GenDigital

Q1 2010 College Top Ten List Report Highlights

Another quarter is almost complete and that brings us a new wave of Top Ten. College is the first to come out this week followed by Kids and Teens next Monday. For some reason, may be it's just the simplicity of the report, Top Ten garners more press mentions than any other YT report, go figure, but I think the concept of ranking against a particular topic is something that most everyone can relate to pretty easily.

Moving onward here, the Q1 wave of College Top Ten was tweaked a bit as the celeb category was broken out by more general Hollywood celeb personalities and sports-specific personalities. We'll also continue to rotate between most socially responsible companies/brands and favorite sports-related activities. When all is said, we covered a total of 12 individual categories including favorite TV shows, magazine titles, musical artists, movie & DVD titles, male Hollywood celebs, female Hollywood celebs, sports celebs, video game titles, web destinations, clothing retailers/brands, footwear brands and sports-related activities. To read the full background and view the table of contents, click here. For non Youth Trends subscribers, Top Ten can be downloaded/purchased for $399.

Some topline highlights:

- TV: relatively unchanged at the top compared to Q4 '09, White Collar debuts among males and American Idol makes a surprise appearance among females

- Mag titles: six of the top ten titles among females are trending downwards on a sequential basis, sorta sums of the category's picture fairly well

- Musical artists: goo goo for Gaga and welcome to the list NeedToBreathe

- Movies & DVDs: V-Day performs as expected, no let up for The Hangover

- Hollywood/sports celebs: Jessica's back at the top, LeBron is still king and Elisha debuts for the first time

- Video game titles: COD Modern Warfare 2, 'nuff said

- Web sites: check out Sporcle, it's legit...

Q4 '09 College Top Ten List Highlights

The Q4 '09 wave of College Top Ten is out and available to download. You can view the report background and full table of contents here. Top Ten provides an authentic top of mind look of what's most popular among young people (college students in this case) with respect to pop culture topics including TV shows, musical artists, video game titles, web destinations, celebrities and other lifestyle-related areas.

A few brief highlights: in the realm of TV, for the third straight wave, The Office was the top pick among college males, while Grey's was once again the top show among females. Glee debuted as the third most popular TV show among females, while MTV's Jersey Shore came in 9th among males and 6th among females.

For the second straight wave Taylor Swift was the most popular musical artist among all students, while Breaking Benjamin, Lady Antebellum and Justin Bieber appeared for the first time. Twilight stars continue to dominate the celebrity rankings with Robert Pattinson leading the way along with Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart.

On the retail front, fast fashion is still where it's at as evidenced by the performance of Forever 21, but Urban Outfitters is picking up momentum as well as premium yoga wear retailer lululemon. Finally, we included a new measurement for the Q4 wave as college respondents provided their choices for the most socially responsible companies or brands. Leading the socially responsible pack was Ben & Jerry's followed by Burt's Bees and Coca-Cola.

To learn more about Top Ten, you can visit the Youth Trends site.

2010 Macro Trend: The Impact Of QR Codes

Here's a quick look at one of the 12 macro trends we've identified that will make an impact in 2010. The origins of Quick Response Codes, or QR codes for short, go all the way back to 1994. The concept of mobile tagging, which is already wildly popular in Asia, brings new life for the cousin of the old fashioned barcode. QR codes are incredibly more valuable than barcodes as they are able to digitally store information and present it on the user's mobile phone. The information can be as varied as a web address, product information or a promotional offer. The actual QR codes themselves can be featured in almost any type of physical media or advertising. Assuming the consumer has a mobile phone equipped with the necessary software and a digital camera, the device can download and decipher the code with just a few simple actions.

Here's a real world example: a student is walking around campus and sees an outdoor billboard for the new Twilight movie. On the ad, underneath the web address promoting the movie is a QR code. Using the QR reader on his/her mobile phone, the student is able to watch the trailer for the flick in seconds. Talk about future implications, this has the potential to be nothing short of colossal. Welcome to the future of outdoor interactive!

Fall '09 College Internet Life

We're pleased to announce the release of the Fall '09 wave of College Internet Life. The report focuses exclusively on Internet life and culture among the college-aged audience, the original members of the digital generation. The report is chock full of the latest activity-related data across multiple sites, services and platforms along with four noteworthy macro trends and highlights of key behavioral changes on a sequential and year over year comparison basis.

You can view the full table of contents here. This will be the last chance to purchase new Internet Life reports for $379. Beginning March 1, the cost of new Internet Life reports will be $479.

Go ahead and download a copy!

2010 Youth Macro Trends & Predictions

With 2009 nearly in the books, it's time once again to take stock of what has been a highly eventful year in media, marketing, entertainment and technology. As we prepare to say goodbye to 2009 and welcome in 2010, we are pleased to present the lone qualitative deliverable within the Youth Trends portfolio: the annual Youth Macro Trends & Predictions report for 2010.

The 2010 Youth Macro Trends & Predictions hones in on 12 large scale consumer trends that will shape youth behavior in the year to come. Here's a quick look at the 12 featured in the report. Visit the Youth Trends store to learn more or download a copy.

2010 Youth Macro Trends & Predictions:

- Media & Marketing: Quality over Quantity

- Media Consumption: The CDC (context, distribution and customization)

- Mobile Mainstreaming

- Crowdsourcing

- Values-Driven Discretionary Purchasing

- Controller-Free Video Gaming

- QR Codes

- Exclusive Lifecasting

- All Packed Raring To Go

- Quarterlife Crisis

- Subtle & Softer Fashion

- Eco-Instant Gratification

The Relevance & Staying Power Of Twitter For Teens & College Kids

Lately, it's a rarity for a day to pass without someone asking us about Twitter and the youth market. The questions range from the straightforward and simple (do they use it?) to something more strategic in nature (how do I integrate Twitter into our social media marketing plans in a relevant way that will attract and engage our target audience?).

