twopointouch

Being old and weary, I have to use blogs like the excellent Ypulse to find out what the beautiful people are into nowadays. The only hip I ever get close to is a hip operation. Today, it points me towards this press release from the American Marketing Association. It’s not all good news for brands trying to get down with the kids by investing in social media:

Most adults feel that a company that uses customer-created advertising is more customer-friendly (68 percent), creative (56 percent), and innovative (55 percent). However, young adults are generally more skeptical than their older counterparts. Respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 are more likely than those between the ages of 25 and 64 to say a company that uses customer-created advertising is less trustworthy (21 percent versus 10 percent, respectively), less socially-responsible (20 percent versus 10 percent, respectively) and less customer-friendly (13 percent versus 5 percent, respectively).

Younger people generally still trust companies that use social media more, of course, just not as much more as older people. On average, a fifth of them - over twice the number of adults - actually view such companies as more untrustworthy, irresponsible and unfriendly. Couple of possibilities here:

1. The young people who are more sceptical of companies that use customer-created advertising are sceptical of advertising full-stop. Don’t care who creates it.
2. They view the customer-created thing, in particular, as a con. That the companies who engage in this are not being honest about trying to sell them stuff - it’s not just salesy, but manipulative too.

Maybe the answer is both. Great that there are such healthy levels of scepticism on this contentious issue. Might remind you of Virgin’s run in with the young scallywags on b3ta.