Youth Marketing is all about something you do with not to youth.” Graham Brown (mobileYouth 2008 Report)
Following my earlier riff about trends in the marketing of Great Youth Brands (last time was Red Bull), I’d like to talk about one of my favourites.
This is the key question – how does a mass market “everything to everybody” brand build relevance with a specific segment – such as Youth?
Consider this challenge facing the largest and most profitable automotive manufacturer in the world – Toyota.
Toyota cannot roll out customized fat pipe blinged rims low riding coupes for the mass market because their core value of reliability is also one of a generic appeal – they will alienate your grandmother and the school teacher.
So this is how Toyota does it – meet Scion – the Toyota sub-brand that no one knows is actually Toyota (unless you study the marque a little harder).
Check the video – this is real ownership and consumer generated content in action, this is consumer ownership of the brand – creating rather than sponsoring events, local Scikotics, magazines etc.
Technorati Tags: toyota, scion, youth cars, consumer generated content, mobile youth, mobileyouth, youth marketing, youth trends, graham brown, mobileyouth report
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[...] how brands such as Scion and Red Bull are building relevance with youth in our Great Youth Brands [...]
Youth Marketing is all about something you do with not to youth.” Graham Brown (mobileYouth 2008 Report)
Its about what you do for them also. Toyota created this easily customizable brand so that owners could creatively express themselves through it. Then they embraced that community of “scikotics” and created ways for them to interact and communicate their fervor which has resulted in user generated content/marketing.
@Ben, good point indeed. Scikotics is such a good example of partnership marketing – ie giving them the basic tools from which the consumers make good as they see fit.
I use Scikotics videos to get across the point of “consumer generated content” and “partnership marketing” in most of my presentations… second to the Jones Soda taste tests, execs love em :)