There are more differences between the generations today than ever before.  Being aware of these differences can help individuals tailor their message for maximum effect, regardless of the task, or the relationship — family, friends, workplace peers. Good business is based on understanding others. To work effectively and efficiently, to increase productivity and quality, one needs to understand generational characteristics and learn how to use them effectively in dealing with each individual.

• Generation Y uses the brand as a heuristic for decoding not only the augmented product’s meaning, but also the meaning that brand provides for the concentric circles of all consumerism, pop culture, politics, and society. However, they're not brand loyal.
• Authentic brands that do what they say are trusted and rewarded by Gen Y.
• A way to engage Generation Y is to frequent the places where they like to "hang out" and use those channels as a means to launch an awareness campaign.
• This group is increasingly living their lives online, on social networking sites.
• Generation Y individuals, born since 1980, have many of the traits of the Veterans. They are not like their parents. They are curious, goal-oriented and loyal.
• Generation Y is  moral conscious. Volunteer-work programs, corporate responsibility efforts, and product recycling drives appeal to Gen Y.
• A critical question that a Generation Y employee will ask about a job is, "What does my place of work say about me?" He or she uses the company's brand as a simultaneous selfexpressive statement and guide for cultural representation.
• Advertisers that want to claim brand heritage such as Adidas face a difficult challenge to convince Generation Y that their brand stories are genuine and real. The same conclusion can be made about using celebrity endorsements for brands. Youth are very critical about this marketing strategy. To them celebrity endorsement implies that a brand is not confident enough to have an own image and hence it is interpreted as a weak moment of a brand. It shows that a brand has no real personality on its own and needs to buy coolness by using cool persons.

source: Warc.com  http://warc.com/Content/ContentViewer.aspx?ID=42753ae4-263c-446c-ae8e-521e7fec9130&q=generation+y&MasterContentRef=42753ae4-263c-446c-ae8e-521e7fec9130