The IM Generation in Charge - Part 2
on Always On, June 13, 2006
Taking a look at IMers and brands, big media, and user-generated content.
Online presence and social networking
IMers are increasingly using the Internet and other communication technologies to create social networks and cultivate their relationships. MySpace and Facebook are the two most popular social networks taking advantage of this new market opportunity. They let kids create profile pages, make connections, and post and share multimedia content. Most teens' networks still include substantial numbers of relatives, neighbors, and friends they met at school or at other real-world social events. Yet U.S. teens are now meeting up to 30% of their new friends online, according to Pew—although most of these new acquaintances are friends-of-friends.
One clear positive effect of the social networking phenomenon is simply that kids are communicating more, and they're constantly drawing on their network capital when they need help. While their immediate family communications still take place in-person, most kids keep up with their friends via the Web and other communications devices. Kids engage in the same kind of conversations online as in the real world; passing a note in class has just been replaced by text-messaging several friends at once.
MySpace ended up outflanking all the early social networks—including Kleiner Perkins-backed Friendster (which became dominated by Philippino and Singaporean kids) and Google's Orkut (overrun by Brazilians)—by promoting music and photo-sharing among its members. This underscores our earlier point that the primary characteristic differentiating the IM Generation from the more geeky PC Generation is the IMers' passion for posting and sharing content on the Web.
Remixers, bloggers, and creators of original content
According to the Pew researchers, more than 57% of U.S. teens have created content for the Internet. This includes creating blogs, personal webpages, and sharing original artwork, photos, stories, or videos. Remixing existing online content into new "mashup" creations is also very popular. Content remixing is equally prevalent across genders, ages, and socioeconomic groups. And surprisingly enough, Pew researchers found that teens with dial-up and teens with broadband remix at comparable levels.
Teens also tend to blog and read blogs more than adults. Approximately four million kids between 12 and 17 years old, or 19%, have created their own blog, compared to 9% of 30-somethings. Nearly 40% of IMers report regularly visiting blogs, compared to just 27% of those aged 29 to 40. As a result, the IMers are more in the habit of relying on and trusting non-traditional (that is, non-Big Media, non-Big Entertainment) sources. About 62% of blog-reading teens say they only read blogs written by people they know.
IMers are more conditioned to tap into their network of friends for knowledge, insight, and opinion on products and entertainment and major life decisions. Peer-network influence is now the dominant factor in the lives of these young folks, which makes it challenging to market to this demographic.
Smart brands will create their own open networks, where people can see each other and interact. "Brands that are closed and one-way will lose trust over time," says Steve Rubel, well-known PR blogger and senior vice president of PR agency Edelman.
More brand-conscious than not
According to the Energy BBDO's report GenWorld: The new Generation of Global Teens today's wired teens are resistant to traditional advertising messages, and more likely to be influenced by the people in their online networks.
The report does identify ways to speak to them without alienating them, but advises that marketers' potential strategies should include contacting these teens on their terms, in ways that let them communicate with each other and personalize what they receive. Open communication empowers this group and encourages optimism. This is why Rupert Murdoch's move to target 21-year-olds by building MySpace into a major portal seems viable.
Over time, it's likely that any brand that does not allow IMers to be openly interactive simply won't be trusted. Yet the consensus among marketing professionals is that popular brands are staying extremely relevant. If executed well, fashionable brands like Adidas and iPod can have the same connecting power with teens as a social network.
Interestingly enough, this study confirms a report by Michael Rogol of Hong Kong-based brokerage and investment banking firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets that AlwaysOn published last year. That report surveyed young adults in Japan and China, and noted that despite their penchant for saving, Chinese youth are highly aware of (particularly foreign) brands of automobiles, electronics, and clothing. Ditto for Japanese youth, who represent the most brand-conscious youth culture of all.
