(mobileYouth) The Youth Marketing Handbook

We need to move from viewing youth asdestinations for our marketing messages to treating them as partners in its production – Graham Brown

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comCopyright© 2011 by mobileYouthAll rights reserved. No part of this document may bereproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, orotherwise, without prior written permission of mobileYouthAuthors grant fair use of book‘s materials according toconventions of ―fair use‖ covering printed materials 1

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comIntroduction by Graham BrownSelling to youth is easy, very easy.In fact, whether you are selling soda, mobile phones orinsurance - once you know about context and fans,they‘ll be ripping it out of your hands.Selling to your own organization, however, is the realsale. Your competitors aren‘t other banks, mobilebrands or games providers in the same category - it‘syour own department, your marketing team and youragencies. Your competitors are marketing managerswho‘ll never get fired for booking TV campaigns,agencies using your marketing budget as a ticket to theCannes Lions and a boss who ―has all the information heneeds.‖You‘re surrounded by seemingly immovable habits,behaviors and a lifetime of relationships with peoplewho really want to do something exciting, but at the endof the day, are afraid of change. We call it diseconomiesof scale and it explains why the biggest threat to brandscan be their own success.And when you tell me that your organization is alreadysold on youth marketing? That‘s a warning sign too.Not enough dissent, not enough vocal opposition forhealthy debate.That‘s where you come in. 2

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comYes, you‘re reading this book, so you‘re already in theselect few. You are part of the 5% who want to changethings, because your brand‘s strength with youth is justthat - your brand‘s ability to change and constantlyreinvent itself. When kids started seeing their parentssqueezing into a pair of 501s in the 80s, Levi‘ssomehow lost its appeal. It‘s a mistake that eventuallycost them their market position to new challengers likeReplay, CK and later on, brands like Diesel. It took thebetter part of the next two decades for Levi‘s to recoverfrom that mistake.Levi‘s failed because it was successful. Nokia failedbecause it was successful. Pepsi failed because it wassuccessful. You see a pattern emerging here? Brandsfail with the youth market when they don‘t have enoughmoney, or when they have too much. Given the choice,I‘d rather take the first scenario because that‘s whereinnovation thrives.I‘ve been helping brands build bridges to reach theyouth market for over 10 years. I‘m a cultural explorerand adventurer and share my insights and learnings withcompanies across the world. What I‘ve learned is thatgreat brands aren‘t products of great strategies but are afunction of great company culture. Often, the peopleinvolved wouldn‘t call what they‘re doing ―youthmarketing.‖ I‘m thinking about people like Ian Stewartfrom Converse, Peter Adderton from Boost Mobile, JakeNickell and Tom Ryan from Threadless, Ian Votterifrom ESPN X-Games, Vipe Desai who used to head upaction sports at Monster, Peter Van Stolk founder ofJones Soda, and Torsten Schmidt from Red Bull Music 3

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAcademy. Through their journeys, I‘ve learned criticallessons in how brand culture needs to be, and howmarketers need to live that culture rather than simplyoutsource it to a creative agency. It‘s through theirjourneys that I‘ve helped a whole host of brandsunderstand their young customers - from banks togovernment agencies.Making great brands and engaging youth, therefore, isnot about hiring an agency to buy media space and runclever campaigns. It is about creating an environmentthat allows insights, relationships and innovation tohappen. This is where the organizations themselves sooften get in the way. Fear. So much of marketingoperates from a baseline of fear.There was a little known psychological experimentconducted by Dr. Elizabeth Newton at StanfordUniversity 1990 in which, despite its size, unlocked awealth of insights into the success and failure ofmarketing. When subject A (Tappers) were asked aboutthe success rate of subject B (Listeners) in correctlyguessing the song that subject A was tapping, A‘sconfidently pegged the hit rate at 50%. When subject B(Listeners) were asked to identify the song – only 2% ofthem guessed correctly.There is a song in your head that you are trying to singabout your products, your brands, your launch, yourwebsite or whatever exciting information you want tobring to market. But they‘re just not getting it. 4

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comThey are your customers, your colleagues, your bossesand your partners. They are not getting it because offear. Fear encourages you to cut corners. Fear makes iteasier to simply hire a creative agency to run a TVcampaign rather than engage one on a longer project tofind your fans. Fear means we don‘t fix marketing orinnovation because it‘s not our jobs to. What this bookaims to do is to share with you insights into how you canget it right; not through theories, but through examplesof brands that are consistently successful in engagingyoung customers by being comfortable with fear. WhatI mean by ―comfort‖ is living with it, not trying to avoidit.There will always be fear - fear that letting your youngcustomers take control will result in a PR backlash, fearthat letting them tell the story won‘t generate the neededresults, and fear that building an asset would meanmissing your next quarter‘s targets. Fear of theunknown, the new, the uncontrollable and letting go.It‘s here great brands thrive.When you‘re comfortable with fear it can also become agreat motivator - call this positive fear. It‘s the samefear Jeff Bezos of Amazon talks about when he tells hisemployees to wake up afraid their customers will leavethem. The words ―fear of losing out‖ can commit us toactions that may have taken a lifetime to completeotherwise. They can become the ammunition, thestories, and the tools you need to make that changeinternally. Otherwise, you‘ll be overwhelmed by thenegative fear of your network. 5

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comIn the Youth Marketing Handbook, we will share withyou that ammunition, those stories and tools from 10years of insights in simple bite-size stories for you totake away. We‘ll do this with the collective insight ofthe mobileYouth team - myself Graham Brown, FreddieBenjamin, Josh Dhaliwal and Ghani Kunto. We‘re notgiving you all the answers. In fact, we hope the storieswe share with you here are going to get you asking morequestions.Send those questions and ideas tograham.d.brown@mobileyouth.org 6

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com 1. CONTENT vs CONTEXT Youth don‘t buy stuff, they buy what stuff does for them Content is what you make for them Context is what you mean to them Youth buy on emotion and justify with logic 7

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comPeople Drink the Can, Not the SodaThere‘s a marketing story told by both Seth Godin andDan Ariely about Coke and Pepsi which is as good aplace as any to start our journey into the world of youth,branding and media.When clients ask us how they can learn more aboutyouth marketing, we point them to the study of soda.Soda marketers are the youth marketer‘s marketerbecause here are men and women selling fizzy waterwith a few flavorings - there is nothing to distinguishone product from the next. The only distinguishingfactor, therefore, is the context each marketer can createfor his or her brand.Back in the 80s, the Pepsi reached its zenith as a youthbrand. Stealing market share from its rival infused thecompany with a growing sense of confidence. Thecompany launched the ―Pepsi Challenge,‖ aimed toassert the upstart cola as the de facto brand of choice. Inthe Challenge, customers took blind taste tests whichresulted in 60% of them stating that Pepsi tasted better.In Pepsi‘s mind, they had won and market share wouldfollow.Researchers in the 90s repeated the Pepsi challenge butemployed a subtle twist. Rather than making thesubjects wear blindfolds and drinking anonymous colas,the researchers told the subjects which brands they weredrinking before the taste test. The result? Four times asmany people said they preferred the taste of Coke. 8

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comYou see, people aren‘t simply buying a product. Theybuy the whole social package. This is the distinctionbetween Content (the product) and Context (thepackage). As Seth Godin pointed out, ―blind taste testsare only good if you have blind customers‖ and ―peopledrink the can not the soda.‖Simply put, we don‘t buy stuff. We buy what stuff doesfor us.Is Harley Davidson a great bike for old guys, or anexcuse to dress up in leather and terrorize yourneighbors? Is Lego a great toy for kids, or a way toreclaim fond childhood memories of father and sonbuilding together?We sometimes use Lego bricks in client presentations toillustrate the difference between Content and Context.They are mere simple plastic bricks after all. But lookat what you can build with them. Look at the fun youcan have. The bricks are tools to help you createContext.Sharpie permanent markers are yet another anomaly inthe digital era. How can sales of a pen increase 3% yearafter year, despite the growing trend among youngpeople to adopt e-readers, text messaging and blogs?The answer lies in what you can do with the pen. Youcan show your individuality by drawing on yourConverse shoes with a Sharpie. You can express yourrebellious side by tagging public bathroom walls with aSharpie. Sharpie is just a tool. Even in the digital era,the context of these analog tools for will never die. 9

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAdvertisers call this ―what stuff does for us‖ the ―benefitof the benefit.‖ That means we have to look at what thisproduct does for us socially - the context - rather thanthe product itself. Content is what you make. Contextis what that means to people.Content vs. Context: A Comparison Content ContextWhat is it? Product Social Package What we buy Why we buyDrivers Logic EmotionExamples Price, Need to belong Touchscreen Need to be keyboards, Offer, significant DesignMarketing Advertising, Communities, Socialtools Campaigns, Programs, Events, Sponsorship, Projects Celebrities, PRWho Companies Users, customers,creates it? fansExperience Content Context experience experience starts starts before the after the purchase purchase, exists even & exists only when not interacting during direct with the product, interaction with lasts way beyond the the product. end of product usage. 10

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comIt‘s difficult, admittedly.We become engrossed in the world of product andContent. We discuss the fineries of our product and itsunique selling points over the competitors--ours has abetter touch screen, more memory and comes in thesecolors. Once you engage the creative agency, theysimply follow through on this Content narrative. Foryears, companies have been hiring agencies to magnifythe differences between products - Pepsi tastes betterthan Coke, SonyEricsson has more megapixels in itscamera, and so on. In reality, however, this value maybe post-rationalization applied by the brain afterrealizing the social Context of the product. Microsoft‘sZune was a technically better product, but the markethad already decided on Apple‘s iPod. Zune won onContent. By virtue of a decade of investing in youth,students, teachers, families and music stores thatfacilitated sharing, iPod won on Context.The King is DeadWe hear the phrase ―Content is King‖ used regularly inreference to youth marketing.Good content, we are led to believe, sells. We only haveto look at the world of Content—advertising, marketingmessages, celebrity stories and headline sponsorships—to understand that this is big business. What we don‘treally get, however, is a sense of how this industry maybe self-perpetuating. ―Content is King‖ helps 11

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comadvertising agencies justify their existence to clients:pay us money, we‘ll deliver great Content.If ―Content is King‖ why would anybody buy a productthat killed them (cigarettes)? It doesn‘t make sense. Ifpeople were really buying the Content of cigarettes,whole generations of young people would avoid theperils of tobacco. Young first time smokers know thehealth risks, but to them, the Context of cigarettes—thesense of belonging afforded among fellow smokers, thebrand stories, the rituals of smoking, cigarette sharing—is more important than life itself.While thankfully youth smoking is in decline in anumber of countries, the emotional tendencies of youngsmokers are applicable to the world‘s general youthpopulation. Think about young people and mobilephones. We should know. We‘ve worked in the fieldsince 2001.Mobile phones and cigarettes offer similar Context:belonging, ritual, sharing, emancipation, andindependence. You can see why one has replaced theother as the moniker of cool for youth. Now think aboutthe role of your product within youth‘s social universe—are you selling the benefits of the Content or theContext? How will this help a young person to belong?How will this help a young person be significant?If you want to understand Content vs. Context in action,take a look at the bestsellers on display at your localbookstores. Which ones are selling? Cookbooks byBourdain and Oliver maybe? They aren‘t introducing 12

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comanything new. They are simply repackaging existingrecipes in a format that helps people believe they arebuying into a story. It gives the buyer something to talkabout and tools to interact with others.The Social PackagingWhen Xiao Zheng‘s mother found her son returninghome to their family apartment in Anhui, China with hisrecent haul of iPad2, iPhone and spare cash she becameconcerned. It didn‘t require the acute intuition of amother to know something was up.After prolonged questioning, Ms. Liu was relieved tofind this wasn‘t the result of theft, drugs or prostitution.It was at that point, a more menacing reality emergedwhen Zheng revealed a deep scar running down the backof his torso. He had sold his own kidney. Like manyparents in China, local TV station anchors were alsoshocked and stunned that these objects could beconsidered more valuable than life itself.Zheng‘s story started when he saw an online advertisingoffering money to young Chinese students to becomeorgan donors. After contacting the nefarious gray-market agents, Zheng made the trip to an officialhospital at a different province where, followingremoval of his kidney, he returned with around $3,300in cash.―I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but I didn‘t have the money‖the boy confessed to Shenzhen TV. ―When I surfed theinternet I found an advert posted online by an agent 13

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comsaying they were able to pay RMB20,000 to buy akidney.‖Perhaps the sad twist in the tale is Zheng‘s ownadmission that having bought his phone and iPad he―regretted‖ the decision. Not only was he one kidneydown, he was sizably shortchanged on the deal--a blackmarket kidney can fetch up to $160,000 according tosome sources.While Zheng was arranging the deal with his brokers, onthe other side of China in Sanlitun province, riots werebreaking out outside the Apple Store. The crowd wasnot venting their anger at the brand that had ruined aseemingly naive and innocent person‘s life. The crowdwas venting their anger at each other. Ordinary Chineseyouth clashed against their peers. As Zheng wasnegotiating his organs away, young Chinese wereexchanging hard earned cash for a limited number ofiPad 2s at the official Apple Store. A large number ofthose waiting in line felt that they were going to missout. For those still waiting in line, watching their peerscoming out of the store with an iPad 2 resulted in aheady concoction of envy, frustration and fear of losingout. They started to lash out against each other.Is this unique to Chinese youth?When one 16 year old student from the UK had to live24 hours without his mobile phone he reported, ―All Iwanted to do was pick up my phone and become a partof the human race again.‖ 14

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comThis student took part in an intriguing research studythat challenged young people to live 24 hours withouttheir most prized possession--the mobile phone. Theirresponses?―I felt lonely without multimedia. I arrived at theconclusion that media is a great companion. ―--Chile―At the beginning, I felt irritable, tense, restless andanxious when I could not use my mobile phone. When Icouldn‘t communicate with my friends, I felt so lonelyas if I was in a small cage on an island.‖ --ChinaIt‘s not just youth in remote regions of the world.Here‘s what one 15 year old Long Islander said in ourrecent ethnographic survey of youth-and-mediarelationship in the USA:―I went camping one time and there was no service outthere, no Wi-Fi, or any internet connection. I felt like Iwas pretty much in jail. I didn‘t know what to do. Icouldn‘t talk to any of my friends. I didn‘t know whatwas going on. I felt like I was missing so much.‖When traditional media caught hold of these kinds ofstories, they are quick to arrive at the seemingly obviousconclusions: insidious brands, addiction to technology,―kids these days,‖ corruptible minors, decline in socialmorals, etc. It‘s a Content-centric view of the world thatsees only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and whilemisguided, it is recurrent in our own history.Rock‘n‘Roll music, TV, blue jeans, video games andsneakers have all been made media pariahs, but no one 15

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comseemed to fully understood that these things were justthe another object on the Content carousel that rotatesthrough generations.Context, however, looks at what lies beneath the waterline: motivations, causes, social packaging. We forgethow it was back when we were teens. Look back longenough and you‘ll find similar concerns and stories of―addiction‖ and irrational behavior.But those were not really stories of youthaddiction. They were stories of the strength of youth‘ssocial drivers, and how different tools fill the vacuum.Our 15 year old Long Islander didn‘t want to gocamping with his parents just as any 15 year old fromprevious generations ago didn‘t want Mom & Dad at hisbirthday party, or listening to his music.Content exposes only the symptoms--the objects withinthe story. Context reveals to us the plot lines.New Technologies Old BehaviorsTo us, it‘s just what boys have been doing all over theworld for hundreds of years. To Satoshi Tajiri,however, it was a $100 billion global franchise.If you‘re British, it‘s Trump Cards. If you‘reIndonesian, it‘s playing with the seeds of rubber trees.For you, it could be kites, dodge ball, or marbles, butwherever you are in the world, it‘s just what boys havebeen doing for hundreds of years. These are simplegames that facilitate social interaction between boys. 16

