If someone asked you the #1 website for teens, my guess would be that you’d answer one of the top social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.  Same goes for the twenty-something set.  Well if so, the most recent TRU Study would have proved you wrong.  I was pretty surprised to see YouTube #1 with 8 of 10 Teens visiting in the last 30 days…beating out both MySpace at #4 (56%) and Facebook at #7 (42%).  A few other things that caught my eye:

• 50% of Teens and 56% of Twenty-somethings visited Wikipedia in the past 30 days.  I think that answers the question of what Geny Y views as “credible” information.
• eBay makes the top 6 on both lists and is the #1 “commerce” site for Gen Y.
• Yahoo is #3 on both lists.  They have been getting slammed recently and basically discounted as irrelevant by some in the press.  My guess would be the high ranking of Yahoo is thanks to their Web 2.0 plays like Flickr, Del.ico.us and MyBlogLog…not their base portal or search (except maybe Yahoo Mail).

TRU July 2008 Most Visited Websites

I’ve been a huge fan of the new Canadian Club campaign ever since it broke a few months ago.  According to the latest article from AdAge, it appears I’m not the only one.  The campaign, under the tagline of “Damn Right Your Dad Drank It” has helped Canadian Club reverse one of the longest declines in the spirit industry.  From the article, “case volume of Canadian Club in food, drug and liquor stores rose 4.4% in the 13 weeks ending March 8.”  This is after case shipments went from 3.9 million in 1980 to 1.5 million in 1995 and further down to 1.3 million last year.

In my eyes, the success of this campaign shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that knows Gen Y/Millenials.  For younger consumers (ie the 21 to 30 set this campaign goes after), being like your dad isn’t a bad thing.  Family is more important to this generation of consumers than ever before and dad is a role model, not an old guy.  In fact, doing something your father did isn’t a bad thing, especially when you think about your dad as a cool young guy that enjoyed life.  Canadian Club got it right on this one with their new generation of consumers.