Mobile Youth Marketing Trends and Clips

Just released! Following our successful 2009 tour, we’re putting together a tentative tour itinerary to share mobileYouth updates on trends and youth marketing insights for 2010. Here are the initial dates. If you want mobileYouth to speak/present at your conference/company or seminar then contact us here in first instance and let’s get talking. As you can see, time is going to be limited to 2 engagements per city so contact us early.

Feb Week 1

• Turkey

Feb Week 2

• Bahrain (1 space left)
• Dubai (fully booked)
• Delhi/Mumbai (1 space left)
• Kuala Lumpur (1 space left)

Feb Week 3

• Jakarta
• Singapore (1 space left)
• Hong Kong
• Taipei
• Shanghai

Feb Week 4

• Tokyo (fully booked)

Mar Week 1

• Seattle (1 space left)
• San Francisco
• New York
• Toronto

Use Twitter to contact Josh or Graham directly.

OK, it’s on - we’re visiting the Americas and here is the tour schedule:

November

Sun 8-Wed 11: Brazil Sao Paulo
Thu 12: Chicago
Fri 13: Seattle
Sat/Sun 14/15: Vancouver
Mon 16: Saskatoon
Tue/Wed 17/18: Toronto
Thu 19: New York

If you’re interested in making contact or want mobileYouth to come present @ your office then ping us here

via mobileyouth.org

You are here: Home / youth marketing insights / features / Content is Dead… Long live Context

Content is Dead… Long live Context

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There was a time when Pepsi said that they were the “choice of a generation” and youth believed. There was a time that in exchange for the inconvenience caused by interrupting young people on TV, in the magazine or at the bus stop, creative agencies would balance the transactional deficit by delivering humour.

That’s what gave us the drumming monkey or the funny gopher thing. You know what we’re talking about. Make ‘em laugh and make them forget about the whole inconvenience.

The era of “Advertising is Content” is dead because content alone is no longer enough to engage youth.

The discussion about “it is” or “it isn’t” is largely irrelevant because content is a mere bit-player in the marketing issue.

Blyk tried to give this stuff away and pay youth for the inconvenience. Despite claims of “massive success“,  it seemed they couldn’t even give their service away for free.

You see, today marketing is a function of context not content because communication is a function of trust not technique. Being “clever” with your advertising content through buying Michael Jackson or Madonna no longer smacks of authenticity.

Getting face-to-face with young consumers creates trust.

Context enables brands like Red Bull, Threadless and Monster get that face to face (see my Ebook on the subject here). Great youth brands grow context around their grass roots support.

Context is the platform for interaction. It’s the base of partnership marketing. It’s the move from treating youth as the destination for the marketing message to treating them as partners in its creation. Remember - they’re all marketers. Not only does context create powerful advocacy but also the most authentic insights you could wish for.

Content means clever campaigns , celebrities (Motorola Beckham anyone?) and sponsoring (read Sony Ericsson sponsoring a tent at Glastonbury).

Context means creating (read Boost Mobile’s grass roots activism , Twilight’s convention and fan tour or Red Bull 1976 Games)

Content means pipelining messages onto the market and you’re done. Next campaign?

Context doesn’t mean buying your own F1 team. It can mean a cheese rolling event or similarly niche offerings such as downhill biking in downtown Hong Kong. Whatever you choose it’s about creation of Social Currency to enable you brand to provide the platform for ongoing conversation.

This is the key distinction between paid and earned media.

Procter & Gamble’s BeingGirl.com creates context because it doesn’t sell tampax through clever content, it creates a community for young girls to address their daily challenges - a context in which the product sits comfortably in the consciousness of the community member.

Ford Fiesta shifted their youth focus from simply buying media space on billboards and implementing a clever SMS integration to creating a whole movement.

One’s lazy, one’s inspired.

Needless to say, one required breaking a few eggshells , challenging internal conventions surrounding language and ignoring marketing common sense.

Ford Fiesta’s movement is the move from campaigns to conversations in action.

Youth Conspiracy’s work with Durex demonstrated that to sell condoms to young males wasn’t about a humorous and often risque ad campaign (that “big idea” thing again) but a context in which youth could address their questions and issues about sex that wasn’t an STD clinic or government Aids awareness campaign.

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Posted by Graham Brown on Friday, September 25, 2009 at 3:48 pm (Edit)
Filed under features · Tagged with advertising, blyk, content, context

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Paid or Earned Media - Making Gravity is Hard Work

Whether you are walking down the street, watching the TV, surfing the net or even driving a car, you are the subject of some form of advertising. From the branded cap on the boy walking down the street to the billboard behind him – marketing is hard at work trying to capture your attention. Constance Hill and Bruce Henry suggest that we see around 3000 marketing messages each day. But no matter whether we see 100 or 10,000 messages – clearly we are exposed to a significant number. But how many do you recall? How many seep into your unconscious, adding a negative or positive neuron to your thoughts around these brands?

Now, add into this mix the dozens or even hundreds of blogs that you read and the tweets that you view on Twitter each day. Combine this with podcasts, music streams via blip.fm, videos on YouTube and email – and suddenly you have an abundant media stream that can appear overwhelming. As Sean Howard says, “In today's world everyone is a publisher, everyone has some level of influence, and everyone has a network of influence that is difficult to define let alone measure”. It makes the life of the media consumer rather complex.

As a marketer, however, you do have a specific objective. What you are aiming for is MAKING GRAVITY. With paid media you are using your marketing budget to have your content inserted into spaces that your audience inhabit. It is an expense which you measure in terms of how many people you have reached with your communication.