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comThese tools help create structure for these interactions.That‘s why their highest appeal applies to most pre-teens. It‘s this group--the socially awkward male--thathas the greatest growing social awareness, but the leastdeveloped skills to satiate this awareness.Each conveys numerous social rituals, avenues tomastery and urban myths, from the kid who had theconcrete conker to the one who soaked kite wire in glassgrinds. Each tool passed via word of mouth from onegeneration to the next. Each platform comes without arulebook, but a socially filtered group of rules throughwhich interaction can take place. The platform createswinners and losers; thus, reinforcing existing socialdynamics. It creates heroes and outcasts. A young boycan choose to train and invest in the skills of theplatform, achieve mastery and boost their socialstanding.These platforms led Satoshi Tajiri to a $100 billionglobal franchise.When Satoshi Tajiri sought inspiration for Nintendoshugely successful Pokémon series he didnt have to lookfar; Tajiri drew insight from his own youth. What 8year old boys didnt enjoy scrapping in the schoolyard,grubbing around in dirt and the fascination of bothinsects and dinosaurs? The sales that followed thePokémon brand stood as testament to one truth abouttechnology and marketing. If youre going to launch aproduct, use the technology to enhance existingbehaviors instead of creating new ones. In Pokémon‘scase, the game was no more than a technological 17

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comevolution of the Context that young boys had beenplaying with for generations--trading cards, combat andthe love of insects. Pokémon simply brought thetimeless behaviors that boys of a certain age group intothe information age. Trade cards, do battle against yourfriends, and train your army of monsters.The "Pocket Monster" concept, from which the namederived, was all about first finding what youngcustomers already love, and then using technology tomake it better. It‘s about finding the Context anddesigning Content that can better serve that Context forthe new generation.A focus on Content and technology often does theopposite: find a way of making the Content better, andthen shoehorn it to "disrupt" existing behavioralpatterns.Its no different with Pokémon than many of thetelecoms industrys inventions. MMS (picturemessages) were supposed to be a richer medium ofcommunication than SMS. You liked SMS - lets makeit better. Its no different to saying, "You liked 2 playerchess - lets make it 3 players!" Chess, like SMS, is notabout the features, but the benefits it affords. Both SMSand chess are popular because they are widelyunderstood and can operate at the lowest commondenominator. With a few exceptions, the rules of chess,conkers, trading cards, marbles, kites and SMS areuniversal and simple enough to allow youth to invest increating Context around them. 18

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comGreat products don‘t come with a rulebook, so don‘twrite one for yours.We simply make the tools. They make the rules.  Emotion vs. LogicOne of the key challenges facing youth marketers todayis in understanding the differences between the reportedand the felt world. Justifying owning a mobile phone inthe early 1990s was difficult if you weren‘t a drug-dealer, gas plumber or a stockbroker. Today, it seemsincomprehensible that anyone would need a logicalreason to own one. We simply do.If you sit young people in a room and ask them abouttheir reasons for buying a pair of Nike sneakers, theywill tell you it‘s because of the gel/air technology, thedesign and the advertising. Nobody ever tell you theybought Nike because wearing Adidas would make themlook stupid in front of their friends. That‘s because theywere trying to justify their purchase decisions post hocso they would appear less whimsical, less emotional.This is something that we all do.People buy on emotion and justify with logic.Your mother bought her first mobile phone in the 90s―just in case the car broke down.‖ In 10 years, her carhasn‘t broken down once, but it just goes to show theneed to justify emotional behavior with logical post-rationalization. This justification is particularlyprevalent in youth, especially when answering in groups. 19

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAs you get older you become more confident about yourdecisions and identity, but when you‘re a teenager, youconstantly search for social proof to verify yourbehavior. That‘s why focus groups are effective atidentifying product content that youth like, and veryineffective at identifying the real reasons of why youthbuy: the social context of that product. This is whymarketers, on reviewing focus group findings, arrive atconclusions like ―we need a QWERTY keyboard tocompete with BlackBerry‖ or ―youth want free musicgiveaways to open a new bank account.‖Time and time again we‘ve heard marketers revertdiscussions back to the price point of free because―that‘s what kids want.‖ When we don‘t understandwhy youth buy we relegate everything to price, and thatoften means free. Yet, if young people really wanted―free‖ why are they spending $400 and up on iPhones oron partying during the weekends? Sure, they are pricesensitive, but price is merely part of the content, notcontext.So how do you access the jugular issue of why youthbuy: the social and emotional context? Just like anyrelationship, people only share emotional informationwith those they trust. That‘s why we encourage clientsto bypass focus group style research and start buildingoffline social networks - real world contacts. Theycould be interns, young employees or students in thenetwork who want to work with you. These arerelationships you can nurture over years. 20

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comMarc Kornberger‘s Student Village in South Africaoften finds that students who work on their campaignsas brand ambassadors are the first to submit theirresumes when new job vacancies arise. Bernard Hor ofYouthworks Asia in Malaysia finds that while manyyoung people participate in his grass-roots brandprojects, it‘s the regulars who yield the most valuableinsights; regulars don‘t need ―warming up‖ and feel thatthey can provide feedback (however brutal) without fearof repercussion. Remember that for this age group,many have lived in an education system whereproviding feedback to figures of authority like teachersis rarely encouraged. Youth see brands in a similarlight, they need encouragement.Insights are a function of trust. Use focus groups, getlousy insights. Develop relationships, get honestanswers.Key Questions for Youth Marketers What is the Context of my product? How are my customers creating Context for my product? How does my product‘s Content support its Context? Does our marketing focus on Content or Context? Where are we investing our budget? What timeless social rules does my product enable customers to engage in a new way? What can I do to better understand the emotional drivers behind purchases of my product? 21

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com 2. Design Thinking vs. Social Thinking What wins you awards won‘t necessarily win you customers When youth break your product do you see a threat to your model or an opportunity to improve? 22

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comSocial ToolsTake a walk along the Rhine River in Cologne andyou‘ll find an iron bridge that runs across to the city‘sancient cathedral. As you cross the bridge, you‘ll alsodiscover a solitary padlock chained to the railing. Acuriosity, but you kept on walking. But soon, there aremore padlocks in more places clustered around ironstruts, like barnacles around a ship‘s anchor. Thepadlocks vary from pink to plain. Some are inscribedneatly. Some are scratched with a pin, or set of car keys.All have them are etched with names of two (andsometimes more) lovers.Mikko Ampuja from 15:30 research in Finlandexplained that these padlocks-on-a-bridge phenomenawere not just in Cologne - they were global. In fact,there are 30 or more cities where you can find thesepadlocks--look them up on Wikipedia and you‘ll find acity near you. They are called ―lovelocks‖ because thelovers whose name appears on their face plate would,according to tradition, cast the key to the bottom of theriver to be lost to eternity.Social connectivity is all around us.To the irrepressible nature of youth, everything is apotential social tool. What appears to us as a mundaneobject may hold a more profound and emotionalmeaning to some young people.Just because you don‘t see it, doesn‘t mean it isn‘t there. 23

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comGeneration OBy the time you read this book, you‘ll be on toGeneration Z. What would marketers use to mark thepost Z generations? Perhaps one of those Swedishcharacters that looks like the symbol for Boron with aline through it?The problem with identifying and naming generationsaccording to their era is twofold. First, they‘lleventually age out. Make sure you don‘t have Gen Y inyour company or job title, lest you too will be draggedinto irrelevancy.Second, you have to be careful about what you‘recommunicating by identifying a distinct generation.Gen Y may appear unique in their traits, but when youtake a long term view on their development, you findthat they are no different from previous generations.Every generation wanted to change things, was moreoptimistic, more entrepreneurial and more open to newtechnology than their forerunners. Nothing has changedhere. You can go back to the teenagers of the 50s andfind traits which generational pundits have claimed asunique traits of Gen Y/Z today.Traits of Generation O compared to Adults Generation O AdultsFree time High LowMoney Low High 24

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comSocial need Large and growing Small and decreasingSocial tools Limited and Many and relatively expensive affordable, access to creditProduct Optimization, Read themastery Positive Deviance, Manual, ask a Cultural Hacking young personProduct Google, friends, Call center,support exploration retailProduct Ability to customize Complete,expectations and develop consistentWhat remains constant in the youth market, world over,is their qualitative difference. Here is a generation thatseeks to change and optimize what they have. Give aBlackBerry handset to an adult, and he sees an executivetool that‘s useful for email. Give the same tool to ateenager and she‘s going to try and crack BBM, and useit as a messaging tool with her friends.All around us are objects that are mundane to the adulteyes, but are loaded with potential to the observantyouthful eyes. That‘s why if you want to understandyouth, you need to start understanding them in thecontext of ―Generation O‖—the optimizers.Optimizing means taking a Social Tool and making itbetter. The more obvious examples of this are the 25

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.commobile phones and technologies. The less obvious arethe more revealing—soda brands, shoes and even theirrelationships with government. As we‘ll discover in thisbook, this current crop of youth haven‘t changed fromtheir forebears. They‘ve simply gained access to moretools. They‘re not compromising anymore. If Gen Owants to indulge their passions for Lego, they indulge.If they want to protest against the government, they useFacebook to organize mass protests. Previousgenerations would have learned to suck it up and gowith the flow. Members of Generation O are not drivenby different ideas and convictions; they simply havemore capacity to realize these ideas and convictions.The Meme―If you are still ‗Planking‘‖ warned the Inquisitrmagazine ―you‘re behind the times. A group ofindividuals have decided to move on to… ‗Owling.‘‖Wait, what‘s ―Owling?‖ I haven‘t even got round toPlanking yet!As Planking becomes mainstream, Owling picks up themantle. On the Owling Facebook page, the fan base hasyet to reach 1,000, suggesting that either this is goingnowhere, or it‘s early days yet. And Owling picturesbegin to emerge: perched like an owl on top of the stairsat home, perched on the national monument in Montreal.Owling has arrived.But what about Planking? 26

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comPlanking hit the headlines in 2011 when a youngBrisbane man in his 20s fell from his building‘s balconyin a quest for the perfect Planking photograph. Hisunfortunate death put Planking on the map—what beganas a small trickle of young people being photographedlying stiff, like a plank of wood, emerged with a torrentof followers. With over 150,000 fans replete withpictures of young people lying as straight as planks invarious settings—on club dance floors or in front of theTaj Mahal—Facebook‘s Planking Group suggests thatyoung people are onto something that the older audiencedoesn‘t quite get yet.And that‘s the appeal.Planking‘s appeal for young people has nothing to dowith the Planking activity itself. It‘s what they do withit. Planking is just a social tool to help people connectwith each other. The fact that the older generationsdon‘t get it, label it ‗stupid,‘ ‗utterly ridiculous‘ and‗inane‘ in the media, grants these memes their socialvalue.When Shaun Wright-Philipps photographed himselfPlanking on the side of a door frame, the whole of theManchester City soccer squad followed suit, capturingbizarre moments and scenes--from Planking off walls, toPlanking inside cars, as a part of their pre-season tour in2011. Planking had arrived in the eyes of mainstreammedia.And it‘s at that point that the memes popularity began tofade, replaced by new contenders to the social tool 27

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comthrone that included the upstart Owling. It was also atthis point that creative agencies started featuring thisfading meme in their client pitches.What agencies get so wrong is their focus on Contentrather than Context. Gen O is not into Planking.They‘re into ―not being adults.‖ The more whimsicaland seemingly meaningless the tool they choose tocorrupt, the more they can optimize and play with it.When adults (read: creative agencies) hijack the SocialTool, it loses all credibility.We‘ve seen it before with flash mobbing. What startedas a grass-roots decentralized movement that embodiedspontaneity and connectivity soon became hijacked bythe creative agencies and their clients. T-Mobile‘s $1.5million ad campaign ―Life is For Sharing‖ at LiverpoolStreet station, which won an award for their agencySaatchi, did nothing to increase T-Mobile‘s loyalty ratesfrom being the lowest in the industry in UK. We‘veseen advertisements placed by creative agencies seekingto recruit flashmobbers for new creative campaigns.What happened to spontaneity?When chasing trends, far too many youth marketersmistake Content for Context. If you want to understandhow Context works, spend half an hour on the 4Chanwebsite, but no more—your brain will turn into mush.On sites like 4Chan, you will find bizarre memes like―Anti-Zombie‖ where an anonymous member will sharea photo of a municipal building—a water-tank or someother obscure concrete monolith structure—and invite 28

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.commembers to speculate on how an army of zombies wouldattack and overpower the structure.Insane? Yes. Pointless? No.In the Anti-Zombie fortress post, the subject is anabandoned building in Fukuoka prefecture in Japansubmitted by Reddit users ―Mitsjol‖ (complete with areconnaissance video of the tower found on YouTube).The 4Chan tribe submits their interpretations of differentscenarios, including one theory that the zombies couldscale the fortress as the pile of dead bodies reached acritical mass of 8,515 bodies (based on theirmathematical assumptions).Remix-culture then kicked in, and the derivatives beganto appear. We see Anti-Zombie fortress juxtaposed ontoa sharp Alpine mountain scape, a floating fortress (nophysics supplied to explain floatation device), fortresswith arms and legs build like some Transformer toy, andso on. To the outsider, it seemed completely pointless.To the insider, the constant reincarnation of a SocialTool distinguished who was in and who was out of thepeer group.The peer groups that hang out at 4Chan gravitate to thisseemingly whimsical and inane content because it bothproves that a) the content itself is meaningless—this isall about context and b) the more stupid, the more likelyoutsiders will exclaim ―I don‘t get it.‖ You only have tolook at the panoply of remixes applied to the rainbowcolored pop-tart cat Nyan.cat in his multiple guises onYouTube to understand that people aren‘t really 29

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comenamored by this half-cat half-pop-tart creation. They‘resimply taking meaningless objects and using them toconnect with likeminded people out there.Social ThinkingAs marketers, we get excited by iPads and flash mobs.We see early successes and think that by copying thecontent we can also benefit from their reflected glory.T-Mobile‘s ―Life is for Sharing‖ is just one of manyexamples wheeled out by creative agencies as an attemptto make a brand cool with young people. Saying youare about ―sharing‖ is one thing; actually helping peopleshare is another.One of the challenges that youth marketers face today isthe dominance of Content-led philosophies. ―Content isKing‖ is just one of many platitudes that underpin theprevailing wisdom of Design Thinking.Design Thinking, we are led to believe, can solve a widerange of problems by looking at design. Nobody usingyour product? Try changing the design. Loyalty ratesdeclining? Change the layout of your retail store. WhatDesign Thinking fails to cover is the fact that peopledon‘t buy design. They buy what design does for them.As much as Apple‘s popularity is the result of greatdesign and technology, it‘s also the result of yearsbuilding grass roots activism among fans, youth,teachers and families from the Apple Camps in store tothe Youth Workshops. Apple knew that building an 30

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comarmy of fans would take a generation, so it set to workon its K12 education policy back in the 90s, in an erawhen every student was on Windows and PC. Howtimes have changed.It also suits Apple—the high priesthood of secrecy—justfine that all its rivals and wannabes focus on design asthe key to the brand‘s success. As long as we remaindistracted and try to mimic design, Apple will continueto help its fans convert your fans over to its brand onecustomer at a time. Social Thinking is the antidote tothe feature-led marketing schools that gave us coloredLevis in the 90s to pink phones 20 years on. When westop thinking in terms of features and functions, andstart thinking in terms of our role in customers‘ lives assupplier of Social Tools, we get a better understandingof how we can improve our marketing and evolve theproducts.Design vs. Social Thinking: A Comparison ofPhilosophies Design Thinking Social ThinkingOrigin Logic EmotionOutput Content ContextActivity Creation DiscoveryFocus Product, Features, People, Benefits Benefits of the Benefit 31

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comOrganization Top-down, Bottom-up, Centralized DistributedImplementation Big Ideas Small StepsApproach Strategic OrganicTalent Smart people, Ordinary PhDs, genius people, fansResults Award winning SMS, BBM, product - salad Facebook, spinners, long haul music file travel, artist sharing concept albumsSocial SpaceWhen marketers sell a product, they look at what makesthat product different from the next guy in the category,and then ask their agency to magnify this point ofdifference. When you give that product to a youngperson, they instead try to turn it into a tool to createSocial Space.When the Giants won the World Series November 2010,fans quickly took to the streets of San Francisco and, ina display of unbridled enthusiasm fuelled by alcohol andtribalism, set fire to cars, vandalized stores and threwrocks at the police. While stories of young sports fansrioting is nothing new, in this particular riot, you could―check-in‖ using the mobile app Foursquare. As rioters 32

