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Conference coverage by Jennifer Waits: What Teens Want East was a one-day conference, packing in lots of presentations, panels, and Q&A sessions. The overarching theme was “marketing to teens using music, movies & the media,” so we heard from representatives of many of those industries. Throughout it all, we could never forget that we were in New York City, home of over-the-top advertising in Times Square (my favorite was a billboard with a hole in it allowing daylight to shine into a lucky soul’s apartment for 60 days); celebrity sightings (my husband thinks he saw Pauly Shore over the weekend); subway rides; and fascinating websites like www.OverheardinNewYork.com, where real New York conversations are posted. On to the conference…

Youth Today Rewarded for Just Showing Up; Boys Rewarded More than Girls

The conference began with a presentation by Jim Taylor of the Harrison Group, in which he highlighted findings and insights from a syndicated study conducted with American youth between the ages of 13 and 24. In addition to some familiar findings (this generation is media savvy and optimistic), he had some intriguing, often sad additions. When asked about family relationships, the youth in this study said that they were able to discuss more topics with their mothers than with their fathers. Additionally, young people gave fathers a lower rating when asked to rate their relationship on a point-based scale, indicating that dad is not as significant to them as mom. One of the most disturbing findings he mentioned was that the economic gender gap may begin at home. During their college years, boys in this study say they receive about $1000 a month from their family compared with girls who say they get about $600 a month.

Newsletter readers: The coverage is lengthy so come to Ypulse.com for the rest!

Taylor also suggested that this generation is the first to be “rewarded for their very existence,” with youth receiving “trophies for just showing up.” His argument is that this is counter to Generation X’s experience of rarely being rewarded, which could lead to tension between the two groups. He pointed out that today’s youth have “nano-nostalgia” for things that “happened 5 minutes ago.” Makes sense to me with the proliferation of cell-phone cameras, where a moment is instantly captured, sent to one’s friends, and immediately savored as a memory. Other fun stats from the Harrison Group included:

- 92% of youth are on the Internet daily or almost every day
- 76% would watch TV if they didn’t have the Internet
- 63% are in regular contact with someone they met on the Internet
- survey takers had an average of 40 people on their IM list

Like many companies, Harrison Group offered a new segmentation of this generation:

- A-Listers: popular trend leaders
- American Dreamers: truthful, happy kids
- Outsiders: quiet, low self-esteem, futureless
- Independent Thinkers: opinionated, less tolerant, leaders
- JBs: party kids, not career-oriented

Bolt’s CREATION Generation

Next up was Aaron Cohen from Bolt.com, an online community that has experienced incredible longevity with youth. He talked about this generation as the “Creation Generation” and cited examples such as blogging and “peer-to-peer media.” He chronicled how media has changed from Mass Media (he gave an example of the huge audience for the series finale of M.A.S.H.) to Niche Media to “Me Media.” In addition to showing examples of Bolt member pages, he also highlighted www.deviantART.com and www.newgrounds.com, where artists can showcase work and collaborate. By embracing “Me Media,” Bolt strives to “personalize, connect, and validate” and with this in mind they are moving in the direction of a “portfolio” vs. a “profile” website.

Following the Bolt presentation we heard from Ken Gold of Majesco Entertainment. He made a few points about the creation and marketing of videogames that supported the “personalize, connect, and validate” mantra of Bolt. Customization and personalization opportunities are built into videogames and multi-player games and gamers are encouraged to be evangelists for new games that are in the pipeline. He said that as part of their marketing strategy they will release screen shots and information about upcoming games and that fans will take this information and run with it, voluntarily creating their own websites in anticipation of a launch, in the process building buzz for the product.

Grassroots with Indie Rockers, Cheerleaders, and Jarvis Fans

Steve Kleinberg from DrillTEAM, a division of indie music site Insound.com spoke about his “Brand Ambassador” program, where influential youth are recruited to tell their peers about a particular product that they are already an enthusiast for.

Carlos Scott of N-Vision Inc. talked about a promotion that he did for the launch of a new deodorant for boys called OT Overtime (the website actually has some fun tips about tween boys and grooming), which incorporated music celebrity Jarvis giving out samples during appearances. Scott also made sure that OT Overtime was featured prominently on Jarvis’s dresser during a music video shoot, even though…oops…it got edited out!

Cheerleaders were the intended audience for a campaign done by Ron Vos of Hi Frequency Marketing. For Banana Boat they took sunscreen samples to cheerleading camps and distributed them during registration. They encouraged kids to register online at the Banana Boat website in order to win an Avril Lavigne poster. The contest organizers figured that a smaller prize would feel more obtainable and grassroots to kids who are often jaded about contests with huge prizes like all-expense paid vacations.

