Hitting it home: Pepsi's Refresh campaign

I'm in class right now, time to blog!

Someone just made a comment in class about how Obama's election isn't anything new, it's just the representation of American political sentiment at this moment. I'd seriously care to disagree, and Justin emphasized that 2M people in Washington is hardly evidence of the fact that Obama is no different than other presidents.

This all speaks to a larger cultural movement that's churning and frothing but still largely intangible.

Pepsi has relaunched its brand in an effort to ride this new cultural zeitgeist. It's now a fresher, edgier, more movement-focused brand. And it's coincided with the inauguration!

Here's their old look:

Here's their new look:



Familiar, but different. It's fun.

The centrepiece of the brand relaunch is the Refresh Campaign.

Check out the microsite: RefreshEverything.com. It's a social media site to aggregate the opinions and voices of normal citizens and Eva Longoria (among other celebrities).


It's been created to allow anyone to upload their own user-generated content that expresses their feelings of hope and optimism with the new President.


Even my current fascination, Lady GaGa, has gotten in on the action!



The Refresh campaign doesn't prominently feature any Pepsi products. I like this campaign because it's not about driving sales, it's about driving engagement (again, how does one actually value this?...is it even fair to value engagement by the classical measures of consumer value??)

The microsite is simply meant as an online interactive destination for their offline commercials. It's tied to a YouTube channel with Pepsi's new commercials and other related videos. The microsite doesn't have any search or folksonomy tagging capabilities so it's not too important for site visitors to find exact information on what people are saying, rather, it's meant to act as a speaker's corner for average voices to be heard.

So what's the point?

Two things:

Think of the optics: Pepsi is showing that they are a brand associated with change and youth (again). The TV commercial, courtesy of TBWA Chiat Day, was shown during key primetime spots (I saw it on AC 360 at 10:15pm, January 20) and captured the momentousness of the day. Check out the commercial. It's fresh and friendly.

Think of the non-quantifiable brand development: Tacitly, Pepsi's Refresh campaign is effectively sponsoring the Obama administration! It's piggybacking on a wave of interest in society in individualism, plurality, and self-expression. Pepsi is demonstrating that it understands the strong needs by consumers/voters for these things.

Pepsi is allowing consumers to be heard at a time when the urge to speak up has never been stronger.

To be fair, Coke is launching a big wave of new ads too. Analysts think the Colas Wars are going to begin again!


Great work by Pepsi and their agencies on this one, this is definitely a campaign i'd have loved to be involved in.

Excellent example of getting it done, creating a transparent and highly understanding brand personality, and emphasizing that Pepsi is a brand that unites and empowers people.

Way. To. Go.

Important marketing memes of 2009

And we're back!

Memes are important thought trends in contemporary culture. They are widely distributed, fresh, and organically generated concepts and ideas that emanate and circulate rapidly in a network of plugged-in people. At their worst, memes can propagate racism. At their best, memes can propagate lolcatz like Ceiling Cat!


So I should probably cover up.

Anyway, to start off the new year, it's relevant to think about memes that might matter in marketing in 2009. Let's talk about the concepts, trends, and practices of marketers that will become more commonplace and popular. Let's talk about the ideas that will quickly disseminate through agencies and client teams, mastered by the savvy group of consumers, and eventually expectorated back to the teeming masses of mainstream culture.

In other words, let's talk about what are relevant marketing trends for 2009:

THE 'EXPERIENCE IT' MEME


In the context of the rising tide of greater relevance in advertising, some lucky consumers will find themselves the subject of rare interactions with marketers that go deeper than the banal and shallow ad pitch. Without buying, a privileged few prospects will be invited to try a product, brand, or service. But what they're really trying is an experience.

Remember when you were invited to try Gmail when it was still in beta mode? (Remember how awesome that felt!?)

Testing experience with consumers firsthand is like playing in a sandbox. It's safe, controlled, and a great petri dish to catalyze learnings for experiential improvements. Furthermore, you want to actively segment an select prospects to participate in the experience who you know will then actively go out and spread word of mouth among their networks.

Seeding networks is nothing new, but in 2009 expect to see more seeding based on complete brand experiences rather than simple trial testing or free offers. It's the culmination of consumers' undeniable influence on social diffusion of brands and the demand by consumers for things which they can live, rather than things which they can simply wear, listen to, or eat.

THE COLLABORATION MEME


You know how individual consumers are encouraged to put their stamp of approval on something? They're able to personalize their brands either through participating in the product development and customization process, influence brand direction by vocalizing their needs in web forums and social media, and make the brand their own through non-traditional uses.

Now take the personalization to a broader scale. You and your network personalize your product. You and your friends personalize your brand experience.

Gen Ys are social creatures. We thrive on instant communications within our highly networked worlds (that's why we go mental when the DSL isn't working...). Digitally socializing is an intensive part of our lives and the impact of one's network on the things we associate with is immense.

So why would a marketer allow your network to collaborate with you when developing your personal brand relationship with them? Because it's a direct acknowledgment by the marketer of the things that matter to the consumer: their friends. It's an invitation by the marketer for you to show your network that they are influencers.

Look for this style of meme to pop up with everything from iPod playlists to fashion to media content.

THE INTEGRATED MARKETING MIX MEME



This one is big. Integrated marketing communications refers to the choreography among different ad channels, all targeting the prospects with related messages, calls-to-action, and incentives. It's not merely enough anymore to pair a TV spot with a website. It's insufficient to have a radio play in the same market as targeted magazine drops.

Integrated marketing is a mix of advertising channels that are optimal to distribute the message YET still convey relevance to the end consumer. This is critical. Furthermore, this does not underscore an increase in the overall number of message impressions received by the prospect consumer. Instead, it speaks to two things: 1) a curriculum style that gradually educated prospect consumers about a product/service/brand that they would respond to; 2) a coordinated effort by a marketer to demonstrate relevance to consumers across multiple platforms.