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comcongregated on Bayview, some decided they wouldcheck-in to local landmarks that were simply listed byanonymous creators as ―Riots‖ in the app. To some, it‘sa story of everything that‘s wrong about today‘s youth:misbehaved, disrespectful and whimsical. To us, it isyet another example of how young people simply ―find away‖ to turn any occasion into a social tool.Probably the best example of exposing our inability asolder marketers to see this, is when you ask people asimple question, like, ―How can a spreadsheet be aSocial Tool?‖ Spreadsheets are for numbers.Spreadsheets are for accountants. They are boring. I ama marketer; give me my flash-mobs-and-Planking-basedcampaign.But when you see how youth in Mumbai, India used thehumble Google Docs spreadsheet as a social tool duringthe bombing incident in July 2011, you get a betterpicture of how product appeal is almost completelyarbitrary and left open to the interpretation of youngpeople—not the marketers‘.Within hours of the Mumbai blasts, a student calledNitin Sagar set up an open spreadsheet and asked forhelp from the city‘s social media community. Thespreadsheet listed names, contact numbers and details ofhow the contributors could do everything from distributefood, to donate blood to the victims.―Everybody offering help from Dadar Area, joinPrathamesh. He needs people to move the blast victims 33

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comto hospital,‖ adds one user. ―Can give Blood B+vegroup,‖ adds another based in Goregaon East.Mumbai responded quickly. So quick in fact, that thedocument reached its collaborator limit at 1,000 barringany further citizens from joining the list. When disasterresponses so often appear as a whimsical ―#prayfor…‖hashtag in people‘s Facebook and Twitter updates,youth had turned this superficial interest into ameaningful tool to deliver meaningful help on theground.For the first 1,000 on the list, real kudos.And let‘s not forget, this was just a boring spreadsheet.Examples of Social SpacesExample Content What? Why?Mumbai Spreadsheet Used to Reclaimblast, collect togethernessIndia names of in face of volunteers uncertaintyDigital Online Used to TraditionalFlag version of hold national dayRaising, offline celebrate ceremonyIndonesia ceremony national was long and day on a dull. Young virtual people found platform a different way to show nationalism 34

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comWeibo Instant Chinese In responsesingles Photo group youth turn to lack ofgroups, ―missing datingChina persons‖ channels for service into young a dating Chinese serviceSF Riots, Foursquare Rioters CreatingUSA checking in belonging to ―Riots‖ with other in SF riotersSodcasting Mobile Youth ProvokeUK phone gathering adult around reaction, music on create mobile boundaries phone speaker in public placesFood Mobile food Young Pop-upTrucks, trucks using people communityUSA & Twitter gathering for youngIndonesia around migrants in food truck stop 35

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comReclaimedNot a day goes by without someone—usually on thewrong side of 35 years old—in the Indian mediapublicly excoriating the nation‘s youth for their anti-social behavior which, inevitably, involves Facebook,mobile phones and BBM. Yet, when we consider howthe youth of Mumbai reacted in times of need when thea large group of the adult population in the municipallegislature were paralyzed by inability and fear offailure, one has to ask: when it came to the crunch, whowere the real anti-socials?Let‘s move this on to ―unsocial‖ rather than ―anti-social‖ because anti, by definition, suggests a differentspace that just so happens to be on the opposite side ofwhat you want. We‘ll talk about that in a minute. Butfor the minute, let‘s consider unsocial.In many respects, the Social Tools of our generationhave lost their social capacity for Generation O. If youare over 30 years old, you will remember fondlyweekends spent at record stores with friends riflingthrough the bargain rack for the latest vinyl releases.You‘ll also remember mix tapes and spending hourslooking through your friend‘s record collectiondiscussing, sharing and discovering thoughts and ideas.For youth growing in the 90s, when music moved fromCDs to digital, all of that social benefit found in theactivities that surrounded record and tape sharing wassuddenly lost. How could we lounge around their 36

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.combackrooms poking through their record collections whenit was all stored on the hard drive of their computers?As marketers and brands seek to further optimize andmonetize their products, they inevitably make themincreasingly unsocial. CDs cost money to produce,whereas the variable cost of a digital file costs nothing.It‘s at this juncture that youth seek to reclaim the lostsocial benefit of any given tool. We‘ve seen how youthevolve and hack tools from memes to simple everydayobjects, and later on, we‘ll explore how embracing thisbehavior is the key to long-term survival and relevanceof your brand.For now, however, consider how youth reclaim socialtools that have become unsocial, and how they‘ve madethese tools relevant again.Why is this generation lining up to buy analoguewatches? Why is the most popular camera app on themobile phone the one which filters your photos to looklike they were captured using a 1970s Polaroid? Whydo young people watch less TV, but text more about itscontent? Why did mobile TV never take off?When TV loses its social relevance, as with all theseexamples, young people find ways to take TV ―out ofthe box.‖ Seventy two percent of youth in the UKdiscuss TV via their mobile phone and with friendswhile watching, according to Digital Clarity. Youngpeople reclaim tools that were made efficient and boringby brands, agencies and marketers, and young peoplemake them social once again. We can avoid being 37

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comboring by enhancing the social experience of ourproducts and brands, instead of its technologicalexperience.The humble pushbike is, to many, simply a form oftransport. Yet for the young people of Jakarta who workwith Faisal Muhammad at Youthlab, it‘s also a SocialSpace. As cycling becomes the preserve of middle agedmen dressed in Lycra - the kind that can afford $4,000for a bike and as much again to keep it on the road,young people turn to low-tech solutions. Instead ofgoing for any old low-tech pushbikes, the young peoplein Jakarta go after fixed gear bikes (or ―fixies‖ in theyouth vernacular) stripped of breaks and gear rings andpainted bright colors to signify membership to the tribe.As Faisal and friends cycle through the crowded,polluted streets of Jakarta the megacity, observers see agroup of young people having a bit of fun. However,the informed will see a group activists reclaiming SocialSpace from the seemingly unstoppable march ofurbanization and the blandness of middle-age. It‘s ameme that started way back in LA with the scraper bikecraze when a group of young residents felt similarlyoverwhelmed and powerless in the face of theCalifornian sprawl.Young people don‘t want better Content—faster, highertech, cooler, greater bandwidth or richer media—theywant more Context; a better social experience.Anything can be a social tool as long as you‘re open toits social reality. 38

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comThe 2 Key Drivers of Youth Behavior:Ashton’s Story―I live in a small town called Miles," says Ashton. "Itsa farming community and there is only like, 800 peoplein the town."Ashton is almost right. There are 762 people in Milesaccording to official records. Despite its minute size,Miles perhaps embodies the American dream. It wascarved out from the earth with the toil of early settlerswho pioneered the new lands in the late 19th Century.Families like the Wrights—Ashtons descendants whoarrived here in 1889 to break in 640 acres of farmingland. One hundred and twenty years later, little haschanged.While a new wave of settlers from south of the borderhave set up their own homesteads, Miles still remainspredominantly a farming community with farmingvalues. Being an 18 year old girl growing up in Miles,like in any town in todays global village, has its ownunique challenges. Miles is "old." The average age ofthe town population is twice that of Ashton‘s, higherthan national and state averages. Take a walk aroundthe loosely collected stores that constitute the towncenter and youll struggle to find a skate park, night clubor mall hangout.Town highlights, according to its website, include thelibrary, the county jail, the "Rumley Tractor" (a 909Advanced Rumley tractor, which sits along U.S. 39

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comHighway 67, weighs 24,470 pounds and has a maximumspeed of 2½ miles per hour) and the rather curious ―RedBrick Road.‖When town sources tell you that Miles Texas is "namedafter Jonathan Miles (cattleman and railroad contractor)who had donated $5,000 to a fund for an extension of arailroad track" you begin to form a better picture of howgrowing up in this small town is going to be.Welcome to Miles, Runnels County—the town youveprobably never heard of. Which is unfortunate, becauseit is in towns like Miles where a new way of doingbusiness is done.This isnt a story about Miles, however. Its a storyabout about Ashton. In fact, you could even say that itsa story about them, or us.Ashtons story is not unique. We‘ve all grown up in"small towns" defined by our young mentality, our senseof marginalization and striving to reach out to the globaldiaspora of youth that existed tantalizingly in skatemagazines, fashion blogs, Hype Beast or hip hop videos.Weve all experienced the yearning for the big city lightsto the sheer joy of those first few days at college whenwe, released from the geographical constraints of ourupbringing, discovered there were people out there justlike us. We weren‘t so strange after all.Ashton Wright is the voice of a generation—a teenagerseeking communion with the wider youth diaspora buttrapped by the geographical choices of her parents. 40

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAshton is a teenager that wants to belong, who wants tobe significant.Miles, Texas could be anywhere in the world. It couldbe the bustling backstreets of Harajuku Dori or thefavelas of Sao Paulo. It is wherever young people arethe disaffected. These are individuals who have yet tofind their place in the world. These are individuals whoare trying desperately to unravel the layers of childhoodto find their role in society."I am the only one that rides in my town, so I have toride by myself a lot. Rodeo is really big here, so a lot ofpeople in my town think that racing dirt bikes is easyand stupid," says Ashton, perhaps unwittingly speakingfor an entire generation of youth growing up bothmisunderstood and marginalized by their elders.   Ashton Wright is your regular American college kid—18 years old with a healthy obsession for the outdoorlife. Marketers see PowerPoint presentations that beginwith stock photos of skateboarders in high-five posesand patronizing broad-brush statements about how youthlove social media, games and self-expression. But whatmost marketers didnt know is that Ashton is a rising starin her own Universe. This isnt the known Universe of"ordinary" marketing to youth, typified by cleveradvertising campaigns, focus group "insights" and high-visibility sponsorship. This Universe is brought intobeing by a new generation of youth brands emergingfrom obscurity to the big time, from niche to dominatingthe mass, and from being an interesting intellectualdiversion to a threat to the established order. 41

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comPepsi vs. Monster Energy - A Comparison ofApproaches Pepsi Monster EnergyPhilosophy Content ContextMarketing High-visibility Build Permission Advertising Assets ―Monster Army‖Planning Serial, Based Cyclical, Ongoing around campaignsFocus Youth Extreme sports amateursApproach Tell Pepsi Story Build asset to help ―Pepsi young people tell Generation‖ their storiesStars Celebrities: Fans Britney, Beyoncé, Pink, Lady Gaga, etc.Brand Logo, website, Conversations,equity campaigns, community heritage, can designHow is Manufactured Curating ContextContext through built by customerscreated? advertising 42

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comHansen Natural Corp—owner of the Monster Energydrinks line—is no ordinary company. In fact, itsprobably a brand youve never heard of. But this is acompany that is more profitable per employee thanApple. The company is growing its earnings at 9% perannum, while keeping a debt-to-asset ratio of 0.1% (ie.all their cash is their own). All this, despite sitting in themiddle of the deepest consumer economic recession thisside of the War. Being ordinary, has never been therecipe behind this energy drinks success.One reason youve probably never heard of Monster isbecause youre not 18 years old and you dont live inMiles, Texas. Not that Monster has any geographicalpresence there. It‘s just a place where one of theirstories is being told. And heres the rub—this is acompany that doesnt advertise.In fact, the deeper we dive into the world of youthmarketing the more we‘ll find that when it comes tosuccess and failure of youth brand, advertising plays buta cameo role.The real pivot points aren‘t media choices, but choicesin mindset. Hansen is no niche brand. With $3 billionin market cap you could consider it as a major player,but its not playing by the major league rules. ForHansen, the first rule they were going to breaksuccessfully was the rule of brand management: thatyour reputation residing in your corporate assets. Thelogo, the advertising, the PR and the website—meantvery little to this generation. None of these assets create 43

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comContext. If Hansen was going to redefine the market, ithad to start redefining the rules by which success wasdefined. And where its competitors had investedbillions in high-visibility mass marketing campaigns,Monster was going to convert its customers one at atime. Ashton is no "customer," she is a fan—a devotedpaid up member of the Monster tribe known as theMonster Army. This 18 year old from Miles, Texas is arising motocross star and, at the time of writing, isfeatured in the "November Soldier Spotlight" forMonsters burgeoning Army website. Army, in thisinstance, means army of fans—one million of them—allparticipating in a community that gives them all arespective voice.Ashtons story is intriguing. Not only is she a relativeunknown in the eyes of traditional marketers whoseworldview is largely shaped by the "findings" of a focusgroup, but also she is an anomaly in the world ofmotocross—she is a girl."I think in some cases being a girl has its advantagesover a guy. But guys can make a living at this sport; Ithink eventually it will get that way for the women too.Especially with awesome women riders we have outthere today,‖ she says.Ashton is an awesome rider whose story is able toinspire and motivate a generation of would-be Ashtons.Her profile on Monster Army is testament to the site‘sability to support this generation of wannabes. 44

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comWithout the Monster Army, members like Ashton andMacca would have one less tool to achieve significanceand belonging. A brand is only as powerful as the socialbenefit its customers can derive from it and from thebrand‘s platform. Nobody‘s espousing the benefits ofMonster; they are broadcasting their own stories withMonster‘s help."Regular Man, None of This Goofy Shit!" explainsMacca of his style "As Long As It Makes the Boys JawsDrop and the Girls Skirts Drop, I‘m Styling It!"Marcomms would cringe. Consumer insights managerswould gloss over the data. This didn‘t fall into the ―4Ps‖—or whatever they‘re called now—and the ―socialmedia strategy.‖ Almost everybody would ignore thetruth that for Macca at least, this flavored sugarybeverage was a Social Tool. Everybody, that is, exceptyou, because you know that the product‘s Content issecondary to the Context it creates.Almost everybody would have missed a trick becausethey were focused on the Content instead of the Context.Most marketers would focus on how to make this sodabeverage cool, instead of how to connect people likeMacca. And that‘s where so much youth marketinggoes wrong. It becomes more about the brand and lessabout what young people do every day in their lives.How can you help me belong?How can you help me be significant? 45

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comIf you can answer these questions—questions about the2 key drivers of youth behavior—about your productsand brand, then the fact you are a nondescript sodabeverage, a cheese manufacturer or a businessman‘sphone become irrelevant to the fact that anything, withthe right amount of young people and hacking, becomesa social tool in its own right. Applying Social Thinkingin the real world means developing deep insights intothe forces that shape their lives and supporting thestories people want to tell about themselves, rather thaninterrupting them with tales of celebrities and imagesthat make them feel inadequate.Real marketing is about understanding the lives ofpeople like Ashton Wright. She is no focus group, nobrand ambassador, intern or campus advocate engagedin a brand marketing program to boost her resumecredits. She‘s just a regular teenager who wants to tellher story."Glad to See More Beautiful Girls Out There BangingBars, Loving It!" says Macca. But Maccas no ordinarygroupie. He‘s a 17 year old skater from MaryboroughAustralia for whom "life is great" and time is spent"nailing those tricks.‖Maryborough—a small town in the middle of nowherein the middle of Australia. News travels fast andMonster isnt even advertising in Australia. 46

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comKey Questions for Youth Marketers What Social Tools are my young customers using? How do I help my customers use their Social Tools instead of hijacking them? What kinds of Social Space are my customers looking for? How do I help youth tell their stories, without making it ―just another ad?‖ What can my brand do to help youth belong and be significant? What can my brand do in the next 30 days to start applying Social Thinking in its marketing? 47

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com 3. Paid vs. Earned Media In youth marketing, attention is your biggest cost What youth say about your brand is now far more important than what we say The traditional marketing model was born of an era when youth trust and attention were abundant 48

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comThe Attention EconomyDuring ideation seminars, we often show marketingexecs a video designed by Transport for London whichtasks viewers to count the number of passes thebasketball team in white make in 30 seconds. Mostpresentation attendees get it right. However, less than5% ever ―see‖ what‘s going on in the presentation. Aswe rewind the video, we ask ―did you see theMoonwalking Bear?‖ and to their disbelief, mouths wideopen, when we replay the video, they saw man in a bearoutfit moonwalking across the scene as basketballplayers pass the ball between them. How on earth didthey miss it?To understand requires a better appreciation of how thebrain works—we don‘t actually ―see‖ as our perceptionis highly focused. In layman‘s terms it‘s called focus.When you‘re driving down the road on the school runyou don‘t actually ―see‖ that cyclist even though shewas patently there in front of your eyes. So, how doesthis also apply to youth marketing?A whole industry is based on the fundamentalassumption that youth attention is abundant—simplyisn‘t true anymore. By the age of 15, the averageAmerican will have seen 75,000 marketing messages.When exposed to this level of information bombardingyou on a daily basis, you get pretty good at ‗gating‘ itout. In fact, scientists tell us that we only actually ―see‖5% of the stimuli our brain receives at any one time—begs the question ―what‘s happening to 95% of ourmarketing?‖ Sure, it‘s picking up awards along the way 49