For starters, in terms of registrations, Twitter's growth among teens and college students has been impressive through the first nine months of the year. At the start of the year, only about 5% had registered for a Twitter account compared to 19% at the end of September. Of course, that's only one data point. The more impactful findings are things like frequency of access, frequency of updates and the number of people the individual is actively following. Basically, how sticky is the platform? From our perspective, these are the more meaningful metrics.

Frequency of Access:

- among the 19% with a Twitter account, only about a quarter (23%) have posted 5 or more updates during the past week and about one in five (19%) said they posted less than 5 updates since first registering an account

Followers & Following:

- teen and college student Twitter users have an average of 57 followers and they follow an average of 61 people, companies and brands

- the most commonly followed non-people are news & information centric: ESPN (net sub-brand mentions), CNN, Fox News, NY Times (net sub-brand mentions), Google (net sub-brand mentions) and Xbox (net sub-brand mentions)

- the most commonly followed "notable" people/personalities are the one's you'd expect them to be: Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz Taylor Swift, John Mayer, LeBron James and Dane Cook

- more than three in ten (32%) say they are at least somewhat interested in using Twitter more to follow updates from friends, brands/companies

So, what's the net here? Well, we think it's a fair assessment to say Twitter, at least among the teen/college segment is still pretty niche in terms of stickiness. It's not necessarily a bad move strategically to include Twitter as one element within a broader social media plan, but in that same breath, probably not the most pragmatic play to make it your sole element.

The updated and expanded  Q4 '09 Youth Social Media Marketing & Insights report will be available to download/purchase the week of November 23rd.

Teen Top Ten List Report: Q3 2009

The latest wave of Top Ten for the teen segment is now available via the Youth Trends Research Store. This wave of Top Ten covers the top TV shows, magazines, web destinations, musical artists, video game titles, movies, celebrities and clothing retailers. The Q3 '09 wave was completed the week of August 17th using a sample of 1,011 teens between the ages of 13 and 18. The final wave of the year for Top Ten will be conducted in the next two weeks.

Mag Publisher Bauer Targets Younger Online Set With 4Tnz Site

Bauer Publishing, home of youth-targeted magazine titles like J-14 and Twist, among others, has recently launched a new standalone site called affectionately: 4tnz.com. The site offers the usual and commonplace mix of videos, photos and quizzes for the teen set. Of course, users need to be at least 13 years of age to register for the site, which probably cuts out about half of the target audience they reach through their magazine titles. While the site is cute in nature, nothing comes off as totally unique and awe inspiring enough to get teens to switch over from using Facebook or MySpace...Facebook continues to have the most of the momentum as it recently over took MySpace as the top social networking site among the teen audience based on our latest wave of Tween & Teen Lifestyle. The teen social networking space, not unlike anything else in the online space is all about scale. The company hopes to achieve scale by frequently updating its original offerings, I think they would have a better chance of jumping the shark if there was a casual or multi player game element included within their offerings since that seems to be thing right now that gets teens talking and gets them coming back.

Tween & Teen Lifestyle Highlights: Part Two

In part two we're taking a look at Internet and online-related trends among tweens and teens. Certainly, Internet access is a non-issue for this audience with nearly nine in ten having access at home and more than nine at ten having access at school. That said, if you take a look at time spent online in a typical week during the school year, you'll see that teens tend to spend much more time online compared to tweens...and why is that? Very simple: social networking sites. In typical week during the school year, teens spend 12.5 hours online while tweens spend only 6.4 hours. The key shift among teen consumption habits is the transition to Facebook from MySpace. Somewhat akin to "American Idol burn out" much of the teen audience has grown tired with MySpace and has moved on to Facebook in the past six months. Now, interestingly enough, with the massive amount attention given to all of these virtual world communities tailor made for kids, truth be told, only a couple are even on their radar--not surprising to us, but needs to be reinforced. It doesn't take a Harvard MBA or cultural anthropologist to figure out the top site tweens visit--it's still Webkinz among both tween boys and tween girls. Neopets, owned by Viacom's interactive unit as well as Nick.com, the online companion to the cable network continue to put in strong year over year performances. Disney's acquisition of Club Penguin last year has done little so far in terms of deeper popularity, the site remains in third place among tween girls and actually dropped from 11th place to 13th place among tween boys since last summer. Another gaming site owned by Viacom to watch out for is AddictingGames, which is fast becoming the top casual gaming site among all youth, not just the kids and teens.

The WB Will Get A New Life Online

Two years ago The WB and UPN announced they would merge to create the The CW Network. In one fell swoop, we said goodbye to a network brand that brought us youth hits like Dawson's Creek and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, among others. Now after a two year hiatus we will be able to see the WB brand again, this time though it will be an online destination, exclusively. Under the Warner Bros. Entertainment umbrella, TheWB.com and KidsWB.com will launch officially next month (they're currently in beta right now) featuring a slate of ad-supported episodes of former hits ranging from Buffy to Smallville to even episodes of the iconic Friends, still after all of these years a top 15 program among teen and college women. Along with the archived shows, The WB hopes to get some mojo by launching new made for online series created by the likes of Josh Schwartz of O.C. fame and McG another top writer/producer. As noted, some pundits express a lot doubt about the viability of new video-based destination site. On the contrary, I think it's a slam dunk. Some of the most streamed episodes online are hits of yesteryear. The WB still has extremely high levels of brand awareness, especially among 18 to 28 year old women. The addition of Friends alone will certainly provide an immediate boost and assuming one of the star writers/producers can create something that sticks, there is no reason not to believe the new sites won't draw in at least a couple of million uniques each month.