GenDigital

Blue Chips Should Go Beyond Flirting With Mobile Marketing

The news is out from this year's Mobile Marketing Forum: blue chip brand marketers including Procter & Gamble and MasterCard, among others, plan to dedicate a portion of their media budget to mobile marketing programs as opposed to discretionary ad hoc tests as has been the case for the better part of the last 12 to 18 months. Of course, there are major pros and cons of mobile marketing. But first, the service providers need to make sure they are ready to cozy up to marketers with clear and concise offerings and relatively modest guarantees. One of the negatives that is sure to come out this story is the whole privacy issue as marketers test geo-targeted placements through various service providers, for example, Joe Blow who is Sprint/Nextel subscriber is walking down main street U.S.A. and walks past a Best Buy, using location based technology, Sprint/Nextel sends Mr. Blow a $50 coupon if heads into the Best Buy within the hour. The privacy advocates will go nuts on that scenario. There are tons of other channel marketing opportunities within the mobile space, but I would have to think location-based would be the most appealing to marketers, at least for now.

Site Watch: Meet Takkle, Niche Sports Social Networking Site

Check out Takkle.com, the latest social networking site to raise some venture capital. Here's the quote from the company's CEO. "Given our sports-crazed national culture and the explosive growth in social networking, we built TAKKLE to enable amateur athletes and fans to connect via their passion for sports," said David Birnbaum, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of TAKKLE, Inc. "With this financing from strategic partners, we are now poised to build on our early success and grow TAKKLE to its full potential." Ok, sounds fair to me. I just want to confirm that when he references "amateur athletes" he could have also said high school athletes which seems to be the initial target audience for the social networking site. When we wrapped up our analysis of the social networking marketplace and made our predictions for 2007, we were quick to mention that market leaders MySpace and Facebook will continue to dominate overall, but there would be a handful (less than 5) of these so called "niche" sites that will pop up, garner some decent buzz and get well on their way to securing critical mass audience levels. So far, Takkle seems to be one of the best positioned sites to succeed next year, assuming the management team running the site (To be fair, I don't know who they are or what they have done in the past, since none of that info is listed on the site) is able to execute the business plan. On the other hand, I noticed the group of investors participating in the round were tier one, marquee names, so they must have seen something unique.

Underdog Wii Has The Edge Over PS3

If you've been following this blog or subscribe to our monthly trend and marketing report covering Gen Y, this article from USA Today appearing yesterday shouldn't come as a surprise. We came out as early as late August, when Sony announced their latest product delay and production snafu to give Nintendo's Wii the "not-so-much-of-a-sleeper" hit of the holiday season. And again in late October after completing surveys with our proprietary panel of tweens, teens and college students and young independents we noticed what we would consider to be unusually high purchase intent for the Wii among a broader audience while the "hard core" gamers (which in reality, is less than 15% of the Gen Y market) were totally pro-Sony. Because of the very limited supply of PS3's, many of those potential shoppers, some of which certainly had to be some of those hard core gamers, have opted to purchase a Wii, and so far, their gaming experience has been pretty good. I don't think this is the last time you'll see a story like this before the end of the year.

Coming Soon: Comic Book Series For Teen Girls

From what we have been seeing tracking teens and tweens over the past year, comic books have made a nice little run up in the ladder in overall popularity and buzz. We attribute some of the popularity to the comic book extension of the The O.C., which was at one point earlier this year a Top Ten television show among all teens and a Top 3 show among teen females. Based on the success, D.C. Comics, the giant comic book publisher owned by Time Warner, plans to introduce a teen female focused comic book imprint called MINX whose first series called "The Plain Janes" will launch in May 2007.

Nice Coup For Verizon Wireless

In a deal that is expected to be announced today, YouTube, the 5th ranked site among Gen Y according to the October Youth Trends Top Ten List Report and Verizon Wireless, the number one cell phone service provider among Gen Y, will soon allow subscribers to the provider's VCast service to watch videos on their cell phone from the highly popular site. This is a major coup for Verizon Wireless, since the word "exclusive" was referenced a couple of times, thus shutting out the other players in the space like Cingular and T-Mobile, among others. For YouTube, whose popularity continues to the soar with this audience, the deal represents an evolution of their brand and their user-generated content model to what many would perceive as a "no duh" type distribution deal. In my mind, the key for Verizon Wireless is making sure that the team at YouTube responsible for picking the videos for wireless distribution, are cool enough that Verizon Wireless users feel compelled to talk about them with their friends, and perhaps creating the dream scenario whereby the friend who is using another cell phone service ends up making the switch to Verizon Wireless.

