- Fashionspace (social networking for fashionistas last year is evidently doing pretty well. And check out Coolspotters where you can find out how to dress like your favorite celeb. Plus Stardoll launches an app for girls to design their own virtual clothes) (Reuters) (Media Post, reg. required)
Today's Ypulse Guest Post is from Ryan Okum, president of StreetWise Concepts + Culture, a social media agency focused on the youth market. If you work in youth media or marketing and have an idea for a guest post, just email me.
The Golden Rules for Engaging Youth Online: Keeping your brand fresh and building connections to create a base of youth advocates
Today the biggest challenge in marketing to youth is the rapid pace with which trends emerge, creating a need for brands to stay fresh and relevant. This challenge is compounded by a youth market that is increasingly product-savvy and informed on the many choices available to them; which means that brands must establish authentic connections to best engage these young, intelligent consumers.
Having spent more than 10 years working closely with the youth market, I have gained crucial insight into what strategies are most successful in mobilizing young people and generating buzz for brands. The most important principle to follow when marketing to young people is to never pretend to be something you're not online, as youth are the first to see past quick sales attempts.
Here are four golden rules for keeping your brands fresh and building long-lasting connections with youth:
Get personal
Involve your customers in your campaigns and create a community of advocates - who better to learn from than your peers? It's a noisy, often impersonal world: On average consumers are hit with two marketing messages a minute. Nothing helps break through all of that like engaging your audience in a relevant way.
Experiment with unconventional platforms
An element of entertainment is key to engaging with youth, as they are constantly bombarded with information, communication and entertainment. You need to create an interactive environment with breakthrough creative that actually engages. Take Amazon's Mechanical Turk tool: It creates a dialogue and surrounding community by allowing people to post problems for others to solve in a compelling way. Imagine building audience loyalty with a similar tool that enables fans to provide feedback directly on a movie script or video game plot.
Integrate your online with off-line campaigns and go mobile
Create ongoing connections wherever and whenever young people are engaging. According to a recent OTX Research study, anywhere from a third to half of teens say mediums such as TV, magazines and advertising in general are still among their most important influences. Additionally, young people are exposed to images daily just by utilizing public transportation and traveling around their city or town. This understanding of the ebb and flow of humans on a given day was behind the Halo 3 viral campaign that included a group called "The Society for the Ancients" handing out seemingly innocuous flyers on city streets. But Halo-savvy passersby picked up on some visual clues and ended up a website that took the story deeper.
People don't exist in a vacuum or rely on a single medium. The power of an impression builds with the number of different ways your message is disseminated. Repetition, in a variety of media, can be your best friend.
Kids are increasingly communicating on mobile devices, whether it be through IM or Twitter. Smart campaigns leverage the communities and immediacy that those mediums offer.
Leverage new social networking tools
As the Web becomes modularized through the use of widgets and gadgets, there's an opportunity to use those technologies to spread a community virally in the social-networking world. A band's latest songs, for example, can be packaged in a widget and spread to many different audiences. A clip from a new movie, made portable through YouTube embed codes, moves quickly among the youth market and can become fodder for additional mash-up content.
Building a social-networking environment can be a very important technique, not only to build community but enable a new type of connection that leads to increased word of mouth (WOM), better products and services, and a more engaged customer base.
A comeback for "Square Pegs" (the '80s show will be released on DVD and remade into an upcoming movie - is there anything better than pre-SATC Sarah Jessica Parker?) (Washington Post, reg. required)
- OMFG ("Gossip Girl's" gay teen character is outed. I liked the scene with mom. Plus the show regains the top spot on iTunes) (Queerty) (Lost Remote)
Correction from Anastasia: In my jet lagged state, I posted in yesterday's Essentials that 7 Eleven was doing a Rockband promotion when it was actually a Guitar Hero promo with Slurpee. Thanks Chris!
