mobileYouth®

I’ve been a fan on Peter Van Stolk’s work for some time. Perhaps it’s because he was out there living the 7 laws of youth marketing when I was simply writing about it. Perhaps it’s the simple irreverance of the Jones Brand he helped grow that threw the copybook out and ignored the received wisdom and CPG industry’s understanding of common sense.

Jones was “crowdsourcing” way back when the word wasn’t even invented. Jones was building a field presence out there in the events and Universe of youth before Red Bull and Monster got their start.

I’ve been speaking to Peter recently about his insights and lessons learned behind shaping the Jones brand with a view to featuring these insights in my upcoming youth marketing book. Peter’s interview will also feature in a future episode of Upstart Radio.

If you know anything about youth marketing you’ll know Jones Soda because under Peter’s tenure the brand resonated with youth through innovative and, at times, brave marketing. Jones’ approach was, in its heyday, the epitome of outstanding partnership marketing – an approach rich in the creation of Earned Media. Check out Dan Pankraz’s spot on Upstart Radio re Culture Creation if this interests you.

Shaping the brand meant not listening to what the focus groups had to say but actively participating in the field. It’s an approach challenger brands such as Red Bull have taken on so well (here’s a video example of RB in action)

Early on he realized the marketing game had changed and it was no good simply benchmarking your competitors to stay in the game and it was certainly no good buying scale to outcompete.. It was the end of the Pepsi Generation and an opportunity for challengers to play their part.

For Jones to connect they had to build something from the grass roots. That approach resonates with us here at mobileYouth. Check out our ebook on growing grass roots youth movements.

If you need proof that the man nails his colors to the youth marketing mast check out the follow presentation.

If you liked this presentation, there’s more youth marketing presentations here.

So what? You may say – we’re not in the business of soda. Well neither are your customers. You’re in the business of relevance and how you connect with youth is the same for a soda brand as it is for a mobile handset manufacturer or a government agency. Sodas can teach us a lot about our customers.

Rather than adopting the traditional Pipeline approach to marketing, the fast moving highly competitive nature of their market ensures that a high premium is placed on marketing innovation – hence the recent emergence of Platform models. Innovation at Jones came not in the form of the adoption of the latest technologies but new ways to engage and connect with youth. Van Stolk knew youth didn’t care about yet another soda so the marketing had to change the narrative from one being about the brand to a narrative about the customer.

Stay tuned for the Upstart Radio interview and the Upcoming Youth Marketing Book.

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