Reality-Check from Pro Skater

One of the highlights of the day was hearing some smart marketing tips from pro skateboarder Andy Macdonald. The well-spoken 31-year-old was deemed “mother-approved” by Sports Illustrated (admittedly provoking heckling amongst his peers) and from that vantage point he broke down some misconceptions about the sport, saying that skateboarding is mainstream and that skaters are “not all just a bunch of thugs breaking public property and disrespecting authority.” He provided great insights about early failures by both the X-Games and Nike in attempting to market to skateboarders without understanding the details of their scene. During its initial year the X-Games were known as the Extreme Games, which Macdonald says was a “laughable” term to skaters who didn’t see a connection between their sport and things like bungee jumping. Based on athlete feedback the name was changed to X-Games in year two.

Macdonald said that skateboarders are very leery of sponsors who try to “buy their way in” to the scene without an apparent connection or passion for the sport. He encouraged marketers to really get to know their audiences, especially the skateboard community, before embarking on a campaign that directly markets to them or utilizes elements of their culture. He criticized Subway for doing a skateboarding-themed campaign for Extreme Carver sandwiches without doing its research. He mocked the ads which featured an unknown skater, an incorrectly assembled skateboard, and a “guy in the sky photo” with no point of reference (breaking the collective “rules” for skateboard trick shots).

Youth Intelligence’s 7 Macro Teen Trends

After lunch Catherine Stellin from Youth Intelligence shared tons of teen trends. Her macro trends included:

1. Statement Shopping: Youth embracing companies with “pro-social” policies also ties in with a point that Andy Macdonald made about skaters respecting brands that “give back” to the community.

2. Positivity: Youth want to hear about the good and be distracted from the bad.

3. Intensity: This increasingly medicated generation is “looking for emotional connections and intense experiences,” including things both scary and sappy.

4. Family First: There is new status associated with “being settled,” as evidenced by youth wearing fake wedding rings and looking up to younger celebrities with marriages and families (um..Britney?).

5. Group Think: Gen Y are “team players” compared with more individualistic Gen X.

6. Organica: Desire for “products and experiences that feel real.” She said that even something like “The Dukes of Hazzard” could fall into this category because the movie is simpler, without high-tech CGI.

7. Restraint: Backlash against the concept of celebrity, but not against celebrities with “subtlety and anonymity…becoming more cool.”

Trendum’s Message Board Analysis Tools

Folks from the online and mobile space shared stories about marketing to teens in these venues. One of the most fascinating concepts from the panel was from Trendum, a company that has created technology to analyze message board content. Trendum tracks teen discussions on message boards and in other online communities and uses technology to analyze these conversations. By this method, they can track trends over time, tell marketers what TV shows are being discussed (and how), and learn more about specific markets (like skateboarders) by delving into their communities and postings. Text analysis is always complex and I’d be really curious to learn more about how they do it. The guy from Trendum seemed to know his stuff, even analyzing some hacker code for the crowd, explaining that youth often create their own online language in order to have conversations that can’t be understood by adults.

Music Marketing

One of the final speakers was Charlie Walk of Columbia Records. He had one of the best quotes of the day, saying that “US Weekly has become a teen magazine…it’s crack for kids.” He mentioned this in the context of a discussion about using placements in celebrity magazines to get buzz for new music artists. He also acknowledged the importance of television, saying “in a way TV is the new radio” for breaking “emerging” artists. He’s placed songs from new bands on TV shows (for example “One Tree Hill”) before releasing an album or even a single. It’s interesting that teen TV shows are being used to market new major label artists, whereas TV commercials often utilize music from indie artists past and present. I agree with an argument I’ve heard that music on television is much more diverse than on commercial radio.

Other venues he sees as important for music marketing are websites like MySpace, IM screens, cell phones, and increasingly ring tones. Ringtones have been extremely profitable, but beyond that, Walk kept repeating to the crowd that a ringtone actually beat Coldplay on a U.K. singles chart a few weeks ago.

Real Live Teens…finally!

By the end of the day things were running late, but the crowd was still eagerly anticipating the teen panel since it was a chance to hear the real scoop and it was the final event before cocktails. Eight teenagers shared their insights about fashion, spending, brands, celebrities, and shopping. One of the teens described celebrities as a “guilty pleasure” (US Weekly reader perhaps?). Another said, “I want to see a celebrity that’s real…a small percentage of teens…can get into the VIP Lounge.” When asked about cause marketing, one teen boy mentioned that he watched Live 8 and was compelled to sign the petition, saying “anything for a cause.” All of the teens on the panel said they use AOL instant messenger (some have hundreds of buddies) and have iPods.

It became apparent that this group was uniquely New York as several of them mentioned subway-specific stories. A teen girl said she read the ads in the subway, another mentioned that she liked reading magazines because “you can take them with you on the train,” and another said she read the ads on the subway because “on the train you don’t want to watch the bum coming past you.” Another highlight was a teen girl describing her favorite website www.numberslady.com, where you can learn your number and the numbers of celebrities like Tom and Katie. She’s said she’s gotten obsessed with checking out the numbers of her entire family.

In addition to the real teens we saw on this panel, between presentations we saw video of teen interviews put together by Snippies.

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Categorized under: Youth Marketing

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