Control shift: today’s youth and how they think about brands

Citation

Jones, J. and Minton, E. (2009), "Control shift: today’s youth and how they think about brands", Young Consumers, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/yc.2009.32110aab.003

Control shift: today’s youth and how they think about brands

Article Type: Executive insight From: Young Consumers, Volume 10, Issue 1

When I was eight years old, a cousin came to live with us. Danny was older than me, maybe 14, and he introduced me to things that changed my life. The most important thing he brought into our house was comic books. We would spend hours reading the newest comics, creating and drawing our own heroes and talking about what super power it would be best to have. This early experience has shaped my personality and preferences, but perhaps the greatest influence was on how I look at the future. An interest in comics lead to my embracing science fiction and eventually my adoption of computers, which led me to the internet when the first browser was in beta. Indirectly, comics led me to my career as online marketing strategist.

A few years ago, I had the chance to present to DC Comics in their headquarters, just off of Times Square. I was there to talk about how they could better engage eight-year-old boys with their characters in an online environment. The scene was surreal. I stood there, surrounded by Superman and Batman memorabilia, and I told the story about the power of comics in my life. I walked out of that building back onto the streets of Gotham and had an epiphany: I realized that if we could identify and understand the influences and behavior of kids as they begin to emerge into their tween and teen years, we could predict how to effectively market to them in the future. That is really the mission of our agency.

No matter the demographic you are marketing to, it is important to keep today’s kids in mind. They will be your consumer tomorrow. A generation growing up never knowing a world without the internet, these web-savvy users bring with them an entire new class of expectations. When a brand fails to meet these unstated expectations, kids find themselves frustrated and move on to a brand that better understands them. They were born into constant communication, instant gratification and technologies that we sometimes mistakenly view as luxuries instead of the everyday tools they are becoming.

In this article, I will discuss five key shifts that we are observing as today’s tweens take control of their environment. These individual concepts are not as important as understanding that the way people view the world is changing, as well as the things that people expect from their daily interactions with brands. This shift is changing marketing in powerful ways, and by focusing on how today’s tweens are embracing and even spurring that change, we can better predict how to keep ahead of the curve.

The brand/friend blur

Today’s consumers are interacting with brands in a way never seen before as the line between their human relationships and their brand relationships is becoming significantly blurred. In the past, if you were to see one of your friends in a magazine or on television in close proximity to a brand message, it would be an event of notable uniqueness. Today, interacting with a friend in a context where one interacts with brands is not only a daily event but happens moment by moment.

Consumers spend hours interacting with their friends on social networks such as Facebook. While there, they come in contact and engage with brands, often “friending” those brands they same way they would another person. But it is more than just engagement; they often use these sites to advocate for the brands with which they have built a relationship. They keep track of their friends, favorite bands, social movements and brands in the same spaces. The brands that can authentically live in these social networks are rewarded with increased word of mouth and viral activity.

On the other side of the coin, consumers see their friends selling things on eBay, Etsy and Threadless as well as other site. So not only are brands active where their friends are present, but their friends are behaving like brands. This has caused a blur to develop between the expectations a young consumer has for their relationships, online and off, with people and with brands.

Persistent presence

Recently my daughter’s two best friends moved away. One moved five hours from where we live in the Midwest of the US and other shuffled off to London. My daughter stays connected to them via Facebook, Twitter and IM. Granted, personal, face-to-face contact cannot be entirely replaced with text messages and posts on your “wall” or even, for that matter, a video meet-up in iChat. However, the break is not as clear or drastic as it would have been even a couple of years ago.

In the last hundred years, the speed and nature of communication has changed so radically that is has almost become a cliche to talk about it. While none of us would question the increase in the speed of communication, not nearly as much has been said about the nature of communication. Clay Shirky, in his great book Here Comes Everybody, explains why we are in the greatest revolution of personal expression in the history of mankind. While all the past communication advancements (movable type, the telephone, television, etc.) either facilitate a one–to–one, real–time conversation or a one–to–many, one–way conversion, no technology did both until now.

Although we all recognize and acknowledge this change, we have not yet fully appreciated the impact. Technologies are taking hold which allow for another kind of experience. It is what we call Persistent Presence, or others have called it “ambient intimacy.” Either means, quite simply, that you are virtually always connected to the people you care about.

