It’s Emperor’s New Clothes Time again…
There was a recent survey run by Inmobi for management students at IIT. Now, the following isn’t a criticsm of the survey or Inmobi – it’s a call to put the PR generated by bloggers around this story into perspective.
Reality check time:
We are reading “Indian Youth Love Mobile Ads”
Let’s examine this statement:
* The survey covered 205 college aged consumers
* 57% browsed the internet on mobile (=117 people)
* 1/3 of these “engaged with brands that advertise) (= approx 40 people)
* “of those who engaged with ads, 10% woud call the company and 17.5% would buy the product” (= 7 people)
So reality check One: 7 Indian Youth said they would buy the product as a result of mobile advertising
(The youth population of India is 550 million). Go figure.
Also let’s look at the nature of the survey
* The survey took place with management students (you need to consider whether conclusions such as “Indian Youth” can be drawn from this niche group)
* The survey was conducted at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology – an elite college drawing in less than 1% of the country’s student base)
So reality check Two: Management Students at IIT are an elite survey sample and will inevitably be early adopters, technically minded and enjoying certain economic & social privileges.
In Summary
* 7 people in India does not represent “Indian Youth”
* Management Students at an elite technology college are not representative of Indian Youth
However
* All of the above case presented to put the PR in check is irrelevant because it’s like telling kids Santa doesn’t exist. Remember when Ebayers bid $28,000 for a piece of toast that looked like The Virgin Mary? It wasn’t because it actually looked like Jesus’s Mother, it’s because they wanted to believe. The evidence doesn’t make any difference. It’s the worldview, and tech marketers are still of the opinion that youth love products and youth love technology. No weight of evidence will change that and media will still cling to the most tenuous of evidence to support their case.
* This is the challenge facing most marketers – that most brands and tech companies want to believe youth (like themselves) have fallen in love with their products. I’m afraid that doesn’t help anybody.
If
If brands and tech companies really woke up bearing in mind that youth don’t wake up thinking about them, then the world would be full of many more meaningful products and less waste. And that starts with the ability to question the received wisdom that got brands into the mess they are in now where youth just aren’t paying attention anymore.
Free Download: 100 Key Trends in Youth Mobile Culture
Sign up to the mobileYouth newsletter and you will also get the 4 Part PDF Free (Note: each section is full-color, high resolution, 9MB in size). Our trends newsletter delivers the latest insights straight to your email box. Written every week by our resident best-selling mobileYouth authors. Never miss a trend in youth mobile culture again. Unsubscribe any time.