Today's Tweens Are Teens

There was a nice article released on the AP wires over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It was written by their Gen Y expert who covers a variety of youth related topics for the leading news service. The article was titled "Tweens Are Fast Becoming The New Teen." If you've been following this blog or have been a subscriber to the Youth Trends Tween and Teen reports over the past year, this is probably not groundbreaking news, although, I have to say, it is nice to see the mainstream media pick up on tween psychographic shifts nearly a year after we first started talking about it...we feel like it is a nice little validation of our work. One interesting thing the writer offers not found in any YT product, is a more direct parent's point of view on the current cultural shift in attitudes...it's definitely worth a quick read to get back into the mindset of the tween audience after the long weekend.

Nearly 40% Of Children Are Born Out of Wedlock

A story hot off the wires (interesting day to choose to release the results, especially as the current federal administration has been pushing "traditional" marriage and strong values since day one and continues to do so, so perhaps, it is not a coincidence that the government chooses the day before Thanksgiving to release this). To tell you the truth I figured the number of children born (this study is based on births last year) out of wedlock would be somewhere between 15 to 20 percent, certainly not 36% percent, that is a really high number, and I am going to tell you right now, have huge implications for the long term personal make-up of the next generation of young people with regards to just about everything in their lives. So, on a day where most of us aren't really concentrating on work, I am almost tempted to post a more in-depth piece about the potential implications this statistic has. If you take a look at the current American tween population (those between the ages of 8 and 11), approximately 28%, less than one in three, live in single family households, a significantly lower percentage than children born last year. We are already tracking some of the distinct differences between single family tweens compared to the traditional family unit with a tween in the household with respect to some basic lifestyle related habits (shopping, personal time, media consumption, etc.). This is a big story and it definitely won't get the attention is deserves today, so hopefully someone big will pick it up next week.

Arrested Development Moves From On-Air to Online

Who says that dead tv shows can't get a new life? I distinctly remember when Fox decided to cancel the comedy series Arrested Development (which, by the way was critically acclaimed by tv critics, and I actually think they might have won an Emmy too, for that matter). The show was a weekly favorite for a ton of college aged students (i.e. the audience not measured by Nielsen :-). When the announcement was made, we received a ton of emails from our panelists who were upset and in some cases pretty angry. The good news for hundreds of thousands of young people is that MSN is about to give Arrested Development a second life online. Beginning December 15th, users can visit arresteddevelopment.msn.com to stream three new episodes. The first five episodes are already available. MSN plans to make all 53 episodes available over the next year. Great move on MSN's part to acquire what we refer to as a market-specific sleeper hit.

Ridiculous Toys From Ridiculous Parents

Not exactly on topic, but hey, it's Thanksgiving week. If you are looking for a quick five minute diversion, a little comic relief if you will, check out some of these incredibly high priced toys for privileged tots being marketed to multi-millionaire parents this holiday season. My favorite is the Junior Off Roader Vehicle. It's recommended for 7 to 12 year olds and carries a price tag of only $32,000...you could buy a entry level BMW for a few thousand more, but hey, the kid that is getting these kind of gifts is more likely to start out with a Porsche or Ferrari as their first car.

Sony Delivers Even Less PS3's Than Planned

Not good news for Sony (and lots of hungry young gamers with $600 in their pockets for that matter), but I doubt Nintendo or Microsoft is feeling bad. Rumor has it, that Sony shipped less than the already reduced 400,000 PS3 consoles it said it would have in stores last week. By now you've all seen or read about the craziness that surrounded the release of the PS3 last week...that craziness ranged from gun shots being fired at one store in Connecticut to near riot conditions in front of several Best Buys and Circuit City's around the country. In one word, pathetic. On the other hand, the mainstream media and bloggers alike were quick to pick up on the "civility" of the Nintendo Wii release...no gunshots, no riots, just a chock full of courtesy and a side of friendliness. It probably doesn't hurt that Nintendo shipped about five to ten times the amount Wii's compared to what Sony shipped for the PS3. Supply and demand at its finest.