NewsLine Column: Don’t Throw Youth Media At The Problem!
Advertisers eager to tap in to the potential of the lucrative youth market are often all too keen to commit their budgets to well tailored youth marketing partnerships. However, Jon Forsyth, communications strategist at Naked, argues that creating brand association within a youth environment is only one part of an effective youth targeted strategy…
The diversity and complexity of today’s youth marketplace makes marketing to them a potential minefield for advertisers, especially those that provide less relevance to their lifestyles.
As a result there has been an increasing emergence of well packaged youth marketing partnerships, which are often bought into by advertisers desperate to engage with this lucrative audience.
The Brit Awards, Party In The Park, young men’s mag supplement sponsorship, universities, Ibiza, pubs/bars and football are all good examples.
However, having presence or creating brand association within a youth environment is only one part of a youth targeted strategy. The real connections are based on insights of which the advertiser can prove they’re best placed to deliver on, and ideally allow the audience to ‘step inside’ and experience it for themselves.
The reality is that no matter how well tailored and targeted a youth media vehicle is, without a valid insight into the youth market or an associated relevant benefit, the advertiser will often be wasting their time.
Large corporations, who have used large broadcasted music events as a platform to communicate to the youth market, are a classic example. How can an advertiser expect to enhance the experience of the X million teenagers watching, by simply associating their name with a big event? And if awareness is your goal then why not just buy more ratings?
Nike is a great example of getting it right. Almost without exception, they invite their audience to ‘step inside’ their advertising by holding an open event to encourage participation of whatever relevant concept they want to introduce.
They’re often dismissed as being a valid case study due to their inherent youth appeal; however, it’s this reason that makes them such a good example – they place the importance of relevantly connecting with their audience far and above any historical relationship or reliance on brilliant advertising. In fact their advertising is more of a celebration of the insight they’ve come up with rather than a call to action or a claim.
It’s also interesting to see the brands that exist further outside of the youth domain spend so much time investing in external youth media products, but overlook perfect youth communication channels of their own. Banks are a typical example; they have the most prominent square metres of high street media available but, when developing youth targeted campaigns, choose not to integrate their branches into the overall communications experience.
And for those advertisers that don’t have the luxury of high street real estate, what’s stopping them from temporarily renting the space as part of a campaign? With the current economic climate there seems to be an increasing amount of available space kicking about.
So in summary, if you want to talk to a youth audience, have something new to say, prove it’s relevant to them, and demonstrate it’s a benefit only you can offer.
The platform from which you chose to do this may well be a well-packaged youth media opportunity, but if possible either use what you’ve already got or create it.
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