GenDigital

TBS Wants To Make You Laugh...Online

TBS, the Turner Broadcasting unit known for replaying youth hits like Friends, Family Guy and Sex & The City, has plans for an ambitious new broadband channel called Super Deluxe. Based on reviewing some of the reports on Super Deluxe, it looks to be a broadband channel squarely aimed at 18 to 34 year old men who are fans of Colbert and Stewart on Comedy Central, visit sites like CollegeHumor and The Onion, and use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. So basically it looks like they are going after half of all men ages 18 to 34. In addition to launching the broadband channel, the Turner unit hopes to offer Super Deluxe content on mobile devices and through video on-demand services. No date was given for launch.

That Advertisement Smells So Good

To distinguish themselves in a crowded, ever-fragmented marketplace, consumer packaged good brands are turning to aroma-enhanced packaging and other aroma-technology to kick it up another notch. Some examples include M&Ms spreading a "chocolate aroma" throughout its M&Ms World retail outlets. (I would have guessed the stores would already be pre-disposed to smelling like chocolate). The aroma technology is also being used in branded advertisements. To promote its diet black cherry vanilla cola called Jazz, Pepsi used a black cherry vanilla aroma inside a magazine insert that appeared in People, which by the way is the second most read magazine among teen and college women. So the inevitable question pops up, is this just the advertising fad of the moment that no one will remember this time next year, or is this a legitimate channel-enhancing strategy?

Halloween...Is It Getting Too Racy? Well, That's What They Want You To Believe

Youth Trends Insights subscribers will be treated to a Halloween-theme later this week when the November report is released. The report contains some interesting data points that really illustrate how popular the Halloween holiday is among young adults, who many believe have "outgrown" the holiday...simply not true. Let's put it this way, without giving away too much of the report's findings, more college kids will be participating in a Halloween event (and purchasing a costume for that event) than those kids who will not be participating, so right away you are talking about a majority. Over the past couple of days, I've noticed a ton of stories highlighting another theme we saw from this month's report and that is the whole notion of Halloween becoming some sort of "over sexed" party, given some of the costume choices many of the young ladies are choosing to adorn. With articles like "Good Girls Go Bad, For A Day," you get the picture pretty quickly. Like many other youth-focused topics covered by the mainstream media, this looks to be another mis-guided effort, because I can tell with a very high confidence level that 90% of the feedback we received from our panelists concerning Halloween, Halloween costumes and Halloween parties, is the polar opposite of what the so called "experts" are being quoted as saying in most of those articles. Too bad, they missed the boat again. In short, for young people today (for many whose dress code would be considered racy on a normal Tuesday morning) Halloween is a "theme" party to dress up and pretend to be something they're not, to get a few laughs out of their friends, and party. There is more to it, and if you're a subscriber you can read about it later this week.

7-Eleven To Stop Selling Cocaine...Huh?

Ubiquitous convenience store chain 7-Eleven has sent the word out to franchise operators to pull the caffeine friendly drink "Cocaine" from its shelves based on the negative connotation of the brand name. This might be a dumb question, but doesn't the c-store has some sort of corporate merchandising group that takes a look at things like this? They (7-Eleven brass) couldn't have been that naive to think that someone wasn't going to catch on to this super quickly. With the high powered energy drink now being pulled from the shelves, it could potentially give a short term boost (pun intended) to other energy drinks carried in the stores like Red Bull and Coke's energy drink called Full Throttle.

O.C. Fans Can Get Sneak Peek on MySpace

O.C. fans can rejoice. Starting tomorrow, fans of the show can go to MySpace to stream the season premiere episode which won't run on air until November 2nd. What we see here is yet another rock solid example of News Corp utilizing the reach and power of its digital assets, in this case, MySpace, as a sound distribution platform for one of its traditional, youth-focused contents plays, The O.C. The question is whether or not the thousands of young people (mostly females) that start streaming the episode tomorrow will again tune in when the premiere goes on-air next Thursday.

High School Musical Hits The Road

The enormously successful Disney High School Musical franchise is about to get even bigger. No doubt that Disney/Buena Vista music execs looked at the success of the American Idol national tour as precedent before making their latest moves. Notice I say moves...So here's the deal on the first one, the mega hit movie (a sequel is in the works, of course) and corresponding multi-platinum soundtrack is taking it to the road for a 40-city live tour beginning right after Thanksgiving in San Diego. The Cheetah Girls, another successful tween targeted Disney TV musical is already in the midst of a sold-out 60-city tour, which, according to my eight-year old niece, "was so very cool." Perhaps we are getting a glimpse of the Disney multimedia franchise strategy of the future: from on-screen, to in-store and in-person.