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comand keeping brand managers happy at the Cannes after-parties but is it really doing its job? Young people maybe ―aware‖ of your product but are they payingattention. Awareness means nothing. When was the lasttime you bought a Cadillac?The Moonwalking Bear is a useful analogy for so muchof our youth marketing--it may be cool, fun and highlyvisible but are young people actually ―seeing‖ it? If not,as the data indicates, you might as well take yourmarketing budget and flush the lot down a big blackhole because in youth marketing today, attention is yourbiggest cost. That‘s right, start considering attention asa major cost factor in your marketing activity and alsostart with the assumption that 95% of what you do issimply invisible no matter how ―visible‖ it appears toyou on the inside. For many brand and marketingmanagers this may hurt but you cannot unwrite theinternal programming of young people‘s brains yousimply have to work within the parameters you‘re given.So, the question is, how do we get in to the 5%?That sweet spot is the holy grail of youth marketing butit doesn‘t require a lengthy and perilous quest--theanswer is right there before your eyes. See how peoplebehave on Facebook and you get a better picture of whatgetting into that 5% means. It‘s like in the old dayswhen we used to share holiday snaps (you rememberthose analogue ones that came in the photo pouchesalong with the negatives?). We would rifle through thepack; ―It‘s interesting, it‘s interesting, it‘s interesting,‖ 50

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.combut secretly we will be thinking, ―Where‘s the one withme in it?‖Yes, as much as we‘d like to believe we are sociallyaware and altruistic, deep down our fundamentalmotivators are based on answering this key question:―Where am I in this story?‖Just like the Facebook status updates and notifications,we‘re really only interested in the stories that feature us.Google the Moonwalking Bear. Take the Test.Pay AttentionYoung customers don‘t wake up thinking about yourbrands anymore. We do. We wake up in the brandworld, go to world in the brand‘s office and sit aroundtalking about the brand all day. We are surprised tolearn that outside of that office, it isn‘t like that. Oncewe have understood that, then we can continue.Perhaps one key youth marketing problem lies in ouruse of metaphors. We want youth to pay attention to ourmarketing messages. Think about that for a minute--Payattention. We are expecting youth to pay to listen to us.When attention becomes an increasingly scarcercommodity our assumptions become increasinglybroken.Old school youth marketing focuses on being good; findsomething really good about your product and amplifyit. You have Pepsi‘s taste, SonyEricsson‘s cameraphone 51

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comand Levi‘s engineered fit. All of these are really good,but are they relevant? You see, the real youth marketinggame is not about clever, funny ad campaigns to tellyouth how good these things are. It is about creatingrelevance.Only 34% of US youth trust advertising. And evenwhen they do trust it, doesn‘t mean they‘re payingattention. What we are finding is that youth are turningoff from traditional advertising. Yes, they are ―stillwatching TV‖ the TV networks tell us and ―ads are stillthe best format for making youth aware of your brand‖but none of these suppositions explain that 65% of youthbuy mobile handsets based on what their friends saidand 62% of 16-24 year olds cite ―other 16-24 year olds‖as the most influential medium when it comes to makingbrand or technology purchases.Isn‘t it time we considered youth as media too?Earned MediaPaid Media is the billions of dollars spent every year onmedia buys. It could be Facebook, it could be yourTelevision set--it‘s all advertising content paid for bybrands and their agencies. When Pepsi wanted to raiseawareness with the younger generation it paid $25m forMichael Jackson to cut a remix of Billie Jean to thewords ―You‘re the Pepsi Generation.‖ When TVbecame less attractive as a media buy, Pepsi spentmillions plastering Times Square in New York with 52

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.combranded ad hoardings. Even when brands are on socialmedia, more often than not it‘s paid media.Earned Media is, however, what counts. Earned Mediagets young people to buy mobile handsets, start usingFacebook or buying a pair of Nikes. Earned Media iswhat you earn as a brand by being a brand worth talkingabout. Social Currency creates Earned Media. If youhelp youth tell their story, they‘ll indirectly talk aboutyou. If you tell your own story, they‘ll simply ignoreyou.When Red Bull set up the Red Bull Music Academy itwasn‘t selling fizzy soda--it was cultivating EarnedMedia by training a generation of youth to go out andbroadcast their own story. By backing the rising stars oftomorrow, Red Bull knew that it would indirectlygenerate Earned Media. Every time an Academygraduate‘s story was retold in the media and in dailyconversations it carried a ticket called Red Bull.Paid vs. Earned Media: A Comparison Paid Media Earned MediaMindset What is our Who are our fans? Unique Selling What do they like Proposition? about us? How are Which media they using our channel should products? How do we we use? What connect our fans with can we say each other? through social media? How 53

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com big is the budget?Formats Advertising, Recommendation, social media education, discovery marketing, PRApproach Big budget for Long-term relationship big ideas, based building; enables on campaigns; Context building sells ContentStrengths Easily Works even while accessible by you‘re sleeping; the masses; increasing returns with established decreasing operating metrics, easy to cost over the long control the term; received with message; higher amount of trust; increases brand personalized message; awareness influences preferences and behaviorsWeaknesses Mostly ignored Difficult to control; by the masses; harder to measure in simplified the short term; harder message; to justify to senior increasing cost members to maintain the same level of awareness 54

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comWe can no longer buy youth attention, we have to earnit.From Open to Discrete NetworksAs Facebook valuations started to make Google lookcheap by comparison, news began to trickle out into thepress that maybe, just maybe, Facebook had peaked.The Financial Post led with ―Why teens are fleeingFacebook‖ stating that despite the network‘s ―meteoricrise,‖ the prospect that it may be slowing down was ―avery difficult idea to digest.‖ Perhaps, they speculate,the root cause of the slowdown is a potential exodus ofteens from a Social Space now occupied by theirparents, teachers and future employers.No data is provided to support the speculation, althoughnumerous press articles wade in on the possibility.In reality, teens aren‘t fleeing Facebook, they‘re justfleeing marketers and intrusive journalists on Facebook.When young artist Brian Lobel decided to cull hisFacebook friends list, he turned the decision into apublic event. Nobel toured London to involve youngurbanites in the voting process that decided who stayedand who was culled winning the sympathy of generationwho, too, realized they had more ―friends‖ than theyreally had friends and whittling the number down to amanageable level was actually a good idea. 55

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comYouth aren‘t fleeing Facebook they are simply turningfrom Open to Discrete networks. Increasingly,Facebook comes to mirror real life connectivity.Relationships in the offline world cost time and money,so we limit them at our individual comfort levels. Whenfriends on Facebook are ―free,‖ we grab as many as wecan. Except, they are not free. We found out thatfriending T-Mobile and Coke actually cost our attention--we had to listen to their brand monologues.As youth turn to Discrete networks they shut outmarketers, and social networking eventually gravitatestowards its offline base-level. Marketers fret aboutFacebook‘s decline by highlighting the teen exodus, butfail to realize that their quarries are still there. They‘resimply networking behind closed doors--as they do inthe real world (in the park, back rooms, in clubs andoutside the campus library).Open vs Discrete Networks: A Comparison Open Network Discrete NetworkNetwork BBM, SMS, BBM Groups,Type Facebook, Facebook behind Twitter privacy settings, SkypeOccurrence New technology Educated usersAppearance Large, chaotic, Small, ordered, public invisibleMembership Open, random, Closed, real-world, inclusive exclusive 56

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comKey Questions for Youth Marketers Is my marketing budget geared towards getting attention or getting customers? What can my brand do to win my customer‘s Earned Media? What can I do to ensure my Paid Media (advertising, etc) does not get in the way of my Earned Media? How much of my Paid Media budget can I reassign to develop Earned Media? 57

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com 4. Fans vs. Customers If your customers like you, be afraid be very afraid Your whole marketing career you focused on getting customers to like you when all along you ignored the inconvenient truth of the fans who already loved youWe shouldn‘t be asking ―how do we engage them?‖ butasking ―how do we break down the walls that prevent them from engaging us?‖ 58

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comFanspottingIf your young customers ―like‖ you be afraid, be veryafraid.When Trevor Moran hit the Apple Store on FifthAvenue New York in the Christmas of 2009 he wasn‘tlike the thousands of customers who regularly beat thepath to find the latest MacBooks and iPhones, lookingfor presents for the holiday season. Trevor was lookingto record the latest episode in his story. Trevor Moranis like most 12 year old kids seeking to mastertechnology to help them communicate with a widerplaying field but this 12 year old has a unique talent.Trevor is better known as iTrevor and when hecommunicates from the Apple Store he does it throughregular video updates of in-store dancing. This weekit‘s to the backbeat of Lady Gaga‘s ―Telephone‖ nextit‘s Will.i.am. He‘s throwing shapes and freaking out infront of the in-store MacBook webcam as bemusedcustomers and staff look on. Some ignore Trevor with awry smile, ―oh, it‘s that crazy kid again.‖ Some join infor the hell of it. Others including grumpy store staffask him to turn it down, or even shut it off.Apple sells more per square footage from its retail storesthan does the luxury retailer Tiffany‘s. These aren‘tdiamonds and pearls but gadgets manufactured in China.According to recent data, Apple Store generates morevisitors in a quarter than the four biggest Disney themeparks put together. What the Apple brand and iTrevor 59

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comteach us is about the key distinction between fans andcustomers.Trevor Moran is one individual. He‘s not Content forApple because he is not paid, and he is passionate aboutthe brand and its products. In fact, he rarely sells Appleitself except through indirect recommendation; Trevornever records his dances at Best Buy or on a Dell laptop.Every brand has fans, including yours. It‘s just that youradvertising is drowning them out. These aren‘t socialmisfits or freaks. They are often youth with passions--sometimes extreme, always unsatiated. In Trevor‘scase, it‘s the silver screen. He‘s a wannabe actor.Apple is that vehicle for him to achieve his personal andsocial goals. Apple, therefore, isn‘t a product, but a stepup to his life ambitions. This creates real brand loyalty.Could this happen at Best Buy? Maybe, if they knewwho their fans were. Would employees allow it tohappen, or would they try to shut him down?The last question is particularly indicative of how greatbrands aren‘t the product of great strategies. They‘reproducts of great cultures. Does the brand activelyencourage a culture of participation at the frontline, ordoes it see iTrevors as a nuisance?Customers vs Fans: A Comparison Customers FansMarket 91% 9%ShareShare of 35% 65%WoM 60

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comType Followers; Leaders; seek influenced by social currency to Fans‘ behaviors influence the and preferences massesDrivers Consensus; social Significance; proof creativityProduct As demonstrated Break it; optimizeinteraction by Fans itBrand Like; buy Context Love; createrelationship ContextFind your fans, the rest is mere detail.Uniting the DiasporaKevin.J.Walter from the US is also a fan, but unlikeTrevor Moran, he has no pretensions about the world ofacting.For Kevin, however, his passion is far more tangible.Plastic bricks or to everyone else, simply Lego. Kevin‘sclaim to fame is the building of a 2 meter high replica ofSauron‘s tower, Barad Dur, from the book and movieLord of the Rings.The RegHardware reporting on Kevin writes ―somepeople have too much time on their hands.‖ Well, unlikecustomers, fans always find the time to indulge theirpassions. Trevor always finds the time to perfect hisdance moves and lipsync to the latest sounds. He makes 61

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comthe time to make it to his local Apple Store. He doesn‘tcare what those around him think when he‘s lettingloose in front of strangers. Kevin, similarly, is obliviousto criticism.For many ―customers,‖ building a tower out of 50,000bricks and 2 months of your life is too geeky, too nerdyto consider. But for Kevin, it‘s not just a passion, it‘salso a social tool. The tower involved 15 people fromdifferent countries all who pitched in ideas and designsto help Kevin construct the final tower. They sharedtheir ideas on the website Mocpages--a home for Legofans to share their passions--under the project entitled―The Journey of the Fellowship‖ (referencing the wholeLord of the Rings saga) from Inn of the Prancing Ponycomplete with slate roof tiles to the fellowships journeythrough the Mines of Moria. Each created with love.As marketers, we have been trained to target the massrather than the extreme, because the extreme are too―out there‖ to be indicative of wider market needs. Theextreme, however, are exactly those who later influencethe market. Organic food, animal-free cosmetics,vegetarianism, environmentalism, skateboarding andeven the internet all began once as prerogatives of theextreme only now to become widely endorsed by thecore.Fans count because they place a greater emotionalattachment on the product. With a higher premiumplaced on getting it right, they are willing to investheavily in developing the product‘s context--the socialpackaging that makes product appeal to all of us. Lego 62

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comknows that from the 100,000 views Kevin hasaggregated on his Flickr stream of Barad-Dur, and thenumerous meetups, and interest groups Kevinparticipates in with fellow enthusiasts, that offline socialinteraction--not plastic bricks--is why they do it. Andit‘s here that brands learn what their business is reallyabout. In a world increasingly dominated by digitalinteraction, the plastic brick is an anomaly. How couldsomething so analog continue to grow in popularityacross populations, across borders?We live in an era of Fans. When you grew up, Fans hadto compromise. If you were a Lego fan, you would haveto hope that those in your immediate neighborhood andschool year were also Lego fans else you risk beingoutcast and bullied. Most would suck it up; play alongwith the mass. Today, however, you can indulge yourfantasies to your heart‘s content. You don‘t have tocompromise your fandom--you too can connect withother fans just like you around the world. You onlyneed to steer yourself to sites like Mocpages.Inside every customer is a fan. The question is, are youdividing or uniting these diasporas?Brands, Fans and CustomersIn the traditional model of youth marketing, there werejust brands and customers. If brands wanted to reach outto customers they had to hire an agency and commit alot of their hard earned cash on winning celebrityendorsement or developing clever and funny adcampaigns. 63

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comThe media industry was geared towards this model.Radio DJs were good friends of the record labels.Magazine editors would regularly receive productsamples and so on. In this model, the lines of influencein the youth market were clearly defined and winningthe game simply became a decision about which agencyto hire to do the job rather than on the nature of themarketing strategy itself.Fast forward to the 21st century and the game changes;the lines of influence no longer exist. Sure, media willtell you TV still influences young people but comparedto what? Every media decision now needs to be arelative one. Advertising works, but compared to what?Is Advertising actually a better form of influence than,say, recommendation? Just because it works, doesn‘tmean it‘s right.In the world of digital diasporas, Fans are thegatekeepers. Trevor and Kevin may be 9% of yourmarket in terms of numbers but they comprise 65% ofits word-of-mouth. And given that two-thirds of youthpurchasing decisions are made on the basis ofrecommendation not advertising, it means that opinionsof this 9% influence the opinions of the remaining 91%.In short, if you don‘t know who your fans are you‘reonly operating at 35% capacity and that‘s bad news.Consider the new media landscape as Brands-Fans-Customers. Fans have their own tribe which theyinfluence and lead. Trevor Moran is more motivated tobuild a following than Apple‘s marketing managers are.When Trevor‘s followers ask him on which editing 64

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comsoftware to choose he recommends Final Cut Express(an Apple product). Understanding the intricate andsymbiotic relationship between the three is key to alsounderstanding how youth marketing works. This is nolonger about converting a market of customers to yourmessage but developing lines of influence in that marketby leveraging the fans.When Trevor Moran lamented the demise of a beef tacoat TacoBell via Twitter, TacoBell respondedimmediately informing him that it was, in fact, only alimited edition line. The conversation generatedcurrency within Trevor‘s own following whocontributed and furthered the discussion. The net result?They are thinking about TacoBell again. The mistakebrands make today is trying to target customers directly.They aren‘t listening. They‘re only listening to Trevor.The good news is that brands can benefit from thisrelationship if used effectively. A brand can have ameaningful relationship with a small group of fans (aswith the Taco Bell incident) but will stretch its resourcesto the mass resulting in generic (read meaningless)communication.Nurturing fans and customers is like nurturing a garden;there is a natural order of things. Relationships taketime. Ghani Kunto recalls a story from his youth inPapua where town planners, frustrated with the progressof the local flora after felling the indigenous treesdecided to concrete over the space and paint it green.Sure, you‘ve got results, but nobody gets passionateabout concrete. Similarly, advertising is taking afledgling garden and concreting over the conversations 65

