I spent yesterday at the EPM conference "Engaging the Multi-Screen Consumer" listening to marketers talk about how to reach consumers (and in many cases teen or youth consumers) on as many different screens as possible. I plan to hit one keynote (from Cartoon Network) today, but will be scooting soon after. The big themes were that "users" are now in control, there is a big power shift happening, so how can brands encourage, influence and engage these users/consumers/creators as much as possible.

I've never had any formal training in marketing and come from a journalism/content background, so I find these conferences pretty fascinating and a little bit scary in that there are all these very highly paid people trying to figure us all out or rather figure out how to get us to buy their stuff, watch their shows or have an emotional relationship with their brand. What's amazing is how fast the whole notion of "user generated content," which was a faint buzz word when I started my role as "ugc manager" (early title) at Current TV, has become part of the marketing vocabulary, case studies and strategy.

Here's my summary of the day. Unfortunately I missed the first part of the "High School Musical" session, but I nabbed a card and will try to do a Ypulse interview with the Disney team. Ypulse newsletter readers, visit the site for the full wrap up.

UGC is here to stay

Jupiter was here giving research oriented interstitials -- the slides were pretty dense, i.e. I couldn't see the stats, but here are a couple of highligts from their morning preso:

- Allegedly men are slightly more active than women on MySpace (she cited the entertainment factor, personally I think it's the potential hook up factor)
- Youth dominate the whole user generated space except when it comes to using RSS (not new)
- 39 percent of 18-24s read or watch some form of user generated content
- 31 percent of 18-24s are creating it (they include anything here from posting a comment to writing a blog)
- 27 percent of 18-24s uploading photos or video (it's becoming as "easy" to them as posting text)

Influence & Encourage: The Mentos Experiement

Next came two case studies - one was about the whole Mentos and Coke video phenomenon and the other was from Ypulse advertiser Samsung Fresh Films.

In a nutshell, the whole Mentos geyser thing started in Buckfield, ME, which if you're familiar with Maine at all, is truly the sticks. These two performance artists from Buckfield began experimenting with Mentos and soda, recorded the geyser effect and posted the videos online. Mentos found out, and because their brand is "quirky, tongue and cheek, offbeat and goofy - like Adam Sandler," they wanted to get in touch and support Eepybird in their efforts.

So while these guys were blowing up online, Mentos was making sure they were there -- outside of "Late Show" appearances with street teams and ultimately with a website where people could create their own geysers, upload videos and win stuff. As we all know, people got really into it both on their site and on Revver and later YouTube (there are 9,500 geyser videos online). There's now a sequal (Experiment #214) on YouTube, which allegedly has been viewed over 2 million times already. The Eepybird guys have also created a short video in collaboration with the Blue Man Group that opens their show on tour (it's not online yet).

The big message from the Mentos guy (Pete Healy, VP of Marketing at Perfetti Van Melle): "You can't control user generated content. You can just influence and encourage it." Basically if you put too many restrictions out there and are heavy handed in your approach, you will fail or face user backlash (or just get a much smaller number of videos). He saw what they were doing with Eepybird and on their site as "co-creation."

I was curious to know if any of the people making Mentos mashups or other stuff online who they had reached out to were not receptive to the company contacting them to "influence and encourage"....

Enablers of the Experience: Samsung, Stayfree and Fresh Films

Fresh Films operates in many ways like a youth media program -- adults are involved as mentors, teens apply to the program (6K applied for their last go around), nine teams are chosen in different cities and are given seven days to produce short films. Because of this high touch process, the "user generated content" they are creating tends to be on the high end in terms of quality (featured in and has won film fests, etc.).

Fresh Films offers its sponsors an "emotional connection" with teens in that the teens producing these films will really interact with the brand (more with the phones than the maxi pads). They don't force the teens to incorporate Samsung products into the films, but by using them and understanding that the brand is "enabling their expression and the experience," authentic integration happens naturally.

With Stayfree, it was all about helping the brand stand for "empowerment." Kind of like how Dove now stands for "real beauty" even though they make stuff like anti-wrinkle cream. They launched Girls in the Directors Chair (presented by Stayfree) online and on MySpace (an effort all about encouraging more girls and women to participate in the film production process and in the industry in general). They also ran a PSA contest. Stayfree was more hands on than Samsung in terms of wanting to approve the PSA creative brief, but the girls were allegedly ok with with that and even liked that their work would be reviewed by the team.

