Spring Youth Trends

If your market is the elusive teen demographic you are going to want to take a gander at the following observations. Find out what's up with teens this spring with insights such as "Facebook Fatigue" and "The Rise Of The Moderates". What!! Did you expect Facebook to be hot forever?

The fitness landscape that determines success in marketing to young consumers is changing. 10 years ago, the TV provided the de facto advertising channel to win the hearts and minds of this often difficult to reach demographic. Since 2007 alone, the rise of social networking, flat rate data plans both on mobile and internet as well as a widespread growth in niche media content means that marketers are now increasingly challenged when it comes to both communicating with and understanding youth.

But fear not, because we bring you insight from two of the youth marketing industry’s key commentators to shed some light on what’s hot in 2008 when it comes to trends in youth marketing.

Graham Brown author of mobileYouth and Luke Mitchell from Reach Students bring you the 7 key youth marketing trends to look out for in 2008.

#1 “Free” is a viable business model

Given the increasingly challenging task of reaching out to young consumers, more brands consider the “free” route (eg ad supported or cross-selling) as a viable alternative to paid downloads.

Recent download data from NIN and Radiohead’s respective attempts at “pay what you like” charging models demonstrates that allowing the consumer to decide what value should be placed on the relationship and content can be both profitable and a shrewd PR move.

But it’s not just music artists trying to crack the “free” nut but delving deeper we find well established brands from RyanAir to Google to Skype making money out of young consumers by giving away goods and services others would traditionally have paid for.

Blyk’s attempt to crack the mobile industry nut claims that rather than bring to the telecoms table yet another fledgling MVNO, the startup says the operator’s position is a response to a market need - on the one hand young consumers are keen to have subsidized phone bills and the other we have a line of brands queueing up to build a dialogue with young consumers.

Youth indifference may well prove to be a brand’s most significant cost factor so offering a service for free with the promise of cross-selling related services may well provide the first tentative steps in addressing that challenge.

#2 Transparency

When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, legal eagles compete with internal marcomms departments to issue the highest volume of memos all in the name of Brand IP and protecting corporate interest.

Some of the more innovative brands, however, are going long on being transparent about their values and mistakes when communicating with youth. Household names such as Jet Blue, GAP, Starbucks are learning the hard way that covering up no longer works and consumers, especially the younger ones, warm to companies that admit their human fallacies.

Consumers are tired of being both whitewashed and stonewalled. In an era when youth expect access and brands are willing to provide it, the company CEO that appears on YouTube confessing they’d “screwed up” may lose a few investor friends, but wins the long term hearts and minds of the consumer.

After all, he is like us - human. And people buy people, not brands.

#3 Facebook fatigue

It’s now all about 30 somethings in the world of Facebook. Youth are already exploring new avenues more relevant to their lifestyle - such as Bebo. Do we yet have a student specific SNS?

MySpace’s partnership with MTV to platform young musical talent from the social network is a PR victory in the face of a Facebook population disillusioned with their parents and corporates hijacking the party.

Back in the 80s, youth witnessed their parents squeezing into a pair of Levi’s 501s. No longer was the “original jean” cool because it failed to evolve its consumer relevance in as much as SNS sites seek the latest widget to keep themselves alive.

MySpace continues to thrive despite the naysayers, Facebook however is not the youth player it once was.

#4 The rise of the moderates

You know that student activism is finally dead when even NUS suggests a radical reform of its own organisation. It wants to move away from discussing minority issues and global affairs, and instead reflect the everyday interests of its members.

Individually, most students have a moderate and parochial political outlook these days, more concerned with the price of their Bacardi & Coke than any ethical questions that may come served with it. But now this swell of moderate opinion has become a determined movement.

Look out for a new generation of young leaders, keen to show the world how pragmatic they can be.

#5 “Inner circle” brands

Once young consumers were thought to be naïve and persuadable. Then they were savvy, fickle and cynical to brand messages. What followed was a stalemate where wise brands and young consumers knew each others’ hands and knew it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. Then things got complex.

The brands that are winning now have been allowed into a collective inner circle, one where they carefully manage very sophisticated and very considered relationships. Recent research by Opinionpanel discovered a maximum of twenty brands that students were willing to be Facebook friends with. They included Sony, H&M, Apple and Innocent.

But there is also space in the inner circle for maverick brands who don’t give a damn for high-level marketing approaches. In convenience foods this year, watch as sales of plain, honest and simple Pukka Pies rise, while youth ‘try hards’ like Pot Noodle fall.

