We're following youth trends here on the Youth Trends Report.
Here are 10 marketing trends to get your head round:
1) Social Media
Or as the propellor heads would prefer it - web 2.0 and all that. Social Media is now officially mainstream - Obama spent half a million bucks on Facebook advertising.
The modern marketer needs to take on board the growing reality of an ongoing conversation. Previous generations put up with sporadic touchpoints in consumer lives - 15 hrs of TV a week punctuated with other unreachable activity. But, life has changed and consumers are increasingly available and interacting with Social Media.
One only has to look at the latest developments in advanced markets such as Korea to see what happens next. Consumers are increasingly moving away from bloated Social Media experiences to micro ones - check out this useful visualization.
2) Ethnographic Research.
Stop stuffing youth into a lab and asking them whether they'd pay $10 a month for your mobile application. This kind of research provides little or no insight whatsoever. Once they're out onto the streets, the real world takes over. Spending that $10 suddenly becomes an opportunity cost decision $10 on this app or $10 on that t-shirt?
Many of problems marketers face in understanding youth stem from their lack of direct contact with them in their natural environment.
Ethnographic research helps us understand the brand experience - because that cannot happen in a sterile research lab. This is what Godin would call the "Long Wow".
It costs no more than $200 to hire a camera and get out on the street and video youth in situ. Probably a fraction of what you're paying for your in-house focus groups. To see examples of this, check out the video over at mobileyouthnet (reg required).
David Murphy covers an example of self-fulfilling research here from Flirtomatic; Surveys that tell you exactly what you want to hear.
Mobile Youth has a post on using Ethnographic research. See also Ethnography (Wikipedia)
3) Market Beachheads
4) Crowdsourcing
Youth are not only a valid source of innovation, they are also highly entrepreneurial (check out this 16 year old millionaire)
5) Trust Dividend
“Communication is not a function of technique but a function of trust” - Stephen R Covey
Trust is earned never bought. It comes from years of doing rather than saying. Consider the Google brand as a trusted benchmark. However, trust is easily lost through complacency as detailed in the 6 ways youth brands abuse and lose trust.
Build trust is all about trustworthiness. Sometimes it comes down to the simplest things - making your customer feel special. Conversely, getting the basics wrong can hurt your customers, like remembering their names.
Other routes to trustworthiness include value resonance. Youth increasingly take notice of the underlying brand values - are they green enough? do they support fair trade? and so on. Japanese auto manufacturers such as Toyota are gaining popularity with global youth to the detriment of GM, not only through their work with Scion but also their proactivity in communicating brand values.
One of the core underscorings of trust is transparency, highlighted best by EA's use of Youtube to turn detractors into promoters. See this youth marketing post on how to communicate directly with youth through their own channels (eg using Youtube rather than mass media and press releases (in this example we look at EA and the recent Tiger Woods “Jesus Shot” fiasco - which is also very funny).
6) Net Promoter Score
Being remarkable means consumers will talk about you. See this post on how to be a remarkable youth brand (see Jones Soda) and a quick look at Red Bull Marketing
7) Customer Loyalty
8) Lifetime Value
See this presentation to Vodafone covering the 3 above metrics.
9) Meatball Sundae
From my observations, about 90% of Social Media or mobile marketing aimed at youth is no more than a Meatball Sundae - ie a sweet topping ontop a revolting dish. Making it social don't make it palatable.
10) Partnership Marketing
Marketing is no longer something you do to youth, it's something you do with them. That means getting away from the "sponsor a music festival" approach to becoming part of their universe and adding value. OK, that means a touch of uncommon sense in your approach and taking a few risks.
Here's a great example highlighted on how Red Bull does it from Vanksen Culture Buzz
Here are 10 marketing trends to get your head round:
1) Social Media
Or as the propellor heads would prefer it - web 2.0 and all that. Social Media is now officially mainstream - Obama spent half a million bucks on Facebook advertising.