What is still unexplained is whether marketers will contract out their entire marcom budget to a single agency that is capable of doing all things (integrated), or whether marketers will act as directors and fragment their marcom budget out to a variety of specialized agencies.

It's hard for me to call this one a meme because I believe this is a sea change in marketing towards relevance-based integrated campaign development. Perhaps it's meme-like insofar that there will be rapid awareness in 2009 and some traditional marketers will make nascet inroads to developing a more balanced communications strategy.

BTW, when I was thinking about an element to include for the word 'choreography', the Indian version of 'Thriller immediately came to mind...!

The cast of Twilight explains MuchMusic

So I’m watching Live @ Much right now and Sarah is interviewing the cast of this upcoming movie Twilight. Now, I haven’t read the books so I can’t authoritatively comment on the plot – can a commenter fill in here with plot please, Robyn or Kevin maybe? – but it seems to be about a girl in some rainy NorPac town who falls in with a crowd of sultry vampires. The movie is cast with models, not actors. Seriously. This is exactly the same route that Ashton Kutcher took, and last night I watched him on Real Time with Bill Maher – what an Amtrak performance.


But this crowd outside the ChumCity building at Queen and John is going absolutely insane. Like just total hysteria. Sarah is interviewing four cast members: three waif model-looking girls with gorgeous locks, and this foppish good-looking British guy who obviously is the object of everyone’s adoration and mania. He has his head in his hands most of the time and it makes me think he’s either jet-lagged or looking to score more coke. His name apparently is Robert Pattinson.

Sarah is now asking them “how are the vampires in this movie different from the vampires in other movies?”

They reply, “our vampires aren’t just villains, you get to see how they live, you know, they’re like, real people” – wow, deep.


Ok but really what is this saying about MuchMusic? It’s a scene that we’ve seen a million times before at MuchMusic: screaming fans and unsubstantive questions from vapid veejays.

But teens don’t like this, do they? Ok they do, but the ones watching at home are saying to themselves, “yeah, I love MM and I love the movie Twilight, but I’d sure as hell never be one of those losers screaming downtown in the rain.” The teens watching at home are still as engrossed with the content of MM but somehow can relate to the medium in a more marketable way. MuchMusic has crafted themselves as a youth culture powerhouse, a federal reserve for the distribution of what is meaningful and current.


See, MuchMusic creates a reality-based stage for the lowest common denominator. Teens love the lowest common denominator. It’s a way to feel intellectually superior to the depravity going on live on location but still get your fix of brands, celebrities, mundane issues, and relatable content.


I really don’t like the content on MuchMusic, but I adore the marketing. It’s just so blatant and pervasive. Even during commercials they’re now having trivia and showing a tiny square of live video feed. It makes you sit and watch. Brilliant.


MuchMusic markets to teens through creating a connection point with them. Note that I’m not saying they’ve created a ‘channel’, a ‘brand’, or a ‘programming schedule’. MuchMusic is a connection point with teens because it’s integrative across a variety of different media channels (tv, sms, video, web, etc) and has a high degree of interactivity with its viewers. The identity is founded upon strong young-culture acknowledgement (not debasement) and a recognition that commercialism is almost a partnership between the viewer and the channel.


Do the viewers know this? I’d argue that yes, they know they’re being sold with commercials targeted to them and content styled and translated to resonate. But they really don’t care about that. It’s being sold on a lifestyle and an identity that they affiliate with and like anyway.

So I actually now want to go see Twilight. Apparently so do all of you!

I vote for Jessica Alba

I’m torn when I reflect on the drive to encourage Gen Ys to vote and contribute to the democratic process. Don’t get me wrong, I really like democracy, I like what it stands for and I like the egalitarian ideals that are the foundation of the US constitution….it’s just the seedy and irrelevant way it’s being packaged to youth.

Take DeclareYourself.com, a “nonprofit campaign to empower and encourage every eligible 18-year-old in America to register and vote in the presidential primaries and 2008 presidential election.” As much as I’d like to try to be controversial and brand this as campaign as frothy, feel-good clusterf*ck of Gomorrahian proportions, I really respect the integrated marcom aspect of the whole project. DeclareYourself has strategic partnerships with key media, retail, and tech companies and the campaign is ubiquitous in online Gen Y social spaces. Check out some of the partners:

• Cricket Wireless
• Yahoo
• MySpace
• ComedyCentral
• ClearChannel
• Starbucks
• American Eagle
• Van’s Warped Tour
• Seventeen Magazine
• The WB Network
• Google

DeclareYourself.com is also a terrific website. The FAQs are really clear and answer any stupid questions that newly-legal Gen Y might have about voting, such as “who are the main political parties” – yes, it says this! The site is well-designed and encourages a lot of user interaction and dialogue in the form of forums, social network affiliations, blogs, and a bunch of videos.

Ok, but here’s where it goes off the rails for me…it’s overdosing on celebrity endorsements and the frame of reference is moving out of focus. Voting is about people. The site is about young people voting. It’s about you and me and exerting our democratic freedom to elect political officials. It might be about the issues, it might be about the candidates. Either way, DeclareYourself.com wants you to vote.

So why is there so much interest and vocalization of the whole platform by celebrities? It’s sickening to see the commercialization and packaging the presidential election as if Nov 4th doesn’t correspond to the general election, but rather to a movie opening. It’s not fair that the main character in the movie isn’t the newly-minted 18 year old who can vote for the first time in their life, but Jessica Alba.


It’s a movie and all the stars are invited to the premiere!



And the movie certainly has great commercials:





In fact, nearly all the video clips sponsored by DeclareYourself feature celebrities.

Really, it doesn’t matter what celebs say and frankly a lot of Gen Y – especially the ones smart enough to actually vote! – would tell you that they’re 0% influenced by what celebs do, say, or advocate.