To say that today’s kids never lose contact would be an exaggeration, but not by too much. Due to a blend of mobile capabilities, social technologies and a huge cultural shift, it’s getting easier and more important to maintain a sense of Persistent Presence … the feeling of being close to a person no matter where they might be in the world, and no matter how much you actually know them. While in the past the tools for this did not exist, the desire did. Often tweens and teens talk on the telephone all night to friends, much to the chagrin of their parents. This was a simple expression of the desire to have an ongoing connection to their peers.

Microblogging services such as Twitter make it a snap to share lightning–quick posts about any minor detail in your life. Software enables you to post pictures directly from your mobile device to social photo sites like Flickr. You can blog from planes, podcast on vacation, update MySpace on the fly … you can share any piece of your life, at any time of day, from virtually anywhere in the world.

All of these social capabilities, when used regularly, combine and compound to create that halo of presence. Whether the feeling is true or false, you can be led to feel that you have a more intimate connection with people several states away from you, simply because you are plugged into their social media applications and acting as a fly on the wall of their life. It can happen with people you do not know: celebrities use Twitter to “stay in touch” with their fans (and though the connection is a bit one-sided, it can still feel misleadingly authentic), blogger personalities gain great followings simply by updating routinely, and brands are using the constant barrage of social media to maintain “top of mind” with their consumers.

With tweens it is a little more benign: this is how they are staying connected to their peer group. Texting is popular not because they have more to say than previous generations do, but because it is an easy and increasingly accepted way to forge some of their first social connections. While they are not frequenting sites like Twitter as much, they are meeting up in virtual worlds, texting/instant messaging up a storm, and starting to leak into the Facebook space. This is an advanced case of passing notes in class; there is a desperate need to communicate and be present, regardless of what else might be going on. Additionally, as they move into the age where social networking is more compelling, their networks and virtual peer groups grow like wildfire as time, distance and face-to-face connections are no longer major issues.

This all leads to an expectation by the tween consumer that will be carried into their future consumer experience. They will expect that brands they are willing to connect with to should be present in their lives constantly. It will mean expecting browser toolbars, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, widgets and other yet unforeseen tools to facilitate that constant presence in their social lives.

Evolutionary relationship

Many of us, at some point in our education, had a teacher who told our parents we simply were not living up to our potential. Perhaps we even heard the words, “I just think you’re smarter than that.” This statement is one of expectation. After getting to know a student’s behavior, the teacher has developed expectations that either result in being fulfilled or in the student falling short and the teacher being disappointed.

Along these lines, today’s tween expects websites to get smarter, to learn about them and thus provide them better service and a richer experience. For example, online tools like StumbleUpon, the social bookmarking site, functions through a toolbar that you install into your web browser. As you surf the web and indicate that you “like” or “dislike” sites, StumbleUpon learns your tastes and suggests other sites that might be right for you based on heuristic guesses. As the site learns more about you and your preferences, it becomes more accurate. It learns about you.

Another solid example would be Netflix, the online DVD rental service. Their heuristics system helps you find movies you might like, based on the movie ratings you’ve already given. The more movies you rate, the smarter the predictions become. Imagine for a moment that you have rented the movie Casablanca. The system could guess that you like war films and might recommend Battle of the Bulge. If you rate that film 2 stars out of 5, the system might try again with The Maltese Falcon. Suppose this time you give the movie 5 stars. The system has then learned you like classic films staring Humphry Bogart, and from then on, until it gains more precise information, it will suggest those films. The system has evolved.

Let’s look at the world of music. Last.fm is a social music system using a similar evolution: when you install the software, Last.fm watches as you listen to the music you like. It then recommends bands and songs, even aggregating them into your own “station” where you can experience new artists. As your music tastes change and expand, so does your Last.fm feedback, with no further initiation on your part. As with all these systems there is a social element, where you can listen to other users’ “stations” and find like-minded listeners. User’s tastes evolve, as does the software’s preferences.

As more and more sites learn how to heuristically “learn” from their visitors, the newness will die off. Today’s tweens will grow up in a world where this is less noteworthy and more of an expectation: “Of course sites should learn how to best address their consumers.” “Of course search engines should grow linguistically smarter and social sites should have a better understanding of who I am.” As we transition from web 2.0, in which users assertively “taught” the web how to think, and into a more semantic web, in the web takes its understanding from what users are already doing on the internet, tomorrow’s users will expect more. They will be disappointed and perhaps turned off when a relationship they have engaged in does not move forward, become smarter, evolve.

Social facilitation

Friends introduce friends to friends. They facilitate social behavior. Today’s youth have things to say and they are telling us, “I have content! Make it easy for me to share it with my friends and friends-to-be!”

