Youth Marketing is all about something you do with not to youth.” Graham Brown (mobileYouth 2008 Report)

Following my earlier riff about trends in the marketing of Great Youth Brands (last time was Red Bull), I’d like to talk about one of my favourites.

This is the key question – how does a mass market “everything to everybody” brand build relevance with a specific segment – such as Youth?

Consider this challenge facing the largest and most profitable automotive manufacturer in the world – Toyota.

Toyota cannot roll out customized fat pipe blinged rims low riding coupes for the mass market because their core value of reliability is also one of a generic appeal – they will alienate your grandmother and the school teacher.

So this is how Toyota does it – meet Scion – the Toyota sub-brand that no one knows is actually Toyota (unless you study the marque a little harder).

Check the video – this is real ownership and consumer generated content in action, this is consumer ownership of the brand – creating rather than sponsoring events, local Scikotics, magazines etc.

Some of the points I discussed in my presentation to Vodafone about the MobileYouth Report include:

* How to build trust through relevance by drawing down on the insight from how brands such as Toyota (through Scion) have already achieved this. Also how brands can use simple metrics such as net promoter score and customer lifetime value to measure progress.
* How to be a remarkable [#%0#2]youth[/#%0#2] brand (see Jones Soda)
* How to communicate directly with [#%0#3]youth[/#%0#3] through their own channels (eg using Youtube rather than mass media and press releases (in this example we look at EA and the recent Tiger Woods “Jesus Shot” fiasco – which is also very funny).

Presented by Graham Brown author mobileYouth.org