Jessica Alba has nothing to do with me voting, so why is she the star of the movie?

And DeclareYourself isn’t along in superficial endorsements. Here’s Adrian Grenier showing his chops for RockTheVote.



Doesn’t that seem a little self-indulgent?

Contemporary marketing is about measurability and effectiveness. Fortunately for DeclareYourself, these celebs have likely offered their endorsements for free since they have nothing else to do all day. They’re working pro bono to assure themselves that they’re performing a valuable service to society and are atoning for generally being brainless pillheads. But how is anyone sure whether their endorsements and appearances at events and in videos are serving any purpose?

Again, the democratic process is beautiful. It’s a wonderful thing that DeclareYourself is so committed to getting a new generation familiar with their rights and proud of the electoral system the US has in place. It’s marketing platforms are strong through the use of integrated media and online channel promotion direct to Gen Y. I’m just skeptical about how tarnished the message can become when it’s no longer about young people, it’s about Jessica Alba.

Meme is the word: social marketing for Gen Y trends

Inspired by Sunday night’s Family Guy episode – after which everyone started proclaiming that ‘bird is the word’ on their Facebook status updates – this post is about modern marketing memes.



Memes are “ideas or behaviors that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.” (Wikipedia)

Right now I’m sitting in class and thinking about all the behaviors that we’ve individually learned from each other. It’s a weird dynamic here at Schulich because with so many diverse backgrounds and experiences, it’s hard to not take best practices, ideas, or perspectives from others and co-opt them as your own.

We’ve all seen examples of a meme in our classes. Look at the one student in the class who seems to know what they’re doing when it comes to writing a case or an assignment. Doesn’t everyone go to that person and ask them questions about how they completed it so that you can mirror their work? In this vein it’s social Darwinism at work: rapid social adoption of the ‘best herd practice’, or at least the practice seen to be most popular by the other members of the herd.

So memes are odd – it’s not always the best practice, not always the most popular idea. Instead, it’s an idea that has catalytic value and is able to be communicated and adopted easily by others. Consider these modern marketing memes:

• "Oh my god, my business needs a website because everyone else has one!"
• "It’s about relevance, not volume"
• "Brands are dying, consumers are only loyal to themselves now"

As a card-carrying Gen Y, I love memes. Why? Cause like most Gen Ys, I’m social but independent, extroverted and networked yet individualistic, and brought up by parents who encouraged free and creative thinking. Sharing and contributing to social discourse is therefore only part of the game. Consider these Gen Y memes:

• Talking politics when you enter college– especially if you go to an arts school, not a business school!
• Wholesome pop (the packaged reaction to the late 90s trollop pop), including the Jonas Brothers, High School Musical, Tokio Hotel, Hannah Montana
• No-barriers sharing. One’s whole life, friends, pictures, secrets, ideas, and interests are on your Facebook page
• Lolcatz, pwns, fails, YTMND

I don’t pretend to be a social anthropologist or expert semioticist, but I can analyze content and culture. It pays to keep your ear to the ground and understand memes for their power to influence people and, in turn, be shaped by people. Memes are particularly germane to contemporary marketing because of their importance in the lives of Gen Y consumers. Creating value with young consumers is a two-way street and necessitates an honest and fun approach to relationship building.

In theory, memes could act as jetpacks for brands or people to attach themselves to to quickly reach key influencers and adopters. Ok good, but how about being a meme yourself? Why mimic when you can lead?

Marketing to youth: Part 5: UNIQUENESS

It goes without saying that effective marketing to youth is both unique and impactful. In fact, youth are perhaps the audience who demands uniqueness the most in their advertising because of the competing sources for their attention, their dynamic multiuse of media, and their relative low tolerance for pithy, info-focused messages. Hit them hard and hit them fast. As my co-blogger and fellow B!G Executive, Olga, wrote in her previous post, if you can also make them laugh, then awesome!

As I’ve introduced in previous posts in this series on marketing to youth, uniqueness is rooted in Gen Y’s strong sense of individuality. Bland or generic brands simply have no place in the spectrum of bold designs and transparent, authentic company values. This was the problem, among others, faced by The Gap at the end of the 90s when customers began to fall out of favour with the unoffensive blue and white style that the store was so well known for. Gap became dull and quickly lost touch with changing consumer trends. There was nothing to make its brand voice unique and identifiable among the din raised by all other casual apparel retailers.

In comparison to the other youth marketing best practices which we’ve analyzed here – transparency, participation, and relevance – uniqueness stands out as being perhaps the most uncontrollable and challenging to master. How do you inform a brand manager how to come up with a witty zinger subject line in the email? How do you suggest a standout call to action in an experiential marketing campaign when it has never been attempted by the brand before and there’s no basis for determining whether it will prove to be a success.

Uniqueness is a gamble.

It’s a risk that brands must take to show that they can be unconventional and hip, while also retaining the legacy aspects of the brands values that appeal to the demographic. Condom manufacturers (from Europe) have always seemed to excel at this:



A real standout though - and I seriously wish I could find an embeddable clip to show - is FearU.ca, a microsite created specifically for a HP laptop contest. MacLaren Momentum, a Canadian promo agency created it and integrated the online campaign with some pretty scary tv spots that are currently running on Much and MTV Canada. Great ads that immediately capture one’s attention and pique interest. Why? Because they’re unique and unlike other sales ads for electronics and back to school shopping.

