Advertising concept for an election panel
Yle Turku

Yle held an election panel with the aim of increasing youth voter turnout. Our task was to figure out how to get young people to watch the panel.

Millenials and gen-z's have a completely different experience of decision-making compared to previous generations.
For a millenial, it can be difficult to choose which bread to buy at the grocery store, which table to sit at in a café, or what to watch on Netflix. In the eyes of older generations, young people may appear indecisive, lazy, or easily discouraged.

However, this phenomenon is genuine: a large number of choices can be paralyzing. Previous generations lived in a time when there were ten VHS tapes on the shelf to choose from. Now there are ten streaming services to choose from. Other generations are more accustomed to making decisions as they haven't developed the same threshold. When you have always lived in a world of endless choices, you become hesitant to make decisions. You start to avoid them.

In the worst case, this affects democracy. Young people don't want to add any more choices on their to-do lists. They don't want to choose who to vote for.

We can't help them by telling them who to vote, but we can offer them the election panel as a solution to their decision-making dilemma.