This is a great story - apparently a 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley, Matthew Robson, decided to pen an expose of his peer group's media habits; wowing the suits at MS with his insight. The investment bank promptly published his thoughts, which are contained in the report below. Matthew is British, but his observations can largely be applied to American teenagers as well; with the single subjective observation on our part being that Sony's Ericsson mobile phones are more popular amongst the British youths than their American counterparts. He also puts newspapers on notice concerning their next generation of readership, proclaiming that "teenager(s)..can not be bothered to read pages and pages of text". Matthew's comments are cogent and well written, however they don't offer any specific insights that could not be gleaned by simply talking to any teenage individual - and listening - for thirty minutes or so.
Perhaps this is evidence that Wall Street would benefit from more divese hiring practices. By diverse, we don't mean the implementation of the stereotypical affirmative action policies that pervade much of the US, as such policies are based upon largely irrelevant, socially constructed racial classifications. The greater emphasis, we think, should be based upon a combination of age and socio-economic categories; as we would argue that attitudes towards spending and consumption vary the greatest across those two variables. For instance, how can an analyst expect to predict how elderly WalMart shoppers will be spending their money if he has never spoken with an elderly Walmart shopper?
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