Although not specifically targeted to youth, another famous commercial from HP stands out and perfectly conveys the simplicity of the ‘click and print’ message:



Also clever is this from Guinness, too bad it didn’t show here:



But uniqueness from the Gen Y perspective implies originality as much as any twist, pun, and memorable tagline. Sure, your spot is quirky or obscene…but has it been done before and been overplayed too much? Marketers’ zeal to have a commercial or campaign out the door with a zippy message can sometimes do more harm than good if that message has been diluted and worn out in the consumer’s mind. Enough already with the Telus animals and the Rogers Wireless teenagers on summer vacation. Go home, Abercrombie, with your intimidating abdominals and idealized WASPy lifestyle. No one lives like that!




…I wish my high school experience was like that…so full of beauty and boredom. Suddenly I feel like I’m not wearing enough pointless dogtag chains. And stop trying to pay homage to the semi-nude B&W style of photography of Herb Ritts:


Being derivative and unoriginal can only get a brand so far with a young audience. Gen Ys crave creativity and novelty. New content, media, or ideas all resonate with the ring of a tuning fork to young consumers’ ears. Repetitive messages and different plays of the same game really are unsustainable brand strategies that do nothing to push the brand forward in new directions and build itself a new avid base of customers.

Being unique is a great quality. You stand apart and can assuredly state that your values and message is your own. For marketers that’s a golden ideal in brand building and it’s a moral that youth consumers live by.

So there it is, the best practices for youth marketing. It has to be transparent, participative, relevant, and unique. Hit all these, with a little bit of luck, and some magic pixie dust, and you'll have an effective campaign that stands out and still builds the brand.

Marketing to youth: Part 4: RELEVANCE

Relevance is the name of the game today in our five part series of youth marketing best practices.

You know those songs we have in our iPods that are really embarrassing and we don’t really share with anyone? Well, mine came on shuffle today, Hilary Duff’s “Wake Up”…so as I laughed and strutted my way home I reflected about Hilary Duff.

Where has she gone? What has she even done lately? It really does seem like she vanished off the face of the planet. The somewhat ephemeral nature of popstars is not particularly new or earth-shattering, but it is a useful context for tonight’s topic. Teens cultivate a remarkable bond with bands, celebrities, clothing styles, and friends, and then just as easily drop them from their folio of favourites. Record companies have encouraged and played to this fickleness and churn and prepare their next star far in advance of their fifteen minutes.

How does one explain this churn in youth consumer attitudes? It’s because new things become relevant in their lives. Like the Kirk and Spock performing a slingshot maneuver around the sun in a Klingon Bird of Prey in an attempt to go back in time in Star Trek IV, the Voyage Home (see minute 1:40…!), youth frequently can have a very strong attraction and repulsion from consumer brands. This is natural and all based on relevance.



When Gen Ys like something, it is strongly based on how relevant it is to their lives and its fit within the context of their other interests. Relevance implies a meaningfulness to me and an compatibility of my own values with those of the thing. For example:

• Obama is relevant to me because we share the same opinion of certain issues
• Triscuit crackers are relevant to me because they’re not made with trans fat and I am careful about what I eat
• Applying for graduate school bursaries is relevant to me because I am desperate for cash during a time when I have no income!

In marketing, relevance is therefore highly intertwined with the explicit (spoken) and implicit (assumed) values of the brand. To appeal to youth, these must be easily communicated and the relevance to them made singularly clear.

Experiential marketing is actually a useful technique in which to analyze relevance as a factor for marketing to youth. Consumer experiences are rich, holistic brand moments in which the individual plays the lead role. This form of marketing is effective to convey relevance because it hits the consumer at a moment they have actively opted-in to. A simple example: you try a potato chip sample in the grocery store because you want to. You’re likelihood to actually buy those chips is now much higher because of your active role in the environment of the grocery store. Compare your likelihood to buy the chips if you sampled them in-store versus on the street outside of a subway entrance – a situation that is irrelevant to the act of eating junk food.

Last year’s Virgin Festival provides some useful examples of experiential marketing being widely utilized as a way to drive home relevance of the brand to the target market. The psychological equation goes: ‘I am attending the Virgin Festival, General Motors is also attending the Virgin Festival, therefore GM is relevant to me and the context I’m in’. The same logic applies to why brands will sponsor bands or tv shows. It associates your interest for that band or show to the brand itself.

Here’s Virgin Mobile:



And xBox:



And Energizer:



…wow, look at that line. I actually played this last year at the Festival and won a beach ball!

But relevance must mean more than just making sure that the brand message hits the right themes and notes with the audience. It must also mean more than being present in situations where the consumer has a higher perceptual tuning to the message you’re selling (the grocery store, the Virgin Festival…). The biggest opportunity for relevance to be increased in youth marketing comes from leveraging the power of CRM programs. Building these out to a level of sophistication that captures varied forms of activity and interaction that youth may have with a brand is absolutely essential. Consider the profile of a the following young man who loves Axe bodyspray (otherwise known as glorified Glade air freshener for armpits):

• Purchases two cans on sale at Shoppers and swipes his Optimum card at the register
• Goes online to enter promotional codes from the cans he just bought on a special Axe microsite
• Watches a clip on the microsite and send it to his friends through a form on the microsite
• Enters a contest through his phone and participates in a viral MMS campaign for Axe
  

So this guy’s obviously avid, but consider the tremendous marketing potential of all the data that was collected. The frequency, the overall spend, the logins and online referrals, the multiple touchpoints now captured for this one guy…not to mention the shopping cart data collected and owned by SDM through his swipe of the Optimum card. (SDM can sell direct mailing and merchandising opportunities to Axe based on the collection of this in-store individual consumer data)

As discussed yesterday in relation to participation, CRM programs has the ability to integrate complex patterns of consumer activity and match this to existing demographic fields. The psychological profiling is limitless.

Very scary, yes, but the good news? With all the data we give up daily into the consumer world, we’re making it easier for marketers to hit us with messages that are relevant and meaningful. Marketing is no longer mass. As Tony Chapman states, it has moved ‘from mass to mind’, underscoring the greater emphasis on personalized marketing specific to each consumer.

