• by Jack Feuer , July 2, 2008

As he approaches his 20th birthday, my kid, a.k.a. The Punishment From GodTM , is back in the reinventing-himself business. Since last summer, The PFGTM sampled and discarded sobriety, personal hygiene and the skinny girlfriend. He welcomed and then bid farewell to plans to be a paramedic, an entrepreneur, a telemarketer, a fitness instructor, a music producer, a clothing designer and a salesman for a line of energy drinks named after a marijuana holiday.

He is currently between jobs.

The young seeker was certain that he wanted to go to college in San Diego. Then San Francisco. Then Santa Barbara. Then San Diego again. Finally, he took a course at Moorpark Community College but dropped it. ("Introduction to Logic." Might have helped.)

He is currently between institutions.

As a parental unit, I'd have liked to see some of this stuff stick (except for the weed-based energy drink sales). But Feuer the Younger tells me to chill, because he's got it handled. Or he will have, right after he goes to the DMV this morning to replace the driver's license he lost when he misplaced his wallet while "throwing down" some money to buy booze for a late-night, underage beach binge with five other tattooed pinheads.

It's hard on the streets for a space cadet.

Still, I believe there's more to this meandering than meets the eye. I see a potent marketing lesson in the boy's exurban existential crisis.

Sure, every young adult that ever lived went through something like this. But it's also a very specific, millennial search for authenticity--one of the most devoutly desired attributes of any marketing or media campaign.

Problem is, we're plumb out of authentic.

In this pusillanimous land of ours, everybody jacks someone else's life, language and fashion sense. It's all borrowed interest. So marketers' obsession with messaging that is "genuine" is completely misguided. There is no such thing in America today.

Deep down, our kids understand this. The PFGTM, for example, knows where the phrase "throwing down" comes from. He and his cohorts may not consciously realize that their dependence on black slang, clothes and attitudes or the stuff they steal from the surfers and skateboarders in Venice, prevents them from creating their own authenticity. A culture, a value, a way of wearing a baseball cap to call their own. But they suffer from its absence.

Ergo, the meandering.

If I was a client or ran a client's big account, I'd stop wasting time and money on copy that apes texting talk or asinine ads with white, suburban kids singing about how they can't buy a "phat" car to ferry around their "posse" because they didn't check their credit report. I'd resist the temptation to talk to my consumers like my corporate headquarters was in Compton.

Instead, I'd craft marketing messages, and the media strategy to deliver them, that urge their target to do exactly the opposite: Stop talking like Tupac and make your own subculture.

That, and pick a damn profession already.