At one time, “content” hinted at something vaguely professional. Photographers took photographs and they got paid for it, writers published books and they got paid for it, someone in Hollywood was churning out all of our movie options, for a price. This, as you may have noticed, has changed drastically. While this is partly due to the simultaneous increase in quality and drop in price for devices like camera-phones and cheap, high-quality, digital camcorders, it owes as much to the social media that makes it increasingly painless to share the content. Imagine how much frustration you would encounter upon finding an article that you could not link to, could not print, could not share or save. While some sites are still a bit behind, by now any site that wants to spread any type of message realizes the power of lubricating the social process.

This goes beyond just user-created content. Even sites and online services that are not primarily concerned with content can afford their users a social experience. We have already mentioned Netflix; in addition to their heuristic approach to DVD recommendations, they offer users robust social tools which includes “friending” other members, passing on reviews and comparing your preferences to those of your community. This turns the dialogue from one between the brand and a single consumer to one between a brand and a group of passionate viewers.

This leads to one of the most important factors in facilitating social behavior. It works best when the social activity lives in the context of the user’s passion. When we were at the very beginning of the development of ToppsTown.com, we wanted to identify the passions that would ignite user interest. We knew there would be a group of kids that would be passionate about baseball, card collecting and trading. However, that would not be a large enough audience to build a thriving community. We had to identify the other passions that could be tapped into. Those included “the joiner,” who is quick to seek out and join new trends; “the nester,” who loves enhancing an online environment (in our case, the Clubhouse); and “the gamer,” who is energized by striving for the highest points in a casual gaming environment. By identifying the series of passions, we were able to reach a far more energized audience as well as a larger one.

We are passionate people by nature, and all marketing seeks to understand the target audience. Social marketing, however, will not function without understanding the passion of that target. The emerging tween consumers will expect their brands to help them express their passions and to help them connect with others who think and feel similarly.

Authenticity

Friends, at least good friends, are real, honest and authentic. Tomorrow’s brands will understand this reality, but it will not be easy. It cannot be taught, it can only be believed and embraced throughout an organization. This attitude transcends marketing. Today’s users are beginning to expect a certain transparency from all organizations with which they interact, from churches to political candidates to television reporters to brands.

As brands move into the same spaces that used to be designated for “friends,” such as social networks like MySpace and Facebook, the tone of these social sites dictates that brands be authentic and open with their most familiar audiences. On the other hand, when consumers hear a brand saying one thing and then doing another, the brand can expect a powerful and public backlash. Bad news travels fast, and it has never been easier for disgruntled consumers to band together. In the past we operated under the assumption that “no news is good news,” but this is simply no longer true. Today, only good news is good news. Anything you say to anyone you now say to everyone, compounding the need to be authentic.

Being authentic does not mean “pretending you aren’t a brand.” Faking a tone that is not in line with your brand comes across as desperate and insincere. The point is not to pull the wool over the consumer’s eyes or sneak a message past them; the point is to create a message that emotionally affects your target, and one that they feel compelled to pass on. In order for that to happen, today’s consumer needs to feel that they have a relationship with a brand. By spreading a message they feel that they are putting their neck out for you, and a negative reaction to the message is a negative reaction to themselves.

Conclusion

What do we do with all of this information? How do we respond? First, we need to understand the tremendous opportunity here. As marketers, we seek to move consumers from their first Recognition of our brand into the realization of the Relevance of our brand to their lives, then into an understanding of the Rewards of an association with our brand and finally into an ongoing, active relationship with our brand. The online social trends we have discussed are perfectly crafted to facilitate users efficiently moving through this process. While the user’s focus is on developing a relationship with other people, they are not opposed to and often seek out the same kind of relationship with brands.

Secondly, we must understand the trends, which we can only do by being a part of them. This means joining and using key social environments. In an initial, toe-in-the-water list I would include Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Del.icio,us and Last.fm.

Next, track and document what transitioning tweens are doing with online social tools. While we have debated about who the early adopters are, they have been sitting in our homes all along. Tweens, seeking to understand the world in which they find themselves, have always been open to embracing new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things. This openness allows us to observe trends and attitudes that can help us, regardless of what target audience we seek to connect with. These will change often and you must constantly renew and reevaluate your perspective.

Yes, it is true, the world is changing quickly, but there is no reason we cannot shift with it.

Jeff Jones , Erica MintonThe WonderGroup.