If you ever doubted that it’s incredibly hip to be a young entrepreneur these days, consider that HBO is about to launch a new Entouragesque series about the travails of aspiring young business owners. How To Make It In America, which airs Feb. 14 at 10 p.m., follows Ben Epstein (Bryan Greenberg) and Cam Calderon (Victor Rasuk), two twenty-something New Yorkers who decide to launch a premium denim company. Greenberg and Rasuk, along with co-star Lake Bell, who plays Ben’s ex-girlfriend, Rachel, and series creator Ian Edelman, were at the New York Stock Exchange this morning to ring the opening bell. I chatted with them before they headed down to the trading floor. As it turns out, each of the young actors had a little first hand experience in the world of entrepreneurship and I’m hoping they’ll draw on those early lessons as they breathe life into their characters.

Greenberg: “I had a lemonade stand but it wasn’t that successful because there isn’t a lot of traffic in the suburbs of Omaha where I grew up.” (Lesson: even the most awesome lemonade stand needs customers. Location, location, location.)

Bell: “I had a tattoo and piercing shop when I was in boarding school in Connecticut. It was a very preppy place and someone had to be the punk, so I was the punk.” (Lesson: it always pays to find a great point of differentiation. But, oops, Bell didn’t charge for all that inking and piercing! Lesson #2: never underestimate the value of your product or service).

Rasuk: “I went to public school in New York and they gave us Metro Cards for the subway. I used to say I lost my card, then I’d get more and sell them.” (Lesson: Before acting upon your entrepreneurial impulses, it’s probably best to check in with your moral compass.)

Still smarting from the lemonade stand failure, Greenberg took his role as Ben Epstein seriously enough to actually have some conversations with successful entrepreneurs in the fashion industry. He checked in with some folks at Mark Ecko, and also had a long conversation with Bobby Kim, co-founder of The Hundreds, a streetwear apparel company and former Inc. “30 Under 30” company. “Bobby told me is that it isn’t about what you’re making – it’s all about the brand and the hustle,” says Greenberg. He hints that all will not go smoothly for Epstein and Calderon. After all, the fictional partners have already failed once. "We made a skateboard but then the guy we made it for went off his meds and went crazy," says Rasuk. Ah, another lesson: the perils of celebrity endorsements! “We have no idea what we’re doing,” says Greenberg of the characters. “So the business plan may change over the course of time. Plus we get into debt with some people who we probably shouldn’t get into debt with.” Sounds realistic enough to me. I’ll be watching on the 14th and, because I can’t really help myself, looking for all the little ways that this fictional world resembles the real paths of the young entrepreneurs we cover here at Inc. What about you? Will you be tuning in as well?

If you missed Tom Friedman’s OpEd piece in The New York Times yesterday on why the Obama administration needs to focus on youth entrepreneurship, please read it here right now. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Friedman suggests that President Obama seems to have all but forgotten the “amazing, young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots movement he mobilized to get elected.” I couldn’t agree more. Sure, there was a meeting of young entrepreneurs at the White House last March, organized by Elliott Bisnow, founder of the Summit Series. In attendance: Jake Nickell (Threadless); Tony Hsieh (Zappos); Aaron Patzer (Mint.com); Evan Williams (Twitter), and 25 or so others. But what has the administration done since then to engage this incredibly entrepreneurial generation? Not much, as far as I can tell.

Yes, we need health care reform and we certainly must put some regulatory reins back on the financial sector, but most of all, we need to create jobs by stimulating the creation of new companies. And while organizations like the Kauffman Foundation, for which I have great respect, claim that the majority of new entrepreneurial firms are started by people in their 40s, I think a strong case can be made for devoting significant resources to young entrepreneurs. First of all, we know that they are a generation of serial entrepreneurs. Over 75% of the entrepreneurs I interviewed for my book, Upstarts! said that they were very or highly likely to start another company; most had already founded two or more. Why does this matter? Because practice makes perfect and by the time they’re in their forties, many of these young business owners will have several start-ups under their belts, having learned as much if not more from their inevitable failures as from their successes. And that will help them grow into an exceptional generation of entrepreneurial leaders.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Last month, I had the incredible privilege of having tea with Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts, founder of the Leader to Leader Institute, and now the Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point (she’s the first woman appointee and the first non-graduate of West Point to hold the position). Ms. Hesselbein, who Peter Drucker described as one of the greatest leaders he had ever met, knows leadership when she sees it. And she told me with great enthusiasm that she views the current generation of cadets at West Point as the most promising group of future leaders she has ever met. Why? “They understand the importance of service,” she said. And she wasn’t talking just about service to one’s country, but to communities in general. “The first thing they want to tell you about is the volunteer work they’re doing,” she said. I found the same to be to be true among the young entrepreneurs I interviewed for my book: 70% said their companies had a social mission. But make no mistake: they’re laser-focused on the bottom line as well and they understand why growing a profitable, sustainable company that creates jobs is a social good in and of itself. It’s pretty clear to me: this is a generation worth investing in.