Just got back from Istanbul last night. Jetlag would be an understatement. I traveled to Istanbul to speak at the first BEYOND Trend conference to share a perspective on wired U.S. teens. We stayed mostly around Istanbul for the week -- a city that in many ways reminded me of San Francisco with its hills and proximity to "the sea." We visited the Princes Islands, ate lots of kebab and dolmas and checked out most of the big tourist sites including the Grand Bazaar where I was talked into buying a small carpet, a couple of scarves and of course, Turkish Delight. I also met Ozgur Alaz (in the photo), a Turkish marketing blogger who has been reading Ypulse for three years. He shared how he has been building his own consultancy focused on youth in Istanbul. On Wednesday, I spent the entire day at their beautiful conference site right on the Bosphorus listening to a host of international speakers talk about trends. I only took sporadic notes on a couple of speakers but will attempt to summarize below.
One of the speakers was Edith Keller from Carlin International -- an international trend forecaster that has loads of clients and appears to specialize in design. Edith spoke in French so I relied on translation (my four years of French in middle and high school did not help). She spoke about what her company actually does to predict trends 3 to 5 years out. What I took away from this was that it's not just marketers but a team of creatives (with help from a historian, sociologist, and other experts) who basically predict what's next, package it in a beautiful book and sell this thinking to loads of brands. It makes you wonder if companies like Carlin, who have so many major brand clients, are actually predicting trends or creating them. She had beautiful Power Point though. Piers at PSFK launched a really interesting discussion a while back about trend forecasting with a post called "The Problem With The Trends (Business)" - worth a read.
The Turkish rep from Adidas spoke later that day. He focused on Adidas' core market (Gen X and Y) but also on how they are paying attention to the growing (global) aging population. Evidently most of Turkey's population is under the age of 25. He spoke about Gen X being defined through television as our medium of choice and Y being the Net. Apparently the desire for flexible office hours and more work/life balance is not limited to Gen Y in the U.S. He also talked about the lack of attention with so many channels and options specifically in sportswear where there are over 250K products introduced each year for whatever mood on whatever day -- "it's their choice to be in touch with you." He mentioned Adidas efforts to be socially conscious by supporting a local campaign to prevent drunk driving and creating a smaller more eco-friendly line (still hard to create sustainable products in apparel, i.e. costly). He talked about the move towards intelligent products (wearable technology) like a chip in shoes that adjusts the shoe according to the pavement) as well as miCoach, a new partnership with Samsung that involves tailoring music to your jogging rhythms. He also mentioned the need to create products you can personalize, i.e. miAdidas (like Nike i.d.). Oh and Adidas is also going to launch a big marketing partnership with Vespa in 2009. Cool.
I made friends with another U.S. speaker, Harley Cross, the founder of HintMint -- a very high end and packaged mint company that has done well with the Hollywood red carpet crowd and in high end hotels and galleries internationally. I love hearing other entrepreneurs' success stories.
My sense of what's different about Istanbul youth culture vs. in the U.S. is the role of family, community and tradition in their society (i.e. it plays an even larger role there than I believe it does here). While Istanbul is incredibly cosmopolitan and westernized, it is still a Muslim country (you are reminded of this when you see some teenage girls wearing colorful head scarves and hear the prayers from the Mosques echo across the city). I was curious to know how these traditional forces vs. the forces of more western individualism/consumerism are playing out within within families and between generations. My guess is that the former tempers the latter. If you were wondering about MySpace vs. Facebook, Özgür told me Turkey is more like Canada in that its tech savvy youth are on Facebook vs. MySpace (though MySpace is coming) and MSN Messenger vs. AIM or Yahoo!. I also sensed that there are lots of Turkish teens still logging on at internet cafes vs. a laptop at home, especially outside of the bigger cities. Either way, I think the portrait of wired U.S. teens I shared was not so different from that of teens in Istanbul. There was one Turkish teen in the audience, and when I asked if anyone had heard of Soulja Boy, he nodded his head immediately.
