I won’t discuss numbers here – however you slice them there are going to be 2 sides. I’ll focus on the concept and for the sake of lessons learned what future outfits need to do to avoid the mistakes that Blyk has committed.
As the blogosphere is a-chatter with Blyk this Blyk that it’s worth noting that I’ve long struggled with this model despite the apparent industry acclaim.
What Blyk should have done was make it very clear at the off whether they were a brand that youth could care about or an advertising platform a la Metro newspaper. Where they failed was ploughing a furrow between the two and thus sending out mixed messages about their intentions.
As a youth brand they needed to have created a presence on campuses by focusing on building a legacy; their own events and supporting the heroes of the community (writers, bloggers, musicians, grafiti artists, DJs etc).
As an ad platform they needed to have dropped the pretensions of being anything but.
Unfortunately, Blyk’s plight is akin to the emperor’s new clothes; they are surrounded by a coterie of advisors and bloggers who hang on their every move, pinning the apparent hopes of “youth marketing” on this false champion. “False” because we’re often too lazy to bother looking outside of our own industry for the answers. Just like Springfield’s Monorail, we expect mobile to solve all our problems and smoothe over the cracks.
It’s no surprise that if you task a creative agency with the challenge of addressing the issue of “how do we connect with youth?” they’ll tell you the answer lies in advertising campaigns. As the zen saying goes “if the only tool in your kit is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
Blyk should have studied the market leaders rather than listen to those sniffing the MVNO glue. Red Bull, Jones Soda, Toyota Scion, Nike, Threadless, Boost Mobile and Loftwork are all examples of brands that refuse to lie down and take the agency medicine committing themselves to the creation of sustainable currency in the universe of their consumers rather than relying on a 50 year old business model based on interruption that is quite frankly, broken.
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