Clarity is power. As Seth Godin says in his book “The Purple Cow” - stand for something or stand for nothing at all.

Years ago, when we were running Wireless World Forum, mobileYouth and Statsmine amongst other ventures, we stood for many things, but not one thing in particular.

Having gone through the mill, we realized that standing for and being recognized as the best in your field for one thing alone was far more valuable than being 2nd and 3rd in multiple fields.

So now we only do youth and marketing and we hope that’s why you’re here.

So let’s talk about youth and marketing. What exactly works?

Be clear in your message. Stand for something

Toyota stands for reliability. It’s the most profitable car company on the world - built on kaizen philosophy of “highest quality is lowest cost”. Yet, if you stand for reliability, how relevant is that when you are dealing with consumers who want something specific to their lifestyle. A hip hop, skateboard loving student does not identify with the same lifestyle as the executive hungry for the moniker of “arrival” through status. Toyota is able to maintain its brand clarity to its consumers through lifestyle branding without impinging on the clarity of each of its portfolio brands.

Toyota offers the main Toyota brand, Lexus, Crown and Scion. Consider the latter

Consider the Scion Hako Coupe - aimed specifically at the hip hop loving urban youth of the US (which the rest of the world identifies with). In this consumer beach-head the Scion brand has found a home - an affinity with a lifestyle group supported by Scion’s own branding activities of DJ Jams, urban lifestyle magazines and Scion owner websites such as ScionRide. Unlikely to kick it with Lexus owners, but underneath it’s fundamentally the same brand in a different guise. The Scion logo bears a close resemblance to that of Toyota, but the consumer is largely unaware, and Toyota has cut some slack for the upstart brand to be able to innovate outside of the interference of the ivory tower.

Scion’s success is well documented. Here is a large mass-market consumer brand playing at being a niche lifestyle offering without detracting from its core offering. So, one must ask the question, how is this approach relevant to telecoms?

Our challenge is we try to take things the other way. When we communicate with consumers, we try to complicate things, because we lose sight of the core emotional bonding consumers have with our products and go long on features.

Wired runs an article about consumer disconnect with mobile phones in Japan due to overcomplication of features.

“There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,’” says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo.

You know when engineers start talking like this, we have a problem. So is there a market for Apple’s simpler IPhone in Japan? If simplicity wins, then there is an appetite. Apple has long traded on its simple message of creative innovation.

Nokia has long been the Toyota of the mobile industry - the reliable manufacturer. Vodafone also has great international consumer visibility. Yet, moving forward what do these two brands have in terms of brand clarity for the next generation of young consumers? Operators for example have long associated portfolio branding with going MVNO which is not necessarily the only available option - services can be sub-branded without splitting out the expensive billing and operational aspects.

One reason why mobile companies continue to struggle with engaging young consumers is because of lack of clarity. What exactly does this brand mean to youth? If you need proof, go watch the on-the-street mobileYouth videos we made particularly the ones where we asked youth to provide us with word associations with well known brands:

Nokia “reliable”, Apple “Trendy”, Nike “good company”, Vodafone “hmmm….”, Motorola “rubbish…”

Whether we agree or not is relevant, this is how the next generation of consumers see it. If we are to change, we need to consider how Toyota is creating relevance and “remarkability” (ie something to talk about to your peers) across their mass market and import the concepts that work into our own.