#6 It’s cool to be a suit

In the eyes of the young, businesspeople were once the least cool people in the world. Now it’s okay to want to be a suit.

Thanks to Dragon’s Den, The Apprentice, a second wave of internet entrepreneurs (spiritually led by youth icon Mark Zuckerberg), media dramatisation of financial news and ever-increasing opportunities to make money from your bedroom computer, business is somehow sexy.

Witness the clamour of smart twenty-somethings trying to get in to London’s must-see gig of last term. Not “Hot Chip” at the Electric Ballroom, but investment bankers BNP Paribas at the LSE.

#7 Youth turn off the box

The current generation of young consumers are perhaps the first that have had real choice in their media consumption. TV, although remaining a significant channel of influence in their lives, is increasingly being squeezed out by other distractions. Facebook, MySpace, WII, homework, after-scool activities, commuting and just good old “hanging out with friends” compete with TV for youth attention.

And it’s not just the decreasing time spent watching TV, it’s the quality of that time. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 25% of high school students were actively involved in another form of media (playstation, computer etc) whilst “watching” TV. Add to that the increasing fragmentation of media channels (MTV1, MTV2, MTVBase, MTVU etc) you find a situation where advertisers can no longer identify clear front-runners for their marketing spend.

Source - MobileYouth

Teen Crash Course

A "not to be missed" crash course on what teens want from an online and mobile experience. Based on a panel conducted at SXSW this is an excellent up-to-date look into the teen demographic. IM is dead and all the boys are gamers. Lots more insight here.

This was a panel hosted by Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse about what teens are looking for when they go online and use their mobile phones. The panel consisted of real, human teenagers (and tweens).

Interesting insights from the panel (and remember, it’s a small focus group we’re dealing with here)…

* goodreads.com is one of their favorite sites (thank goodness teens are still reading books).

* MySpace & Facebook are still hot. They communicate with siblings — NOT parents. MySpace has some catching up to do with ‘open apps’. Hi-5 came up as well. They help meet them meet people from their school that they may not already know. One of the girls on the panel was 12, but she said she was 16 on MySpace. One of the guys was 99 years old. More of them have MySpace accounts than Facebook accounts.

* Digg keeps them updated. Interestingly enough, they consider it a NEWS site to help keep them up with news of the day. That makes me nervous, personally.

* Sites like Purevolume and Mixtape websites helped them discover new and old music. Music is a huge part of their lives.

* EvERY guy on the panel is a gamer.

* Seventeen.com isn’t deep enough for one of the girls on the panel.

* Runescape, a MMORPG, was also discussed.

* They hate the experience interrupting ads. Especially pop-ups/unders and pre-roll and mid-roll. One of them goes to NBA.com to watch videos, but all he sees are Miller Beer ads (that’s not good).

* But they do accept that advertisements are necessary. They just don’t want it slowing down their computers, interrupting their experience, or slowing down the load of the page.

* They are starting to trim their MySpace friend lists. They are also concerned about MySpace’s new changes — or any changes. They think that MySpace thinks they are more important to their lives than it really is.

* They use email to register for sites and for school assignments. But barely ever for social communication.

* One of the girls eloquently stated that it necessary for teens to understand how to ‘type’ — not just use LOL, TTYL, or any other txt-speak.

* They barely ever use IM anymore. This was almost universally agreed upon.

* Texting on mobile phones is very important. Many have unlimited texting plans. They don’t have internet plans — way too expensive. They do play casual games on the phones. If they have a camera phone, they use it a lot.

* None of them watch videos on their phones.

* They couldn’t live without their phones.

* They don’t really like virtual worlds — high schoolers say they don’t have time for it. One used to use Zwinky (man, this site is getting trashed by the girls on this panel), but don’t like it anymore — she didn’t like when people asked for personal information. They guys are turned off a bit by the pay-to-play MMORPGs. One girl mentioned they play around with their Yahoo! Avatar. One of the girls was speaking about the time she used to spend on TheN.com (the cable network) in message boards and chat rooms around their shows, like DeGrassi.

* Only one member of the panel made a video that was entered into an advertiser-supported contest. But many do not have the hardware. But they do like the concept. They like having a voice. They like brands ‘respecting’ their opinions.

* Humor or alternate (not-dry) angles really grab their attention.

* NO ONE goes to the regular news sites (CNN.com, NY Times.com, etc.)

* Social causes are really important to these kids. Especially ones that they can take actions to help with. Easy and fun things to do to help are best. Online efforts really do get them to pay attention. One example used was FreeRice.com.

