The youth of today are cynical, media-savvy, seen it all, done it all, wouldn't-be-seen-dead-in-the-T-shirt types who appreciate only the most achingly trendy adverts, TV shows and magazines, right? Wrong: that was so last generation.
Today's youngsters don't "get" clever ads, are not in the least suspicious of commercials, don't know the difference between newspapers' political stances, or TV channels, and they don't mind admitting it. In short, they are not half as media, marketing and advertising literate as we might have thought, according to new research commissioned by five media groups - Guardian Newspapers, Channel 4, Carlton Screen Advertising, media buying agency OMD, and Emap Advertising.
As a result media companies and advertisers are going back to basics to arouse the interest of 15- to 24-year-olds with instant impact messages, plain product pictures, bigger posters, annoying jingles, celebrity endorsements and repetitive ads. Today's youth are a far cry from today's thirtysomethings who grew up as commercially-naive kids weaned on the cold war, no national commercial radio, three national TV stations, grant-funded higher education, sponsorship-free Glastonbury festivals and regular strikes and student protests.
Now a lifetime of MTV, the internet, dawn-till-dusk advertising and PlayStation gaming has created a generation so used to being bombarded with fast-turnover information, they filter it instantly without paying much attention to its meaning. This is a generation of "thoroughbred consumers" says Stuart Armon, managing director of 2cv: research, the company that conducted the so-called Roar research into the media habits of the nation's youth. "Previous generations were suspicious of advertising, they might have liked ads, but they wouldn't necessarily buy the product. But this generation has been consuming since they were born. They don't see any reason to be suspicious," says Armon.
One young panellist in the focus group research embodied this attitude: "If the advert is good, you think their product will be good because the more they can spend on advertising, the more money they are obviously getting for their product." Armon says the trend has become more pro nounced over the seven years that the continuous tracking study has been running, but has reached a peak in the latest round of interviews with 600 youngsters.
"Advertising is accepted and expected. Young people don't see anything wrong in being sold to and think that if a product is in a TV ad, it must be good. It's a myth that they are interested in clever ads - they are not willing to decipher complicated messages, they want simple ones." Many panellists dramatically illustrated this point by revealing they thought Budweiser's "Real American Heroes" ad, ironically celebrating "Mr foot-long hot dog inventor", was an ad for hot dogs rather than beer, even though the ad might not be aimed at them.
However, many loved Heineken's ironic ad featuring Paul Daniels singing Close to You, purely because it made them laugh. "They are looking for an instant message. If it's not there, they don't take any notice. And they literally, and naively, believe celebrities in ads really use the products they are advertising," says Armon. A girl panellist from Birmingham commented: "In some of the Nike ads they've got all these well-known footballers. You think, 'Oh my God, they've got everybody famous there.' You think it must be good if they want it."
The youngsters only read newspapers for the celebrity gossip and sport, rather than news, and couldn't distinguish between papers' political stances. They also failed to distinguish between TV channels - they access TV through programmes, not channels, for example watching Sky because The Simpsons is on, not because it's Sky.
The results of the research deeply worry Sid McGrath, planner at the ad agency that made the infamous "You've been Tango'ed" ads, HHCL and Partners. But they do not surprise him. "My worry is that the youth of today are not being called upon to flex their intellectual muscles enough," he says.
"There is instant gratification everywhere - in food it's Pot Noodles or vending machines, even their pop icons are one-dimensional figures delivered on a plate. Young people are living vicariously through other people's lives and are not asking for much at the moment. A lot of stimulation is 'lean back' - it doesn't require as much involvement as it used to."
He says advertising is changing as a result: "Lots of the most popular ads at the moment are happy, clappy, fun. Easy to digest. They've got no time or inclination to decode ads." One reason behind the shift, McGrath believes, is that young people want relief from the traumas of real life: "Advertising is becoming the opium of the masses rather than the educator."
But advertisers will have to spend ever more money trying to achieve recognition among a sea of similar populist ads. One alternative is to build a brand that becomes part of young people's lives. Unilever, for instance, opened a barber shop named after its Lynx toiletry range. Matthew Gladstone, board planner at Lynx's ad agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which is also responsible for Levi's advertising, says: "We do feel advertising is going back to basics. Young people have grown up with advertising and understand it so well that they want it to be straightforward, honest and truthful, saying one simple thing about the product, in an entertaining, smart, intelligent way. Why should they have to work out what we are trying to tell them?
"There used to be a lot of stigma around being commercial, but there isn't any more. Young people think 'We know McDonald's isn't Greenpeace, but I like Big Macs and I'll make my own mind up'." But Gladstone does not believe blithe acceptance of advertising coupled with rock-bottom concentration levels and low critical faculties adds up to a less than marketing-literate youth: "They have just learned to quickly filter the messages they are bombarded with."
And with the coming of age of youngsters as crucial customers, a whole industry has emerged to help decipher what the kids want: enter the youth marketing experts. Jason Van-haeften, the former marketing chief of superclub the Ministry of Sound, has just opened the doors of new youth marketing agency Blowfish 24: "Young people are media-savvy, but it's about getting the right message to them at the right time, and in the right way. "There is apathy towards politics at the moment, so it's not surprising they aren't into newspapers for the news. There are other ways of accessing news tailored specifically for them - such the BBC's Liquid News and the internet. And they do relate to certain TV channels with strong youth-orientated brands - like MTV and E4.
"Brands that are not cool - like banks - don't need to get all Ali G on young people. They just need to be more honest about what they are," he says. Joe Pidgeon, the ex-publisher of music and style magazine Touch, has just launched a youth marketing agency, U Influence: "Kids' patience and concentration thresholds are lower than even 10 years ago. Brands have to be as obvious and in your face as possible to get their message across.
"Young people locate information very quickly. But in terms of what they take in, it has to have instant impact because they are so easily bored. Brands have to be able to constantly reinvent themselves. One splashy ad campaign running all year is no longer enough."