Ever get the feeling that people think they can achieve success by slapping a familiar-sounding label on something to make it sound new and exciting?

OK, it does happen quite a lot, but that doesn’t mean it’s on the mark each time.

A recent post by Greg Verdino caught my attention, where he commented on Generation Virtual, a Forbes article by Gartner’s Adam Sarner.

Generation V (for Virtual), which isn’t a generation in the traditional sense, is a collection of people who use the Internet (a lot) in order to get and share information.

This paragraph really encapsulates the whole thrust of this article:

In 10 years, the largest influence on all purchases will be the virtual experiences associated with them, and, therefore, more money will be spent marketing and selling to multiple online personae than marketing and selling offline.

That’s a pretty tall claim. Let’s dissect this article and see what makes it tick.

According to Sarner’s article, Generation V (there is no age requirement to belong to this “generation” by the way) has three behavioral attributes:

• To use technology as a day-to-day tool to facilitate communication that is not bounded by the previous limits of geography.
• Generation V members demonstrate an overwhelming desire to participate through involvement in global communities
• Finally, the value set of Generation V differs subtly from that of its predecessors. Its members have an overwhelming belief in a meritocratic environment: the value of collaboration, that “we” is more powerful and valuable than “me” and that sharing increases the value of something rather than diminishes or erodes it.

I can buy these three points and I see a lot of myself in them, even if I think that Generation V is a misleading term.

However, Sarner makes a few other statements that I don’t buy:

Web 2.0 signaled a “V-day” shift of control from company to customer, where increasingly powerful virtual environments and social networking communities proliferate. While traditional wisdom has focused on customer identification for one-to-one targeted marketing campaigns, cross-selling and so on, the reality of Generation V members using multiple personae (e.g., Amazon reviewer, eBay seller, Second Life avatar, “World of Warcraft” blood elf, digger, blogger, YouTuber), and the sheer power of their growing influence, means that customers will have a host of online personae driving your business relationship.

As a social media enthusiast, I can certainly appreciate what’s being said here. Although some of the more high profile flexing of social media muscle has been in a negative sense (e.g. Dell Hell, AOL Customer Service), somebody must be using it in a positive way.

I’m not sure that I buy the idea of multiple online personae as a focus for marketing campaigns. I mean, what is World of Warcraft going to market to me if it uses my online persona/character as a basis for anticipating needs: more gold? Better items? Or a new Lexus and whole life insurance?

And how is that going to help P&G market toothpaste to me? Following Sarner’s logic, there would have to be some kind of virtual toothbrushing experience (the Sims v. 10.0?) in order for a company to find the best way to sell me toothpaste.

This is assuming, of course, that I’ve provided 100% accurate information in my profiles AND that my behavior on these services is largely consistent with my non-virtual life. Sorry, no battleaxes or magic wands here. I’m not too keen on the virtual toothbrushing concept either.

The eBay, Amazon.com, etc. activity might be a better basis to market to me, but my Digg behavior might not. Maybe I voted for a story to help out a friend. Maybe I voted for a story because I thought it was well written, even though I don’t care that much for the subject material.

Here’s some more thoughts to consider:

Discovering customers’ true identities becomes irrelevant.

Good, because for the most part I’m happy to remain anonymous to the companies that I buy from.

Multibillion-dollar third-party customer data providers, business intelligence and analytics markets will shift from collecting demographic information to psychographic information to better understand these various personae and their behaviors.

Not necessarily a bad idea, but again it assumes that the way I behave online matches the way that I behave offline. Amazon.com already does this to a certain extent through its built-in recommendation system (largely built on other people’s behavior, not mine), so there is a precedent for this, but it goes dormant after I leave the site, nor does it necessarily provide useful information to other merchants (assuming that they can get access to the data).

Companies will create multiple interactive, virtual environments as a way to orchestrate customer exploration toward purchases.

I don’t see any CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies having any success at doing this; not for a disposable or short lived product. Larger, more expensive goods… maybe. Services… maybe. And I think technology, including networking, bandwidth, etc. is going to have to become cheaper, more powerful, and ubiquitous in order to make this work.

By doing so, they will benefit from a deeper understanding of how and what people are exploring or buying, who strays from the normal path and why.

This creeps me out a bit, to be honest. I’m already a bit uncomfortable with the incomplete information I have on Facebook. Why would I go even further for a faceless corporation?

As a member of Generation X I don’t think I’d be willing to take the leaps of faith in this article, even though in many ways I fit the profile of Generation V.

My children, on the other hand… they may see it differently. At their young age they’re already starting to immerse themselves in the online worlds of Ty, Ganz, Lego, and Hasbro, so perhaps they will be more open to this sort of thing.

We didn’t have anything like those websites in my formative years, so it’s harder for me to understand. I’ve certainly spent my fair share of time in social media and in on-line games, but I see it in many ways as a distraction from the “real world” as well as a place to get information. If my job ever changes such that I become more dependent upon virtual interaction with other people, I may see it differently.

Adam Sarner is undoubtedly more informed than I am about trends, technology, and social media (for Gartner’s sake, I hope so), so in some respects I should give him the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, this article strikes me as a dumbed-down white paper (i.e. missing a lot of technical terms, supportive evidence, etc.) that someone created to put a stake in the sand so that they’d look clever a few years from now.

Maybe Sarner will be right. I just see too many potential problems to allow me to make that same leap of faith.