* They do watch online video. Even from other cultures. Especially Japanese (i.e. crunchyroll.com). Veoh was brought up quite often. Yes. More often than YouTube, even.

* When they like a show on TV, they interact with all of its online elements. They miss their shows a lot, and catch them online when they can. They all love CSI. That’s a surprise.

* They want ads on their sites to be contextually relevant.

* Ad agency reps are getting up here and asking these kids if they visit brand microsites or click on ads. Shouldn’t they know this before they go out and spend their clients’ money trying to reach them?

* They love flash games like the ones found at AddictingGames.com and NewGrounds and AlbinoBlackSheep.

* There are teens in the audience asking questions about the teens’ behavior on the panel (like, ‘How do you make social plans more often? Online or in person/phone?’). It’s so ‘meta’. BTW, the answer is that they probably will use the phone. It’s more time sensitive. And a better way to maintain a friendship. By the way, that dynamic is what I love about this conference. It’s not just agency folks and marketers and publishers. It’s real people interested in this stuff.

SOURCE - Ian Schafer

Hipster Media 2.0

Hoping to secure a foothold with trend savvy hipsters, in what's described as "60 Minutes meets Jackass", Viacom has partnered with Vice magazine to produce VBS.TV. Think smart investigating journalism presented in an irreverent format. Is the the future of youth oriented media?

Vice magazine has built a small media empire out of a raw, ironic sensibility, risqué photographs and a willingness to deal in taboo subjects.

On VBS.tv, the video Web site the company runs, viewers can find short videos about independent music, extreme sports and, of course, some nudity. But there are also a surprising number of ambitious news reports, like an interview with Hezbollah’s self-proclaimed “mayor of Beirut,” investigations of environmental abuse, and a story about a Colombian date-rape drug.

What’s even more surprising is the company that finances most of these projects: Viacom.

Late last year, the Viacom-owned MTV Networks Music and Logo Group made a deal to start VBS, with financing from MTV and content from Vice, which also sells ads.

“They gave me a pitch of ’60 Minutes’-meets-‘Jackass,’” said Jeff Yapp, the executive vice president for program enterprises for the MTV Networks music group.

In return for its investment — which is not mentioned on the VBS site — MTV gets a low-cost laboratory in which to experiment with Internet video programming as it struggles to adjust to a world where online content is chipping away at television’s dominance.

MTV virtually owned youth culture on television a decade ago but has not translated that success online. Viacom missed its chance to buy MySpace, a failure that many believe cost Tom Freston, the company’s former chief executive, his job.

“MTV’s online distribution strategy has been one of confusion,” said Michael Wolf, a research director at ABI Research. “I think they could use a content partner if it helps them bring in a fresh perspective.”

Major media companies like Viacom have been looking to smaller firms like Vice to lead them through the digital wilderness. But this deal will also give MTV Networks a source of new television programming, since it has the rights to show VBS content on any of its channels worldwide. MTV Latin America has already shown four half-hour programs assembled from VBS content, and the first United States VBS special will appear Saturday on MTV2. More could follow.

“We were at this place in time when all the great creative energy was around music videos,” said Van Toffler, president of the MTV Networks music group. “Now you see all that energy happening again.”

VBS is set up as a separate venture, although neither Vice nor MTV Networks would discuss the exact terms of the deal. The two companies also work together on several other projects.

Vice did some work on the marketing of the MTV Networks video game Rock Band and consulted on a virtual world project the company is working on. Vice also has a publishing deal with MTV Books, under which it has released two titles; a third, “The Vice Photo Book,” which collects images from the magazine’s history, is due out Dec. 1.

Vice was started in Montreal in 1994 by Shane Smith, Suroosh Alvi and Gavin McInnes when all three were on welfare, they have said. During the late ’90s, the company was bought by Richard Szalwinski, a Canadian software millionaire who made big plans for expansion and moved the operation to New York.

The magazine quickly became known for politically incorrect, sometimes racially charged, humor and photographs from Terry Richardson and Ryan McGinley. The company opened several retail stores that sold the kind of street fashion the magazine advertised.

As the dot-com boom ended, however, “everything fell by the wayside,” Mr. Smith said. In 2000, the three founders bought the company back, closed the stores and focused on the media business. The company now controls 13 foreign editions of the magazine, published with partners around the world, and runs an independent record label.

As Vice added international editions, the perspective of the founders began to change.

“The world is much bigger than the Lower East Side and the East Village,” Mr. Alvi said. So the magazine started to cover more serious issues, usually in its own inimitable style. One recent issue about Iraq, written mostly by people there, portrayed daily life in that country; in true Vice fashion it included an interview with an Iraqi prostitute in Syria.

