What? Teenagers are just like the rest of us…on a budget.
Have you ever heard mom-friendly and teenager in the same sentence? I doubt it.
But, times are changing. Tenenagers are in fact just like the rest of us–even Moms (gasp!). It seems teenagers are no longer sold on the designer label and are now looking for the deals.
See Losing Its Cool at the Mall for the latest trend in teenager spending.
It’s not the medium that matters, it is the message; do digital, but think analog
Many consumer brands have Facebook pages, they are on Twitter, they lurk on MySpace…but why? Do these channels actually “work?“ Except for very few exceptions the answer is probably anything from “No” to “maybe a little,“ but that’s not a reason to leave. The problem lies in the strategies behind these digital forays. Put simply, digital technologies should be used to engage with a customer’s analog life. It’s not the medium that matters, it is the message. The way for brands to make these technologies work is to do digital, but think analog.
The growing number of consumers that have fully embraced the digital lifestyle has been a boon for digital agencies, but not necessarily for brands that were coaxed into social networking without any real strategy. (Some even paid big money to be in forgotten cul-de-sacs like SecondLife.) Regular folks use social networks because they’re free, and they can keep using them amidst the disintegrating economy, skyrocketing job losses and stock market free-falls.
Meanwhile, in the department store, supermarket and elsewhere, consumers have stopped spending. This lower consumer spending has resulted in brands pulling promotion and advertising dollars. Print and broadcast media have been suffering mightily from falling ad revenues. Consumers don’t need Time magazine anymore, they can get that content (or similar) online for free without committing to the Time brand. Brands previously relied on the perceived strength of the commitment made between a subscriber and an outlet (like a magazine or newspaper) to balance their advertising spending. The digital realm has all but removed that commitment; a mere banner ad is no replacement.
What’s a brand to do? How does a brand continue to be present in the lives of consumers? And, most importantly, what kind of effort and money are we talking about?
Brands should endeavor to replace the commitment that a subscriber used to make to an outlet with a commitment from the brand to its audience. The concept of commitment is a very analog concept; it’s not on or off, it is a fluctuating continuum that requires and rewards constant attention. A brand should target its message and go for fewer but higher quality relationships instead of broad-stroke blanketing. Use the technology to give back to your desired audience, to be a partner with your customers. Recast your customer relationships to be a peer and a resource instead of just a provider of some gizmo. This approach was almost not possible before, but digital technologies make it not only possible but very cost-effective, stretching your budget far beyond what you might have ever imagined.
Want specifics? Here are 4 ideas, just for starters:
1. Brands develop products. One collateral benefit of product development is knowledge development on a given topic. Give some of this knowledge away through all these digital channels, it will help reinforce your position with your customers and it gives you something to talk about without being to “me-me-me” all the time.
2. Start offering select specific financial incentives exclusively through your web site. Tweet the program, and reward those who tell all their Facebook friends. Customers are hurting and products are moving more slowly, so couponing makes sense. Your CFO will scream about profit margin, but a quick trip to the warehouse or through the inventory report will provide a strong enough argument for moving product at lower margin. Plus, why pay to be part of somebody else’s circular? These are exceptional times that call for exceptional measures…
3. Network on behalf of your customers by creating a network they can use. Employ the bully pulpit of your web site or Twitter account to help out of work customers spread the word about their skills and availability. Allow your customers to find each other (they have at least one thing in common…you!) and help each other. The PR bump from this generous act will lift your brand…and it is the right thing to do.
4. Be funny, be useful. Release an iPhone or Blackberry app that brings a smile or a sense of utility. Give it away. Stay on your brand’s central message, but make the app a secondary reason for the world to see your brand. Done properly it’s something that long outlives the normal duration of contact with your audience. If a brand’s lifelong ambition is to become a meme, this is the first step toward getting there in the digital world.
But what about the money? To put it one way, your $2MM brand building ambitions can now be meaningfully executed for around $200,000. Put another way, a properly applied $2MM budget is now worth $20MM in benefit. The rules HAVE changed, and these rules are better for brands if they do digital but think analog.
Q: What’s Happening To Print Media And The Ad Agencies Who Propped It Up?
A: What should have happened 10 years ago…
It all started with a fundamentally flawed notion: advertisers will provide a 600-plus percent subsidy of the cost of delivering printed content to “readers” (be they subscribers or in a doctor’s waiting room) as long as ad agencies can manufacture metrics (alchemy) to support the assumption that “readers” see and respond to those ads. Costs of production of the media content going up? No worries, charge more for the ads! Can’t do that? Create more room for ads! It’s the real estate model done all wrong; real estate values are predicated on scarcity; a magazine / newspaper, with the proper motivation, can always print more pages…
So now, see here, and then see here, and then see here, and then…well, you get the idea: print newspaper editions are dropping like flies. It’s the same for magazines, where the model is slightly different (higher affinity interest x less frequency = greater ad spend) but the outcome is becoming the same…shall I pepper you with more links or do you get the picture? (I thought so…)
What is at the heart of all this? The confusion of the roles of media and the ad agencies who assigned them a zero value. Information is free and should be free. What media does is add value to information. It weights information, effectively ordering it for us; it adds context that derives from the back-story. The media filters, for sure (“fair and balanced” is just like beauty). We need media to process, sift, and package information so we can more easily digest it. It’s not just news: it’s prose, poetry, criticism, analysis, anything that communicates anything. Newspapers are the most susceptible to the breakdown of the model, and we know magazines are coming next. (What about “broadcast” TV? As the Jamaican’s say, “Soon come, soon come.“)
The notion that content of any kind should be free is ludicrous. A magazine or newspaper must charge what it costs to produce. Net readership will plummet, but this new reality of vastly reduced readership numbers is what the real reality has always been; the ad industry has always been loathe to acknowledge it and re-tool accordingly. I get the NY Times online for free; I’d gladly pay full fare for it if they made me do it. Same for the Economist and Wired; I subscribe to these magazine but this cannot cover all their online costs as well. I already pay Comcast, HBO, Sirius Satellite Radio and National Public Radio for access to value-added content. The BBC imposes a tax on subjects to cover its costs, and it’s really quaint: “The annual cost of a colour TV licence (set by the Government) is currently £142.50. That works out at less than £12 per month - about 39p per day for each household.“ (Read the entire license fee explanation.) And, yet, I get the BBC online for free. Why not charge me the same $210.92? I’d happily pay…or, if I thought it not worthwhile, I wouldn’t.
Where are ad agencies in all this? Exactly where they have been; in the role of evaluating the best fit between a brand and where it wants to be seen. But the metrics will have to change dramatically. It is already clear that the notion of “newspaper” is rapidly evolving...maybe too rapidly for some. And, as we have seen, many agencies tragically don’t get it. Agencies have the responsibility to show brands where they should be seen and how they should be experienced, to support their core strategies. This means acknowledging the new rules of the new game, on the new playing field.
How many business cards have you come in contact with over the course of your life? Did any of them STICK OUT more than others? If you are in the market to redesign and print new business cards, watch this video before doing so. It might give you a few pointers.
