Youth Marketing
We absolutely know what you were thinking about this past year?
What do the Iran election, Michael Jackson, Google Wave, Harry Potter, American Idol, the Superbowl and #musicmonday have in common?
No More Textbooks in Schools?
Quite possibly, Yes! And why not? The latest personal technology rage is Amazon’s Kindle, a portable electronic reader that replaces the typical hardcover or paperback book by wirelessly downloading books and select newspapers. Currently a consumer product, the Kindle’s surface area is similar to the standard hardcover book yet the depth is no larger than a pencil. It provides a great alternative for someone who doesn’t want to lug a heavy book through the airport; needs to conserve on space during their morning commute; or to download a new book on a whim no matter where they are. And the current cost of downloads is cheaper than the real book itself.
Now think about the significance of distributing a single Kindle – a digital textbook – to each student throughout an entire school or school district instead of stacks of hardcover textbooks. The benefits are huge and the applications are limitless.
Oh, to be so Young and Savvy
It’s been a while since I was part of the 20 – 25 year old market segment and I recall having a “devil may care” approach to food buying and consumption. Sure, I cared somewhat about calories, but actually finding caloric content info wasn’t easy. Forget about RDAs and percentage of fat vs. sugar vs. proteins. Fiber? Don’t think so.
I just had lunch with my cousin, a college freshman, who filled me in on her eating habits. She spurned the school meal plan, opting to cook for herself. She shops at Whole Foods almost exclusively, eats organic when she can, doesn’t mix carbs with anything else and has pretty much a hands-off attitude about sugar. Turns out, she fits the profile of the Young Women (20-25 year old) segment of our recent Food Shopping Survey 2009. We asked respondents to rank purchase considerations among 12 criteria; then probed into label-reading. Here are a few highlights:
- The overall #1 criteria is Taste, but for this group Price is a close second. Which, interestingly, often means buying simple, fresh ingredients rather than prepared, packaged foods.
- Young Women were not as concerned about preservatives or fiber as their “more mature” female counterparts.
- More than any other group, Young Women were more influenced by Packaging, yet paid less notice to Brand Name. This comes as an expression of their curiosity in exploring items, general “newness” of shopping independently, and the attendant lack of brand loyalty.
- Young Women (and Young Men) are more interested in organic and fair trade than any other segment.
- A lot of information is derived online as well as through friends, including those on Facebook and other social networks. Some of the favorite online sources cited are: Hungry Girl, fitday, Jillian Michaels, wholefoods, idealist and epicurious. And two favorite magazines are Fitness and Health.
Here are a few verbatim comments which reflect a collective point of view:
- “I’m eating less healthy now that I’m in college and away from my parents. But I’m determined to turn that around.”
- “I just got married and my husband is obsessed with saving money. Still, we buy good, whole foods. No more pre-packaged junk for us.”
- “I buy more ‘real’ food, meaning not processed. If I buy pre-packaged foods, I look for ‘real’ingredients, those I recognize as food.”
-“I’m more aware of the effects that highly processed foods have not only on people, but on the economy and sustainability of the earth.”
- “I just returned from two years living in France, where I learned to shop almost daily for fresh foods … a great habit.”
-“I’m not interested in brand names. I’m reading labels, cutting out things with added sugar.”
-“I’ve given up dairy.”
- “I became a vegetarian.”
-“I’m purchasing from local/smaller grocery stores. Also looking at what is in my food. For things like bread, it’s ridiculous that it would contain HFCS (as an example).”
- “SEO is a great thing. You can Google anything and the information will pop up. I do this the first time I buy just about anything – that is, go online to find what’s in it.”
To sum it up, these are the views of our emerging food buyer, in her first few years of meal planning independence. Maybe she’s in college right now, or newly married, but soon she’s likely to be buying for a family. We know a lot about how she selects food and engages with brands, but few ingredient companies are using this intelligence wisely. There’s a lot of “if we build it, they will come” mentality still rampant in b2b marketing. Ask yourself … do you understand this consumer? And how can you join the conversation?
Notes from CIMA’s Interactive Marketing Survey
There were no real surprises from Chicago Interactive Marketing’s (CIMA) 7th semi-annual marketing survey. 
Our friend, Troy Mastin, former researcher at Blair and new Director of Global Strategy and Operations for the Marketing Store, conducted the research again this year. The responses provided from Chicago area marketers, agencies and media were what I had expected: Continue reading
Link instead of Ink!
Yesterday in the mail we received a very nice four color self-mailer from our local community center. Their goal is to ‘enrich lives through education, cultural arts and charitable service’, and they offer a variety of classes for children and adults that range from Yoga, Bridge and Dog Training to Children’s Acting classes and Chess. I’m sure your community has a similar organization. 
Traditionally, they’ve mailed out a multi-page catalog that I’ve scanned rapidly and thrown away. Well, except for the year we signed up for dog training which we desperately needed at the time.
But this year they’ve really looked at the audience and figured out that we’re just interested in that one sentence description and can go to the next level on our own! To make the transition complete, they state upfront that this IS the Fall 2009 Catalog, and push everyone to either use their website or give them a call for more information or to register.
With the cost of postage constantly going up, and the volume continuing to fall (advertising is off 5% the past two years alone), smaller is looking better all the time!
I’d just sat down to write about this when I saw a report discussing the savings the University of Florida realized in their ‘Think Before You Ink’ campaign. They converted 160 print publications to web only to save over $1MM a year. These savings are recurring, too.
So let’s all study our target customers and Link instead of Ink!
Matching your advertising expenditures to your target’s media consumption habits
It’s that time of year… everyone’s planning their budgets for 2010. We all hope and pray that the recession will be over by then, but in the meantime most organizations are lean and mean. Just today eMarketer reported that in order to improve overall marketing effectiveness, 70% of marketers are moving budget from traditional to digital media.
So is it time for you to create a high impact online marketing program? You know that your targets are online, but where do I start?
Two primary ways come to mind – targeted media buys and search marketing.