So, back to Friedman, who suggests that the best thing President Obama could do is to “bring together the country’s leading innovators and ask them: What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over?” He also mentions two youth entrepreneurship programs that are worthy of being replicated: National Lab Day, which pairs scientists and engineers with budding student inventors; and The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) which teaches entrepreneurship to low-income kids. He might have also included Junior Achievement’s new Be Entrepreneurial program, which is focused on helping high school students start their own businesses. And what about funding/incubating programs like TechStars and YCombinator? Both organizations receive hundreds of applications every year but can only accommodate a few promising young entrepreneurs. Is there some way that government can support and/or offer incentives to spur the creation of similar programs?

I know there’s a strong contingency out there that believes government should simply step aside and let entrepreneurs do what they do best with minimal interference from inside the Beltway. And maybe in the best of times, that works. But we’re in crisis mode now, so I stand with Friedman and his call to President Obama to help ignite a youth entrepreneurship movement. I think our future economic growth depends on it. What about you?

It's the time of year when our mailboxes and our inboxes are flooded with generic greetings -- electronic and paper -- from the people with whom we've done business throughout the year. The messages are pretty much all the same. We read them and often rack our holiday-fried brains to remember who we met where and what conversations took place. So when I checked my email this morning and saw that Zach Ferres had sent me a link to a video greeting, I guess I was a little cynical. Ah, I thought, the generic holiday video greeting is now replacing the generic email holiday greeting. Zach, the CEO of Bouncehost.com is one of the many young entrepreneurs I've had the privilege of meeting this past year as I've been spreading the word about the findings in my new book, Upstarts!. Zach, by the way, is not in the book; I met him at the Inc. 500 conference in September. So I literally squealed with delight when I opened the YouTube link. Take a look at it here.

So, yes, I do understand that this greeting falls solidly into the realm of marketing/public relations and that Zach probably stood in front of his Flip with that Santa hat on for many, many personal videos. But it's pretty brilliant, isn't it? I have no idea if I'll ever write about Zach. But I do know one thing -- I won't ever forget him! Just curious: What do you do to make yourself unforgettable to the people who matter most to you?

The ink was barely dry on the check from Intuit when Mint.com founder Aaron Patzer, flush from the software giant’s recent acquisition of his young company, wrote a check of his own last month. The happy recipient was 23-year-old Jack Abraham, who I met in Manhattan a couple of days ago and whose website, Milo.com, moved out of beta today with a million unique users and $4 million in Series A financing. Patzer is an enthusiastic participant in that round.

Milo enables shoppers to research items on line and then actually find them in stock at local retailers. So if you’d like to buy, say, Upstarts: How GenY Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business (shameless promotion alert), you’d enter the book’s name and your zip code into the site’s search engine and Milo would tell you which local bookstores carry it. The site makes money through commissions if you choose to buy the product online and have it held at the store for you. But Abramson says he is also developing a “proprietary tracking system” that will enable Milo to link users to actual foot traffic in stores and to thus earn commission for in-store purchases as well.

It’s a very user-friendly site powered by highly complex technology that captures real time inventory and price data from major retailers. Abraham, the son of comScore CEO and co-founder Magid Abraham, helped build the technology and has signed on 30 major retailers with 42,000 stores and 1.5 million products. (Footnote: Abraham also helped build comScore’s technology when he was just 12 years old!). He and his partner/CTO John Evans have grown Milo.com’s traffic from 2,000 users to a million a month in just about a year. No wonder their Series A round was over subscribed. True Ventures took the lead and was joined by Abraham’s dad, Jawed Karim (YouTube), Kevin Hartz (Eventbrite, Zoom), Keith Rabois (PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide), Aaron Patzer (Mint.com), and several other Silicon Valley heavy hitters.

