mobileYouth®

As much as you’d like to think yourself the elite of Social Media, you are all products of the industrial world.

You were penalized for sharing during test time at school, started the morning when the school bell rang and were rewarded for producing a 10,000 word essay when most modern execs struggle to get round to reading a 100 word email.

The DNA of marketing, like education, is built to serve its master – the company and society respectively.

The industrial world of marketing was built on warehousing, value chains and shunting products onto the market. Choice was a luxury and luxury was for the elite. In the social marketing era, we have an excess of choice, luxury is the norm and we all consider ourselves the elite yet as with our schooling, the industrial DNA remains. And the wonderful thing about DNA is that no matter what you do, it keeps replicating itself with the same old pattern. As Jack Welch said – “What’s measured gets done”.

Making change therefore means going beyond the campaign and making a difference at the organizational level.

Advertisers want a piece of the pie but…

Advertisers are keen to tap the community but applying social media to an organization built on industrial DNA is merely a meatball sundae. That’s why youth aren’t as interested in mobile marketing as they should be and shun commercial messages on their mobiles.

Community is key in marketing. We are moving from an era of selling products to one of selling the social fabric of consumer interaction and community defines that social interaction. Companies such as Nike, Red Bull, Jones Soda, Maruchan and Scion have been able to create an interdependency between their brand and the consumer community and generate loyalty beyond the industrial school of thought’s answer to the problem – the dreaded loyalty program.

The brand graveyard

Although advertisers may push the sharing message the organization that supports them is often rooted in industrial philosophy. There are plenty of youth brands that talk social and walk social – Red Bull, Nike, Jones, Scion, Diesel, Threadless, Best Buy, Toms Shoes to name a few. There are also a number that talk social but walk industrial; Coke, Blyk, Levis, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Ford find that their tail is still wagging the dog. Where Red Bull creates events, empowers its customers and markets energy as a lifestyle, Pepsi insists on plastering Times Square with a bandwaggon statement. Industrial brands think Awareness, Social think relevance. The Second Life brand graveyard and the poor results in mobile operator customer surveys are testament to why marketing really adds up to nothing if you still operate an industrial outfit that fails to consider the basics – customer service and experience.

Social Marketing means a Shared Experience

Advertisers are cottoning on to sharing as a key element to product appeal. Some pundits are talking about “Generation We” (not Wii!) or perhaps a redefinition of Gen Y (Gen Z or Gen C anyone?). It’s not a fad or a trend but a deep rooted psychological need that is constantly expressed through the symbols of the generation.

Flashmobs (such as those you can see at Liverpool street) are but one manifestation of young people’s desire for a collective experience. Back in my day we didn’t have flashmobs but something similar – Acid House warehouse raves – testament to the belief that youth don’t really change that much over time – symbols merely do (more evidence here). Technology has merely made things more possible and the shared music experience it seems is a timeless foundation for that.

We didn’t have Twitter and its explosive growth or teens texting 500 messages a day back then, but our social circles were defined more on geographical locality as opposed to interest so the drivers were the same but expressed differently. Where youth have mobile phones, Gen X had lighters and cigarettes as their symbols of arrival. Whereas back then it was very much localized, today’s youth culture is global – Rock Music and Hip Hop in Mumbai is testament to its ubiquity.

Check out our on the street video of youth in Bangalore to see what youth are saying about their mobile phones.

What has changed is that back then we had little access to the right information and relied heavily on experts to inform our choices – the “official charts”, magazines, DJs etc. Now information isn’t siloed with these individuals youth place trust in the collectively evolved decision, a process that some believe actually is a more accurate indicator of global demand,

Social Marketing means no Compromize

The community of our youth was more of a compromize, defined by those who lived in our local area. We sought out more global identities to plug into but still without the technology and channels of communication, the effort required was a lot higher. That was, remember, the era of “28 days for delivery”.

Now despite being unaware of industry terms such as “globalization“, youth can pick and choose their tribes as these guys are doing in India and because they pick and choose, the communities are fluid. Networks don’t live on islands.

Interested in Tribes? Check out our mobileYouth tribes presentation

With 1.2 billion youth now owning a mobile phone and an increasing number tapping into communities through their phone, the potential for shared experience is certainly tantalizing for both youth and the marketers who stalk them. Welcome to the Mobile Shift.

Between generations, little in the way of the fundamental drivers of behavior actually changes. However, this behavior operates within certain parameters – such as the economy. Despite being relatively less burdened by debt, the financial crisis is also impacting youth. Although they will keep on spending it may just be with a hint of frugality, and it will be on vegetable based snacks as opposed to PopTarts (apparently). Good news for skaters, though (see here).

