One of our @ypulse Twitter followers asked us what we thought about this post from The Youth Conspiracy about how Blyk, a youth mobile company that pioneered ad-supported free mobile service, notified its users that it will be closing its consumer-facing operations. Antti Öhrling, Blyk's co-founder keynoted at the 2008 Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup and we have interviewed him on Ypulse in the past. My thoughts are solely based on the Youth Conspiracy writer's experience with Blyk as a customer vs. having spoken to the company to get their side of the story.

In many ways Blyk's marketing and corporate persona embodied a lot of principals youth marketers strive for — they were, as the writer noted "chatty" on Twitter, maintained a relatively active corporate blog and tried to offer a service that young people desire (mobile) and to work with their advertisers to create campaigns that young people would respond to. Unfortunately, their business model wasn't working.

Debate over their model aside, The Youth Conspiracy post reminds us that you can't just talk the talk as a youth brand and then start talking a lot less when the sh#t hits the fan. This applies to all brands, but especially those speaking directly to youth — why? Because if you've created a product and a brand that connects with this audience, you've also won their hard-earned trust and loyalty. As brand "savvy" as youth may be, they are still more idealistic than those of us who have been burned enough to develop a thicker skin when it comes to relationships with corporate entities (or human entities!). Feeling like you were "dumped" by a brand you loved via Twitter is not so different than being broken up with through a text message.

In the tech world where websites and mobile companies come and go, lots of young users who invested time or posted content on these sites/ services end up being left behind when the business goes south. To me this seems incredibly shortsighted on the part of these entrepreneurs/business owners. If you've worked hard to be open, accessible and relatively transparent with your young customer base, why not be that way even as you wind down? Talk to them EVEN MORE.  Write conversational blog posts explaining why your business model isn't working, ask your passionate users for help or ideas, and if you know you're sunk, tell them you're winding down and what it means for them AND for any content they may have posted to your site (read the comments – most ever on any Ypulse post). This is the adult way to handle breaking up with your young audience. Not only will they respect you for it, you leave them feeling good about your brand even if it flopped financially. You may even be able to capitalize on the good will you ended with in your next venture by being able to remind people that you were the founder of that brand.

For more coverage of the latest trends and developments in mobile technology for youth, check out the Ypulse Mobile Channel.

Categorized under: Mobile

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