Many historically conservative brands which have targeted Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are beginning to refocus their efforts toward Gen Y. This is a curious concept which begs the question, is the older audience disloyal and moving on? Or is it simply that as [#%1#2]Gen Y[/#%1#2] is getting older, brands are realizing what a large opportunity is available? Additionally, aiming at [#%1#3]Gen Y[/#%1#3] widens the gamut of advertising channels. [#%1#4]Gen Y[/#%1#4] can be targeted through avenues which older generations cannot, such as social media.
Southwest Airline, P&G’s Herbal Essences, and politicians are among the many who have refocused their efforts.
Southwest, an airline which has traditionally targeted business travelers through low price and customer service, recently announced they will be sponsoring the Midnight Gaming Championship (MGC) 2008. This sponsorship of the video gaming season is targeted at gamers aged 16 to 25 who will be tomorrow’s business travelers. “The ‘Southwest Airlines Ultimate Gamer’ promotion and MGC sponsorship speak to young adults and gaming enthusiasts–a demographic far removed from the traditional frequent business traveler that Southwest typically targets with low airfares and timely plane departures and arrivals,” states a MediaPost Publications article. 
This “Ultimate Gamer” promotion is a sweepstakes in which two grand-prize winners will each receive two roundtrip tickets on Southwest to Las Vegas, tickets to the Video Game Awards, a Sony PlayStation 3, a Microsoft Xbox and a Nintendo Wii. Southwest is making an obvious long-term attempt to capture this audience early, which may show no short-term payoff.
Herbal Essences, an almost 40 year old brand, was in a “long-term decline” when P&G acquired it in 2001. P&G’s marketing team found that the target audience for Herbal Essences was too broad. A BusinessWeek article states, “By 2006, [Chairman and CEO A.G.] Lafley and P&G’s beauty business chief, Susan Arnold, knew something had to be done with the tired brand. ‘We had three choices,’ Lafley says. ‘Abandon it, divest it, or frankly, reinvent it and resuscitate it.’” They chose the latter. In finding that no competitors were targeting [#%1#5]Gen Y[/#%1#5] specifically nor meeting their specific needs, Herbal Essences decided to prioritize their efforts on this generation. Through not only redesigning packaging with youthful designs and curved bottles which fit together, but also renaming the specific products (different lines renamed “color me happy”, “body envy” and “totally twisted” – as opposed to bland titles for color treated, volumizing, and curl booster), Herbal Essences was able to drive up sales by targeting [#%1#6]Gen Y[/#%1#6].
Barack Obama’s campaign has notoriously been targeting the younger voters. By using social media venues, Obama has been able to reach out to his young supporters in a way that other candidates have not embraced, giving him an advantage in this demographic. Strategically targeting [#%1#7]Gen Y[/#%1#7] through Facebook, where he has over 1 million supporters, and Twitter, where he has over 43,000 followers, gives this audience an insight into his campaign in a way that is more appealing to them. He also posts photos from his campaign trail to Flickr, and has just over 5,500 followers there. Additionally, MTV has now decided to accept political ads, but only from candidates and party committees, not from third parties. In the past, even as recent as primaries earlier this year, MTV had refused political advertising, even throughout its Rock the Vote and Choose or Lose voting promotions. MTV Networks is encouraging the youth vote, which gives the candidates even more access to reach [#%1#8]Gen Y[/#%1#8].
Understanding the marketing opportunities available to reach [#%1#9]Gen Y[/#%1#9] will be an important tactic for brands in the near future. However, it will also be important that these aging brands not abandon nor alienate the earlier generations who may still be loyal consumers.
Boomers had it pretty simple back in their youth. Want to connect with your friends? Write them a letter, give them a call or go and see them.
Gen X-ers had a little more fun. They could’ve emailed each other over 28.8 or used their pagers to send 1-sentence messages back and forth.
Here’s what Generation Y uses to stay in touch.
To an outsider, it can be a confusing to understand how Gen Y uses those channels just to talk to each other. After all, Boomers just had three channels and they made friends just fine.
To put things in context, here’s what my communication habits are like and how I use the above.
Looking at that chart makes me envy my father’s generation. They didn’t have to worry about drunk texts. Or having personal information all over the internet.
Honourable mentions for Blackberry PINs and Twitter.
