Part two in the youth marketing trends for 2009 series by Graham Brown. 50 Youth marketing trends 1-25 part one is here – 3000 views on Slideshare in 5 days, so must be doing something right!
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Create Culture or Go Home Context: 10 Brands that Lead The Social Media Campfire What is Social Currency? Paid vs Earned Media
Youth Buyology What they don't teach you at Business School Customers Are The Brand Customers Are The Brand The C2C Era Growing Grass Roots Movements The day we met Threadless The Attention Economy Now I Can Drink Me Meatball Sundae: What is it? Brand trust and advocacy survey
[...] 50 Youth Marketing Trends in 2009 (part two from MobileYouth’s Graham Brown) [...]
RT @grahamdbrown: mobileyouth – 50 Youth Marketing Trends for 2009 : Part two in the youth marketing .. http://tinyurl.com/84b65u
Hi some decent points in the presentation, just like to air some views about it.
I am part of a U.K youth company who actually has many of these repeat eyeballs and new eyeballs from young people on our companies services on a daily basis and have been through many trials and tribulations (with substantial financial risks) on what works with young people and what does not, charging models etc.
I think that it is great to have blogs, articles on marketing etc. You can have all the buzzwords, theory, say its ‘about an ongoing 2 way conversation between brand and consumer’etc.
However practically applying all of this to simply put it make money, in the real business world is a different matter. Just a quick and key point in relation to this presentaion-many people hypothesised, predicted, buzzed about that the pound/sterling would have to withdraw from the ERM in 1992, the difference being George Soros put a $10 billion bet on it (and made $1billion in 24 hours). Therefore he is the man to listen to on say financial matters as he has actually done it for real not in theory.
With regards to the presentation, Slide 17 ‘About Charging Models are not so important’ is totally off the mark. It is ok to say that as a marketing consultant but in the real business world does not hold true.
Obviously obtaining eyeballs for your service etc. is key but to say that if you obtain that then you will figure the rest out (in the real business world) is really shortsighted. This popular model suggests build the service for free, get the eye balls and then worry about chargin/revenue later.
Most companies often think that advertising based on their eyeballs they have built up will save the day. However in this economic climate relying on advertising (from cash strapped and weary advertisers) is a weak model, especially if you have a substantial number of eyeballs but not massive amounts to attract the big boy advertisers.
Also, if your service is say funded by a business angel, VC etc. and you are eating into those funds to obtain eyeballs, those funds will intially run out so in the real world where cashflow can kill your company charging models are vitally important. Google has employed a ‘head of monetisation’ at You Tube to convert all these so called eye balls into a substantial revenue stream, there is a similar situation at FaceBook where converting eyeballs into revenue is a big problem (hence poor attempts with ideas such as Beacon). However these companies have huge backing (Google-YouTube and FB-Microsoft and many others)and funding reserves to keep going to keep trying new ideas to charge, generate revenue etc.
However for most businesses if you don’t find a viable business model and do not make a priority of a charging model then you will be finished.
For example as a director of a company and not a marketing consulant would you say have 500,000 free users of your service/eyeballs which you have built up from which you generate little or no revenue and you have to come up with a charging model later in the day which may or may not work or say less eyeballs-100,000 users paying you £1 a month each? Eyeballs are obviously crucial, however a charging model should be planned and either implemented in the short-medium term or the eyeballs should be indirectly built up and gradually be prepared for a charging model. Not simply spend time, resources and finance to get the eyeballs and afterwords hope for the best.
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