Top 5 Personalities that Appeal to Gen Y Men

What does Howard Stern, Steve Carell and Ron Paul have in common? No, Howard Stern and Steve Carell are not running for Congress (though Howard Stern might have some interesting takes on international policy…). All of them are on male Gen Yer’s list of most influential people.

But what is the red thread that connects Howard Stern to Steve Carell? Each influencer, from Howard Stern to Ron Paul, speaks to a specific aspect Gen Y’s life stage. Howard Stern tells potty jokes reminiscent of high school (think 10th grade health class), Steve Carell represents the awkwardness and naivete of college life and the first big job while Steven Colbert takes his comedy to extremes (not so unfamiliar to the latest adrenaline junkie generation).

To find male Gen Yer’s top five influential personalities, we utilized Quantcasts audience analysis and Google Trend tools to determine where Gen Y men travel on the web. The following are the several top influencers Gen Y males look up to:

Howard Stern
The shock jock personality knows how to tap into his twentysomething self. Stern does it so well that 67 percent of visits to HowardStern.com are male and an astounding 40 percent are Gen Yers. You’d imagine Stern’s audience to be more his age; however, his toilet humor and fart jokes (remember Fart Man?) have been passed down to the next generation: Gen Y.

Steve Carell
The Office and 40-Year-Old Virgin star represents the awkwardness of Gen Yers — as they make many firsts, including college and a professional job. The Office is consistently top rated on Gen Y’s favorite video network, Hulu. In fact, 56 percent of Hulu viewers are male and 37 percent (the majority share) are Gen Yers. Carell’s supreme awkwardness and naivete strikes a chord with a generation learning the ropes in college and their first serious job.

Steven Colbert
Did you see the 2010 Colbert Olympics in Vancouver? Turning the camera to the audience, you can see the sea of Gen Yers screaming for Colbert. Colbert’s audience is primarily made up of male Gen Yers. Why? He’s a funnier, more witty version of the Canadian Gen Y favorite, Tom Green (without the gross factor, of course). Colbert’s edgy, I’ll-say-or-do-anything comedy (remember Colbert riding the Canadian moose?) is the shock and awe Gen Yers seek in comedy.

Ron Paul
Social media savvy Gen Yers mobilized support for Republican Primary candidate, Ron Paul. In what is referred to as a “money bomb,” millions of dollars of online contributions poured into the GOP candidates campaign. Nearly overnight, Ron Paul transformed into the internet’s most buzzworthy politician — particularly for male Gen Yers. Ron Paul’s Facebook Group (the admins of which are male Gen Yers), “Congressman Ron Paul for President 2008″ has nearly 50,000 fans and Paul’s fan page, nearly 200,000.

Kevin Rose
Yes, this older Gen Yer created the bookmarking lovechild known as Digg. Rose’s legions of fans flock to digital and offline meetups. Throngs of geeky Gen Y males line-up to pay homage to the social media “underdog” at Diggnation. This successful geek serial entrepreneur is among an elite class of Gen Yers (including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg) blazing the next wave of tech.

To read more about Gen Y check out our 2010 Generational Trend Report:

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