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comin the quest for immediate results. If Lego startedadvertising how to build your own Barad-Dur chancesare Kevin and friends would find their own significanceand unique discovery compromised.Everyone has FansWhen we think of fans we think of teenagers gettingexcited about Nikes and BlackBerries after seeing thempromoted on hip hop videos. Hip hop has provided auseful line of influence to brands over the past decade--from promoting Courvoisier and Cristal spirits toEscalades. So, when underground rapper from Nigeria--J20--starts propping Indomie instant noodles fromIndonesia, you have to wonder if product placement hasperhaps taken a step to far.But this isn‘t product placement, J20‘s decision toeschew the benefits of Indomie‘s best selling noodlebrand was purely a personal one--he liked the taste.―Tomorrow‖ says J20 ―is 2 packets away.‖ Commentson the YouTube video range from disbelief to a wholehost of Indonesian supports who seize the opportunity toreinforce their noodle‘s cultural superiority overwannabe rivals, to more personal attacks on the lessinformed commenters who ask ―is it Malaysian?‖Back home in Indonesia, Indomie continues to carve outits student base of fans. Rival Mie Sedap (literally―delicious noodle‖) vies for attention by claiming abetter tasting noodle and deeper marketing pockets.When Indomie focused on building relationships withgrassroots fans in the student world, Sedap aimed to 66

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comcapture retailer shelf space and high visibility celebritieslike Titi Kamal posing in a provocative angel costume.Ask any Indonesian student which noodle brand they‘dbuy, the answer inevitably comes back ―Indomie.‖World over, student fans gravitate towards simplenoodle brands. In India, Nestle‘s Maggi nurtures acommunity of its own. With over 450,000 likes onFacebook, fans like Devika Singh reveal their emotionalattachment to the brand stating ―i love Maggi, i eat itevery day.‖ Like Indomie, Maggi and even Pot Noodlein the UK, there are brands out there that are continuingto grow its grass roots fan base, one customer at a time,by focusing on creating simple products that allow fansto share their stories. When Indonesian studentsrecommended the ―internet‖ in the 90s they weren‘ttalking about TCPIP based gadgets. They were talkingabout Indomie + Kornet (kornet in Indonesian iscorned/bully beef), an odd variation to the recipe thatstudents had created. In India, Maggi activelyencourages its fans to share recipes and connect witheach other over these ideas.The simplest products often have the most passionatefans. ―Indomie‖ is Indonesian for ―Indonesian noodle‖.Simple meant brands stories didn‘t get in the way offans stories. Simple meant the focus is on the fans notthe brands. 67

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comLiked vs LovedWe‘ve ignored the inconvenient truth of marketing: ourwhole marketing careers we‘ve been trying to get youthto like us, when all along we‘ve ignored the fans whoalready loved us.Seth Godin uses the analogy ―getting elected‖ and this iswhat youth marketing used to be like.If you were selling mobile phones, you‘d want thebiggest possible market share. That‘s no different togetting 51% of the votes and winning the seat.Traditional marketing can‘t entertain the concept offocusing only on 9% of the electorate.In the 21st century, youth marketing has no longerbecome about getting elected. The guy with the mostvotes doesn‘t win. In 2011, Nokia began to reportcrumbling market shares around the world and financialanalysts were quick to put the boot in, claiming thatNokia‘s real troubles had yet to filter through to themarket. What their most pivotal failure was not thedecline of the brand but loss of fans. When 13 year oldsstart saying ―Nokia? Meh…‖ in your research, youknow that Nokia has potentially another 10 years ofproblems feeding through the market.Some of our most common failures in youth marketinglie in failing to distinguish between ―liked‖ and ―loved.‖Just because you liked a brand on Facebook doesn‘tmean you‘ll spend 2 months building something out ofits products. What counts today is being loved--not by 68

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comeverybody, but the 9% that count. If they like you, youmight as well be invisible.When we first conducted field research on the liked vs.loved question for handset brands we found that 71% ofyouth ―Liked‖ Nokia--the highest of all brands but whenit came to ―Love,‖ they came behind Apple, BlackBerry,Samsung and SonyEricsson. In fact, it is the ―Loved‖brands that have fared the best in the 2 years we havebeen running the research. Back in 2009, Apple andBlackBerry accounted for less than 9% of the marketshare but they comprised 22% of industry revenues and62% of profits.In business sense, love really does make sense. Whenfans love you, your marketing dollars go a lot further.Your churn rate is lower and you are far more likely tohave receptive users when you launch new products.When a store employee asks Trevor Moran to turn themusic down he doesn‘t engage in a negative PRcampaign assault against Apple, he sucks it up and givesthem the benefit of the doubt. When an airline losers apassenger‘s guitar however, the whole world finds out.Building Beachheads: Influence theInfluencers"Everybody had a feeling something was going tohappen but nobody knew what...."For a brief moment, Chuck paused to reflect. Theaudience leaned forward in anticipation. Since his daysat Public Enemy he‘s been out of the spotlight of 69

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.commainstream media, supporting communities, involved ingrass roots activism and taking care of business in themusic scene. Such is his gravitas and respect amongmusicians from all backgrounds. When Chuck speaks,people listen.When Chuck got his start, it was way back in 1976. TheJackson 5 had left Motown and rebranded as theJacksons, Cold Crush began showing up on the NewYork music scene and every wannabe young urban NewYorker was beginning to discover block parties, boomboxes and mix tapes. Chuck D was a youthful 18-yearold. He recalls the story of his journey into hip hop atthe Red Bull Music Academy in Barcelona to anexclusive audience of 40 aspirant young musicians, DJsand performers hand selected by Red Bull to participatein their decade old grass roots project.   Hip Hop owesits enormous popularity to "keeping it real"--beingauthentic. Authenticity is all about the "no sell out," thegrass roots credibility that makes these two iconssustainable as fashion blows its fickle winds of change.If you know hip-hop, he needs no introduction, but ifyou dont, youll know of Public Enemy. Public Enemyopened the ears of the world to hip hop in the 80s, andbuilt it on a solid foundation of grass roots support,despite a media blanket avoidance of their provocativemessage. As they said, ―this time the revolution will notbe televised.‖―My exposure was through the DJs and their mixtapes"explains Chuck to an audience half his age, who wereengaged by the story and respected one of black musics 70

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comlarger than life legends.  "The mobile sound systems inLong Island were doing parties. Not only were theymobile, but we had to be mobile too," he explains as hecharts the rise of hip hop from its birth around NewYork block parties to the global music force it is today.  It was an era when the radio was dominant. Piratestations provided the social fabric for young blackcommunities as for those cross the river in InglewoodNew Jersey as well as in the Bronx, Harlem and Queens.The scene was heavily localized--sound systems in theparks supported by grass roots advocacy and createdlocal legends that had to move up if the music was toprogress. Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel are namessynonymous with the early emergence of New Yorkship hop mainly because they made the move from localbeachheads of support to the club and later the recordingindustry by 1979.  Unlike trends, movements have foundations that areultimately sustainable because they continue to offertheir people a behavioral platform on which trends canbe manufactured and let go. But it takes time, passionand faith to build – core values shared by organizers likeTorsten Schmidt whose roots in the burgeoning Germantechno scene of the 90s allowed him to cut his teeth onbuilding, nurturing and curating youth culture.Trends vs Movements: A Comparison Trends MovementsBrand Chasing and Building a tribe aroundActivity reacting to the the brand‘s DNA market 71

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comFocus Objects: What‘s People: What do youth hot now? always love?Output Safe, try to Can create controversy, please the attract the kind of masses crowd you chooseResults Immediate, short Long term termLifetime Cyclical Perpetual―Originally I was dubious‖ Schmidt recalls. ―We werethinking ‗here‘s another brand that wants to buy its wayinto the market‘.‖ So many companies before and sinceRed Bull had tried and failed at making their brandsappear authentic by buying a slice of the action, so howwas the Academy going to be any different?It‘s a question Fans ask every day. Given their capacityto influence large numbers of customers, you‘d expectfans to regularly courted by advertisers andtrendspotters.―When we started the Academy, you have to rememberthis was the mid 90s, an era of ‗cool hunting‘ and ‗trendspotting.‘ Everyone was trying to hijack youth cultureback then. You‘d see people running around Berlin‘sLove Parade with inflatable mobile phones or givingaway backpacks stuffed with tampons to girls at raves.It was just clueless, almost disrespectful of thesebrands.‖ 72

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com―Making it work‖ explains Schmidt ―meant people inthe scene talking to people in the scene. We were allabout connecting them with each other. In the first yearwe had lawyers sitting there for like 3 hours talkingthrough contracts. Then we realized that we neededartists who lived it rather than suits who were simplycashing in on the trend. If you had De La Soul‘s PrincePaul telling you about sample clearance you‘re going tolisten more closely. It was about respect and connectingpeople who respected each other.‖Respect is core to any youth culture. Know your place,earn your stripes. Brands, artists or pundits that tried tofake it by shortcutting their rise to prominence werecalled out, named and shamed. So, growing apermission asset like the Academy needed people whowere grass-roots to make it happen.―It helped that Red Bull itself came from the clubculture and had figured they needed to reinvest in thatculture. For them it was simply a case of reconnectingwith their roots. But how do you do that apart fromputting a stupid banner on the back of the DJ booth?‖You can‘t buy authenticity and attention with youth.You have to earn it and there is no better way to earn itthan to let the community speak for themselves. Dadwill never be cool, but Dad can buy his kids a phone totalk to their friends--now that‘s cool. Getting through tothe Trevors of this world means building a communityof people he can connect with. If he‘s a Nike fan, thengive him access to likeminds. If he‘s a Kindle advocate,support the homes where these likeminds hangout. If 73

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comhe‘s an all American teen, then give him a place or eventhrough which he can interact with his friends.Unfortunately, doing anything meaningful like settingup an academy, means building for the future--investing.Sure, Red Bull was investing itself in high visibility,short lived projects that would spike activity, but tomake these authentic, it needed solid foundations withinthe culture. It meant creating an asset rather thansponsoring an event, and all of this would take time andpatience--qualities lost on organizations constantlydriven by the need to report to the street or turn aroundits investments in the confines of the 90 day window.It‘s in this quick-fix environment that marketers feel theenduring pressure to throw money at the problem,commit to a flash mob or be seduced by the agency BigIdea.Chuck D talks of Flash and Mels authenticity. Theywere "able to bleed into whats happening at the clublevel and also at the college level" before they made it tovinyl. From January 1978 to October 1979 the date ofthe first rap record, the scene was intense carried by awave of localized enthusiasm and localized heroescreating the foundations for a movement that was morethan a trend. And so patrons of assets like the Academyare able to tap into the communities, trends and vibeswhich they support.As Schmidt explains, ―You touch so many aspects of thecultural fabric of the city through this project – valueyou can‘t get from simply sponsoring a stage at afestival. Modern patronage is mostly done clumsily. 74

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comRather than meaningful partnerships brands tend to wantto pimp the marketing. You claim ownership ofsomething with pimping it.‖Public Enemy‘s rise to fame in the late 80s was itself themanifestation of a groundswell of activity at thegrassroots level. A movement was born and stars likePublic Enemy was not only riding the wave, they alsoinvested heavily back into the energy of the communitytoo. The Academy exemplifies how marketing bar hasbeen raised for companies too.RBMA is just one of a growing number of storiesemerging from the marketing world that demonstrateshow marketing with is far more effective at engagingyouth than marketing to. As brands struggle with theengagement thing they turn to their agencies for silverbullets that can relieve them of their short-term crisis.We‘d rather rearrange the window dressing than thestore itself. We‘d rather throw money at the problemand hire in Lady Gaga than focus on building long-termsustainable organic relationships with our customers.Slowly but surely, we are changing. These long-termcase studies don‘t deliver overnight but when they dothey provide further ammunition for the change agentwhen trying to sell the case internally. Every day, theygrow in number. Today it‘s Threadless, Monster, Jones,Red Bull and Jet Blue, but tomorrow it will be changeagents in P&G, Unilever, Kraft, Verizon, Citibank andNokia who use these case studies to save their brandportfolios from disappearing into irrelevance. 75

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comConverse has opened its own studios for fledgling youthbands who need free recording time (bear in mind this isa footwear brand). Vogue has begun identifying itsinfluencer network of 1,000 magazine fans. P&G isbuilding out its Tremor network of young moms andinfluencers. Time is ready to activate the fans, build asandbox, start a movement.Red Bull works because it isn‘t selling to you and me.It‘s selling to the sold. Traditional marketing finishes atpoint of sale. Youth marketing today needs to begin atpoint of sale. Stop advertising, start activating the fans.There is a group of fans out there who need yourproducts and tools. You have to create them a home fortheir passions and turn this market into a Beachhead.Forget about the 90%, focus more on the 10% who havetheir ears, eyes and attention.Sell to the sold.Key Questions for Youth Marketers Who are my Fans? What are they doing, and what do they love? How can my product help Fans tell their stories? What can my brand do to help connect Fans? 76

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com5. Brand Managementvs. Brand Democracy Are you finding new ways to tell your brand‘s story or new ways to help customers tell theirs? Every customer asks this of your brand – ―where am I in this story?‖ Customers are the brand 77

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comWe are the Media nowNancy Bean embarked on a year-long project capturingrather mundane photos a day of everyday life, hersurrounds and family taken by an automated cameraattached to her body. One photo a minute, 400 times aday. Her work was good enough to feature in its ownexhibition in Arles, France.Nothing strange here, you may think, except the kickerin this story is that Nancy Bean is actually a three-legged cat.The democratization of media is a double edge sword.On the one hand, mass access to the tools of creation.On the other, a mass cheapening of the format. It‘s herewhere the moot point in the future direction ofmarketing occurs. Journalists, analysts and mediaowners lament the rising tide of youth on Youtubecapturing everything inane from spitting contests coversof Justin Bieber songs. Surely, they believe, youth willstill need the authority of the qualified?Across the internet are examples of cheap marketing--from Fred Figglehorn to The Fine Brothers and their―How Kids React‖ video shorts. To the qualified eyethey are crass, inane and not worthy of critical acclaimbut to us they are the beginning of a democratic mediathat has just found its first steps.In the era before mobile phones people had answeringmachines. These small boxes sat on your coffee tableand bleeped incessantly until you acknowledged they 78

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comhad collected messages for you in their absence. Whenthey first arrived on the scene, people refused to leavemessages on them. Within time, we were recordingpersonalized greetings with Clint Eastwood andSuperman.Now, of course, answering machines are history but theprecedent was set. We got used to sending shortmessages that conveyed information rather than chit-chat - albeit in the audio format. Within a decade we‘dbe sending text and email.Similarly, our media consumption habits are beingtransformed. Fred Figglehorn amassed 115 millionviews on his YouTube channel alone, with 804 millionviews of his uploads. That‘s nearly 1 billion views.Consider that for a minute, we‘re talking about ateenager with a video camera--nothing more. Morepeople watched Fred Figglehorns content than theWorld Cup Final and all of Seinfelds episodes from1991 to 1998 combined (or all the Superbowls orAmerican Idols in the last 10 years). Think about thatfor a minute! Sure, it may be cheap but that doesn‘tdetract from its social value. Each of Fred‘s shorts is asvaluable social currency to its viewers as an episode ofFriends or Lost.Media owners and advertisers will cling on to theconcept of high-end content but the youth have spoken.Sure, Lady Gaga is a hit but compared to what? TheROI of marketing on a Gaga endorsement isincomparable to the Earned Media generated by a $10video created by a group of fans on YouTube. We cling 79