When I studied in the late 80s and graduated in the early 90s, the world was awash with a similar sense of financial meltdown. Getting a job, it seemed, was more important than getting a career. Just as we experienced in the late 80s there was a distinct disconnect between youth aspirations and the media’s perception of our generation we also read that today’s “millenials” see their employment demands as somehow different. And guess what, thanks to educational, time, economic and body matters – they’re just as stressed as we were back then.

Social Marketing isn’t just a bolt on

Despite launching new content and the availability of children’s eyeballs for TV (although less by the day), BBC for example is struggling to recapture that middle ground.

Detroit’s flagging sales show us that once a brand disconnects with youth – particularly teens & students – marketing finds itself climbing a mountain to regain dialogue. Any wonder that Toyota scores highest on customer loyalty (brand repurchase) and it’s the same name behind Scion? GM scores poorly. It’s not just about having a cool idea or great marketing campaign but organizing the whole business around the needs of marketing and serving the customer rather than the industry (a la GM).

These examples all show that simply making “cool” content or adding community to your offering will do little because your organization is industrially oriented. Everything from how you refer to your customers (“end users”) to how you visualize the industry (“value chain”) to how you connect with them (campaign) are driven by the industrial DNA of the org. Industrial DNA + community = meatball sundae.

Social Marketing means Control

Credit crunch or not, today’s youth have grown up with the expectation that there should be no compromize when it comes to brand or product selection. Here are some examples in the  domain of food and the frugalista trend in car choice picked up by Toyota. Affordability, it seems, should not mean compromizing style or quality. If there is one legacy defined by the seminal inauguration of the Obama Generation it is that this demographic feels it should have a say not just in politics but in what it wears and what it consumes. That means control over both the content and how it is delivered. Brands that deliver consistently on their promises build loyal advocates – consumer beachheads.

Opening up requires more than just sending the marcomms department on a long holiday it requires a shift from industrial to social mindset, an uncontrolled path racked with the fear of brand pollution at the hands of anonymous commentators, vandals and nogoods.

Social Marketing means letting the customer drive marketing and product development

Once marketers come round to the idea, they’ll see that crowdsourcing in the form of asking customers (as demonstrated by Uniqlo here), using the community to glean research insights (MROC), come up with new product lines (Maruchan Cup Ramen) (Examples on Mixi) (BestBuy) or adding value to customers (Apple’s education program) is no longer a cool adjunct to their strategy but the most competitive edge they can adopt moving forward. Scion’s extreme example is to let students run the campaign itself. However you cut it, you can’t deny that lack of experience is perhaps the reason why youth are so creative – they always ask “what it?”.

If you want to get some insight into brands getting it right, look no further than the sugar powered energy drink market, as Greg Rollet discusses:

Energy drink mania has taken over Gen-Y and youth culture over the last few years. From Red Bull starting the craze and their smart marketing into youth culture to Monster and then Lil Jon’s Crunk Juice and everything in between, playing on the fact that kids love extreme has been a major selling point for the drinks.

Social Marketing means constant Redefinition

Just as Levi’s discovered in the 80s, being a youth icon today has no bearing on future results. Brands such as Nike work very hard to keep nicheing out their brands to stay relevant (check out the photo proof). When your dad started squeezing into a pair of 501s the edgy appeal soon vanished. Facebook faces a similar shift in youth perception with 20 somethings and teens expressing disquiet (and here) over the apparent invasion of oldies.

Community means Brand Involvement
If you want to nail down the one factor that separated the divergent fortunes of Nike and Levi’s over the last generation it was lack of relevance and that stemmed entirely from lack of involvement. Where Nike beavered away at building a beachhead of passionate consumers, soccer pitches, basketball courts, turning up at local events, collaborating with trusted personalities and sponsoring the stars of tomorrow, Levi’s got lost in its ivory tower wondering what colour the next series of 501s should be.

Involvement is key and marketers can benefit from this. Rather than run a run-of-mill campaign, why not let your consumers make the campaign themselves? Here’s a great insight from Flip. Industrial marketing will always hold back because it means giving something away, perhaps for free, before you score results and the thought of getting out there on the street and asking youth what they want seems a waste of time. That’s why organic marketing and the industrial mindset are uncomfortable bedfellows but as experience shows you need an established dialogue before you have permission to sell.

Inevitably, just as industrial replaced agricultural, industrial itself will lose out as small challenger brands build up core beachheads slowly but surely one customer at a time by adding value to the community (as in this fun Ugly example).

Social Marketing means core Values

Perhaps it’s the watering down of values that youth dislike which would account for the rise of niche sites such as MyYearbook – a network that is actively involved in promoting social responsibility. Youth, it seems, are the future guardians of social values. As youth enter the job market, the education system and government they bring with them the values of change. Rather than being an overhackneyed journalistic expression, it exists and while they have yet to take over the reigns of Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Vine it’s out there on the streets but we continue to haul them into the labs and focus groups to tell us what we want to hear – that they are “interested” in our products.

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