Editor's note: This article is an excerpt from How Cool Brands Stay Hot: Branding to Generation Y, a new book by Joeri Van den Bergh and Mattias Behrer. The book is published by Kogan Page (www.koganpage.com). This article appeared in the April 11, 2011, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

Youth behavior typically sets many tongues wagging; especially older generations, such as Generation X, who have many prejudices against Generation Y. We would like to challenge some of the common misunderstandings.

Gen Y only put trust in peers

Generation Y are allegedly only capable of trusting their own friends. It is true they do attach a lot of importance to peer opinion and word-of-mouth and have more real-time channels to connect with them. This doesn't mean that they only listen to peers. In a survey InSites Consulting did for Levi's Europe, we asked what would be the most trusted source to decide what new pair of jeans to buy. Gen Y responded: my best friends (74 percent); shop personnel (52 percent); my mom (40 percent); people like me - offline (38 percent); my sister(s) (24 percent); my family (18 percent); brochures, Web sites of brands (17 percent); review site, forum on the Internet (15 percent); people in the street who look like me (13 percent); my brother(s) (13 percent); and my dad (10 percent).

Although 74 percent prefer the opinion of their best friends, shop personnel are trusted too. They even put a higher trust in commercial staff than in their own mom. Still, mothers remain an important source. This confirms the better relationship between Gen Yers and their parents, although fathers don't seem to be fashion style specialists. Brochures and commercial Web sites of the jeans brands are as important as reviews and objective forums on the Internet. So although they are marketing-savvy, this doesn't automatically imply that they don't trust commercial media anymore.

They reject global brands and mass marketing

After four years of researching cool brands among Gen Yers, it is safe to conclude that they are not the "No Logo" generation at all. Global mass advertising brands such as Coca-Cola, Nike and Nokia are still among their most-beloved brands. The advertising and marketing strategies of these brands changed to appeal to the new consumer, though. Coke's "Happiness" campaign, for instance, is much more emotional and on an equal level with the consumer than the "Real Thing" or "Always Coca-Cola" campaigns of the past.

The global presence of brands radiates a sense of power with which Gen Y is happy to affiliate. Because they seek reassurance for what they perceive to be a chaotic world, they are looking for security. Global brands are a safe haven because they have proven to be able to survive. If they had not been delivering high quality and reliable offers then they would surely not be around today. Great brands are always one step ahead of the rest and are continually innovating and updating their products. Although some of the brands in youth's preferred list such as Levi's, Apple, Nike and Coca-Cola have a U.S. origin, this is no longer the ultimate rule. Scandinavian brands such as H&M and Nokia; German brands such as Adidas; and Italian fashion brands such as Diesel were able to conquer global youth's trust. As children of a media-dominated society, Gen Y love excellent visual communication from their beloved brands. They tend to adore ads that:

  • portray openness;
  • express closeness, warmth, caring and harmony;
  • show that a brand is natural and stays true to itself (authenticity);
  • support the simplicity of the brand;
  • have witty humor; and
  • provoke controversy.

More than seven out of 10 youngsters say they are critical towards advertising in general.

We discovered some interesting results from our brand authenticity work for Levi's Europe. Most youngsters like humor and irony in advertising and they want to hear the unvarnished truth. Although Gen Yers are stimulation junkies, it remains important for brands to stay consistent in their messages. Youngsters today generally reject image-oriented advertising.

Gen Y's attitude toward advertising includes the following: I like humor in advertisement (92 percent); I like companies who always tell me the truth (88 percent); I like companies who are consistent in what they do and say (85 percent); I like irony in advertisements (78 percent); I have more trust in the opinion of my friends than in what companies tell me (76 percent); I am critical toward advertising in general (73 percent); I don't like companies who try to create an image they don't have from nature (73 percent); there is too much advertising in this world (71 percent); I think I am able to see through marketing tricks (71 percent); I like companies who show corporate social behavior (62 percent); I don't like everything that sounds or looks too commercial (43 percent); I have more trust in the opinion of people like me online than in what companies tell me (38 percent); and I go online to find out if companies tell the truth in their advertisement (24 percent).