Patzer and Abraham met by chance more than a year ago, on a strenuous 11-mile hike at Big Basin Redwoods State Park. “I was there with my friends and I saw this guy roll up in a car with Mint.com license plates and I thought, that’s got to be Aaron Patzer,” recalls Abraham. “I bumped into him on the trail and I was picking his brain about Mint. Over the next year, I kept pinging him and he got excited about the company.” Neither will say how much Patzer invested; he’s not on Milo’s board but Abraham considers him a mentor. So I caught up with Aaron last night and asked him a few questions about his first venture investment.

DF: What do you see in Jack that reminds you of yourself?

AP: Jack is young (23), the sole founder (usually it's two founders, one tech, one business), an engineer by training (programming since 12), and yet incredibly articulate in describing his business, its value to consumers, its technical difficulty (and therefore sustainable advantage), and revenue model. He's also good a product designer, despite never having formally done it before - he did much of Milo.com, just as I did the user interface and product specs for the early version of Mint.com.

DF: What are the three things about Milo that makes it a good first investment for you?

AP: 1) Jack, for the reasons above. 2) It's core technology for querying the real-time inventory of all the stores near you is actually very similar to Mint.com pulling data from banks. 3) It has a real business model (lead generation and sales referrals) that is valid now, and 10 years from now. Unlike, for example, the 87 Twitter derivative companies that you see springing up.

DF: Do you think Milo is the next Mint.com (in terms of star quality, growth potential, etc.)?

AP: Milo.com definitely has a solid consumer value proposition: price comparison and product research online, with real-time local availability so that you can get what you want now, rather than waiting a week for shipping. It has a young, bright, articulate, product and engineering focused founder, and an impressive technical team (including one of the original comScore developers). It has a real business model. It's metrics focused, and all the metrics are up-and-to-the-right. And it's got a four-letter domain name that begins with "M". The parallels are uncanny, so of course they'll be successful.

What do you think? Is Milo.com the next Mint.com?

To kick off Global Entrepreneurship Week, I spent the morning at the New York Stock Exchange at an event called “Mentoring Madness,” sponsored by NYSE Euronext and the Kauffman Foundation. A roomful of eager, aspiring college entrepreneurs soaked up advice from a panel of inspiring veterans, including Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes, Barry Sternlicht, chairman of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Stephen Hanson, founder of B.R. Guest Restaurants, and rapper/entrepreneur Snoop Dogg (no wonder every seat was filled!). CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo interviewed the group and extracted some pearls of wisdom, relevant to all entrepreneurs, young and not so young alike:

1. Some Rules Are Not Meant To Be Broken. Blake Mycoskie talked about how thrilled he was when Nordstrom’s first started carrying TOMS Shoes. He stubbornly refused the retail giant’s request for the shoes to be packaged in traditional shoeboxes rather than the environmentally friendly canvas bags that Mycoskie was so proud of. Nordstrom relented, but the bags were a stockroom disaster: they couldn’t be properly stacked, their drawstrings became tangled, and they caused frustration among the sales staff. The result: “We got kicked out of Nordstrom and it almost put us out of business,” Mycoskie says. “Now we put our shoes in boxes.” Lesson: choose your battles wisely; compromise isn't a dirty word.

2. Admit That You Don’t Know It All. Stephen Hanson grew his restaurant empire from one location in New York (Coconut Grill) to 15 locations in three cities. But he didn’t do it alone. Hanson relied heavily on experienced mentors in the industry. “I used to pick up Michael Weinstein every day at his home and drive him to work so that I could talk to him about the restaurant business,” says Hanson. Weinstein is the founder and CEO of Ark Restaurants, which owns and operates fifty food-related businesses. Hanson’s advice: seek out successful people who you admire and respect and don’t be shy about asking for their advice.

3. Customer Research Is Overrated. According to Barry Sternlicht, when hotel guests were asked to name the ten most important factors to consider when choosing a hotel, bed comfort didn’t show up on the list. “But when we asked them how much extra they would pay for a great bed, the answer was $20 a night,” he said. And so began Starwood’s successful campaign to differentiate itself to consumers through the quality of its beds. “Sometimes people don’t know what they want until you offer it to them,” says Sternlicht. He also offered the audience my favorite piece of advice of the morning: “People lose their fortunes when they lose their humility.” Hear that, Wall Street?