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comon to Lady Gaga because Earned Media is limited byour imagination. We have none, so we buy mass. Yet,consider what democratization could really do for you.Some media owners are waking up.Natalie Tranh, the Vietnamese Australian who regularlyshared her thoughts on life, travel and culture on TheCommunity Channel won herself a coveted paidposition with Lonely Planet. Figglehorn secures himselfa movie rights deal. Content owners are slowing wakingup to the idea that it makes business sense for the marketto take all the risk and identify the content and messagesfirst.Right now, rising stars of the community need bigbrands and corporations for their distribution, they needthe social proof of the words ―bestseller‖ on the albumartwork, bookcover and in the magazine reviews. JustinBieber may be the half-step towards how this model canidentify talent. It‘s not quite brand democracy but wehead in that direction. We are approaching an era wherethe model could market the talent too.New Media Business as UsualWhen Dell decided to do the ―social‖ thing it arrived atan idea (or more accurately put its agency pitched it onthe idea) that Dell, unlike the other notebook brands,could better represent the consumer. One spot showsBetty, a grandmother, explaining how she uses her Dellsmartphone to keep in touch with her grandchildren. Inanother we see Sarah, a young girl with an Inspiron Rand a crush on Justin Bieber. 80

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comDell has always been a relatively strong performer whenit comes to brand positioning so this is essentially abrand playing from a position of strength. But, what weshould never assume is that a brand today is worthanything to youth tomorrow. Nokia has learned this thehard way. In Dell‘s ―More You‖ campaign, Dellemphasizes self-identification with ―clever‖ twists thatinclude rebranding the iconic Dell logo in the name ofthe user.And this is what so much agency advertising is about--expensive gimmicks on the client‘s account. Real youthmarketing doesn‘t run campaigns. Real youth marketingisn‘t about gimmicks. That‘s why if you want to getyouth marketing right, best avoid most agenciesaltogether.This Democracy thing is the sticking point. Greatbrands like Nike, Converse, Threadless or Monster don‘tuse new media to find new ways to tell brand stories.They use it to help youth tell their own. Monster buildsan army to profile the fans and helps them connectglobally. Threadless lets its designers take control of thecreative agenda. Converse creates communities andspaces that enable fans to share and Nike buildsplatforms--from apps to soccer pitches--to support therising stars of tomorrow. Remember the moonwalkingbear challenge we set way back in chapter 3? Well,here‘s the follow on--youth are always asking ―Wheream I in this story?‖Youth don‘t want a dialogue with your brand. Theydon‘t want to be your friend on Facebook they just want 81

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comyou to help them connect with each other. Dialogue isout there. Don‘t interrupt it with your own boringmonologue. Support theirs.When BlackBerry posts on its Facebook fanpage it soonlearns that no matter how much youth love BlackBerry,they really aren‘t interested in interacting with the brand.BlackBerry asks: ―Is there a concert you cant wait tosee?! It‘s easy to mix up dates or misplace details—evenfor the concert of the year. When you buy tickets usingTicketmaster for BlackBerry smartphones v2.0, you canadd your concert schedule to your calendar to ensureyou‗re always in the know. Check it out in Beta Zone!‖To which the ―fans‖ repliedRiby Caem: ―3008D468‖Nickquelle Leadon: ―Please add me 2384AAF‖Akinbami Akodot: ―Add me (2357DE64)‖Chandra Irawan: ―227AB23D jakarta‖Young people are exchanging BBM pins as you wouldemail addresses. They are not interested in interactingwith BlackBerry the brand. They‘re interested in usingthe platform to interact with each other. BlackBerry‘sannouncements itself is just noise.The opposite of brand democracy is not branddictatorship, but what we teach at business school andon marketing courses--brand management. Brandmanagement is the enemy of youth marketing because it 82

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comexists only to serve the interest of the organization.Brand management is that voice in marketing tellingyouth to be quiet and listen to this cool announcement.Remember in the introduction we said that your ownorganization is your own competitor? Well, here youhave one of the very tools employed by the machine toprevent change. Brand management manageseverything--how the brand should be, the brand story,the brand template, brand equity and so on. Nothing inbrand management allows young people to take controland play with the brand. Brand management is givingyoung people the done deal. Brand democracy is givingthem a set of Lego bricks to play with.Brand Management vs Brand Democracy: AComparison Brand Brand Management DemocracyThe brand as Owner CustodianCustomers are Buyers, End The Brand, Users, partners in destinations for marketing and marketing and new product new products developmentMarketing Rely heavily on Generateapproach expensive paid customer driven media earned media, 83

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comInnovation Top-down, Bottom-up,approach begins with an begins with internal product existing need based agenda gaps in the marketCommunication One-directional Dialogueapproach broadcast between Fans messages from and customers brand to facilitated by customers brandCorporate Build walls that Build lastingculture alienate relationships organization that included from customers customers in brand buildingMarketing to vs. Marketing withJohn Green gives hope to the thousands of undiscoveredartists, poets, singers, songwriters and creatives outthere; his story is how brand democracy works for therising stars of our community. Sure, the crowd cannever produce another New York Times or a John Pilgerbut within the market there are leaders who have trustedvoices that, with the right encouragement and brandsupport, could make a real difference.Years ago, you‘d need money to buy 30 second spots onTV. You‘d need a brand manager to instruct an agencyto run a campaign on that spot. This of course, cost 84

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.commoney too. Then there were the focus groups you ran aspre-campaign dips to verify that youth really did likeyour jingle. Branding used to be an expensive business.We wouldn‘t be writing about John Green.Today, however, branding can be cheap. Not cheap inthe sense that it‘s low quality but cheap in the sense thatanybody can do it, and anybody is. No longer do we seeexpensive TV adverts as the moniker of a brandsuccessful enough to buy TV advertising space, weincreasingly see it as an annoyance. Two-thirds ofyouth buy based on the recommendations of their peers--this is branding too.John Green, is a regular 33 year old American authorwho rose to prominence in 2005 with his debut novel―Looking for Alaska.‖ Recognizing the power of themedium, Green openly conversed with his fans on issuesranging from the content of the novels to his fractiousrelationship with the publisher. He was infamouslyquoted as saying ―I don‘t take directions from Penguin.‖When Green took up tweeting and video blogging hisideas and thoughts it wasn‘t long before he generated afollowing of a million potential readers. Green has 1.1million Twitter followers, half a million followers onYouTube, 62,000 on Facebook, 60,000 on Nerdfighters,27,000 on Yourpants and 26,000 on Tumblr. Withinthis group there were the fans who wanted to co-createwith him--the 9%. Soon after announcing the birth ofhis new book ―The Fault in Our Stars‖ fans were alreadytweeting illustrations of the book‘s cover. Green‘s novelwas scheduled to launch in May 2012 but by June 2011, 85

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comwithin a week of announcing its inception, it hadreached #1 on Amazon.Green is not alone. 26 year-old Amanda Hockingbecame one of a select but growing number of authorswho have generated over $1 million in sales from theirindividual ebooks alone. Before Hocking made theheadlines in the mainstream press only her fans hadknown about her.In the 21st century, customers are the brand. What theysay is far more important than what comes out of yourcreative agency and marketing department. This willtake time to adapt to, of course, but the speed ofadaptation is key to long term brand survival. As amarketing friend once confided, ―Advertising is like sex,only losers are paying for it.‖Marketing to youth is buying media space--whether onFacebook or TV and trying to use that real estate tobroadcast your story to them. Sure, you may have someinteractive or social element but it‘s still fundamentallyabout you and your brand. Marketing with youth,however, is about recognizing them as the most adeptstorytellers. You supply them with the tools to go telltheir story. You simply benefit from the reflected gloryand the leveraged position of being the platform thatfacilitates this social interaction.Boring brands need to be managed. They don‘t helpyouth connect with each other, they interrupt them.Their marketing strategy focuses on segmenting thatmarket down to one isolated individual but the reality is 86

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comthat nobody wants to be alone, everyone wants to knowhow you will connect them with the mass. That‘s whyboring brands have to throw a lot of money at theproblem to get some of it to stick and this is calledadvertising. Advertising is a tax on the boring brand.Exciting brands allow youth to take control. This is notopen-house branding where you simply say to youth―hey, what‘s up?‖ this is about providing leadership,setting the tone and building a platform.From One to One to Many to Many:Open Source CultureIdle and Nunn‘s ―Tweets from Tahrir‖ is an excellentinsight into how watershed events in history areincreasingly accessible to us not as a monolithic set offacts and ideas but as individual and very personalstories. Covering the ―Arab Spring‖ of 2011, the bookprofiles many of the individual messages sent by theyoung protesters who gathered in the fateful square.Many cover the obvious, such as:―Internet‘s back in #Egypt. Ive been camping out inTahrir for 4 days n will remain until #Mubarak leaves.#jan25 12:03:06.‖ Tarek Shalaby (web designer whocamped out in a tent in the square). Others recount anarrative not made available to the mainstream media:―He Was trying to protect a little girl! Captured peopleare with weapons, knives, some police! 17:28:03.Beleidy (a travel writer and co-founder of an Egyptiantravel website). 87

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comFree speech is one thing but having access to the tools ofstorytelling that allow you to recount your own narrativeis another. The mass availability of mobile phones andin many cases, the mass availability of cheap Chinesemobile phones has given everybody a voice. Even themost oppressive and stifling regimes have met theirnemesis in the democratization of media.When everybody has a voice, the playing field becomesmore level. No longer is it about who has control of thedistribution channels but who becomes the most trustedand believable and this plays right into the hands of thepeople.This also meant ideas and change travel faster. Whenparts of Kenya were devastated by a prolonged drought,people got tired of waiting for the government to dosomething about it. Ahmed Salim woke up one morningand asked Kenyans on Twitter if they can do somethingthemselves. The response immediate and actionoriented. ―What do you have in mind?‖ ―How can wehelp?‖"Young Kenyans understand that with social media andmobile things can be done without waiting forgovernment. It gives them confidence to change thingsand a sense of immediacy in response," saidNgaruiya Githegi of The Insyder, a youth mediacompany in Nairobi.Within 45 minutes, a movement was started. #FEEDKEcaught the attention of Kenyans and they startedtransferring money for food and medication to Red 88

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comCross. Red Cross not only used the money to buy foodand medicine for those in the drought areas, they took ita step further. They replicated the movement, andwithin a month they‘ve collected $1.6 million.With internet democratizing not just access but alsoinvolvement in creating media content, those who sharethe same ideas and concerns will naturally find a way toconverge and meet each other. If a brand wants to seethis happen, it doesn‘t need to focus on building newplatforms or ways to communicate. It just needs tobreak down the walls that are preventing thisconvergence from taking place.Social media brought changes to social movements andsignificant changes to youth marketing. Youthmarketing needs to learn how to cede control. Themonolithic storytelling of the last 50 years has tocompete with numerous parallel narratives. What youragency says about the brand also has to compete withwhat fans and their tribes say about it. Who do youlisten to?When UK fashion retailer Next decided to launch itsown reality-TV style search for the ―Next Model‖ itsplans came unstuck. The winner wasn‘t a glamorous, 15year old improbably proportioned demigod, but a 24year-old computing science graduate from Belfast calledRoland Bunce. This red haired, overweight geeky typewho isn‘t blessed with model looks destroyed thecompetition generating 25,000 likes on his Facebookpage compared with second place, who notched on 97. 89

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAnd the interesting thing is that Roland nevervoluntarily entered the competition, he was forwarded asa joke by his college friends.This unfortunate turn of events for Next places them inan awkward position which hadn‘t gone unnoticed bythe fans who voted Roland to #1 spot. If Next were topull Bunce they‘d risk the wrath of both the fans and themaintream media for their cruel and elitist ways. If theywent with the plan, they‘d end up with a face thatwouldn‘t sell their products. So, what does Next do?Next‘s problem isn‘t the result of a poorly managedbrand but a poorly conceived plan. Roland Bunce ismerely the embodiment of the same protests voiced byyoung Egyptians in Tahrir square--a refusal to subscribeto a story they increasingly failed to believe in. Nextneeds to discharge the creative agency who conceivedthis old fashioned idea and start investigating how youthactually interact with fashion.Fashion to youth isn‘t a popularity contest where themost beautiful kid in school wins--fashion is somethingthat everybody has a voice in. Take a look at sites likeChictopia or Lookbook.nu and see how youth interactwith fashion. On Lookbook you can see the thousandsof fashion styles submitted by youth, on their ownaccord and with their own money. Adam G, a 19 year-old ―free spirit from Riverside California‖ shares his―Triangle Saga‖ style which attracts hundreds of bothsupportive and critical comments. ―So FreakingAwesome‖ says Aleksi T. The comments come in fromaround the world. The diaspora transcends traditional 90

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comgeographical borders and the walls built by its marketingstrategies. Where Next comes in is in creating theplatform for this to take place, promoting the fans andsetting the tone/guidelines for this community tohappen. The rest they can leave to the people who knowbest.Learning to Stand BackBoba Fett is, by a long margin, the most widely covetedStar Wars action figure. If you found yourself thefortunate owner of an original model with workingrocket launcher you could be in the possession of acollectible worth $16,000.For most Star Wars fans, the mysterious character ofBoba Fett who said little but implied much, the directionin the first three original movies needed littleimprovement. It‘s when George Lucas released theprequel trilogies and gave the bounty hunter an extendedrole that filled in the missing gaps such as what heactually spoke like, who he was, where he came fromand so on that fans began to protest. Lucas hadshattered their childhood dreams by dispelling theillusion.The Star Wars fan community is an active one. Thegrassroots project ―Star Wars Uncut‖ spawned from onefan‘s idea (Casey Pugh) to segment the movie intoindividual 15 second chunks which were then offered upto the community as an opportunity to recast the snippetin their own interpretation. In time, 472 entries were cutand spliced together from Lego, clay and computer 91

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comgraphics remakes to full on directed scenes featuringamateur actors.When a brand means something to somebody, that brandneeds to be careful about how it evolves its marketingmessage. Although Star Wars fans have individualinterpretations of the original movies, they are all agreedthat there isn‘t one correct narrative--it‘s their story.Star Wars simply gives them the opportunity to retellthat narrative whether it‘s in claymation format ofdressed as a storm trooper on Tatooine.The iconic brand lives in its customers and marketerssometimes need to learn to simply stand back and let ithappen. Sure, keep making tools but don‘t try tooverwrite these conversations by developing amonolithic marketing message that removes their abilityto create these interpretations.―The People vs George Lucas‖ debuted at SXSW inAustin 2010 to much acclaim. The movie is dedicatednot to George Lucas as the genesis of their passions butto the Star Wars trilogy itself. It‘s almost as if the brandhas taken on its own life that transcends the role ofLucas as the brand owner.The website reads:―So, for those of you who feel betrayed, disappointed,infuriated or traumatized by George Lucas, theresfinally a movie for you, the fascinating, excellentdocumentary The People vs. George Lucas, which notonly details the crimes Lucas has committed against hisfans, but goes much deeper, examining the Star Wars 92

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comphenomenon, the man who created it, its fans and thevery idea of culture itself.‖But if fans didn‘t care, if this was simply a case of ―likevs. un-like‖ they wouldn‘t have gone to the extent ofinvesting time, effort and money into the moviecreation. As the directors themselves note on thewebsite: ―For all its criticism, this film is a love letter toLucas from fans desperate to forgive him despite whathes put them through, that I enjoyed immensely.‖We are dealing with fans, people who love the brandalready. Perhaps you don‘t know who they are. Perhapsyou are trying to monetize the customers before theinterests of the fans. Perhaps you see their input asmeddlesome or obstructive. However you view it, thesevocal fans think themselves right.Create the tools, stand back, let the magic happen.Jared: His StoryWhen Bob Ocwieja pitched Jareds story to RichardCoad most would have thought the chances slim.Here was a Subway franchisee from the coal face ofoperations pitching to the pitch-guy. Coad was anexperienced master of the pitch who knew all theintricacies of the art of persuasion. The pitch in questionwas a 425 pound high-schooler from Indianapolis in hisjunior year – Jared Fogle.Why would anyone want this overweight self-confessedjunk-food junkie as a figurehead for their campaign? 93

