by Graham Brown
Part of the feature series: The 7 Laws of Youth Marketing by Graham Brown
<Back to Law #2 Take your insights from the street not the lab
3) Build a dialogue using the right channels.
Marketing continues to plug the wrong advertising channels with the positive spin about their brand that youth aren’t watching anyway. Even if they are, they’re probably not paying attention.
We shot this video to find out about youth attitudes towards traditional media, this is just a flavour of what we captured:
Mobile and Web 2.0 technologies are key to the dialogue building (but only if your organization is using the right measurements – see law 6 and this article on Web 2.0 and net promoter score)
EA’s Jesus Shot retort is a great example of using the right channel, featured here on the mobileYouth blog. Dialogue builds community around the brand – here’s an example from The Chemical Brothers, and another great one pointed out by Tomi Ahonen – Tohato. Red Bull also embodies how to get granular with marketing efforts and get out there and start doing it.
Here are some examples of how youth are using Web2.0 – ask yourself how many hooks for good dialogue between your brand and communities exist in these conversations and insights unearthed by these young consumers we interviewed? Are marketers missing a trick here?
Here’s an interview I did with Ged Carroll from Waggener Edstrom about the Orange Balloonacy campaign – a simple yet effectively executed campaign that generated community (albeit for a short time) around a single concept.
Perhaps Blyk stands out as an innovator in this field, but if you simply use the channel without changing your method of marketing it’s simply a topping on the proverbial meatballs; examples of bad “common sense” marketing thought that tried to make the unviral viral demonstrates that the medium is definitely not the message (although some analysts would like us to think otherwise).
Check out these on the street videos we shot on Mobile TV and consider whether or not the mobile industry is getting in right. Great technology…but what about the basics? Are we getting ahead of ourselves here?
Mento’s got it right with their viral campaign because they used the right channels and put youth in the driving seat – ie determining the content producted. However, some obvious faux parts need to be avoided. For example,how do you improve the dialogue between academia and students? Myspace? Facebook. Those are given now, so count for little. If you want to engage students, the last thing you want to do is make reference to them being “junior” as the JuniorU social network just launched.
Next> Law #4) Make the internal business case for youth
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