4. “It Ain’t Nothin’ Y’all Can’t Do.” Those are direct words of encouragement from Snoop Dogg, who made my day when I got a great profile shot of him on my iPhone on the floor of the NYSE right after the opening bell. You can see it here. Snoop’s advice: be original and creative and don’t let lack of money discourage you. “I had to hustle from the ground up. I had no money, so I went to DJs and to parties until I met Dr. Dre,” he says. And learn from failure, he adds, because “it teaches you what you shouldn’t do.” What did he learn? “I didn’t understand when I first started out that I had to be a role model. I brought everyone up with me – the homies from the neighborhood and the criminals. But then I realized I had to change my whole environment.” Now, he says, his most important project is The Snoop Youth Football League, which he founded to help keep inner city youth off the street. “It teaches them how to win,” he says, “and how to lose.” Biggest surprise about Snoop: he took calculus because “if you stop at general math, you’re only going to make a general math salary.”

So what's your advice to aspiring young entrepreneurs? What do you know now that you wish someone had told you when you were first starting your business?

When I talk about my new book, Upstarts: How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business, which is out next month, people tend to assume that the bulk of the companies I cover are in the tech industry. And while it’s true that I do profile many awesome companies in that space (like Loopt, Xobni, Mint.com, Aviary, Quirky, and many more), I’ve got to confess that I’m always a little more drawn to companies that have become wildly successful in industries that are a bit more mundane. That was the idea behind my first book, Alpha Dogs, which showcased eight amazing businesses in relatively ordinary industries.

So in Upstarts, I continued to seek out those kinds of companies. Among them is College Hunks Hauling Junk, which made an impressive debut on our Inc. 500 list this year at #156. You don’t get much more low-tech than this – basically, these guys make a living hauling the junk in your basement to the dump. I’ve been talking to co-founders Omar Soliman and Nick Friedman for a couple of years now and have had the pleasure of watching College Hunks grow into a multi-million dollar franchise operation. It didn’t happen by accident. Here’s what I think are the biggest factors in their success:

1. They entered a fragmented industry with a low barrier to entry but differentiated themselves through branding and top-notch service. Hunks are clean cut, wear khakis and collared shirts and drive snappy new trucks. And they know that their real business isn’t just hauling junk, but making their customers’ lives tidier and more organized. They professionalized and classed-up what we typically think of as a “dirty” business.

2. They looked to an existing successful business – Vancouver-based 1-800- Junk – for guidance and ideas. There’s no shame in taking a peak at someone else’s playbook and adopting their best practices!

3. They put a green spin on their operation by pledging to recycle approximately 60% of the items they collect. They also donate a percentage of revenues to College Bound, college scholarship and mentorship program. That kind of commitment to social causes means more and more to customers these days.

4. When they decided to expand their original Washington, DC operation to include franchisees, they didn’t waste time hiring someone who knew the ins and outs franchising – industry veteran George Palmer. Kudos to Friedman and Soliman for knowing what they didn’t know.

5. Even though this isn't a tech company per se, Soliman and Friedman have made significant investments in information systems that help the business run smoothly as it grows. Lesson: every company needs to be a tech company at some level.

Both Friedman and Soliman will be joining me at a special program for young entrepreneurs at this year’s Inc. 500/5000 conference in Washington, D.C. The good news is that whether or not you made the list, you can join us, too. If you’re under the age of 32 and would like to attend, drop me a line at donna@donnafenn.com for more information, but keep in mind that seating is limited. See you there!

Now that unemployment is at 8.5% and no one is really talking about a labor shortage any longer, can you forget all that nonsense about how you need to pay special attention to training, motivating, and engaging your Generation Y employees? They ought to be happy just to have a job, right? Not so fast, says Bruce Tulgan, author of Not Everyone Gets a Trophy (Jossey-Bass, March 2009). “The downturn in the economy will cause them to keep quiet for a while,” says Tulgan, “but by and large the essential equation remains the same. This generation is being shaped by a lot of forces that cause them to arrive in the workplace with thoughts, words, and actions that are out of sync with the needs of their employers.” Among those forces: over-indulgent parents; growing distrust of corporations; increasing integration of work and non-work time.

