We had an amazing event in Santa Monica last week -- the room was packed, the schedule was packed and people were making connections left and right. I left the heavy lifting of recapping the essence of what we learned to our volunteer blogger Andrea Zak. Before I post her highlights, here are a few of my own.

- Realizing that mtvU is way cooler than the flagship station. Why can't they smarten up what they're doing for teens?

- Learning that Rafat Ali, founder of Content Next, is also a hard core Friday Night Lights Fan. Also learning that while we were having our opening reception, there was a FNL event happening at the same time (L.A. Times, reg. required). If only I could have been in two places at once...

- Awkward moment: The New School panel talking about the decline of MySpace with MySpace IMPACT's Lee Brenner just smiling politely in the audience, and then later reminding us that they're still number one!

- I didn't realize that January 31st was the anniversary of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Boston bomb scare. CN's Dennis Adamovich gracefully responded to a question on this (there's the need for disruptive marketing to reach this audience...and then there's just disruptive - my words, not his). Later, Ricky van Veen shows a really funny spoof of the whole incident.

- The college student on our panel who proudly claimed Live Journal as her favorite website (she's a blogger) when every one else said Yahoo! or Google (fyi: They were all into customizing these pages).

- Jean Twenge makes people defensive. I think there's truth to a lot of what she says, but people get very defensive when she makes her case. I don't think any generation is all good or all bad, it's all very nuanced. Since most of the rest of the event skewed very positive, I thought, it was helpful to have her perspective.

And now the real recap from Andrea...

The Ypulse College Mashup addressed the lifestyle and marketing needs of the 18.2 million college students that fall within Generation Y. SurveyU Co-Founder Dan Coates presented some statistics, which emphasized the need to understand the best ways of targeting this group. Generation Y (aka Digital Millennials) is the first American generation to top 100 million members (Comparison point: there are 76 million Baby Boomers). With half of all high school graduates enrolling in college, roughly 40% of 18-24 year olds are students now. In addition to the $333 trillion spent on higher education each year, college students are shelling out $71.4 billion in discretionary spending. Coates pointed out that though we're on the "brink of a recession, colleges are a growing market." If you weren't there too, here are some insights to consider when trying to tap into this market.

College students are unique.

College students and non-college students in the 18-24 year old demographic respond differently to marketing. mtvU General Manager Stephen Friedman noted that college students say that the most memorable brands target college students and "know what students want." That said, "60% have a hard time naming brands to do a great job connecting with them as college students. Students are also more apt to focus on product features and quality, whereas non-students place greater emphasis on celebrity endorsements and product aesthetics. Additionally, non-students tend to be impulse buyers while college students research products and brands before purchase.

Senior VP of Marketing Dennis Adamovich shared a key lesson learned after launching [adult swim] on 30 college campuses: Marketing to this "elusive" audience is "not one size fits all. Every campus is different."

Newsletter readers: Visit Ypulse for the rest of this post...

Content: how and when college students, not you, want it.

Master multitaskers who are cramming in up to 34 hours of activity in each 24 hour day (according to an mtvU study), college students want ubiquitous access where and when they want it. Warner Bros College Radio Programs Manager Graham MacRae commented, "records are leaked before they're released; illegal downloads are the first way to hear it... People are accustomed to hearing things before they purchase." Gaylene Nagel (Electronic Arts) pointed out college students are watching shows 20 minutes late in order to skip the commercials, demonstrating the need for advertising to be integrated into the programming.

Content also needs to be distributed across multiple platforms (film, tv, internet, iPod/mp3 player), which can ultimately benefit content producers. National Lampoon's Zach Posner shared that "third party outlets...have opened up our content to millions of users." Even the traditional college fair is seeing an interactive re-birth. Last year CollegeWeekLive hosted 6000 unique visitors at its virtual college fair, offering video content, messenger conversations with school reps, and discussions with current students by webcam.

"Localize your efforts; it's going to be a lot more powerful." (Matt Britton, Mr. Youth)

Successful marketers to college students reach out to students on campus. Mr. Youth assisted Microsoft in its campaign to increase downloads of their Windows Live Messenger application and raise awareness and buzz around the IM (instant messaging) initiative. Mr. Youth service Rep Nation hired a team of 80 campus ambassadors across 40 campuses in key markets, which meant marketing initiatives could take place every day, not just when a tour bus was passing through. With budgets of $500-$1000 per semester, ambassadors got creative by recruiting professors to hold weekly Q&A over Windows Live Messenger, dorm storming, sponsoring local events and networking online. The campaign yielded 50,000 downloads, 32 college paper stories, 150 local campus event sponsorships, and a 60% landing page conversion. Britton credits the program's success to marketing that is "grassroots, [drives] a measurable ROI, on brand, in partnership with causes, [and] not loud or invasive."

Posted by anastasia