About What The 15-Year-Old Morgan Stanley Intern Said…
- July 14th, 2009
- 4 Comments
“Put a skeptical 15-year-old on your payroll.” For those of you who weren’t in attendance at the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup, these words of wisdom were spoken by youth guru and Mashup keynote speaker Josh Shipp as advice to any brand with an interest in the demo. And don’t they seem prescient now?
If Matthew Robson, the skeptical 15 year old intern behind the sensation-inducing media report on teen habits, wasn’t being paid by Morgan Stanley before, the job offers are surely rolling in now. From the Financial Times:
” [The report was] one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen – so we published it”, said Edward Hill-Wood, executive director of Morgan Stanley’s European media team.
‘We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day.’ He said the note had generated five or six times more responses than the team’s usual research.
On the one hand, it’s an encouraging turn of events. To generate that type of enthusiasm from fund managers and CEOs, not to mention incite a media frenzy, all simply by formalizing the commonplace practice of… asking the intern. I mean, haven’t teens and twentysomethings always been the de facto in house youth experts in the office?
That’s why, less notable than the insight itself [well-trodden territory for those of us who live in the youth space] was the credit and credibility Robson was awarded for his work. Sure, it had the trappings of a publicity stunt—offering the inner workings of a real, live teen to inquiring minds of the financial industry—but I couldn’t help but appreciate the transparency. From the report’s introduction:
..we asked a 15 year old summer work intern, Matthew Robson, to describe how he and his friends consume media. Without claiming representation or statistical accuracy, his piece provides one of the clearest and most thought provoking insights we have seen. So we published it.
Say what you will about the findings (more on that in a bit) that came out of the unscientific methodology, but the effort to recognize and reward young employees (or future employees) seems like a step in the right collaborative direction. Especially for an old-school intergenerational company like Morgan Stanley and the conventionally non-youthy space of finance.
That said, before other similarly conventionally non-youthy businesses take the cue and follow suit, let’s hope this other piece of sage advice floats their way: interns are not the definitive litmus test of teenage taste. They are a starting point, and a great one at that, but one teen and their friends can’t take the place of research. A couple sticking points from the report:
Personal tastes vs. fact. To his credit, Robson mostly sticks with general terms, but when he does get specific, for instance parenthetically reporting on the popularity of anime—“Many teenagers use YouTube to watch videos (usually anime which cannot be watched anywhere else)”—I feel skeptical and slightly frustrated with the language that nonchalantly implies the observation as fact. The same goes for his note that “Teenage boys (generally) watch more TV when it is the football season, often watching two games and related shows a week (for a total of about 5 hours of viewing).”
Subtle shifts get lost. After the report that came out just yesterday on UK teens downloading from file-sharing sites less and streaming more, Robson’s lack of emphasis on this trend with his note that, “a large majority (8/10) [of teens are] downloading [music] illegally from file sharing sites” stuck out as off the mark.
Of course, “real” research has its own problems, as we’ve discussed before on Ypulse. All the more reason why companies should ideally do both—talk to their interns or kids and looking at research critically—to create an approach based on a combination of the two.
For more campus coverage, visit the Ypulse Campus Channel, sponsored by Campus Media Group.
I have absolutely no idea why people are so hyped up about this. Last year I produced a 150 page study on the habits of teenagers in this society. I have also done reports on migration, the value of money, China’s emergence as a world super power, and what under-18s feel about the crime on our streets- all backed up with sources and quotes and references.
Do these investment bankers really feel so desolate about Britain’s youth that they get excited about this report (which, as many people before have also said, does not really correlate with many teens at all)?
Yes, there are still children who read books on investment banking and the financial times. Yes, they have read Warren Buffett’s biography and Intelligent Investing by Ben Graham. Yes, there are 8 year olds who make great returns on their stocks. Yes, super-charged, financially savvy, and diamond bright children are still alive in this world. And yes, I AM YOUNGER THAN THIS BOY. I AM A 14 YEAR OLD GIRL.
Trust me, that boy is no wonderkid. I could have done exactly the same thing, better. I have half a mind to charge up to Morgan Stanley today and see how those guys react to me. (I am planning on doing work-experience there next year anyway, they’ll see me even if they don’t want to.)
WAKE UP, WORLD. CLEVER KIDS DO EXIST. MANY OTHERS HAVE DONE MUCH BETTER.
RE
========================================
“Teenagers do not use Twitter” (as quoted by the Guardian). Why? Because updating Twitter on your phone counts as a text message, and teens would rather use their texts to ping friends than update a Twitter profile “that no one is viewing,” Robson writes.
=================================
Updating a Twitter page is free from a computer.
And free from the web-browser of a phone.
There is only a text-message charge if one uses a phone’s text-message feature to update a Twitter page.
I agree with Stella. Many youths have done far superior work to this anecdotal drivel. Stella, as long as your thesis is strong and your points supported, I’d love to read your thoughts.
I am glad that others his age realize that this “report” is poor work product and should have never been published. Perhaps it could have been a jumping off point for further study and polling by Morgan Stanley, but to have this report printed with their name on it should be embarrassing for them.
Stella is not my real name, but thank you , Luch. As other sites have undoubtedly pointed out, I feel that the real question is not the quality of this report, but actually how this boy get an ‘internship’ in the first place.
The Times and the Guardian have said how ‘connections’ forged from walking a dog in a park led to a job, but I refuse to believe that this was the sole cause of being accepted as an intern. I really would like to know what he actually put in the letter he wrote to MS. Surely in this increasingly work-depleted City, with well publicised job cuts left right and centre, letting a 15 year old into your firm when hordes of well qualified graduates are streaming out of the doors (I don’t know about MS individually, but I’d guess that like hell jobs are tight), he must have put something truly spectacular in his letter. I really don’t think dog walking relations can get you a job in these circumstances. Tell us your secret, Matthew!
But by no means am I disapproving, because like I said, I too am considering somehow snatching an ‘internship’ at an investment bank, even if I need to grovel at the feet of the managing directors (only subtly, obviously; desperation is not an attractive quality !)