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAnd, furthermore, how were they to track this guydown?The reason was simple – it was about them. ―Them‖being the customers. Jared was authentic in that nocasting agency would have given him a second lookexcept for maybe ―are you sure you‘re supposed to be atthis audition?‖   Yet, Jared‘s normality was also hisremarkability; Jared‘s seemingly helpless food slaveryhad created a heart-warming story that touched ageneration of potential customers. The 30 stone no-hoper in size XXXXXXL shirts (yes, only in Americathey make them that large) turned his junk foodaddiction to a seemingly healthier alternative–-Subway.At first piqued by the ―7 Under 6‖ campaign, Jaredfeasted on the 6 inch Turkey Sub for lunch followed bya footlong veggie for dinner.   According to their ownwebsite, Jareds daily Subway routine was as follow: Breakfast—coffee Lunch--"I ate the 6-inch turkey, tons of vegetables, including hot peppers and a bit of spicy mustard." He left off the mayonnaise and cheese and had a bag of Baked Lays® potato chips and a diet soft drink  Dinner--Footlong veggie sub--again no mayonnaise or cheese.  The ―Subway diet‖ became a fixture.Gone were Big Macs and in their place lower caloriealternatives combined with a brisk walk to the newstore. Remarkably, within 3 months, Jared shed 100pounds and weighed a slighter 150kg (down from 193). 94

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comSeven hundred Subway sandwiches later, Jared had lostover 100kg.His story caught the attention of Men‘s Health in theirarticle ―Stupid Diets that Work‖, a story whichultimately reached Ocwieja and then Coad. For Coad,here was an opportunity to overcome public hostility tofast food advertising. Few youth trust brand claims. So,how would they react if the narrative was changed frombeing about Subway to being about Jared?Jared was too implausible a choice for a casting agencyto select that it had to be authentic.  Finding thismystery eater mentioned only briefly in Men‘s Healthadded to the backstory that made Jared‘s one of the bestearly examples of successfully re-engineering the brandnarrative.On the instructions of Coad, an intern was sent to everySubway in town to locate the ―subway guy.‖ Scouringevery Subway near campus offered up clues to hislocation until one counter clerk said ―Oh that‘s Jared, hecomes here every day.‖ All the intern had to do was sitand wait.When Coad‘s men finally made contact with Jared, theagency went to work on creating the commercial – acampaign that achieved significant success reflected inmedia interest from USA Today, Fox and Oprah. Thepicture of Jared beaming from the advertising hoardingsholding his 62 inch jeans and the following ―Tour dePants" were iconic additions to a project thatmaterialized as top line gains.    95

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comSubway claim the campaign spiked sales by 18 percentin 2000, and 16% the following year. So successful wasJared as the figurehead for Subways marketing thatwhen the two parties decided to enter a trial separationin 2005 Subways sales dipped 10%. It wasnt just oneway traffic in the relationship, though, Jared didhandsomely from endorsement and as he said himself"The Subway chain helped save my life over and over. Icant ever repay that."Fast forward to 2011 and Subway makes the news againbut this time for the wrong reasons.Photographed outside a US store stands anadvertisement featuring a young girl holding aseemingly enormous Subway sandwich. Sure, it‘s lifesize--Subway really does deliver value for money exceptwhen the photographer points out the girl holding thesandwich is, in fact, a midget. How far we have come--from the beginnings of a marketing philosophy thatpromised to incorporate customers in the storytellingprocess, to one that gets caught out trying to hoodwinkcustomers.Generation O have become very adept at spotting thebrands that cut corners to drive up short term sales. Thetemptation is there, but it‘s actually more work to doless work. Customers will trust you less. Negativerecommendations will reduce your future marketingROI. Our challenge is having faith in the idea that youthmarketing is about investing in the long-termrelationships, building assets and letting go. It‘s havingfaith enough to resist these insidious temptations--a 96

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comsneaky marketing campaign here or a ―gotcha‖paragraph in the terms 97

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com 6. Top Down vs. Bottom Up InnovationInnovation starts at the point we can say ―I don‘t know‖ Real innovation doesn‘t come from productdevelopment departments or people with ―innovation‖ in their job title but the curations of numeorous social interactions and conversations with the market Everybody wants to understand what makes good innovation but very few people have asked why it happens and explored its social dimension 98

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comExperience vs. ExpertiseIf you get the chance to walk the city of Cologne,Germany, make sure you pay attention to the seeminglyinnocuous. We‘ve already mentioned the lovelocks onthe bridge. You will also see small metallic guttersrunning down the side of the stone staircases. At first,you might think they‘re there to handle rain runoffs incase of flash floods or typhoons, but they are none of thesort. It‘s only when you see a cyclist coming down thesteps walking the bike in the gutter next to her does itclick. This clever invention could only have beendeveloped by a cyclist - no town planner could innovatelike this.Our models of innovation are often confined by thestories we tell about innovation itself. We go to schooland learn about Pythagoras or Archimedes. We learnabout the Chinese Empress and the discovery of silk.Almost all of these stories are no more than half-truths.The real innovation didn‘t happen in the mind of oneperson. It happened in the many. That‘s the beauty ofinnovation--it‘s an everyday social process that isgenerated through the experienced, not the experts. Thatmeans young people on the front line, not propellerheads in the labs.Youth after all ―discovered‖ SMS, Facebook, Napster,file sharing and BBM. We, the eggheads, inventedlocation based services and MMS. Experience beatsexpertise every time because experts are paid to invent,to innovate. Cyclists, however, innovate because they 99

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comhave a real need. Inspiration comes to them when theyare actually using the product.When the mobile industry invented SMS they includedit in the GSM protocol because they thought networkengineers would need a format to send test messages―Test message. Ignore. Delete.‖ Who on earth woulduse a 160 character format when you had email, voiceand so on? Well, as it turns out youth did and now themobile industry is a mere $1 trillion better off as aresult.Left to experts, innovation festers. Design agenciesdesign great salad spinners and alternatives to long haultravel seating arrangements but experience changes livesand industries. To you it‘s a metallic drain, to them itsolves a real problem. That‘s why we regularlyencourage clients to say ―I don‘t know.‖Innovation: Comparison of Models Top Down Bottom UpOrigin Innovation manager, Youth, Product especially Development teens, hackers Department, Design agencyStartup R&D Budget Context, Fans,Assets platform for Fans to connectDriver Reacting to industry Addressing 100

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com competition behavioral needs of the customersObjective Better products More social currencyInnovation Function of genius Social processcomes fromInnovation’s New products MarketingpurposeBrand’s role Innovate CurateSo much of failed innovation stems from the belief thatone individual had to have all the answers. If you lookat the world‘s first roller coaster built in Cone Island in1884, you see an idea that‘s half-baked and nothingcompared to what roller coasters are today. Sure, theideas are the same, but the product is fundamentallydifferent in execution.The first joy-riders travelled sideways in the coaster carbecause our concept of open-car rail transport was basedon the tracks laid in mines. It was only later on that theride‘s owners discovered that a more pleasurable andless dangerous experience could be had by all by simplysitting forward facing. The concept evolved over time--from sideways to front-facing; from a single strip oftrack, to a continuous loop as they are today. Thedesigners innovated not through expertise--the only 101

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comexperts at the time were Pennsylvania coal miners whoknew little about riding the rails for pleasure. Thedesigners innovated through experience--throughcountless interactions and iterations based on seeing andtweaking the daily experiences of the Cone Islandcoaster‘s users.The MonorailWhen Springfield picked up a windfall of $3 million, thetown committee was tasked with deciding how to investthe money. Would they, as Marge Simpson proposed,invest the money in cleaning up the Main Street andrevitalizing its ailing commercial district? Or would theyopt for a shiny new monorail as proposed by fast talkingsnake oil salesman Lyle Lanley? Lanley had alreadysold the Monorail to the people of Ogdenville, NorthHaverbrook, and Brockway. His pitch was backed witha musical number that had the townsfolk of Springfield(Marge excepted) singing the Monorail‘s praises. AsSpringfield‘s economy faltered, the Monorail promisedthe silver bullet the people naively believed wouldrelieve them of their pain. They were suitably wowedby agency pitchman Lanley, but after $3 million, theirdreams were never realized and Lanley was nowhere tobe seen.The parable of the Simpson‘s Monorail isn‘t a sideswipeat agency pitches but a wakeup call for all companiesthat believe technology or marketing gimmicks can taketheir pain away. Every top-down decision aboutinnovation is influenced, to a large degree, by the 102

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comseductive influence of the Monorail. When we‘re drivenby fear and its ugly child—bureaucracy—we are scaredto venture deeper into the world of consumer behavior,psychology and interaction because it may unearth truthswe don‘t want to hear, like youth don‘t wake upthinking about our brands, or they‘re not payingattention, or they simply don‘t care. These truths existwith every company. What separates Apple fromMicrosoft, Jet Blue from United, and Monster fromPepsi is that one accepts these truths and works fromthat base of understanding, while the other tries to hidethem with flashy displays of gimmickry.Seth Godin calls it the ―Meatball Sundae‖ (from thebook of the same name). We believe adding a creamySundae topping will make the meatballs taste better.The topping which Seth alludes to are all the ―sexy‖aspects of marketing --social media, Foursquare,celebrities, sponsorship, interactive viral videocampaigns, flash mobs, Twitter, mobile barcodes and soon. They have their place, but it‘s in the meatballs thedish is made or broken, the stuff most bureaucraciesboth fail to get excited about and fear--building dialoguewith customers, co-creation, long term projects andcustomer service.We laugh at their gullibility but every brand ororganization is its own Springfield. The Superdomeprobably brought more immediate returns andexcitement to the people of New Orleans than raising afew muddy levees, but history is replete with stories ofpeople that have been punished for not building theirhouses out of anything but bricks. We seek results in 103

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.commarketing just as we do in sports. That one signing, thatnew manager will turn the season. We pay over theodds for the next big idea or the next big player, only tofind ourselves constantly lurching from one promise tothe next at the mercy of the agencies and agents. We alldecry long term investment, seeking the immediate hit,the immediate turnaround, yet it‘s the teams thatinvested in the long term that win out every time.Slowly but surely they plug away at their grass roots andensure stability while the big brands pander to their needto placate the market with big signings.Perhaps the heart of the reason why we are stuck in atop-down world of innovation is our fear of thecustomer. Rather than spend a $100 on hiring a videocamera to go out and talk to these teens, we‘d ratherspend $100K with a primary research company on focusgroups.An industry colleague once confided that his head officehad commissioned a focus group to ask teens whether ornot they liked the new ad jingle. Total cost = $45K. It‘sunderstandable because teens can be quite scary.Let‘s face it. There couldn‘t be anything more terrifyingto your average MBA than going on to the street andtalking to a bunch of teenagers. Once you‘ve got passedthe obvious fears of mugging you‘re faced with the realpossibility of the teens tearing your idea apart.We‘ve seen it first hand at an industry conference inLondon where a panel of youth, organized by JuliaShalet, ripped apart the seemingly innovative and 104

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.combrilliant ideas of a group of startup companies in afascinating role-reversal of Dragon‘s Den (where theyounger players were the ―Dragons‖). Let‘s just say that30 minutes pitching their ideas to a group of unqualified,unskilled and inexperienced ―analysts‖ was the mostvaluable 30 minutes of customer insights they‘d everreceive.The Spirit of JugaadIn rural Madhya Pradesh, India, the story of Lassivendors has become folklore.Lassi--the yoghurt based drink often mixed with mangofor tourists or simply served with a pinch of salt for thelocals—is the staple of both manual workers andprofessionals alike. MP, as it is known, is an extensivesuburb of the sprawling mass of city that‘s called NewDelhi. Almost 30 million people are all packed into alandscape that sprouts bold flyovers and billboards,welcoming the arrival of the future like a rash across itsonce passive existence. Growth and consumerism gohand-in-hand, so the local population demands itsBlackBerry handsets, Louis Vuitton handbags and colorTVs.It‘s here in the turn of the millennium that domesticconsumer electronics manufacturer Videotron saw ahealthy growth in demand for its products. Onecategory in particular stood out--a specific model of top-loading washing machine that was neither particularlyhigh on spec or a particularly attractive addition to theincreasingly image-concious Indian middle class 105

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comhousehold. Why did demand for this rather datedwashing machine continue to grow when it seemedcustomers were dumping old-fashioned models acrossthe board in favor of modern variants?It‘s only when Videotron dispatched its people to thestreets of MP did they find their answer. Locals weren‘twashing their Levi‘s or Diesel jeans at all. It was a largegroup of street vendors producing Lassi that werebuying up the old stock. The old top-loading modelswith their slow spin cycles and economic electricityconsumption were ideal mixing vessels for the yoghurtdrinks. They could keep them on slow spin all daywithout racking up a large bill, while at the same timenot have to fork out for expensive catering equipmentdesigned specifically for the mixing juice but unable toaccommodate the large loads they were accustomed to.Deviance is often used in the pejorative: rule-breakers,rebels and dissidents. But it can also be essentially apositive force for change. What happens when devianceis the driving force for innovation? What happens whenyour customers start breaking the rules in order toproduce a better product, a better way of connectingwith their friends or a better way of being significant?For Videotron, here is the opportunity to create newproduct lines. For a record label, however, in anenvironment where Brand Bureaucracy rules decisionmaking - deviance can only be a threat to their business.It took brands like Apple to realize that how youthconsumed music and the rules they were breaking wasessentially an opportunity to change with rather thanbuild a legal bulwark against the rising tide. 106

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAnd it follows that the most deviant of all customers arethe young. Youth have the time but not the money.They have the greatest need for social tools becausetheir interactions number tens or hundreds on a dailybasis while adults can count them on their hands. It‘salso youth who have the least fear of making mistakes.See how any child learns a language and you have, inessence, the best business case as to why it should beyouth who are the harbingers of future productdevelopment. Children who move to new countries andare forced to learn a new language can become fluent ina year. Adults can take a lifetime, should they everachieve that level. When an adult walks into arestaurant and orders food in a foreign language hisimmediate concern is looking stupid. The young don‘tcare, so they learn a lot faster.The Indian ―Jugaad‖ - a four wheel tractor trailerattached at the back of a motor bike has come tosymbolize more than just a quirk of innovation in thesubcontinent. For many Indians, the spirit of Jugaad isone of deviance, the mistrust of established rules, thestriving for improvement and the constant quest to findsocial tools within a limited budget. The spirit ofJugaad is alive and well in both India and the youthmarket. That‘s why you‘ll find the most excitinginnovations out there where the material resources arethe most limited rather than in the research labs.Teens hack. That‘s what they do. The spirit of Jugaadis alive and well in the outsiders who are want ofresources and have the time. The question is, do you 107

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.combuild walls to contain this behavior or do you activelyencourage it?A 13 year-old boy from Croydon England invented adoorbell that calls your mobile phone if youre out of thehouse. Not a bad idea. It will earn him $400K. Brandslike Apple, Google and Facebook are actively courtingteens to incorporate this innovative drive into their long-term product development because they know teensspeak from experience not expertise. Teens hackbecause they have to, not because they are paid to.Innovation is the child of Positive Deviance--ourconstant exploration of the boundaries of possibilitiesand optimization of available tools to meet our limitedresources. Those compelled to optimize the most--thoselimited in resources--are the best sources of innovation.Teenagers will seek out sites, download software andscour forums to find ways to download a movie for free,whereas an adult will simply open up her wallet and bitethe bullet, paying the $10. In the case of the adult, timeis more valuable than the money spent. But if you havea generation with time at their disposal, you don‘t haveone or two genius individuals who could generate ideasfor your product; you have millions.When music went digital, it lost its social sharingelement, so teens invented and adopted MP3 filesharing--a format that not only later launched the careersof some relatively unknown artists but also the iPod,iTunes and arguably the iPhone. Without teens, Applewould still be manufacturing MacBooks. The greatest 108

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.cominnovations of recent times are the products of teenPositive Deviance.While the media constantly seek out the ―stars‖ to try toredress the balance and revert the narrative to the top-down model with stories of who the ―godfather of theinternet‖ is, the truth is that the net‘s existence is due tothe input of many individuals and the participation ofcountless more. SMS, as we‘ve discovered was theproduct of youth Positive Deviance--a hack tocommunicate more effectively, but without paying forexpensive mobile phone calls. BBM follows the samepath, despite being readily available to the executivemarket for a good number of years beforehand. Thesocially challenged Marc Zuckerberg invented Facebookbecause he needed a tool to help him interact with hisclassmates. It took one lightning-rod to conduct theenergy of the social media storm, but the maelstrom hadalready been created by countless users, innovators andparticipants in the years running up to its launch - fromthe original coding teams, to those that developedMySpace, Mixi and even Friendster. Each generation isa successive deviation from the previous one--anevolution of the technological meme as opposed to, dareI say it, some kind of Intelligent Design.Facebook vs MySpace: A tale of TwoCulturesLeading brands have already embraced co-creation.This is not an option, this is about survival. 109