Relevance must be a strong part of any campaign for youth. Relevant marketing campaigns stay in the consumer’s hands and mind longer than generic ads and are great methods of deepening a preexisting relationship. Although youth are highly skeptical and dismissive of marketing which can be too cloying and sycophantic for their personal information, they do respond to marketing that recognizes their unique individuality.

Tomorrow we will examine the fifth and final youth marketing best practice, uniqueness.

Marketing to youth: Part 3: PARTICIPATION

Today we’re going to analyze Participation, Part Three of our series on Marketing to Youth.

I am lazy. I love being lazy. That’s part of the reason why this blog post is a few hours delayed tonight! Youth are lazy about a lot of things. Don’t misconstrue it as apathy, just consider it to be the antithesis of other very intense relationships that youth have for things that interest them. So if I’m not actively engaged in something that excites me, stimulates me, or challenges me, it’s easy to see why I might be dragging my feet.

For marketers, activating youth on things that interest them really does depend on giving them opportunities for participation. It’s not good enough anymore to focus on the traditional facets of CRM-based marketing: name, address, age, and gender. Youth are complex individuals and binary variables in some database do not accurately reflect the mosaic of their interests, attributes, and consumer actions.

Don’t ever think that “relationship-marketing” should continue to mean culling consumer mailing segments from a master list and sending each person direct mail with their correct name and address. This is far too simple to be the norm for an actively consuming demographic which feels comfortable opening up to marketers. Encouraging a dual communication strategy in relationship-marketing – based on actively listening and responding to individual consumer voices – is essential to intensify relationships and retain consumers.

And youth will love it.

Seriously. When has a Gen Y not shown an ability to speak their mind? To create something individual? To put their stamp of approval on something? Remember, this is a generation raised by parents that pushed excellence and socialization on kids at a very early age. Giving feedback comes naturally to us.

So let’s call this the “Participation Motivation”. It’s a need to be heard and to be responded to. To be liked and to be given the right rewards. It’s also the cause of a really strong affinity for deep personal interests. For example, I write this blog because I have a strong personal interest in building my brand. We previously discussed Lovemarks and the same guiding principles apply: Gen Y is hardly apathetic about things that interest them and will wax lyrical on brands, issues, people, media, or things that are meaningful to them. Often this is satisfied by forms of creative expression.

And here’s where marketers come in. The good campaigns realize how the concept of ‘participation’ has evolved from providing census-style information to providing first-person insight into their relationship with a brand. It’s like a mass form of focus group research. I really admire the brands which have been able to activate consumers to create ads and commercials for them. It’s terrific word-of-mouth marketing and gets people to reflect on why they are close to a brand. I like to think that this brand reflection mirrors Maslow’s self-actualization stage in the hierarchy of needs!

Who encourages participation: Nike, Obama, Radiohead (first they release the In Rainbows album for free online, then they have a contest for who can create the best music video for each of the songs. Watch the terrific user-gen video for ‘Reckoner’. Great strategy.)



Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

And remember this Super Bowl ad for Tide-to-Go? A consumer created it.



Nick Haley, an Apple fan, created a video commercial for the release of the iPod Touch, it achieved traction on YouTube, and the Apple team actually brought him in and produced his commercial. Impressive!




Who does not encourage participation: Rogers Wireless (how exactly can I develop my relationship with them on a more cerebral level…?), many apparel retailers actually (there’s limited brand development beyond perceptional massaging through mass ads and in-store experience. Room for much more experiential marketing that involves consumer participation)

Youth really do love the brands that are meaningful to them. They’ll engage with those brands in unique and varied ways, for example, adding “Ford Mustang” as a friend on one’s Facebook page….not to suggest anything…

Participation is critical and must be present in every touchpoint with youth consumers. It doesn’t matter whether they love you or hate you – it’s important to get feedback from this vocal and quick-thinking group.

Tomorrow we will examine relevance, my favourite of the four key aspects of marketing to youth.

Marketing to youth: Part 2: TRANSPARENCY

We’re at Day Two of the Analysis of Youth Marketing. Today we’ll examine transparency, a critical factor of effective marketing to youth.

Youth value authenticity and reality. These qualities permeate their online and offline lives where ‘defining oneself’ is as much an act of self-expression as a pastime and filler of spare time. Customizable iPod skins, modular and unique Facebook pages, and rich media applications that allow users to generate their own content are embedded in the social lives of youth. These examples – emphasizing the personalization of youths’ consumer lives – aren’t exactly shocking when you consider how Gen Y was raised. Highly involved baby boomer parents have cultivated our individualism and forged a sense of self in Gen Ys that could cut through concrete.

The relevance for marketers is that this personalization is never unauthentic. Gen Ys are encouraged to be themselves and put their stamp of individual approval on every aspect of their lives. So for a brand to masquerade as something it’s not or to primp and posture itself as ‘hot shit’ to an audience that has not yet validated that assertion can mean brand seppuku.

To be less wordy, this means that brands that are not transparent about themselves do not succeed in a youth market. Why? It’s the same reason why we hate posers. They’re just lame.

Here are a few signs that you marketing reeks of lame-i-tude and is not transparent enough:

• Excessive use of teenage slang and speech patterns
• Portrayal of teenagers by 25-30 year old commercial actors
• Pompous style that suggests that your brand is cool and is somehow an authority on what youth like

But it’s not just trying too hard that can get a brand in trouble.

For a marketer to be transparent with youth consumers requires full disclosure about the purpose of the communication, the intended action to be taken by consumers as a result of the marketing, and the future relationship that the marketer would like to develop with them. There’s no way that this can all be communicated in one unique touch with a consumer, but if the style does not suggest that everything is on the table, then the youth consumer has no interest in even including the brand in their lives.