Believe it or not, Tulgan (like me) is a big fan of GenY. With their confidence, energy, and enthusiasm, they’re likely to be "the most high performing workforce in history,” he says. “But I have no doubt that they’re also the most high maintenance workforce in history.” Knowing how to manage them is to your great advantage. So I asked Tulgan how employers should deal with three common complaints about GenY employees.

1. “They don’t show up on time.” You’ve got to spell out your expectations clearly, says Tulgan. But at the same time, ask yourself if there’s really a business reason for, say, a 9 am start time. Does the employee need to open a store or answer the phone? If coming in late is a deal-breaker, say so. If it’s not, consider making the accommodation but, says Tulgan, “make the quid pro quo explicit,” (i.e. they’ll work later, take a shorter lunch, etc.).

2. “They want to change everything on day one.” GenY employees want to know how your company works and why it works that way. Right now, please. “The conventional wisdom is ‘stick around a while and get a feel for the place; no one’s going to take you seriously until you’ve been a while,’” says Tulgan. But what GenY needs, he says, is “a high-intensity orientation” right off the bat – something that gives them organizational context and a gut-level understanding of their role, its relationship to the company’s mission, and who all the players are.

3. “They don’t know how to manage themselves.” Here, says Tulgan, you might need to do some remedial work. GenY often comes to work with knowledge and impressive technical skills, but falls short when it comes to managing the day to day work flow. Teach them how to make lists, set priorities, live by a schedule, and set long-term goals. “They want you to set them up for success,” says Tulgan. “Then, they will dazzle you.”

Footnote: If you really want to understand how GenY employees view themselves in the larger context of the workplace, take a look at Dan Schawbel’s new book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, March 2009). Schawbel is the “personal branding” voice of his generation, and his advice to his peers will give you insight into how to make your own company more GenY friendly.

Jake Kloberdanz, the 25-year-old CEO of Hope Wine, doesn’t think the holidays are a particularly great time to engage in cause branding. For Kloberdanz and his team of seven GenY partners, cause branding is a 24/7, 365-day proposition: the Newport Beach, California company gives away half its profits to charitable organizations associated with breast cancer, autism, AIDS, serving the families of fallen troops, and green causes. “We’re the perfect balance between hard core capitalism and democratic socialism,” says Kloberdanz. (BTW, Kloberdanz incorporated Hope Wine long before President-elect Obama gave the word new meaning, but what a happy coincidence, eh?)

It’s not at all unusual for GenY entrepreneurs to embrace social missions when they start their companies, but Hope Wine takes the practice to an extreme. Can a start-up that gives so much away really hope to become a sustainable company in this economy? Kloberdanz thinks so. He and his seven pals were working for Gallo when Kloberdanz got the idea for Hope back in 2005. He was stocking grocery shelves with wine eight hours a day and noticed that consumer products with cause branding campaigns were given premium shelf space and enjoyed tremendous sell-though. Charities benefited and companies sold more products, he reasoned, so why limit cause branding to a time-sensitive campaign? Why not create a “cause brand”? It worked for Paul Newman, after all.

Hope Wine, which is blended and bottled at Sonoma Wine Co., made its debut on store shelves in June of 2007; each of the five varietals is labeled with a circle ribbon that tells consumers what cause they’re supporting with their purchase. This year, the company did $1 million in sales, gave away $150,000 in cash and in-kind donations to 20 not-for-profit organizations, and donated 3,400 volunteer hours at 200 charity events. At this point, Hope is “giving away our profit margin”, but Kloberdanz says the company will be in the black in 2009. He’s hired an executive from a major spirit company, and is negotiating with a big distributor to take the brand national (it’s now sold in ten states and on the company’s website).

I’m wondering if a tough economy actually increases the appeal of cause branding to consumers. They may not be able to write a big check to charities, but they can still feel good about contributing a little something through their everyday purchases. What do you think? Are you more likely to buy goods and services associated with a good cause? Does your company engage in cause branding and, if so, has it had a positive impact on sales, your company culture, your brand image?

I’ve been interviewing young entrepreneurs for almost two years now and one of the re-emerging themes in the businesses they start is dissatisfaction with the status quo. Sure, that’s pretty much true for all entrepreneurs, but this generation of upstarts has its own way of looking at existing products and services and judging them not quite up to snuff for their own needs. Their response: I can do better. The result: businesses like Mint.com, Unigo, and Ignighter.

