June 2001
To date my boys’ interest in the Internet is limited to the Wiggles and Teletubbies sites. Yet soon, they too will join an e-generation that is turning the pouting teenager of yester-year into something bigger, scarier and more powerful than any marketer dreamed.
RedSheriff has just completed it’s bi-annual study of the Internet behaviour of Australian 6 – 17 year olds and their parents, results from which are historically paralleled by the
Already the buying power of this group is flexing its muscles with a third of parents who bought computer related products in the past six months admitting their children had initiated the purchases. It won’t be long before the bulk of this pre-teen group matures into a marketers dream. Through the Internet they will be cost effective to target and easy to reach. Imagine being able to track the spending habits and interests of 90% of your target market?
As a group, credit card companies will target them as they age, because buying on-line will not possess the barriers faced by earlier socio-groups. Used to communicating via email and text messaging they will have highly developed social networks from which viral marketing (or good old fashioned ‘word of mouth’) campaigns can spread like wild fire – Saatchi & Saatchi have already successfully proven this technique this with their famous online rugby game promotion.
The most successful teen-oriented sites on the Internet will carry the same street credibility as posters and billboards of the past. An example at the extreme level is that of the many dance parties which are only advertised on the internet – if you don’t know where to look, you’re not cool enough to go. Such tactics are already proving this market is not only reachable but financially viable. If you are looking to build brand loyalty by ‘getting’em young’, well, this is the medium to do it.
Driving visitors to your site will be no problem to the media manager with the correct line in integrated campaigning. Cross-media campaigns such as the Nike US advertisement that completed a purposely incomplete TV commercial on its website, have already proven highly successful. Reality TV shows are also having impact with RedSheriff’s recorded visitors to the Big Brother website increasing by 77.3% when the programme was first broadcast live in Australia.
However, there is a ‘but’. Get it right and you will have your teenage target market on a plate – get it wrong and you will never see them again. It is impossible to hide on the Internet. The same e-mail network that can drive eyeballs and wallets to your site in the thousands will drive them away even faster. The image of your teenage nerd Internet user is rapidly disappearing – you are now dealing with the impetuousness of youth combined with unprecedented abilities to communicate and act together – witness Estrada’s recent fall in the Phillipines (a revolution organised by text messaging), and the internet-organised WTO protests. As Nike discovered, you can’t keep sweatshops a secret for long.
This e-generation has grown up with the Internet and use it as you and I accept the telephone as a means of communication and information gathering. Offend this market and the incriminating material will be emailed at the speed of ‘word-of-mouth times infinity’, across all markets, globally. Just think back to the latest joke email doing the rounds – our kids will move it even faster.
As always it is a case of: the bigger the risk, the greater the reward. Like never before you need to do your homework and get to know the sector of the teenage market you are targeting – before your site goes live. Test like you have never tested before and really understand the Internet as a medium, how to use it and how to track it. Notoriously fickle, the e-generation teenager will require constant monitoring to keep pace with trends and interests. And if you do make a mistake - you probably won’t need me to tell you – your visitors will have already vaporised.
Jonathan Dodd