The deal with MTV gives Vice the resources to apply its D.I.Y. approach in a new medium, and it has enlisted Spike Jonze, the film director, as VBS creative director. “I don’t care if it’s for Internet or TV or film or mobile phones, I want to create the best content,” Mr. Smith said.

Although VBS shoots in standard-definition video, so its footage can be used on television, its programming owes little to the medium’s conventions. It sends out correspondents in teams of three — a producer, a cameraman and a host who expresses his opinion freely. There are no lights or makeup.

“Our aesthetic is raw,” said Bernardo Loyola, an editor at VBS. “If it’s raggedy, if they’re hung over, it’s part of the shoot.”

At least one VBS series has already worked out better than MTV Networks might have hoped. Mr. Loyola and Monica Hampton, whom VBS hired from the film industry, edited footage Mr. Alvi and his friends shot in Iraq into “Heavy Metal in Baghdad,” a documentary about an Iraqi hard rock band that loses its practice space to an explosion and goes to Syria as refugees. In September, the movie received positive reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Mr. Alvi said that a distribution deal would be announced shortly.

“We made a feature-length documentary by accident,” said Mr. Alvi, who appeared in the film. “These are the people who are getting affected by this war.”

VBS is also beginning to build an audience online. In August, the site had 184,000 unique viewers from the United States, according to the Internet traffic monitor ComScore; the company says the actual number is much higher.

That’s a smaller audience than some other online video sites; collegehumor.com had 1.3 million viewers in the same month. But MTV has yet to put its promotional muscle behind VBS. Although such numbers are small compared with television, the site’s perspective seems to intrigue advertisers, and it already has attracted record companies and fashion labels.

“This is a singular vision. It’s not cats playing with yarn,” said Todd Krieger, a senior vice president at Denuo, a division of the advertising giant Publicis Group. “What MTV is getting out of it is a relationship with people who have a following, and they have a certain style.”

That style may have mellowed with age. Mr. McInnes, who had become known for making racially charged remarks, perhaps as pranks, fell out of day-to-day involvement with the company. He still writes the withering fashion dos-and-don’ts section that has become a key part of the magazine.

Vice is still owned by the founders and several employees, and Mr. Smith said that it was profitable, although he acknowledged exaggerating the company’s success in the past. “After we bought the company I’d bang the drum and say how great we were doing,” he said. “But we’ve always had to make money. It’s not like we could go to the bank and get money — they’d look at us and run away.”

Images from VBS.tv.

Enlarge This Image

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Dana Lavoie editing video for the VBS.tv program “Hi Shredability.”

Shane Smith riding a camel for the VBS.tv series “Inside Sudan.”

Source - New York Times

I Am Seventeen Here Me Roar

An interesting snapshot inside a seventeen year old's mind. Both candid and oxymoronic, Oliver discusses what he and his peers expect from marketers. Straight from the horse-mouth, this is an excellent source for comparing youth targeted messaging to a consumer's demands. So would Oliver like your youth brand?

My Mindset

I’m the kind of person that likes brands to be one step ahead of me and have the things I need before I need them.

I like to have the freedom to use them as and when I please and not be pestered when I’m not using it. (If they’re good they will be used again)

I like them at my fingertips but not in my way.

What I’m doing has to look good, be easy to accomplish but not simple. Involves skill but not time consuming.

My dress sense is like my uniform, I need to look good but not smart, has to match but not be the same.

I like to follow the trends but be different, look like everyone else but stand out. Be the same but unique.

Same as everyone else’s but better. The same, but exclusive…

Hate expensive but it can’t be cheap.

I like them to be real. I see through the sugar coating, if you have something that can be useful to me then sell it.

When someone’s trying to sell something to me, I want them to be straight up, but I don’t want them to say, I’ve got this, do you want it?’, I want it to be relevant.

Like a mate, I want them there when I need them, in the background, when I need them, I need them to let me know what they’re there for and leave it at that.

I’ve got friends who I want to be around everyday, who I can rely on, I’ve got friends I call up just for a good time that I know wouldn’t be there if I needed them, but I don’t mind that. I want the same from brands. Like my phone, they’ve got to be reliable, around all the time, and there when you need them, if I’m going to go and buy a pair of kicks, I want the ones that look the best that no one else has.

We’re not as easily influenced as you think, we’re tired of video games and films being used as excuse to justify the behaviour of a few. My friends are talented, cool people. I see the talents in them. Don’t insult their intelligence. Don’t insult mine.

Source - Ruby Pseudo Wants a Word