By Sarita Yardi, PhD Candidate, Georgia Tech University. Sarita was a researcher with the Digital Youth Project while completing her Master’s degree in Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005 and 2006.
As has been well-established throughout the research on digital media and technology, kids move between online and offline worlds with ease. Even kids who have limited access to the Internet, thus lying on the fringe of youth participatory culture, perceive their online environments to have real consequences and meaning for their everyday lives, Throughout my [#%1#2]research[/#%1#2] on the digital [#%0#2]youth[/#%0#2] project, I wanted to understand how we could harness kids understanding and enthusiasm for digital media. As a computer programmer myself, I hoped that encouraging kids to open the black box and explore the environments they participated in might help them become more sophisticated producers and consumers of their everyday media engagements. In 2005- 2006 I carried out a semester-long study of an after-school media literacy program with Sarai Mitnick [1]. We partnered with the YWCA in Berkeley, California, a program designed to empower middle-school aged girls by teaching them to program, design websites and discuss the role of technology in their lives. The program catered primarily to young African-American girls who lived in an economically disenfranchised area of Oakland, California [2].
Highly media savvy, Generation Y may be the generation most conscious of being marketed to. As a result, they constantly scrutinize ads and branding with which they are continuously bombarded. A San Francisco research firm conducted a survey of 100 “trendsetter panelists” in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami to better understand what brand communications Gen Yers receive best. An article by Kevin Ransom, “Reign of the Plain: Survey Finds Gen Ys Prefer Brand Simple”, shares the results of the survey which state the Gen Y trendsetters are drawn to brands which approach them in a “straightforward and stripped-down way, use plain packaging, and avoid excess.” Another article by Sarah Perez entitled “Why Gen Y is Going to Change the Web” says that these digital natives are also more concerned about their friends’ opinions than about ads. She quotes retail analyst James R. Palczynski who said [#%0#2]Gen Y[/#%0#2] responds less to traditional ads and more to “humor, irony, and the unvarnished truth.”
You will notice that the top 15 brands listed from the survey results not only offer clean, simple ideas in their design and packaging, but also in their no-frills attitude which bleeds through to their products. “Reign of the Plain” notes that these highly respected brands offer consumers a convenience which may be related to [#%0#3]Gen Y[/#%0#3]’s responsiveness to environmental concerns. This article concludes saying, “The bottom line … is that any company that is inconvenient or confusing, or that used over-designed imagery, is seen as out of touch and too ‘corporate.’”
The 15 Most Trusted brands determined by the trendsetters in the survey were:
- Apple
- Trader Joe’s
- Jet Blue
- In-N-Out Burger
- Ben & Jerry’s
- Whole Foods
- Adidas
- American Apparel
- Target
- H & M clothing stores
- Levi’s
- Volkswagen
- Converse
- Vitamin Water
- Red Stripe beer
“Brands that succeed in the future will be those that open a dialog with their customers, admit their mistakes, and essentially become more transparent,” says Perez. For the most part, these characteristics are representative of the brands above. These 15 brands not only use stripped-down marketing and plain packaging, but many also use humor or are known for their non-bureaucratic corporate cultures.
Is it possible that the adversity to excess displayed by [#%0#4]Gen Y[/#%0#4] could be related to their shrinking attention spans? It is repeatedly studied and reported that younger generations have shorter attentions spans, allegedly as a result of heightened media bombardment and constant exercise of mental fast-twitch muscles through video games. Or perhaps the desire for straightforward information is simply a sign of [#%0#5]Gen Y[/#%0#5]’s tendency to be information and text scanners, as seen in web reading studies. It could be that this generation is simply adapting to the increasing amount of information immediately available at their fingertips. Bottom line: if you’re targeting [#%0#6]Gen Y[/#%0#6], get straight to the point.
20 Hot Latino Brands
A recent report prepared by The Intelligence Group identified a list of brands that are viewed most favorably by young Latino consumers.
According to the study, Hispanic youth said these brands “do the best job of creating products/services for Latinos like me” (in alphabetical order):
> Baby Phat
> Coke
> Dickies
> Ecko Unlimited
> Foot Locker
> Goya
> J Lo
> Levi’s
> McDonald’s
> Microsoft
> MTV
> Nike
> Pepsi
> Rocawear
> Sony
> Taco Bell
> Target
> T-Mobile
> Univision
> Wal-Mart
>
> (Source: Marketing Y Medios, 04/21/08)
>
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