Media on the run
Kids not only taught us how to instant-message and how to program our mobile phones (and VCRs), but they're demonstrating that the "mobile PC" is the new client/server model. Of the teens Pew surveyed, 45% have mobile phones. A third of them have text-message access and use their mobile phones to access websites and services. They also use their mobile phones to take and send photos, record and send messages complemented by graphics and video clips, and serve up other multimedia content.
The mobile entertainment light bulb has gone off in the traditional entertainment industry as the result of the new mobile fixation. ABC, NBC, and the cable networks are now actively cutting deals to offer up TV shows for $1.99 a pop via Apple's iTunes, for playback on the new video iPod. Steve Jobs bragged that since he cut the deal with Disney last October and kicked off the new service to sell popular hits like Desperate Housewives and Lost, Apple sold more than eight million videos and TV shows in the service's first three months.
"This is the future as far as we are concerned," said Disney CEO Robert Iger. After years of denying that he was interested in the video distribution business (because it was technically too difficult and consumers weren't interested), Jobs was as effusive as his new partner on launch day: "This is the start of something really big," he predicted.
Marketers are responding by bringing TV-style advertising to the mobile phone and the iPod. Verizon and Sprint recently started testing short video ads on their phones to test consumer tolerance. To date, video advertising on mobile devices has largely consisted of repurposing traditional TV advertising campaigns—but media buyers know they have to move away from the 30-second ad format to be successful with the attention-deprived IM Generation. GM's Hummer division, for example, has come up with 15-second commercials, and a new Bud Light campaign blends into mini-documentaries for video iPods.
A number of the companies on our OnHollywood 100 list are capitalizing on the mobile-content trend. MobiTV, Blue Frog, Digital Chocolate, Ampd Mobile, MForma, and VoiceIndigo are just a few of the startups committed to creating, distributing, or marketing mobile content. Some of their content is user-generated, but a lot of it is professionally created, either specifically for mobile devices, or reformatted from major broadcasters, studios, and game publishers.
read also Part One: Bye-bye standalone PC, hello social networking and mobile content.
Taking a look at IMers and brands, big media, and user-generated content.
Online presence and social networking
IMers are increasingly using the Internet and other communication technologies to create social networks and cultivate their relationships. MySpace and Facebook are the two most popular social networks taking advantage of this new market opportunity. They let kids create profile pages, make connections, and post and share multimedia content. Most teens' networks still include substantial numbers of relatives, neighbors, and friends they met at school or at other real-world social events. Yet U.S. teens are now meeting up to 30% of their new friends online, according to Pew—although most of these new acquaintances are friends-of-friends.
One clear positive effect of the social networking phenomenon is simply that kids are communicating more, and they're constantly drawing on their network capital when they need help. While their immediate family communications still take place in-person, most kids keep up with their friends via the Web and other communications devices. Kids engage in the same kind of conversations online as in the real world; passing a note in class has just been replaced by text-messaging several friends at once.
MySpace ended up outflanking all the early social networks—including Kleiner Perkins-backed Friendster (which became dominated by Philippino and Singaporean kids) and Google's Orkut (overrun by Brazilians)—by promoting music and photo-sharing among its members. This underscores our earlier point that the primary characteristic differentiating the IM Generation from the more geeky PC Generation is the IMers' passion for posting and sharing content on the Web.
Remixers, bloggers, and creators of original content
According to the Pew researchers, more than 57% of U.S. teens have created content for the Internet. This includes creating blogs, personal webpages, and sharing original artwork, photos, stories, or videos. Remixing existing online content into new "mashup" creations is also very popular. Content remixing is equally prevalent across genders, ages, and socioeconomic groups. And surprisingly enough, Pew researchers found that teens with dial-up and teens with broadband remix at comparable levels.
