Feature: Don’t Throw Youth At The Problem
The youth market has long been the holy grail for advertisers seeking to target lucrative and impressionable consumers. This is particularly the case for technology marketers armed with the assumption that the youth market is dominated by early adopters, who are easily impressed by the latest products.
However, new research from the ROAR consortium shows that marketers need to readdress the way they approach the youth market. It claims advertisers need to ditch the idea that if you simply throw new technology at young people they will be impressed enough to purchase it. Instead, it is advertisers and technology groups that must rethink their approach in order to engage with the market.
To examine the way 15 to 24 year olds connect to new technology, ROAR gave respondents a 3G phone with full access to all services on the 3 network for a two week period. A further set of respondents were asked to give up their mobile phone and home internet connection.
According to ROAR, 3G as a service and 3 as a brand have failed to capture the imagination of the youth market. The research claims that 3G is seen as ‘old news’ and is therefore in the past for consumers, who claim it will “work one day”. This means the technology is not part of the present, or something the youth market wishes to get straight away.
However, it would be wrong to conclude that the youth market is abandoning technology. The success of Apple’s ipod and GHD’s ceramic hair straighteners show the huge potential of engaging with the youth market. ROAR suggests a new approach to technology marketing through a greater understanding of the lives, experiences and social aspirations of the youth market.
In many ways advertisers have a tougher job connecting with the youth generation as the research revealed they are far more demanding than older generations. This younger generation has grown up in an era of huge, successful technological advances and is therefore very difficult to impress.
The 15-24 year old consumer is also extremely pressured and respondents revealed they feel a sense of limited time as work and school become more intense. Therefore, they expect products and services to be totally tailored around them to ease their everyday hassles.
The ROAR research also criticised the tendency to stereotype this generation as ‘socially deficient’ as they spend so much time on their mobile phones and text messaging. One striking point is the fact that among this age group it is perfectly acceptable to dump their partners via text message.
In this way, new technology such as text messaging makes everything a lot faster, easier and in the case of text-dumping, nastier. To many, the proliferation of text and email correspondence in many ways gives the illusion of communication, while taking the real human interaction out of the equation. While researchers may argue over whether this generation is emotionally impaired their shifting social values have doubtless been aided by technology, which fits into their hectic lifestyles.
In this way marketers must help the youth market learn a new vernacular if they are to embrace new technology such as video phones.
Looking ahead, the research reveals that the youth market has huge potential for advertisers. Despite the current lull in technology service, the research reveals that 64% of respondents intend to purchase a new mobile phone in the next twelve months. More than 30% intend to purchase a digital camera and 28% a MP3 player.
The high expectations combined with the low patience levels make the youth market exceptionally difficult to capture. It is only by adapting their products and campaigns to the needs and concerns of this market that advertisers can combat consumer apathy. Failure will leave them languishing as a wasted opportunity in the past, or forever in the realms of future purchases, never to materialise.
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