Mint.com, which was featured on our Inc.com 30 Under 30 Coolest Entrepreneurs list, and in our magazine feature, Cool, Determined and Under 30, was started by Aaron Patzer, who was frustrated with personal finance software like Quicken and Microsoft Money. They were “tedious and boring and failed my basic needs,” he says. For instance, they took too long to set up and didn’t categorize his expense accurately enough. So he built something more to his own liking. Mint.com is an online personal finance tool that tells you exactly how you’re spending your money, how you can save, when your credit card payment is due, and when your bank balance is low. Sounds like mom, but without the nagging. Mint.com now has 600,000 registered users and half of them are under age 30.

Unigo is a website that contains free student-generated information on over 300 colleges and universities. It’s CEO Jordan Goldman’s response to what he believes is the failure of traditional publishing companies to adequately serve the needs of prospective college students. The big guides put out by Fiske and Princeton Review have a few pages on each college and are typically light on substantive student comment. “We’re not interested in white-washing the college experience,” says Goldman. “If part of going to a particular college is going to keggers every week, it’s better that you know that ahead of time.” Amen to that. The company launched last September with 15,000 student comments, pictures and videos. In its first week, it racked up 1.5 million page views and Goldman had a long list of potential advertisers knocking at his door.

Ignighter.com is a GenY spin on Match.com. Co-founded by Adam Sachs, Dan Osit, Kevin Owocki, the site allows young singles to register in groups and arrange group dates with other groups. Did you get that the key word here is “group"? “We had friends who were beginning to explore the online dating world and they’d come back to us with horror stories,” says Sachs. “So we thought, this wouldn’t be so awkward if you could just be with your friends and still be able to meet new people.” The founders spent the summer in Boulder at a highly selective incubator/mentoring/funding program called TechStars, where they refined their website, which now has 6,000 registered groups world-wide.

By the way, all of these companies are either venture or angel-backed, so the founders aren’t the only ones who think they’re on to something by starting companies that specifically serve the needs of their generation. Do you know of other start-up companies like this, or do you have examples of established companies that are tweaking their products or services to entice GenY consumers?

I read a blog post by Chris Brogan this morning that I think everyone using social media for business should take to heart. Here’s part of the post:

“Twitter isn’t amazing. The ability to connect to many voices in a collaborative way is amazing. Facebook isn’t the future. Having mutual social environments that permit deeper understanding of each other’s interest is the future. It’s important that we learn how to talk in terms of benefits and not the features.”

The simple message here is “it’s not just the medium, stupid, it’s the message.” And that’s exactly were Johnson & Johnson went horribly wrong last week. The company launched a viral advertising campaign for Motrin targeted to new moms who may experience neck and back pain from carrying their babies in slings (you can check it out here). Sounds innocent enough, eh? But the video that J &J produced and posted on You Tube incited an online mommy revolt ("Motringate") because of its flip tone and language: “wearing your baby seems to be in fashion”; “supposedly it’s a real bonding experience”; “it totally makes me look like an official mom.” Social media moms went crazy with blog posts and Twitter tweets; some were out for blood and called for a boycott of Motrin. To its credit, J &J/Motrin axed the campaign and apologized on its website.

So what happened here? I asked a few GenY entrepreneurs in the mom space to weigh in. “A perfect example of a company getting it all wrong,” said Bunmi Zalob, who writes a blog called One Crazy Mother. “The ad is SO annoying. All they had to do was show it to one focus group of a broad cross-section of moms.” Rachel Herrscher, the CEO of Today’s Mama, which publishes city guides for moms, says, “in my opinion the danger for large companies targeting this particular demographic online is that they have to be absolutely genuine. They are better off getting a grass roots marketing panel of moms and mom bloggers to weigh in on campaigns like this. But they definitely need the most "plugged in" moms to voice their opinion because they are the ones who can and will make the most noise.”

It’s pretty clear to me that J&J got so caught up in what it thought was a clever use of social media that it forgot the first commandment of successful marketing: know your audience. Social media corollary: reach out to the handful of individuals within that audience who will certainly scrutinize your message and who, by their very nature, will pass judgment quickly and loudly. That’s particularly important with GenY consumers, who won’t tolerate companies that make assumptions about who they are, and then throw an inauthentic message back at them via an advertising/marketing campaign. J & J learned that the hard way. What lessons have you learned about using social media for marketing?