Is Digital Media shaping the young peoples’ relationship with Brands & Marketers ?

Digital media is where the young people are spending their time, interacting, socializing and communicating. These young people are they different compared to "traditional consumers" who were consuming traditional media. What have you seen and observed. Any personal comment or links to research or insights ? This was the question that I asked on LinkedIn to know what other media professionals felt about this phenomenon.

I had attempted to gather such insights in an interview with my 14 year old nephew The mind of a 14 year old Indian – brands, media, trends, internet, politics & more… and the same question came back to me on “ how a young consumer who is totally onto new digital media is different from the user who is traditional in media consumption” and how this affects his relationship with brands and marketers.

Here’re some points from my own thinking and the first points comes from one of the answers on LinkedIn.

Personal Interactions With The Brand

This was never possible before says Ryan Cormier, according to him the young consumers are different than "traditional" consumers of the past.The growing number of tools now allow consumers to opt out of advertising messages. Satellite radio has affected radio ads. DVR devices have greatly affected television marketing. For nearly all traditional media, there is an option available for consumers to opt out of marketing messages. Even when there’s none, people have remote controls to skip your message

However on digital/social media it’s the opposite. The young consumers are actually opting IN here to marketing messages. There is a personal interaction between consumer and brand that was previously nonexistent. Now, consumers go online to do research and gather insights and recommendations about which products to buy and who to use for specific services. Because more decisions are being made online, it is imperative that marketers understand the consumers they are trying to reach in order to create a digital marketing strategy that will get those consumers to opt in to the marketing experience.

Spreadability Quotient of Your Brand / Be The Meme

Before the first point of personal interactions, the “Spreadability Quotient” comes first. My nephew never saw a brand campaign of Converse shoes, he never interacted with any of the interactive Converse social media presence and such. But he and the people around him were wearing Converse and it was considered cool, it was considered cool even when other brands were having massive advertising budgets and reach and products 3x to 4x price range. Yet young people chose to dodge all that and prefer Converse .

The future of Digital Marketing is dependant on Spreadability Quotient of the brand within the young people’s own circle of trust. The young people who are getting more and more connected with technologies will they spread your memes (seeded through marketing or celebrities) or mimic each other’s behaviours

Remember the digital media allows these young people to live their own sub-culture almost real-time and without any restrictions of time and distance.

Spreadability Quotient : Inspired by Henry Jenkins from his blog post “If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead (Part One): Media Viruses and Memes”

Three Billion Blog also describes it well in a short and sweet post on “Meme Theory in Youth Marketing “

Creative agencies are experts in No.1 (and so they should be) however it is the ability of that initial idea to mutate and evolve which is the Holy Grail of advertising. If a young person can be inspired enough by an idea in marketing campaign to want to repeat its strapline in a social situation, sing the song from the ad or the most recent (and most powerful) recreate their own version of the ad and post it on a video sharing site, then you have struck gold!

The best way to sell to young people is to be part of their culture by giving them some form of social currency. As such, Meme Theory must start becoming a much more important benchmark for the success of any youth marketing campaign. There is magic in those memes.

The Media With Infinite Long Tail / The currency of Popularity

Traditional media is one way voice and the digital media is a two-way super highway. On digital media the user’s own social network is reconstructed online. The supernova’s created on traditional media are limited and on digital media limitless  – that is the long tail construction of digital media constitutes many many things with infinite people, infinite choices and that too with infinite personalization options.

The dotcoms which went bust spending millions on Super Bowl ads now have a better targeted properties like Techcrunch or GigaOm, the properties where they can get better conversions and not just the “eyeballs”

Earlier marketer & network had nexus and decided and created their own SuperNovas and user stories. These days digital consumers are constructing their own networks, their own circle of trust and hand picking their own SuperNovas, creating and spreading their own memes.

The marketers now even don’t know who is following whom for what and where they can seed their messages. The limited landscape of media has suddenly become infinite and the never ending friending (pdf)  generation is still growing their network adding more to the chaos day by day. Look at the taxonomy of top 100 digital properties on the web for any country, even if you are able to classify them, do you think you can have a clean and unified marketing strategy across the spectrum ?

For example – How many people are really following Ashton Kutcher on Twitter, is his likes and dislikes are to himself and limited to his page or they also spread within his circle, can a brand approach Ashton for seeding their messages, would he be ready for that ? or he is just happy to be their and live his own life and chit-chat with followers around him.

This challenge is not just for people who want to associate with new rich and famous on digital media but also with the new rich who have suddenly found the popularity currency. The rich and famous are expected to be more open and real on the new digital medium and once they are ready to be sponsored, does their popularity remain the same ?

Young People And Their Unapologetic Ways

The traditional consumers were you in your awe, even when you were not the coolest brand on the planet at least they identified you as a corporation and you deserved some respect. These days, the young and restless have taken your for granted, they pay you and your offer them products and services, that’s it. They would only respect you, if you offer them something cool and exciting and if there’s a real customer experience. Otherwise, they treat you like dirt.

The technology is also to blame for this, for the previous generation you were really solving their problems and adding to the conveniences in their lives. Today, it’s all about experiences – personal gadgets or immersive products and services are the aspirations and not washing machines and air-conditioners. No sir, young people no longer thank you for that, they have taken you for granted.

You had the luxury of the slowness of “word of mouth / print”, today you never know when the bad experience of your brand can become the hot trend on digital media properties. Face to face conversations and interactions was actually a shield between traditional consumers and traditional marketers and traditional media was a cosy vehicle.

Now the young generation can show you the middle finger in front of thousands of your customers. Suddenly your over zealous social media strategy becomes your own graveyard.

How John Cena & Hugh Jackman have reached Deoghar, Jharkhand a.k.a The Infinite Reach of Digital Media

Deoghar is a popular pilgrimage in Jharkhand state and very traditional in all matters, then how come I located posters of John Cena & Hugh Jackman in a kid’s bedroom there. Simple, he is more connected to the digital world then some of us oldies living in a metro. He frequents Orkut, has Tata DTH at home and a super speed broadband connection from BSNL and remember this is a town where 24 hour power-cut is regular feature.

Such people, I must say disrupt your idea of “target audience”. How can this little gent who doesn’t even have continuous 24 hours power-supply and reach to a mall or super market wears Pepe. How come this household has a microwave oven and were able to arrange all the ingredients for Pizzas on a short notice. Common, the digital marketers are happy to sell their washing powders and biscuits here and what’s going on here is potential market for canned and ready to eat food.

There are many more such thoughts in my mind and no conclusions yet. The only thing that I can say so far is “Spreadability Quotient” is the most important factor with young people who are on high dose of re-tweets and comment | like | share. This can only come when they feel good about themselves and you “have” to become facilitator in providing that “customer experience”.

Please feel to share your thoughts in the comments section, would be glad to extend this discussion further.

Related posts:

1. The Sanity Checklist For Digital Marketers (a.k.a The Art of Slow Digital Marketing)
2. Accenture Interactive and The Future of Digital Marketing
3. The mind of a 14 year old Indian – brands, media, trends, internet, politics & more…
4. Who should be the sender of your company’s email messages
5. Why Indian Non-Profits / Businesses are not using Social Media

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