Teens also tend to blog and read blogs more than adults. Approximately four million kids between 12 and 17 years old, or 19%, have created their own blog, compared to 9% of 30-somethings. Nearly 40% of IMers report regularly visiting blogs, compared to just 27% of those aged 29 to 40. As a result, the IMers are more in the habit of relying on and trusting non-traditional (that is, non-Big Media, non-Big Entertainment) sources. About 62% of blog-reading teens say they only read blogs written by people they know.
IMers are more conditioned to tap into their network of friends for knowledge, insight, and opinion on products and entertainment and major life decisions. Peer-network influence is now the dominant factor in the lives of these young folks, which makes it challenging to market to this demographic.
Smart brands will create their own open networks, where people can see each other and interact. "Brands that are closed and one-way will lose trust over time," says Steve Rubel, well-known PR blogger and senior vice president of PR agency Edelman.
More brand-conscious than not
According to the Energy BBDO's report GenWorld: The new Generation of Global Teens today's wired teens are resistant to traditional advertising messages, and more likely to be influenced by the people in their online networks.
The report does identify ways to speak to them without alienating them, but advises that marketers' potential strategies should include contacting these teens on their terms, in ways that let them communicate with each other and personalize what they receive. Open communication empowers this group and encourages optimism. This is why Rupert Murdoch's move to target 21-year-olds by building MySpace into a major portal seems viable.
Over time, it's likely that any brand that does not allow IMers to be openly interactive simply won't be trusted. Yet the consensus among marketing professionals is that popular brands are staying extremely relevant. If executed well, fashionable brands like Adidas and iPod can have the same connecting power with teens as a social network.
Interestingly enough, this study confirms a report by Michael Rogol of Hong Kong-based brokerage and investment banking firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets that AlwaysOn published last year. That report surveyed young adults in Japan and China, and noted that despite their penchant for saving, Chinese youth are highly aware of (particularly foreign) brands of automobiles, electronics, and clothing. Ditto for Japanese youth, who represent the most brand-conscious youth culture of all.
Media on the run
Kids not only taught us how to instant-message and how to program our mobile phones (and VCRs), but they're demonstrating that the "mobile PC" is the new client/server model. Of the teens Pew surveyed, 45% have mobile phones. A third of them have text-message access and use their mobile phones to access websites and services. They also use their mobile phones to take and send photos, record and send messages complemented by graphics and video clips, and serve up other multimedia content.
The mobile entertainment light bulb has gone off in the traditional entertainment industry as the result of the new mobile fixation. ABC, NBC, and the cable networks are now actively cutting deals to offer up TV shows for $1.99 a pop via Apple's iTunes, for playback on the new video iPod. Steve Jobs bragged that since he cut the deal with Disney last October and kicked off the new service to sell popular hits like Desperate Housewives and Lost, Apple sold more than eight million videos and TV shows in the service's first three months.
"This is the future as far as we are concerned," said Disney CEO Robert Iger. After years of denying that he was interested in the video distribution business (because it was technically too difficult and consumers weren't interested), Jobs was as effusive as his new partner on launch day: "This is the start of something really big," he predicted.
Marketers are responding by bringing TV-style advertising to the mobile phone and the iPod. Verizon and Sprint recently started testing short video ads on their phones to test consumer tolerance. To date, video advertising on mobile devices has largely consisted of repurposing traditional TV advertising campaigns—but media buyers know they have to move away from the 30-second ad format to be successful with the attention-deprived IM Generation. GM's Hummer division, for example, has come up with 15-second commercials, and a new Bud Light campaign blends into mini-documentaries for video iPods.
A number of the companies on our OnHollywood 100 list are capitalizing on the mobile-content trend. MobiTV, Blue Frog, Digital Chocolate, Ampd Mobile, MForma, and VoiceIndigo are just a few of the startups committed to creating, distributing, or marketing mobile content. Some of their content is user-generated, but a lot of it is professionally created, either specifically for mobile devices, or reformatted from major broadcasters, studios, and game publishers.
read also Part One: Bye-bye standalone PC, hello social networking and mobile content.
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