Remember, youth receive thousands of competing messages a day. Why should we listen to you in particular? The hook is as much excitement and buzz as it is the ability to portray yourself as a real brand with values that we can identify with.

So let’s analyze:

Who is transparent: Coke, Nike, Converse, Marilyn Manson (actually yes…when has he not



…btw, I’m a huge Manson fan. Watch one of the most offensive moments on television here.

Who is not transparent: NKOTB, High School Musical (despite its massive popularity), Dove (Unilever also makes Axe…think about the contrasting brand values), Rogers Wireless



…boo. Too much product placement, too distant from reality, too offensive to youth sensibilities. I do not identify with these actors. My friends do not identify with these actors. Missed. The. Mark.

Instead, let’s see a great example of an on-message commercial that has zero pretenses and speaks to the needs of young buyers:



(Or maybe I just like the beat…)

To marketers, the value of being transparent is that they can devote less time to embellishing false claims and more time to doing what the brand does best. Less energy is wasted thinking about how to tart up the brand to appeal to youth consumers and more energy is spent thinking about how to effectively develop meaningful relationships with the right consumers.

Youth are fickle and will as quickly drop you from their consuming lives as you were added to them. Marketers must expect and be prepared for this. You can be delightfully surprised when your brand actually achieves a modicum of traction and staying-power among this highly mobile and dynamic demographic. Transparency – underscoring the honest and authentic description of a brand in marketing communications – is essential to for any youth audience.

Tomorrow we’ll analyze participation, the second critical variable in marketing to youth.

been on message or uncompromising in what he says?)

Marketing to youth: Part 1: INTRODUCTION

I really don’t mean to frequently piss and moan about how marketers just ‘don’t get it’ when trying to connect and build relationships with Gen Y, but it’s a topic I feel really deserves more analysis.

With very rare exception, young consumers will affirm that they are not affected by marketing – that somehow they are able to discern truth from fiction, pitch from pulp, and weed out messages that are irrelevant and uninteresting to them. I’m not disputing that youth are adept colanders of information. Our generation has a remarkable capacity to handle multimedia simultaneously and segment our attention among multiple competing sources. Consider how easily we browse the internet, talk on the phone, on MSN, use Facebook, and watch streaming video at the same time. Marketers have difficulty among this cacophony so the typical response is to scream louder at youth consumers, thus adding to the noise and the overall muting of each marketer’s message.

Hear that humming noise? I know the under-25 readers of this blog hear it. Yeah…it’s the sound of a thousand different marketing messages competing for your attention. No wonder Gen Y considers themselves savvy and selective when it comes to consuming. They are able to pick and choose among an immense spectrum of brands competing for their attention and money. Who’s the boss? You.

So when analyzed in this sense, it’s no wonder that youth consumers think highly of themselves when it comes to knowing what to buy and the perceived insignificant impact that marketing has on them. They are (and always were) the authority on what was bought and what was not.

Now, let’s stop thinking that we’re immune to marketing. Obviously you make one decision over another and one brand out of the 100 competing for your attention ultimately gets it. What has made you select that one company? Is it your friends? Youth consumers are information seekers as much as they are willing participants in a culture of conformity and popularity. They’ll be high frugal and choosy about where to spend dollars, comparing features and specs for many types of products, but they are also highly influenced by friends, perception, and traditional marketing techniques that rely on primacy, recency, and spontaneity.

And what about things we allow into our lives but that we don’t purchase. Those who say marketing is only meant to make us purchase things that we don’t want/need are missing a whole other perspective. What about all the marketing that goes into intangibles: who we vote for, what social causes we get behind, what environmental issues we choose to devote attention to, what neighbourhood in a city we choose to live in, what free online applications we choose to use, what songs we download and don’t pay for, what tv shows we stream, what slang we choose to adopt, what celebrities we identify with, what courses we choose to take in school (yes…industrial and professional associations make big investments into educating and funding school programs so that their profession has a future harvest of labour). How can youth now honestly make the assertion that they are unaffected by marketing?

With that aside, I propose to help articulate some ground rules for defining modern youth marketing. Over the next four days I’ll be writing about four important concepts that are essential for marketers to realistically engage youth consumers:

Tuesday: TRANSPARENCY
Wednesday: PARTICIPATION
Thursday: RELEVANCE
Friday: UNIQUENESS

We’ll look at examples of marketers who have done things right and those who might need a little work.

It’s funny when people say that they are immune to marketing. Maybe they’re immune to screaming advertising, but not marketing. As an eternal optimist, I’d like to believe that a better understanding of how marketing affects Gen Y will ultimately precipitate fewer irrelevant ad blitzes by out-of-touch companies looking to increase market share, but greater tactical executions which companies use to deepen and nurture relationships with their best customers.

Although they’d never admit it, Gen Y customers reflect positively on marketing that is relevant and meaningful to them personally.

Back to school marketing: High School Conformity: the Musical!!!

The back to school retail crush is the second largest moneymaker for retail stores after Christmas. It’s when teen and kids apparel manufacturers roll out the latest styles and new clothes are bought for the next school year.

From a marketing perspective, back to school advertising fascinates me because of not only the sleazy shillery used to position the retail brand as the ‘arbiter of cool’ but also because the message must appeal to both kids and their parents.

The extent of my back to school shopping will be confined to gasoline and overpriced textbooks. For this, I’m thankful because I don’t have to endure the mania and feelings of inadequacy commonly experienced by kids half my age going back to school or entering high school for the first time. I remember the trepidation and anxiety of that first day. It was like a heady brew of excitement, untested confidence, and seriously laughable preppy thug bravado.

Kids going to school have enough to worry about, so why does it seem that retail marketers are now making them worry about whether they have the right clothes? I’m also sensing that the implicit message of these ads – conformity creates credibility – has become distastefully more palatable in recent years. It’s a common truism that having cool back to school clothes is important, but the difference with these ads is that you must now have the right back to school clothes. Like the retail big-box contagion spreading commercial infection across the suburban landscape, youth personal style and individualism is being nullified in favour of The Standard.