The modern marketer needs to take on board the growing reality of an ongoing conversation. Previous generations put up with sporadic touchpoints in consumer lives - 15 hrs of TV a week punctuated with other unreachable activity. But, life has changed and consumers are increasingly available and interacting with Social Media.
One only has to look at the latest developments in advanced markets such as Korea to see what happens next. Consumers are increasingly moving away from bloated Social Media experiences to micro ones - check out this useful visualization.
2) Ethnographic Research.
Stop stuffing youth into a lab and asking them whether they'd pay $10 a month for your mobile application. This kind of research provides little or no insight whatsoever. Once they're out onto the streets, the real world takes over. Spending that $10 suddenly becomes an opportunity cost decision $10 on this app or $10 on that t-shirt?
Many of problems marketers face in understanding youth stem from their lack of direct contact with them in their natural environment.
Ethnographic research helps us understand the brand experience - because that cannot happen in a sterile research lab. This is what Godin would call the "Long Wow".
"The idea is to create a remarkable customer experience first, which earns you both loyalty and word of mouth. The number one factor in creating customer loyalty is the experience customers have with your business." (source)
It costs no more than $200 to hire a camera and get out on the street and video youth in situ. Probably a fraction of what you're paying for your in-house focus groups. To see examples of this, check out the video over at mobileyouthnet (reg required).
David Murphy covers an example of self-fulfilling research here from Flirtomatic; Surveys that tell you exactly what you want to hear.
Mobile Youth has a post on using Ethnographic research. See also Ethnography (Wikipedia)
3) Market Beachheads
4) Crowdsourcing
Youth are not only a valid source of innovation, they are also highly entrepreneurial (check out this 16 year old millionaire)
5) Trust Dividend
“Communication is not a function of technique but a function of trust” - Stephen R Covey
Trust is earned never bought. It comes from years of doing rather than saying. Consider the Google brand as a trusted benchmark. However, trust is easily lost through complacency as detailed in the 6 ways youth brands abuse and lose trust.
Build trust is all about trustworthiness. Sometimes it comes down to the simplest things - making your customer feel special. Conversely, getting the basics wrong can hurt your customers, like remembering their names.
Other routes to trustworthiness include value resonance. Youth increasingly take notice of the underlying brand values - are they green enough? do they support fair trade? and so on. Japanese auto manufacturers such as Toyota are gaining popularity with global youth to the detriment of GM, not only through their work with Scion but also their proactivity in communicating brand values.
One of the core underscorings of trust is transparency, highlighted best by EA's use of Youtube to turn detractors into promoters. See this youth marketing post on how to communicate directly with youth through their own channels (eg using Youtube rather than mass media and press releases (in this example we look at EA and the recent Tiger Woods “Jesus Shot” fiasco - which is also very funny).
6) Net Promoter Score
Being remarkable means consumers will talk about you. See this post on how to be a remarkable youth brand (see Jones Soda) and a quick look at Red Bull Marketing
7) Customer Loyalty
8) Lifetime Value
See this presentation to Vodafone covering the 3 above metrics.
9) Meatball Sundae
From my observations, about 90% of Social Media or mobile marketing aimed at youth is no more than a Meatball Sundae - ie a sweet topping ontop a revolting dish. Making it social don't make it palatable.
10) Partnership Marketing
Marketing is no longer something you do to youth, it's something you do with them. That means getting away from the "sponsor a music festival" approach to becoming part of their universe and adding value. OK, that means a touch of uncommon sense in your approach and taking a few risks.
Here's a great example highlighted on how Red Bull does it from Vanksen Culture Buzz
Just at the beginning of this year, after hanging with 10 surfers, the energy drink created the Red Bull surfing website in which Internet users can really feel like part of the surfing action. Its most recent initiative took place two weeks ago in Europe.See also this presentation on Red Bull marketing.Technorati Tags: youth marketing, mobile behavior, trends, marketing trends, mobile marketing, youth brands
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