Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup East: The Totally Wired Youth Panel

We just finished our fifth Ypulse Mashup event last week in Boston. I can't believe we have produced five of these events already (two in San Francisco, a tween-focused event in New York, a college-focused event in Santa Monica, and now Boston). I really enjoyed meeting attendees, speakers and sponsors and wanted to give a special shout out to our volunteers – Derek, Jenny, Stephanie, Vin, Heather, Victoria, Jason and Jon – you all rocked! Our next event is our flagship Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup held every year in San Francisco. Save the dates (and set aside money in your budgets now) for June 1 and 2. We'll be posting our photos on Flickr soon They are now live! as well as hopefully posting some audio and presentations. Attendee blog posts are just beginning to surface. I'll update this post as they come in…

New! Marketing to Teens: How Generation Y is Advocating Innovative New Marketing Techniques Without Even Knowing It (360 PR)
Gen Y Totally Wired: A Ypulse Digest (Tara Cousineau, PhD)
Ruminations: 2008 YPulse Mashup Boston (Derek Baird)

Meredith will be blogging recaps of various sessions throughout the week, but while it's fresh in my mind, I thought I would reflect a bit on our last panel — the youth panel, which I moderated. It's a bit like blogging, reflecting in reverse chronological order. Our panel was half BU students and half Boston high school students from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. These panels offer a peek into the thoughts, opinions and media habits of young people but can't ever be fully representative of "all teens" or "all college students." Still, it's always fun to hear from young people themselves at these events.

Youth consume local news online, too.
I've seen studies about how young people consume news where local TV news ranks pretty high as a source of information. When I asked the teens about websites they visit other than MySpace or Facebook, a couple of them mentioned Boston.com and The Boston Herald (we also had a couple of big Boston sports fans on the panel as well). Even though this generation is growing up with a more global perspective, they are still living at home, going to local sports events, volunteering at local charities (when asked about getting involved in causes online vs. in person, our panel overwhelmingly chose "in person.") and are very much a part of their community. They want news that impacts them, which is why I think more young people tune in or search for local stories. Sites other than MySpace and Facebook mentioned by our panel as favorites were: Colbert Nation, College Board, New York Times, CNN, MSN, Veoh, Hulu, Twitter, Wired, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Lifehacker and Gizmodo. The college students were much more like "early adopters" in their tastes than the high school students (some big socio-economic differences as well).

There are still "Tech Nots"
With all of our talk about Totally Wired youth, we forget that there are some teens who choose to not participate or unplug. We had one of these high school students on our panel. She barely used the internet for anything outside of school work. She also was one of the teens who spent the most time reading books for pleasure. She's not on MySpace or Facebook and did not text. We also had another high school student who did not own a cell phone. I wasn't sure if that was her preference or for financial reasons. My guess was the latter.

Communication Tools Are About Efficiency
Youth are in developmental phase in their lives where socializing with peers is what's most important. They are also incredibly busy. When I asked the young people on our panel how they stay in touch with each other, what I heard were the usual response (IM, textbook, Facebook and some email, mostly to communicate with adults), but I also heard the repeated need to blast or communicate with "all my friends at once." Phones are still being primarily used for voice and text, though some of these teens text more than talk (200+ text messages a day). That said, two of our college students had iPhones with data plans and one student had a music phone. As PDAs become more widespread among youth and if the price of data plans drops, I think we'll see more young people surfing, gaming and even watching video via phone.

HBO a hit…with youth?
When I asked about TV, I was really surprised by how often HBO was mentioned. There were two shout outs to "Entourage" as a favorite show and one to "True Blood." The only CW show mentioned was "America's Next Top Model." When I asked how they watch TV – some still watched the old fashioned way, but I also heard HBO on demand, YouTube, Colbert Nation, SNL videos (online), and "Lost" on ABC.com.

No pop-ups, email or ads with naked, skinny girls
We all hate pop-ups and so do youth. Netflix, stop the insanity! Our panel also did not like email advertising – goes "right into the trash." They notice when TV ads suddenly get very loud, one panelist definitely noticed the music on CW ads (and would go try to find the artist), and another mentioned "don't talk down to me." They want more racial diversity in ads, appreciate unique artsy ads as well. Update: I forgot to mention one of our panelists said he LOVED Facebook ads….

Health information? Just like our recent survey – Web MD and Google
Only two "health" sites mentioned by our panel….(also mentioned were mom and dad)

Books – it's all about the cover not the Kindle
One panelist said "nothing can replace the physical book" when asked about the Kindle. They want books on their shelves.

Still downloading…
Most of our panel downloads free music or movies from sites like Bit Torrent and Limewire, except for one of the college students who was busted by the RIAA (ouch). The other college students download from home (not school) for that very reason. I was surprised that two of our panelists mentioned Pandora as a music source (my personal fave). And our "Tech-Not" panelist says she does buy Britney Spears music "cuz she needs our support."

Categorized under: 2008 Mashup East

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