Who is The Standard? They’re the star of the back to school ad. They’re Nietzsche’s Ubermench, only in high school. The Standard is guided as much by rationality and reason as the desire to confirm. They’re identifiable by prominent logos and popstars brandished on neutral and unoffensively coloured clothing. They take a leading but never standout role. This is the person (notice that I didn’t say individual…) who all students strive to be.

How is The Standard advertised? Pay close attention in back to school ads for any of the following portrayals of The Standard:

• 25-year olds playing high school freshman performing highly acrobatic choreography in school hallways
• Token black hip-hop dancers shown immediately adjacent to The Standard (notice that The Standard is invariably white)
• Lip syncing lame lyrics, for example “I’m going back to school, and it’s so cool”
• And finally, The Standard is always shown as fitting in among the other Standards. This is critical.

So with that short preface, let’s evaluate some of the worst offenders in back to school marketing:


SEARS: Don’t just go back, Arrive



This spot amazes me. So Vanessa Hudgens, The Standard of High School Musical has been paid to lip sync and pulsate to an over-synthesized song about going back to school. If you can’t stomach the commercial enough to watch (and I can’t say I blame you), her dilemma is that she can’t decide whether to be The Preppy, The Rocker, or The Glam on her first day back. In the final act of the commercial, these three styles merge together to create some trashy-looking excuse for an outfit.

The tagline, "Don’t just go back, arrive" is intriguing and memorable. It’s stance is almost threatening and bullish to teenagers who are asked to rise to the challenge and go back to school as an indomitable fashion force.

Effective? I’m not sure… How easily will kids remember that this message is associated to Sears? Overall, this ad really doesn’t offend me because the message still resonates with the attitude that it’s ok to have a personal style. They’re also not hocking actual articles of clothing, more like an assemblage of awkward, juxtaposed pieces.

Listen closely to the lyrics though. My biggest criticism of this ad is the lyric “Be smart, look sharp, if you’re gonna survive”…um, what???


JC PENNEY: Get the look – The Breakfast Club



At first blush, this is a pretty lame excuse for a commercial. The director has reproduced and dehydrated the original John Hughes movie down to a highly clip-focused one minute homage. They even cast kids to look like Ali Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall. The cover version of Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t you forget about me’ kinda blows, but alright…that’s what kids listen to today.

With the exception of the campaign tagline “Get the look” which whiffs of conformity, there’s nothing really offensive about this ad. But it’s stupid right? I mean, the people for whom The Breakfast Club was a relevant movie are now in their late 30s and early 40s. Why would they care about back to school shopping..............?

Wait, so you mean this ad is really targeted at the parents and not the kids? Smart.


TARGET: The Jonas Brothers



I’m really sorry for posting this, but we’re a youth marketing agency and the Jonas Brothers are a highly influential brand to our target demographic. Nothing offensive here, other than perhaps the Jonas Brothers themselves. It’s your standard celebrity endorsement ad, not a whole lot of conformity, other than perhaps subtle message to shop at Target because that’s where the Jonas Brothers were advertised.

Effective? Maybe for teenage girls. It depends on how well they can convince their moms that celebrity endorsements are more powerful than cost-savings, so therefore they should choose to shop at Target.


WAL-MART

A bunch of ads here, all of which are uncompromising in their sleazy salesmanship and unabashed lack of morals.

#1: The Kiss



What an appeal to terrified moms fretful over how their children will be accepted and well-prepared for school. Wal-Mart’s value proposition is, of course, its cost-savings over competitors. This message is prominently made clear in the voiceover at the end. I also think that the actress playing the mom needs to lay off the Dramamine. She sounds like she’s lucid dreaming when uttering the line “that’s why I go to Wal-Mart”….no, that’s why you’re hypnotized into going to Wal-Mart!

#2: Hannah Montana



Wow…why is that 12 year old little girl dressing like she’s 23?

This is only a half-spot, 15-second commercial so it packs a small punch. The difference between this and a longer spot is that the focus is on the articles of clothing rather than the overall style (this would have required a story arc). And do kids entering school need to ‘bring it on’? Bring what on?

#3: “I can’t go with her…”



“I like your top” – there, 10 seconds in and the audience has already been informed that the reason why this new girl is allowed to sit at the lunch table with the other girls is because they think her style fits in with theirs.

And that’s really what back to school advertising is all about. Yes, I’ve left the worst commercial to the end because I think Wal-Mart really made no qualms about the message it wanted to convey in this spot. How about the line “she needs to feel good about herself without breaking my budget”? This assertion only reinforces the insecurity of many young girls to feel included and popular by having the right clothes. Obviously ‘feeling good’ comes from only having the right clothes for back to school, and not from a more intrinsic, self-derived confidence with oneself.

Wow Wal-Mart, what a stinker.

But the question that I just want answered is why is this older woman talking to herself in the middle of a busy high school hallway….?

Unsexy celebrity causes

Celebrity causes are simultaneously fascinating and divisive. The ‘sexy’ causes: international adoption, youth political participation, animal rights, global warming, and marijuana have been taken up by such sizzling international megastars as Angelina Jolie, Puff Daddy, Pamela Anderson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Steve O, respectively.

But what about the B-level social issues – the important domestic and global causes that are perhaps a little under-exposed? Second-tier issues like sex addiction or hypermiling should be raised to the same level in our collective consciousness as clean water availability in the developing world and polar ice cap melting.

But who should speak for these causes? Who should be the unabashed cheerleaders to expose these issues and get them spoken about in the greater public?

