O Turkish Youth! You’re Rebellious, Careless and Irresponsible!

“You’re at the computer from morning till night, and the moment you get up from the computer you grab your phone. You’re rebellious, careless and irresponsible. You have no idea what bread costs or how to keep a household going. You share everywhere you go, take photos of everything, talk to your friends for hours. You listen to weird music and buy pointless clothes. And I really don’t get what you see in these cafés. Stay home and drink your coffee there.” said his father, who had stayed up until three in the morning watching Fenerbahçe’s latest defeat, muttering “What’s going to become of this Fener?”, as he dropped the remote, every inch of it greasy from channel-surfing, into the dip of the couch that had turned into a black hole from all the sitting.

Being young in Turkey is hard. It’s hard to describe how the parallel universe that young people who can’t communicate healthily with their families build in their own inner worlds becomes an escape for them, how the different worlds they can reach and see with a single click in the information age draw them in, and the sheer torment of being unable to explain how different everything could actually be. It’s like describing colors to someone who is visually impaired, or telling someone who is hearing impaired how magnificent Coldplay’s latest album is.

(Northern Ireland in a parallel universe, while war music plays at our matches)

First of all, we need to understand the root cause of all these problems. Trying to explain producing ideas, making art, researching and critiquing to individuals who have been systematically made short-sighted, raised on arabesque currents, on simplicity and vulgarity, and confined to their own little village; to parents; to neighborhood aunties who study their every move with CIA-level meticulousness; and to a system that sees landing a government job as the greatest achievement and rewards it as a society, brings existential troubles along with it in return. Society becoming money-focused leads to the reaction “well, what good is any of this going to do anyway”, and the vulgarity, having turned into a vicious circle, keeps getting deeper.

This needs to be said. The hardships their parents went through in the past mean nothing to today’s young people. They are a generation born in the information age, able to access any information they want instantly, able to see what the Prime Minister of Canada says about his country’s young people, how Barack Obama encourages his own young people to create, research and question, and how their peers in other countries live and what they do. They are a generation that rejects the mainstream media content that dumbs people down and is produced entirely for consumption, and that can seek out and find content made for their own tastes and interests. A generation that produces ideas, observes, can stand up to the status quo and, contrary to popular belief, is quite social. Trying to manage and steer such a generation with the rules of the old world, trying to reach them through those channels, means nothing other than losing them completely.

Brands have to understand the new generation’s values, the way they communicate and the way they live, and create products and services for them. The new generation hates brands that find social media pointless, that produce content that doesn’t reflect young people’s values, that glare as if cursing them out when young people ask for the wi-fi password or for a socket to charge their phone in the café they’re sitting in, that can’t be reached when they have a problem, and that can’t solve their problems quickly.

We now live in a world where it’s not the big fish that swallows the small fish, but the fast one that wins. The new generation hates deliveries that take 3 days to arrive, repair services that keep them waiting 15 days, call centers that keep them on hold for 5 minutes and checkout lines with more than three people in them. If you, as a brand, can’t act fast and keep up with young people’s pace, then sorry, but you’re doomed to be wiped off the face of the earth. Even if you’re the biggest brand in the world, even if Forbes hails you with “Can anyone catch the cell phone king?”!

• This post was first published on Marketingholmes.com.

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