Generational Traits Define Today's Celebs

If you've been regular reader of the Gen Digital blog or are a Youth Trends client you're probably aware of Rachael Ray's growing popularity among Gen Y, especially the older segment of college students and young independents (18 to 26). They're watching her cooking shows (30 Minute Meals is a top 15 show for college women), buying her knives or many cookbooks (or receiving them as a gift) and now even watching her syndicated talk show (which we told they would do back in August). Rachael is in the news again today, she gave a talk at the American Magazine Conference and AdAge just named her "Everyday With Rachael Ray," the magazine launch of the year. So, what is it about Rachael that has lots and lots of young women (some older women too, and even some men for that matter) so into her even though she has lots of critics out there saying not such nice things (she's been called a clumsy cook on several occasions, too loud is also frequently mentioned, among other things). The answer is simple: she coincides perfectly with the times we live in. At her essence, her mantra is time. When is the last time you caught up with someone or had a lunch or dinner with someone and gave the obligatory "how are you?" Let me then ask, did anyone respond saying they weren't busy of late? Right.  Gen Y, like many of us are the supposed masters of the multi-task. There is nothing they can't do together with five other things. If you couple that lifestyle trait with the fact that as a celebrity Rachael Ray comes off as authentic and down to earth (a refreshing change from the personalities of Fox, MTV and VH1) you have a winning combo. Whereas Oprah is far away the biggest personality and influence on Boomers with her "rah-rah, self-empowerment" shtick, which apparently hasn't lost its luster after how many years, I would argue that Rachael Ray does exactly the same thing with Gen Y. She connects with them, speaks to them the way they like to be spoken to, and at the end of the day, the advertising buzz words of the past century highlighted: "she gets them."

Mt. Dew Will Get An Image Makeover

The days of all things "extreme" as it relates to Mountain Dew's brand equity and brand positioning is nearing an end. According to reports, the 5th most consumed regular soft drink brand by teens and college students (third among men only) is looking to leverage a new position around the whole notion of "fueling the core." The core can be anything (including extreme sports, so the brand doesn't blatantly go out of its way to alienate its core audience: 14 to 24 year old young men). The real question for the dramatic new positioning is why now? As most leading regular soft drink brands struggle with past year and two year declines, Mountain Dew has remained steady, swimming against of the growing number of tweens, teens and college students purchasing and drinking bottled water, sports drinks and energy drinks. Mountain Dew was an early supporter of the now grand action sports events of the year, the X Games on ESPN. Will the new positioning force Dew to step away. Given the high levels of awareness, purchase frequency and most importantly brand loyalty (which is fast becoming an oxymoron when referring to brand loyalty against beverage purchases), I would caution Dew not to get too "extreme" (pun intended) with their new positioning.

Apple Rocks Out Quarter B/C of Back to School

If you subscribed to our Back to School Shopping and Retail Report you saw it mentioned a couple of times in the executive summary and again in several data points following: not only was the Apple MacBook generating a lot of purchase interest from teens and soon to be college students, a significant percentage were taking the plunge and actually buying one, thus switching to a Mac from a PC for the first time in their 16, 17 or 18 year old lives. Well, as things should happen, I find myself this morning thinking may be I should be a equity analyst for Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. If you went along with the research findings from our Back to School Report and decided to buy some Apple stock on or around the 25th of August (when our BTS report was released) you were paying between $66 to $67 per share. Apple released their fiscal fourth quarter results earlier today, and guess what? they had a killer past three months. In fact, in the press release, the CFO is quoted as saying the past quarter had “the best Mac shipments by far in any quarter in Apple’s history.” As of this morning, Apple's stock was trading at $74.53, already a 13% increase from the time our Back to School Retail and Shopping Report was released, and most likely will head even higher today. I think I've found my new calling.

Why Dove Resonates With Young Women

In case you're wondering why the Dove Campaign For Real Beauty has resonated well with the majority of young women who are barely 24 but already sick of the stress and tension revolving around the everyday looks and weight. In this ad on YouTube Dove does a really slick job of portraying the "opposite" of real beauty.