All in all - the strategy is to give brands a "halo" by letting them empower teens to create stuff. I actually think this model of corporate sponsorship could work for a lot of non-profit youth media if the brand is a fit.

Atoosisms or What I Learned From Working In Teen Magazines

Atoosa gave the keynote at lunch. I have emailed with the former Seventeen EIC a few times since I started Ypulse (she has been a loyal reader since the beginning), but never met her in person. She basically shared what she learned from all her years working in the fashion/beauty/boy trenches -- teen magazinedom. She did turn Seventeen around (see yesterday's MediaWeek story on their readership) and introduced diverse real girl models to its pages as well as real girl editorial (ugc in print). I honestly think her passion for reaching girls is genuine and will fuel everything she does next. Here's what she said:

She doesn't call teens "teens," but calls them "new adults" -- basically they don't want stuff that feels "teeny" but want to look, dress, act and feel like adults but with the "oh my gosh" factor intrinsic to being a teen.

Keep it simple: Teens are busy - multi-tasking, socializing, trying to get into college, etc. Make it simple for her and visual because teen girls don't read. She talked about how girls told her they could never figure out where to buy the clothes in the mag (even though that info was there in print) so they just drew a line with a box coming out of the item that featured an image of the storefront. They also use color for affect - if the story is should you dump him? and the answer is "yes!", the color of the layout is...green.

Make it human: She talked about her experience on MySpace and how her page sees much more activity than Seventeen's. Blogging, interacting, relating - making the "brand" human. This is Atoosa as brand ambassador - she also gave a shout out to Trent from Pink is the New Blog (girls love him or hate him but mostly love him) and to me [blush].

Make it useful: She talked about how girls could use the Teddy Geiger cover to get a meet and greet with him, how the Paris cover leads to discounts on her fragrance at Macy's and the upcoming Beyonce cover will be connected to free passes to the movie "Dreamgirls."

She also talked about how she used what Seventeen had to offer (the cover, editorial, relationship with Good Morning America) as currency in forging her partnerships with MTV ("Miss Seventeen"), MySpace (using the GMA relationship to air the winning PSA from their joint promotion/contest), and America's Next Top Model.

In terms of the future of print/magazines? "The conversation starts online." The print publication is "the greates hits."

We actually got to hang out after her talk, and I found her incredibly accessible and down to earth.

High School Musical: The Juggernaut

I came late to this party, but what I heard was the Disney folks talking about how High School Musical is now a franchise with multiple properties - music, retail, licensing, a float at Disney Land/World, etc. They are licensing the production to schools and community theater groups -- hundreds of local productions are in the works. Somehow the inclusion of basketball in the plot made it "cool" for tween boys to like.

One interesting thing they mentioned was skills mastery (basically tweens are in the developmental phase of wanting to learn and master specific skills) and how tweens learning the songs, dance steps, etc. to perform them for their friends and family was key to this taking off. To do this, you have to watch it again and again. There's also that self esteem message: Be yourself/follow your dreams that permeates all of Disney's tween productions as well as the fact that you can watch the movie over and over in different ways (on different screens - iPods, phones, DVD, TV, etc.).

There is a sequal in the works for the summer - same cast, same team. It's only just begun....

Superserving the Losties

The day ended with a session on "Lost," which is one of my favorite shows on TV. The presentation was an exhaustive rundown of all their marketing efforts (from promos to the Oceanic Air microsite, The Hanso Foundation ads/site, The Lost Experience - even the Apollo candy bar). What was most interesting was the discussion of the delicate balance/tension of "superserving their core audience" (the fandom) vs. attracting new viewers without scaring them off with all the core stuff.

"Lost" is a phenomenon to be sure, but I think the sci-fi element of the show and the types of people who really get into this stuff - think ComicCon (vs. the people who watch primarily for the drama/characters/relationships, etc.) is what made "Lost" so successful. They were scrambling to meet the needs of this super fan who wanted more Lost when it wasn't airing or was in repeats (and in doing so created huge buzz and media obsession). Working with the show's writers/producers, they dreamed up this whole other mutli-screen narrative that hardcore fans could get into. You see other shows dabbling in this (most notable "Heroes" with its online graphic novel and "Battlestar Gallactica" with its supplemental podcasts), but no one has gone as far or has been as successful as "Lost."

Posted by anastasia