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One of the great things about movies is that they have this uncanny way of communicating the cultural spirit of an era within an otherwise unrelated narrative. Or, as critics are wont to intone, "Great films work on many levels."

Coppola's Apocalypse Now may have been a reworking of Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness, but the film's schizophrenic narrative and hyperbolic imagery nailed the essence of our nation's brooding, post-Vietnam psyche. And while The Graduate was the quintessential "coming of age" tale, the film gorgeously echoed the emerging Baby Boomer angst with tradition and authority. The Graduate's now infamous career advice scene ("Just one word...Are you listening... Plastics!") proved a generational rallying cry for every young Boomer determined not to follow in the same tragically flawed footsteps of his or her elders.

More recently, Diablo Cody's hit film Juno seemed to capture our current cultural zeitgeist, albeit in a way many of us older folks likely found unsettling. Much of the plot centers on Juno, a witty, precocious 16-year-old who, upon finding herself pregnant, demonstrates remarkably little agony or angst in her decision to move forward with her pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption. She considers her situation, briefly weighs the options, and proceeds with far more poise and peace of mind than most couples at the altar. And while the film follows the rest of the pregnancy's events as they unfold, we never find Juno rethinking or otherwise agonizing over her decision.

In the hands of a less nuanced writer, our young Juno would have agonized endlessly over what is arguably the most important decision of most women's lives. But Ms. Cody somehow manages to nail the essence of what it is like to come of age in an era in which unbridled choice has run so amok that it threatens our cognitive functioning and, by proxy, our very sanity.

Deluged as they (and we) are by an increasing panoply of choice, today's youth respond by restricting the cognitive bandwidth available for "choices and decisions" as much as is practically possible. In many cases the operative "choice" is not so much about which friends, careers, brands, products or services to choose as much as it is a conscious choice to not spend excessive effort even thinking about choice writ large.

To be certain, decisions such as pregnancy, career, choice of school or marriage partner surely receive due diligence, it's just that the youth of today are not nearly as preoccupied with excessive agonizing and hand-wringing about such choices. And moving from decisions of marriage to the more mundane world of brands or consumer goods...well, one could only imagine.

This is exactly what we encountered when asking a group of 50-something women why they drink Diet Coke. They go through an elaborate decision-tree of factors that lead to choosing Diet Coke. When we asked a Millennial why he or she drinks Sprite, the answer is a short, curt, "Cuz." Period. Enough said.

In other words, choice — for the Millennial Generation — is way, way overrated.

But how could this be?

Not surprisingly, Juno caused quite a stir amongst cultural critics and analysts (mostly from the Baby Boomer cohort), who expressed disbelief and frustration with the relative ease with which our main character decided to follow through with her pregnancy: "That's just not realistic. No right-thinking young woman would reflect that little on her decision to have a baby in high school and out of wedlock..."

But the thing we must realize is that such tacit acceptance of the unfolding of daily life — with little reason to feel or believe that one's choices are necessarily important (or even interesting) — is one of the chief hallmark characteristics of today's postmodern world. In short, we might suggest that our young Juno is one of the first postmodern heroines of our contemporary epoch.

The intriguing thing about this dialogue is that many of the young consumers we've recently spoken with — what some might term Millennials — don't even recognize the distinctions outlined above. From their perspective, Juno is a great film simply because it seems like a really accurate, playful portrayal of what it is like to come of age circa 2008.

And yet, the Baby Boomer consumers we speak with, many of whom likely represent the perspectives of our colleagues and clients, seem absolutely flummoxed by this evolving reality. To a generation which defined itself by its conscious choices ("We're not going to do things the way our parents did..." "Our actions will change the world," etc.) how do we even begin to make sense of a generation that remains, at best, indifferent to choice and, at worst, simply rejects choice?

We should note here that this is a very different phenomenon from the traditional pattern whereby each successive generation chooses different values from the previous as a means of defining its identity. Such value shifts are as predictable as, well, generations.

What is different here is that the decision is to not even choose — or at least not idolize, debate or agonize over those choices.

The implications for marketers could prove as fascinating as they do frustrating.

Marketing in an era whose goal is to not think or listen

First the good news.

According to our newest report today's Millennials are coming of age in a postmodern world — which encourages consumption with playful, reckless abandon — it's likely they will be consuming at levels relatively higher than their predecessors. Believe it or not, in the future we'll all likely be buying more stuff and our youth will lead the charge.

The challenge, of course, is that we have no blueprint to help us navigate a terrain marked at once by orgiastic consumption styles, excessive choice and a tacit desire to "unchoose." As one colleague recently quipped, "How do we communicate to a generation that has adapted to the insanity of its environment by learning not to listen?"

While we surely do not promise to have all of the answers, we offer the following top-level thoughts:

• Our conventional understanding of communications-based marketing will need to be reimagined and reinvented if it is to remain relevant to future generations. Messages — be they visual or text based — will be increasingly ignored. Shouting only makes matters worse. If marketers cannot think of different pathways to reach Millennial consumers, they may quickly realize that communications marketing is a waste of time. The real losers in this scenario, of course, will be media outlets.

• Channel and shelf placement may increasingly prove to be the only "manageable" aspects of brand strategy. Sure we all know shelf placement is critical, but to generations who begin emphasizing "whatever is closest" over "what I prefer" this issue is of paramount importance.

• Finally, the very practice of brand strategy may itself need to be reconsidered. If we continue our slow progression towards a society that consumes at ever greater levels but with a decreasing interest in our choices (and consequences), we may be heading toward a future in which the only relevant choice is the retail channel itself. Should this trend continue, we might expect retail brands to rapidly eclipse product brands.

Thinking the unthinkable...

This brief meditation on the evolving nature of choice between generational cohorts has one final implication that may well prove too provocative for most of us to wrap our collective heads around, let alone acknowledge.

For many of us with ties to the Boomer cohort, we struggle mightily to make sense of this most peculiar youthful desire to "not choose." Given that many of us have devoted much of our lives to filling this planet with choices that are allegedly "better" (more interesting, more authentic, higher quality, more healthful, more organic, more natural, more sustainable, etc.), we find it both fascinating and maddening that today's youth are decidedly less hip on all of this choice stuff. At times, these Millennials must seem like the strangest of creatures.

But what if — even just for a moment — we turn the analytic lens upon our own selves and entertain the premise that the desire to want to fill the world with "better" choices might itself be a peculiar artifact of our own particular cultural zeitgeist and not a general propensity of all people from all times?

Think about it.

And if that were the case — or even if it were partly the case — what might the implications be for those of us who've devoted considerable portions of our lives to manufacturing, distributing, marketing or retailing consumer goods with distinctions such as authentic, wellness, natural, organic, sustainability...

Put another way, we all knew Roger Daltry was on to something when he screamed those now infamous words, "I hope I die before I get old.." But the thing is, Roger is still singing, Pete is writing new songs, and The Who refuse to quit touring — despite the dwindling audiences.

In other words, what if we awoke from our dream to find out that even though we did change the world, that change was merely our own peculiar dream based more in the particulars of cultural historicity than any kind of universal consumer desire?