A response to Matthew Robson (Morgan Stanley intern)

At the risk of sounding patronising we felt it important that everyone doesn’t get too upset by what was said in the recently published report by the intern at Morgan Stanley.  In case you missed the hype:

You can download the report here in pdf format 

You can read a series of media stories about it here too:

- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6703399.ece

- http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/07/14/236880/15-year-old-intern-dismisses-twitter-as-pointless.htm

- http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aLST1zYfqhk8

Morgan Stanley (a global billion dollar investment banking business) decided to publish these ‘insights’ and call the report one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights they have seen. 

There is an inherent problem, however, in asking a 15 year old with no commercial experience to decide whether twitter is useful; whether he’d rather go to the cinema to interact with friends or pay for a mobile service and whether or not he reads broadsheets ‘ with lots o  f text and numbers, or ‘freesheets’.

The long and short of it is: there is a question of context.

- Twitter is incredibly useful to win business, make contacts and find interesting information (see our blog on it), but even we appreciate that someone who has no direct benefit for it would see it as useless.

- Going to the cinema is a nice leisure activity, but I’d imagine it’s difficult for most people, even if they operate virtual offices to meet contacts during a screening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

- With regard to ‘freesheets’ versus broadsheets and the consumption of online media – this must be seen in context.  I can well imagine that no teenager is going to trawl through the pink pages of the FT to find out the latest about Oil Commodity Markets, but if this is your job I’m sure you’re going to pay the cover price – its important information you can’t find in a freesheet – which publishes what caused hysteria on the dance floor (I did some research – it was Leonard di Caprio).

I asked our summer intern at Naked Generations to read through the report and he suggested that more than anything it suggested that Morgan Stanley is acutely out of touch with the youth market.