for you as a Gen Yer?