Earned media (or what Craig Wilson calls engagement marketing), on the other hand, is both different in nature and in measurement. Rather than being an expense, it is an investment. Its effectiveness is directly related to what you DO rather than what you SAY, and the value that is exchanged is not currency, but trust. As I have explained previously – it is about changing behaviours:

Every time we forward on a link, retweet a message read on Twitter or any other type of social network interaction, we are CHOOSING to act. We are not just using our network of connections to FILTER the noise, we are using it to SHAPE our experience. It is a choice. And understanding this distinction places us in a context where STORYTELLING emerges as vitally important?

Paid media has been an effective marketing approach for hundreds of years (if not longer). But it thrived in a time where attention was abundant and our media consumption choices were limited to a set number of channels. These days, media is abundant but our attention (and maybe more importantly, our respect) is scarce. Graham Brown has an excellent five minute piece on the challenges presented by these changes.

But the fundamental difference with paid vs earned media is the refocusing of effort. No longer do you spend your creative energies (and budgets) on producing executions that gain attention – you spend it on building trust and creating Auchterlonie Effects (stories that can be easily shared). Indeed, in the best traditions of storytelling, earned media propagates itself – becoming promiscuous in the process.

The reason that promiscuous ideas are important to your brand is that you WANT them to be shared. In social media, every shared idea, link or concept creates an exchange of value within a PERSONAL network – so the act of sharing is a recommendation of sorts. Over time the person who “adds value” to their network builds an abundant store of social capital. It is like branding – we can’t necessarily point to a PARTICULAR item – but to the recurring and ongoing sense of positive exchange relating to that person.

When YOUR brand story or content is the subject of that exchange, you are effectively providing a reason for connection between people in a network. And as these connections grow, as they are passed from person to person, you are creating points of gravity around your brand ecosystem. Your challenge then is to work with a continuous digital strategy to “share the message” but “own the destination”. The thing is, gravity can only be earned. And while you can employ paid media to complement your earned media – you need to make sure you have a compelling story to tell and to share.

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16 September 2009 at 11:48 AM in Branding, Digital Strategy, earned media, Media, Old Media, Social Judgement, Social Media, Storytelling | Permalink

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Comments

Stefano Maggi said...

You're so right, Gavin.
I think the real point is in getting used to a new way of thinking: message is important only when related to engagement and channels are relevant only when they help starting or developing a conversation.
Many marketers have always been thinking about channels and message as something they could choose and build, while today choice and meaning result from a cooperation with consumers.
As you say: there's a need for compelling and shareable stories. Brands can inspire meaning construction: this is the opportunity, imo.

Reply 16 September 2009 at 04:46 PM

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Paid or Earned Media - Making Gravity is Hard Work

Whether you are walking down the street, watching the TV, surfing the net or even driving a car, you are the subject of some form of advertising. From the branded cap on the boy walking down the street to the billboard behind him – marketing is hard at work trying to capture your attention. Constance Hill and Bruce Henry suggest that we see around 3000 marketing messages each day. But no matter whether we see 100 or 10,000 messages – clearly we are exposed to a significant number. But how many do you recall? How many seep into your unconscious, adding a negative or positive neuron to your thoughts around these brands?

Now, add into this mix the dozens or even hundreds of blogs that you read and the tweets that you view on Twitter each day. Combine this with podcasts, music streams via blip.fm, videos on YouTube and email – and suddenly you have an abundant media stream that can appear overwhelming. As Sean Howard says, “In today's world everyone is a publisher, everyone has some level of influence, and everyone has a network of influence that is difficult to define let alone measure”. It makes the life of the media consumer rather complex.

As a marketer, however, you do have a specific objective. What you are aiming for is MAKING GRAVITY. With paid media you are using your marketing budget to have your content inserted into spaces that your audience inhabit. It is an expense which you measure in terms of how many people you have reached with your communication.

Earned media (or what Craig Wilson calls engagement marketing), on the other hand, is both different in nature and in measurement. Rather than being an expense, it is an investment. Its effectiveness is directly related to what you DO rather than what you SAY, and the value that is exchanged is not currency, but trust. As I have explained previously – it is about changing behaviours:

Every time we forward on a link, retweet a message read on Twitter or any other type of social network interaction, we are CHOOSING to act. We are not just using our network of connections to FILTER the noise, we are using it to SHAPE our experience. It is a choice. And understanding this distinction places us in a context where STORYTELLING emerges as vitally important?

Paid media has been an effective marketing approach for hundreds of years (if not longer). But it thrived in a time where attention was abundant and our media consumption choices were limited to a set number of channels. These days, media is abundant but our attention (and maybe more importantly, our respect) is scarce. Graham Brown has an excellent five minute piece on the challenges presented by these changes.

But the fundamental difference with paid vs earned media is the refocusing of effort. No longer do you spend your creative energies (and budgets) on producing executions that gain attention – you spend it on building trust and creating Auchterlonie Effects (stories that can be easily shared). Indeed, in the best traditions of storytelling, earned media propagates itself – becoming promiscuous in the process.

The reason that promiscuous ideas are important to your brand is that you WANT them to be shared. In social media, every shared idea, link or concept creates an exchange of value within a PERSONAL network – so the act of sharing is a recommendation of sorts. Over time the person who “adds value” to their network builds an abundant store of social capital. It is like branding – we can’t necessarily point to a PARTICULAR item – but to the recurring and ongoing sense of positive exchange relating to that person.

When YOUR brand story or content is the subject of that exchange, you are effectively providing a reason for connection between people in a network. And as these connections grow, as they are passed from person to person, you are creating points of gravity around your brand ecosystem. Your challenge then is to work with a continuous digital strategy to “share the message” but “own the destination”. The thing is, gravity can only be earned. And while you can employ paid media to complement your earned media – you need to make sure you have a compelling story to tell and to share.

View the entire comment thread.

Ebook: Mobile Youth in Emerging Markets (India, China & South Africa)