- The CW scores a ratings victory (with the return of "Gossip Girl," but was it big enough to stop the streaming?) (MediaLife Magazine Younger Viewers ratings roundup)
- Tweens driving 'Idol' eliminations (theorizes this grumpy HuffPo blogger. Plus Reality Blurred reports that Carly thinks it was her singing "Jesus Christ Superstar" that upset Christians and sealed her fate)
- CNET on the MacArthur Forum (more coverage of Wednesday's event from Ypulse 2008 Mashup moderator Stefanie Olsen)
P.S. I want to apologize to newsletter readers for the grammatical errors in my post about teens and writing yesterday -- it's no excuse but rushing and not having an editor to backread my posts means sometimes they turn out that way. Funny that I sounded incoherent while writing about writing though. Also, you can find the report online here. I will be running an interview with the report's author Amanda Lenhart next week. Here's another take from Inside Higher Ed.
- In spite of recession fears (teens still positive about spending according to the NPD Group [until they ask their parents for cash]. Plus it's time for another youth media blog-a-thon -- the issue is "money." If you're between the ages of 14-26, get blogging!)
- Japan grapples with cyberbullying ("Japan has over 38,000 unofficial middle and high school Web sites that are not overseen by the schools" where bullying is happening....so these are sites about the schools created by students? Wild.)
The other night (4/20), I happened to catch the local news story on 420 Day at the University of Santa Cruz. It kinda blew my mind (coverage in the Mercury News here). We live in a country that spends billions fighting "the war on drugs," which includes pot, yet I was watching a televised gathering of over 5,000 students (college and definitely some local high school students) smoke up and be interviewed on camera about the joys of getting high - you can see photos here. If you wanted proof this generation isn't too concerned about images coming back to haunt them, this event and the youth I watched being interviewed, pretty much embody this notion.
I definitely don't think police should be spending time and energy rounding up 5,000 college students and charging them with misdemeanor possession (just as I don't think we should be filling our jails with people who are busted for using drugs vs. selling large quantities). Still, what did strike me was the complete hypocrisy of our laws, inconsistency in enforcement (I have a feeling inner city youth of color get busted for pot a lot more than college students) and what message this sends to youth. If over 5K people can gather on a college campus and smoke copious amounts of pot without penalty, then we might as well just legalize it already, work on prevention of drug addiction and be done.
The CW pulls 'Gossip Girl' from the web (OMFG. This seems like a bad move to me. It's never good to give people something for free online and then take it away. Teens know how to watch TV using Torrents, too, ya know) (L.A. Times, reg. required)
- Bebo announces its 'Gap Year' winners (including one from Chicago who will join the globe trotting twentysomethings for this online reality series)
- 'Beyond the Rave,' ctd. (danah boyd commented yesterday that the series is vampire/horror and asked, "if you find out why the age marking, I'd love to know." I asked MySpace and got this response: "MySpace has strict policies in place to ensure that younger users cannot view mature material on the site. Due to content that is designed for mature audiences in MySpaceTV's new Beyond the Rave series, MySpace has implemented specific safety precautions so that the delivery of the content is limited to mature audiences." My cynical side, says it's really to make it even MORE appealing.)
- Rock The Vote & Wiretap (looking for youth reporters to cover the election...Plus the United Nations Foundation and Better World Foundation running a video contest asking youth to advise the new president on what he OR she should do on their first day at work. And download this compilation of Latino artists from iTunes for $3.99 to benefit Vote Latino)
- Eating disorders (can be contagious. According to this study...) (Reuters)
- Alicia Keys (in WeeWorld! Plus loads of brands lining up for WeeWorld's Prom -- you know your WeeMe needs whiter teeth, right?)
- Playboy snowboards (I wonder what female boarders will think of these...) (Jossip)
- Want you to want me (not the Cheap Trick song, but a very cool data visualization of what people are saying on online dating sites. Plus SubwayCrush - "missed connections" on the NYC subway system) (danah boyd) (SubwayCrush via Fimoculous)
P.S. Happy Passover to all of you in "the tribe" and anyone else who likes this holiday!