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comGoogle invites teen girls to the Googleplex to indulge ina day of Android app development.Wait, you did read that right.Teenage girls, Android app development, all in onesentence. One group has affectionately calledthemselves the ―Droidettes.‖ Who would‘ve thought thatcould ever happen?Google, obviously.What Google understands is three things a) girls areequally competent as developers, which means b) theremust be many girls who need support out there, and c)girls who attend the app day don‘t come to developapps--they come to hang out with likeminds, take photosand post them on Facebook. Innovation is a byproductof the social process, and Google reaps dividends for itslong term Android operating system by generatinggrassroots insights from experienced users rather thandisconnected experts.And it‘s not just Google, it‘s Facebook too.Business world is polarizing; on the one handorganizations that have excelled at process, on the otheroutsiders who take risks. Large brands need to hire inrisk takers because their own systems cannot supportcreativity.We talk about marketing and innovation strategies, butwhat we really need to be talking about is marketing andinnovation culture. You see, great brands aren‘t the 110

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comproducts of great strategies but great people. Moreover,great brands are a function of the cultures that makethem.Change the people, change the culture.Chris Putnam was just your average college student whoenjoyed playing average dorm room pranks. Usingsome basic code and a few CSS rewrites, he created anapp that allowed members to see Facebook but with aMySpace theme. You wouldn‘t normally give it muchattention, except when Putnam received an email in hisinbox from Facebook‘s co-founder Dustin Moskowitz.There was a precedent to this.Earlier, one hacker had tried a similar stunt on MySpaceitself, which resulted in a probing email from thecompany‘s inner circle. After an exchange of emails,the wannabe hacker was invited to MySpace with thepromise of a job offer only to find a group of copswaiting to arrest him at LAX airport.Needless to say, Putnam was cautious. And it‘s herethat marketing and innovation as a function of culturerather than strategy are most tangible. Here‘s Putnam‘saccount of the message received from Facebook:―His knowledge of my identity didnt come as much of asurprise since the worms interaction with my accountwas a dead giveaway and we even went out of our wayto provide contact information in the source code andCSS file. Im having a hard time finding the exact textof his message right now, but it was along the lines of 111

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com‗Hey, this was funny but it looks like you are deletingcontact information from users profiles when you go toreplicate the worm again. Thats not so cool.‘ This thenled to a lot of back-and-forth between myself and Dustinwhere I explained the worm in detail and other holes Ihad found and planted worms within. He was incrediblyfriendly about the whole thing and we continued talkingfairly frequently over AIM for a month or so. I pulled acouple more dumb stunts during this time, in particularlocking up several college databases testing SQLinjection holes.‖Their relationship grew. In time, Moskowitz offeredPutnam a job but rather than pulling the MySpaceambush at the airport, he ended up working in theFacebook development team working on the creation ofa video sharing application which is now usable by allmembers today.Innovation is a function of culture. In Facebook, theprevailing culture is one of ―Break things and movefast.‖ If it‘s not broken, break it. Facebook grew from adorm culture of hacking and that has carried over to thecompany as we know it today. When Facebook wantsto evolve the platform it doesn‘t hire in design agenciesor brilliant PhDs like Google; it runs Hackathon: TheHacker Cup sets key challenges to buddingprogrammers often unrelated to specific Facebookcoding issues.Here‘s one example: 112

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com―Aliens on the Unknown planet have a tradition ofplaying a game called Loiten. It is played by twoplayers who alternate turns. There are N buckets withapples standing in one line in front of the players. Theyare numbered from left to right with integers startingfrom 1.‖At this point, most of us are lost on the detail but thenFacebook isn‘t interested in the ―most of us‖, it‘sinterested in the fans who love hacking and needFacebook to provide them with the platform, ideas andtools to make that happen.Facebook‘s Hackathons have given us the ―Like‖ buttonand photo tagging--two of the most used functions onthe website. Here‘s the company‘s department of greatideas in action, not in the innovation labs or from theguy with ―innovation‖ in his job title but by the hackerson the outside. It‘s here culture determines innovation--Facebook could have so easily copied MySpace andarrested Putnam but it chose not to because it was younghackers like Putnam who made Facebook in the firstplace. MySpace today is toast not because of poorinnovation or marketing strategies, but because ofculture.We face choices--do we see these people as threats or dowe embrace their Positive Deviance and harness it toevolve our own product lines? It‘s as simple as askingyour store employees what they would do if iTrevorbegan his dance in the store. Our need to shut down theunknown, the uncontrollable, is something ingrained inus since birth. If we danced in the classroom we‘d be 113

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comcastigated. If you turned round to the guy sitting next toyou in the exam hall and offered to co-operate, you‘d bethrown out for cheating. Our whole system is gearedtowards top-down innovation rather than encouraginginnovation as it actually happens.That‘s why it takes brands that have broken the mold--Google and Facebook to explain to the rest of usfollowers how it can be done. Here are two companieswith a potential market cap of in excess of $1 trillion,built on encouraging and supporting hackers.What if I’m not Google or Facebook?It‘s not just the cool tech brands that get all the fun.What if you were a boring has-been, and what if, youwere also marketing products that are given to you as adone-deal? Cars, for example.Ford‘s story exemplifies the potential of bottom-upinnovation better than any. Here is a brand that in 2008had seen its stock price plummet to $1.50--around 5% ofits value 10 years earlier. Ford was finished long beforethe recession ever hit. The auto brand‘s problemsdidn‘t lie in having a poor product line but in a relianceon top-down innovation. Ford employees drove Ford.All their families and friends drove Ford. They lived intowns where everyone either drove the brand or workedfor a company that supplied it. When young peoplestarted buying cooler Japanese marques, Ford was none-the-wiser as to why its brand was becoming 114

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comuncompetitive. It was a slow motion car-crash thatlasted the best part of a decade.How, then, did Ford go from the precipice of bankruptcyin 2008 to launching one of the top 10 coolest autobrands in 2011--a car that met much acclaim both intrade press and in terms of sale--the Ford Fiesta? Bearin mind that this was a small engine, low-end modelpopular in Europe—it didn‘t even have supersizepopcorn holders in the dash.Ford‘s turnaround was its ability to identify and co-create with its fans. The hands-up cashless innovatorsector - American students - were already sold on thebrand. They wanted small engine cars as gas pricesspiraled out of control. Co-creating with them wouldsimply be a case of engaging them in a movement--theFord Fiesta Movement.Ford‘s marketing genius wasn‘t an overnight campaignwin. It was a 3-years program that identified fans andactively helped those fans tell their story to theirfollowers through the platform of the Fiesta.Take a look at the movement‘s website and you‘llstruggle to see ubiquitous Ford branding. No case of―can you make the logo bigger?‖ here. The agentdrivers selected by Ford to run the year-long trial werecritical in the co-creation of innovative solutions fromin-car audio technology to apps that allow you to sendtext messages from the car‘s dash. Sure, some of it isrisky but here‘s the beauty of co-creation; the risk isshifted onto the market. 115

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comWhen fans co-create with you, they are investing theirtime, money and effort into the ideas. If it fails, they‘renot going to dump the brand, they‘ll simply try again.Top-down innovation, by contrast, develops everythinginternally on the company balance sheet before shiftingout at high risk onto high-end customers. We‘ve seenthis pattern repeated consistently in the tech market--MMS being just one example of technologies designedin-house that should have been given to the fans first.We‘ve seen it with BBM--BlackBerry Messenger. Foryears, executives had it on their phones but the appnever went anywhere. When youth got hold of it, theymade it fly. With this tried and tested app, BlackBerryhas a wealth of insights, from how PINs are exchanged,to how youth use BBM groups which it could exportback to their executive users and remain competitiveover Microsoft, Nokia and Apple.In contrast, French manufacturer Renault hires a high-end design agency to create a customizable blue-skyprototype, the Renault Frendzy, based on ourincreasingly frantic lifestyles in the hope you will beinspired to buy. The Frendzy‘s PR team have alreadytantalized the press with a glimpse of how this vehiclewill change our lives--from the mirrors that ―swivel to ahorizontal position‖ to the interior that ―glows orange.‖Unlike the streets and the Movement, Renault‘sapproach is to capture the hearts and minds of thedealers, trade press and the International Motor Show inGermany. 116

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comIt‘s easy to fall into the trap--I am the product manager;therefore, I manage the product. But, the reality todayis, with Gen O, this couldn‘t be further from the truth.You are Encyclopedia Britannica. Nobody consults theEncyclopedia if they want to find out the truth--they goto Wikipedia.Why “Youth Marketing Strategy” is aMythAs Facebook goes public, the question is can it retainthis culture of hacking?Will the next Putnam be shut down by lawyers?When Jones Soda went public, some of the firstdirectives of the new board were to close down theseemingly inefficient aspects of the business--such asthe informal Friday powwow held by CEO and founderPeter Van Stolk with all his team. It was at this meetingthat ideas such as the labels with customers‘ photos andfortune cookie messages under the bottle caps camefrom. Shutting down the meeting to make the culturemore efficient simply restricted the company‘sinnovative marketing efforts.When P&G embarked on an audacious co-creationprogram called ―Reflect,‖ it designed a whole factoryinfrastructure that would allow a new generation ofcosmetics consumers to individually design and selecttheir own lines from mascara to lipstick. The automatedand highly personalizable factory process cost $250million (before any advertising) and failed. Why? Not 117

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.combecause it wasn‘t innovative or creative enough but, asSeth Godin says, because it was P&G.Often we try to change the culture to fit the marketingbut ultimately culture is the marketing. In largeorganizations, youth marketing fails because the tailwags the dog--marketing ideas are confined by thebrand‘s not the individual‘s needs.By contrast, @Cosme magazine in Japan launched a #1bestselling book featuring 120,000 reviews of cosmeticsenthusiasts detailing everything from where to how towear and use the products. We once learned of a client,a large CPG brand, who embarked on an ideationprocess generated by their design agency, would sourcethe best innovations from their employees. Ideas wouldbe submitted and voted upon for approval by seniormanagement who were tasked with the responsibility ofmaking them happen. Anything goes, except that anyidea submitted would have to profitable within 6months.Organizations become their own competitors andhowever ―social‖ you get or to whatever extent youbecome ―customer centric‖ you end up with the sameresults. Sometimes you can‘t change the DNA so yousimply have to change the people.Ford could only change its direction when it overhauledits marketing staff. If Ford was to implement newstrategies on top of old teams, it would end up with whatit always ended up with. Tales about the Apple Storeare often replete with real life examples of customers 118

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comwho have had positive and often unexpected experiencesof interacting with their highly trained Genius staff.―I went to the Genius Bar once with a broken screen onmy iPhone--out of warranty.‖ - (Phone was replaced)―I had a similar experience involving the replacement ofan out of warranty phone for free. Thats why I dontmind the term Apple Fanboi.‖―Apple stores really do put in the extra drive, and yeah,thats why they are such a great success. Well, alsobecause of their products! In San Francisco I forgot mybike lock, so an Apple employee came outside andhelped me, went in, got what i wanted, and swiped mycard outside. Cant complain at all! The place is alwayscrazy and I still feel like the ratio, employee to customeris 1:1.‖This is stuff that you cannot build into a strategy. Youthmarketing ―strategy‖ is just a myth--it‘s a reflection ofthe people not the ideas you have. The CEO can createan environment for these open activities that facilitatemarketing and innovation. She will not only emphasizethe culture‘s strengths but also attract the right people.You can‘t change strategy without changing people.Your best thinking got you to where you are today.From Innovation to Curation: LettingGoOur first step in youth marketing is letting go. 119

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comSomebody once said that ―learning to love is learning tolet go.‖ So much of what we do wrong in relationships isbased on the need to tell our story, the need to be rightand the need to protect our vulnerabilities. In marketingand innovation this is also very true. Letting go meansmoving from marketer and innovator to curator. Youare the curator of the community rather than its voice.You give Gen O their voice by building Social Toolsand encouraging them to hack and optimize these verytools. You create the platform and set the tone.In a similar fashion, youth marketing is a love story.We have to learn to let go. We no longer manage, weencourage. We are the custodians rather than theowners. The relationships are real and cannot beleveraged. You can‘t friend millions of peoplemeaningfully, just as in the real world. And so too, asattention becomes increasingly limited in supply, welose our ability to broadcast our brand storiesmeaningfully far and wide. We have to start treatingmarketing as something that reflects real worldinteraction. We can‘t simply interrupt and start talkingabout ourselves. We wait until we are invited.These are the new rules of youth marketing and it‘stricky. We marketers don‘t like using words like ―love‖in our vernacular. It doesn‘t fit into the 4Ps or whateverthey are called now. It‘s emotional, messy and can‘t bebroken down into widgets, but this is where we are heretoday.Changing your approach isn‘t just a cool way to vampup your brand it‘s the only way you‘ll be around in the 120

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comnext 10 years. No brand is immune. Inside some of thegreatest brands--from Red Bull to Converse--we seeteams constantly fighting their corner and reinventingthe culture from the inside out. To some, they aretroublemakers, but to us they are the future of thatbrand. Without them, Nokia would still be producingwoodpulp, Red Bull would only be a medicine drunk byThai taxi drivers, and Ford a boring old has-brand that,like GM, used taxpayer money to rescue itself frombankruptcy.But, thankfully, the change agents do exist and theykeep trying to change thing without official sanction.Your CEO won‘t tell you to fix the brand or the productbecause by the time she finds out it‘s too late.Key Questions for Youth Marketers Where are most of my company‘s great ideas coming from? What parts of the business can I open up to customer participation? What kind of customers do I want to invite to co- create with my brand? What real steps can I take to start involving my customers in innovation? Does my organization have a culture that supports innovation? What can I personally do to develop the Spirit of Jugaad in my own team? 121

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comThe Crazy OnesHere‘s to the crazy ones.The misfits.The rebels.The troublemakers.The round pegs in the square holes.The ones who see things differently.They‘re not fond of rules.And they have no respect for the status quo.You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify orvilify them.About the only thing you can‘t do is ignore them.Because they change things.They push the human race forward.And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we seegenius.Because the people who are crazy enough to think theycan change the world, are the ones who do--reproduced from Apple’s Think Different campaign 122

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comAbout the Authors Graham Brown has spent his life living and working in both London and Tokyo. A psychology graduate, Graham has focused his marketing career on understanding what influences consumerbehavior a field in which he is due to publish his firstbook in early 2011.As well as speaking at industry conferences on thesubject of young consumers, Graham has appeared onCNBC, Sky News, CNN and BBC as well as in printwith the FT, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal and TheSunday Times. Freddie Benjamin is the Research Manager at mobileYouth. He has prior experience in research and analysis of consumer behavior from US and Asia markets. He masters quantitative andqualitative research methods, design and ethnographicresearch. He is the co-author of the four partmobileYouth report 2011. 123

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.com Ghani Kunto is the Business Development Manager for Asia at mobileYouth. He has been involved in the world of youth marketing and education since 2007. He hosted anumber of business talk shows in television and radio.Ghani has ran workshop on marketing in variouscountries in Asia. He currently teaches ConsumerBehavior for Asian Banking Finance Institute in Jakarta,Indonesia 124

http://www.YouthMarketingHandbook.comContact UsJosh Dhaliwal, Directorjosh.dhaliwal@mobileYouth.orghttp://www.twitter.com/joshdhaliwalUK/Europe: +44 203 286 3635North America: +1 646 867 3635South Africa: +27 11 08 3635 1You can find out more about our work onmobile and youth research onhttp://www.mobileYouth.org 125

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(mobileYouth) The Youth Marketing Handbook

by Graham Brown (mobileYouth) on Jul 25, 2011

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(mobileYouth) The Youth Marketing Handbook — Document Transcript