Here are the top unsexy celebrity causes:

CRIMINAL REHABILITATION

This is a critical issue, especially in the United States where prison populations are expected to balloon up by 13% from 2007 to 2011 to 1.7M. There must obviously be a preventative focus through greater community development and social welfare programs to stabilize volatile individuals and neighbourhoods, but there must also be a strong awareness of the need to prevent crimes by repeat offenders.

Appropriate spokesperson: Robert Downey Jr. Credible, yes, but too repentant.

Sizzling megastar spokesperson: Shia LaBeouf. Charges for reckless endangerment and driving under the influence aside, Shia LaBoeuf is the right spokesperson to connect with young people on criminal rehabilitation, an issue that they’ve perhaps not fully considered.


And as a bonus, he’s a great authority on what can result from what excessive binge drinking – snogging with Megan Fox in a blockbuster movie!


LOCAL FOOD

Eating locally is important not only to support local growers and businesses, but to decrease the food mileage of what we consume. Eating in-season and buying from farmer’s markets are two examples of how consumers can reduce their overall carbon footprint from what they eat.

Appropriate spokesperson: Giada di Laurentis, she’s gorgeous and charismatic, but teens might view her as too intelligent.

Sizzling megastar spokesperson: High School Musical! Why? Because seeing pretty kids doing a well-choreographed, methed-up pop performance about a 100 mile diet is WAAAY more convincing than an acclaimed TV chef!


WHOA! Pass the shrooms!


TEEN PREGNANCY

What a mess the American public school, abstinence-based sex-ed program is. Teen pregnancies are now increasing after a 15 year slide, despite the concerted effort to provide greater awareness and knowledge to youth about pregnancy sex facts. The “just don’t have sex” approach to sex-ed failed because what could be more enticing than something explained as “only for grown-ups” and something you can “only do when you’re older!” Suddenly teen pregnancy is cool.

Appropriate spokesperson Jaime Lynn Spears, but she’d never go for it.


Sizzling megastar spokesperson: Miley Cyrus. Barring an actual informative, loving conversation between parents and their children (seen as too difficult and obvious a choice by many families), the sizzling international megastar choice to be the spokesperson for teenage pregnancy is Miley!

LifeStyles Condoms actually approached her to represent the brand and “get the message of safe sex out to teens across America”, what I think was brilliant move on the part of their CMO. Miley Cyrus’ is influential and relevant to teens, particularly girls. Promotion of anything by Miley Cyrus goes a long way.


Furthermore, what a great way to strike back at the Jonas Brothers and their bullshit ‘promise ring’ approach to sex!

RACIAL SENSITIVITY

Canada is a diverse, multicultural nation and perceptions about race are somewhat muted here when compared to the States. Thoughtful discussions about race are still obviously of huge importance in the American social discourse, as evidenced by the intense scrutiny on American Muslims following 9/11 or Barack Obama having to answer questions about his authenticity as a representative of African-Americans.

Appropriate spokesperson: Some mashup between Justin Timberlake and Kayne West. But although they're both youth-oriented and hip, they do not provoke the necessary honesty needed to truly resolve latent racial tensions.


Sizzling megastar spokesperson: Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Her ineptitude and stubborn position, highlighted in this hilarious clip makes her absolutely the right choice to begin the healing!



Props to Lucy for suggestions on tonight’s topic.

Want to keep me off drugs? Make me laugh or make me scream! - Part II

(To set the record straight, this blogger only uses one drug, Aspirin, and does not drink or smoke anything. However, she does not mind if others do responsibly. Which is why she's writing this.)

In the previous post, I looked at the not-so-memorable and definitely not so persuasive drug ads. DARE was big in the 90s, and yet the kids donning those t-shirts are the ones harvesting mary jane in their dorm closets. Something didn't work.

There's really no way to judge whether a campaign is effective or not, because its rather impossible to track which would-be user has watched what program/worn which t-shirt. But there are definitely some ads that make you think, or gasp, or say "WOW." Recently, I think we've had some memorable ads. Both of these ads aim to stun, whether making the viewer laugh or gasp in horror. And you don't stun with words. In any film school, you are told that good film making is about showing, not telling. What we have found are two North American ads that quickly show the dangers of drug use in ways that will be remembered by the viewers later on.

This one comes from MTV. Although the network has long abandoned music and opted to be a start-up vehicle for Southern California teens turned celebrities, they have come up with this masterpiece.

When I showed this in my marketing class, I had more fun watching the faces of my classmates. They were calm, then gasped in disgust and proceeded to laugh at the mumbled punch line. The message came very quickly afterwards. Marijuana is regarded as being a "light drug" with numerous researchers arguing that it's less toxic than alcohol and that the main reason it hasn't been legalized is the difficulty of related taxation. The key here was not to get you to stop using it, but to avoid operating heavy machinery, illustrating by the severe lack of judgment displayed by the two gentlemen in the front row seats. They didn't talk about the possibility of car crashes, severe bodily harm or incestuous lip locks. They showed. Wouldn't you remember this one? Wait until you see the next.

The folks who made this have really thought it through. I can really appreciate the horror movie feel, reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho and The Grudge. The contrast of the light bathroom, the girl-next-door and her future self, battered and crying on the shower floor, pleading for her to alter her future, actually had me saying "Holy crap!" Again, show, don't tell. She doesn't talk about the life of an addict, her images on wounds on her previously flawless face speak volumes of the dangers of meth addiction and how quickly that stage is reached.

When producing these sorts of advertisements aimed at a young audience, I think it's vital to understand the maximum power of your message and adjust accordingly. We are creatures of "do whatever we want" so telling us what to do won't help. We need information! Being condescending with ridiculous preppy afterschool specials never worked. Speaking of which, here's an example...

You can't prevent drug use or drug abuse, as some would argue, or purchases. The key is to make sure you embed these images in young minds and connect them to messages that you want to reappear when your audience is making certain decisions, be they drug use or buying t-shirts.