Today's Ypulse Guest Post is from Alexandra Suhner. Alexandra is a London-based trend forecaster, marketing consultant and creative director. She also happens to be Canadian and a graduate of St. Martins College of Art & Design in London. If you have an idea for a Ypulse Guest Post (and work in youth media or marketing), send me an email!
Meet The Slash/Slash Generation
The Future Laboratory announced their newest consumer profile last week at the semi-annual Trend Briefing presentation in London. This year it is all about the Slash/Slash Generation. At first it sounded like an odd evolution of the nu-raver, which scared me, but in fact, the Slash/Slash Generation is the group of internet-savvy youths using their image and social-networking reach to get involved in countless projects and who specialize in basically a little bit of everything.
This is about the youth who aren't dedicated to one career path, instead, they are Jacks of many trades. For example, someone who ten years ago may have simply considered themselves a musician would know call themselves a musician/DJ/promoter/graphic designer/fashion designer/retailer/film maker (see now where the Slash/Slash comes from?) because they not only play in a band but also create their own videos and website, sell their own merchandise online, and promote their own club nights.
A strong image, good business savvy, excellent networking skills, a good handle of the digital tools, and never-ending motivation all play a strong role in the micro-empires they build around themselves, and they rebel against traditional business structures and don't depend on mainstream promotion to gain fame.
"Coming of (work) age in the post-digital era, they are the result of the democratization of the creative industries where anyone, with the right application and drive, can make it." -The Future Laboratory, Trend Briefing Dossier, Spring & Summer 2008
Fourteen percent of 18-24-year-old Slash/Slash youths have already made money through social networking (The Future Laboratory, Trend Briefing Dossier, Spring & Summer 2008), and these youths favor products endorsed by their peers rather than being swayed by traditional marketing and advertising. Celebrity culture is not favored by this group, instead, they are their own celebrities. Rather than struggle to enter a competitive field, the Slash/Slash Generation would prefer to make their own video/music/clothes in their bedroom and pilot to their 15,000 Myspace friends. This group don't separate work and life, but they believe in hard work and are financially ambitious. Turn over is quick for them, fashion is fast, and a sense of community is vital. These business-minded youths are simply taking a slightly different route to becoming millionaires.
One of the speakers at the conference, representing the Slash/Slash Genertation was Gabe Shalom (featured in the photo), a video artist/director/editor/sound designer/web and graphic designer/magazine editor/blogger/lecturer/electronic musician/laptop DJ/beatboxer born in the US but based in Germany. He commented that when the generation who grew up with the internet come of age, there will be serious changes in how digital media and the World Wide Web are being used. This won't be for at least another 10 years, he said, but considering how much we use the internet now, imagine how it will change when the world is being run with people who have been using it their whole lives. A scary thought for those of us who are still coming to terms with podcasts.
Apparently some in "Gen Y" or whatever media and marketers are calling this generation want a new name. The folks at the Splinter Generation emailed to let me know they're trying out "The Splinter Generation" as a new name and are looking submissions from folks ages 15-2535 to help define their own generation themselves. Why the Splinter Generation? From their site:
1. Our generation is split into a million different cultures and subcultures, whether they are religious, musical, literary, racial, class-based or consumer-based. Our identities have become selective and insular. We have each found the little niche we think we fit in and we stay there. As a result, we stay in our little group -- or our little splinter -- and we rarely talk to each other.
2. Splinter generation is a weapon-making term referring to the creation of fragments, or splinters, that form in an explosive reaction. Our generation has seen a lot of explosions.
Definitely sounds like a reaction to being "lumped together," a necessary evil when it comes to media and marketing. Still, looks like a cool project.
'Deathbowl to Downtown' (cool looking doc about the New York City skateboarding scene from the 70s 'till now - thanks Bill!)