They are ethical consumers

Ethical, green and charity issues are of growing importance for this generation. However, the media has made them feel numb to many of these messages. Footage from the developing world, wars and disaster zones are projected on the same screens they watch movies and play games on. They have become another fiction, far away from their own real words. They only take these issues into account when they are directly affecting their immediate social circle or local world. Gen Yers transfer all ethical responsibilities to organizations. Although they will try to avoid buying unethical brands, they will rarely deliberately choose a brand because of its charity programs. Being ethical is important to them as a principle, but it is not their utmost concern when choosing favorite brands and they will rarely compromise the convenience of their own lives to make a difference. A brand's socially-responsible image will never make up for poor quality or other basic issues.

Because eco-claims became just another advertising strategy in the first decade of the 2000s, Gen Yers are cautious in really believing what a brand is telling about protecting the environment. In April 2010, sports fashion brand Puma worked together with Yves Behar's Fuse project to design a shoebox that would reduce its environmental impact. Many Gen Yers reacted rather skeptically on blogs. Puma claimed in a movie that using a bag instead of a box reduced the use of cardboard by 65 percent, eventually resulting in lowered usage of paper (trees), energy, water and emission of carbon dioxides. Youngsters called it propaganda, questioning the positive impact of the design, uttering that 77 percent of the carbon footprint in shoes comes from the raw materials (leather, rubber and cotton) and only a mere 5 percent from packaging.

Protecting the planet is not a typical Gen Y thing; it is the result of our zeitgeist. They recycle as much as the other generations and they will buy environmentally-friendly and organic products as much as other generations. More important to Gen Yers is that they don't just get bombarded with traditional charity programs but that they can make a difference by owning the values and choosing how and where charitable contributions will go.

They are lazy

Gen Y are believed to be lazy because they mostly take the shortest way to get what's needed. But that's simply the way they were educated, attaining the objectives with the least possible effort in a smart way. Most youngsters will express a strong work/reward ethic. Nine out of 10 believe you will be rewarded in life when you work hard enough. They do know they have been spoiled by their Baby Boomer parents and realize that when they move out as adults they will have to work hard. Failure is assumed to stem from laziness. Most teenagers will only select role models and celebrities that have worked hard and really earned their success. President Barack Obama and Britney Spears are both often quoted as people who are admired for their work ethic and for achieving great things from humble beginnings by overcoming adversity to maintain their success.

They are multitasking wizards

A common misunderstanding about Generation Y is that they are multitaskers. With the rise of new technologies and social media they are showered with information. The ease with which youngsters follow people on Twitter, answer text messages or communicate via Facebook astonishes adults and might lead to the false conclusion that Generation Y is particularly good at processing multiple streams of conversation and information. Research, however, has evidence for the opposite: Until the age of 22, youngsters are less good at multitasking. They have more difficulty than adults in distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information and have weaker ability to park a certain chunk of information for later usage. Although they are exposed to more information channels than before, this does not lead to an increased absorption of this information. Only strong and short messages are able to pass through the stream of information. There is a limit to what our brains can actually process. While we are able to perceive multiple stimuli in parallel, we cannot process them simultaneously. This is especially the case when the different messages are unrelated. Young people are actually not attempting to process non-complementary messages simultaneously but rather switching back and forth between different activities. Steve Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, calls this strategy to cope with information overload "telescoping." Johnson claims that younger generations have become smarter in using these strategies by evolutions in popular culture: not only gaming but also soaps on television. The latter increasingly have complex narratives with instead of one main plot, several separate alternating storylines. TV series used to have "pointing arrows," or clues in the plot that clarify what will happen next. Recent popular youth TV series such as 24, Heroes or Lost lack these pointing arrows and there isn't even a clear distinction between good and bad characters anymore. There's a bit of the dark and light side in everyone. Leading actors unexpectedly die in the midst of the series. Youngsters have learned to analyze these series as puzzles. They don't need to study medicine to understand the medical scripts of Grey's Anatomy or House MD. They simply deduce the meaning of the difficult terms from the context. This is exactly what they do when they learn to master new technologies or tools. They don't read manuals, they just "probe." Youth master the skills of deduction, probing and telescoping. They don't multitask.