GenDigital

Teen Retailer Numbers in for February

If you are interested in following what's going on in the ultra-competitive teen specialty retail industry, USA Today has a nice little round up of February comps for the leaders. The comps are based on February '07 sales vs. February '06 sales. The percentage leader is surf-inspired Zumiez which experienced an increase of 12.4%. It was interesting to see Zumiez grow while arch-rival and board-style pioneer Pacific Sunwear decrease by nearly 6.0 percent. Category leader Abercrombie & Fitch also had a bad month, down 6.0% from last year while their main competitor American Eagle had an increase of 6.0%. Coincidence, not really...we've been hearing from panelists since back to school last year that they are spending more money at AE instead of A&F.

Site Watch: PicksPal

In the spirit of the opening day of March Madness, check out PicksPal.com, a fast growing sports community and contest destination site run by a former CBS SportsLine exec. The site's value proposition to consumers (their target base is male 18-34), is relatively simple and straightforward: pick the winners across a variety of daily sporting events and earn points for each correct call. The more correct calls a member makes, the more points they earn. Point leaders (the site keeps a tally by day, week, month and year) earn prizes ranging from Omaha Steaks coupons to tickets to various sporting and entertainment events from ticket broker TicketsNow. I would venture a guess that as the membership and traffic increases so will the prizes and prize values. The site claims to have upwards of 200,000 registered members and monthly uniques of 1.0 million, up ten-fold from last October. This site definitely appeals to avid sports fans (that have a decent amount of free time) that itch to make wagers, albeit there is no money exchanging hands with this platform. Down the road the site could position itself as a nice complement to a major sports portal or expand its proposition to other entertainment events like the Oscars and the MTV Music Video Awards.

AT&T's Foray Into Retail Looks A Lot Like Apple

How does that saying go? Oh right, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, if you go ahead and visit one of the new AT&T "Experience" stores, I think you'll notice a lot of similarities in terms of look, feel and attitude, to the incredibly popular and successful Apple retail stores. The leading wireless service provider hopes to open 11 "Experience" megastores by the end of this year with the objective of making the whole process of purchasing a cell phone and other communications equipment and accessories a lot more fun. You have to think though, it's a lot (or at least somewhat considerable) different shopping for a computer or musical device compared to a cell phone...right? You don't necessarily need 5,000 square feet to sell a dozen/dozen and a half cell phone models as compared to selling a couple different computer lines and iPod lines? I wish I could be a bit more articulate on the subject, but ultimately, I just don't see thousands of young consumers visiting these type of store environments the way they visit Apple stores. 

300 Rocks Weekend Box Office Receipts

Nothing is better than starting off the week knowing a prediction you made on Friday came to fruition (and then some) over the weekend. Warner Bros. epic "300" hit theaters last Friday and had a huge run over the weekend grossing some $70 million compared to $28 million for the number two film in country, "Wild Hogs." We knew that "300" was going to be big, but we didn't realize it was going to blow away opening weekend records. In fact, even the studio thought "300" would pull in $35 to $40 million this weekend, instead in pulled in about double what was expected. The studio estimates via exit polls that "300's" audience was about 60% male and slightly more than half (52%) were under age 25. It looks like "300" will fast become the year's second film to gross more than $100 million at the box office, "Ghost Rider" just hit the $100 million mark this past weekend.

More Teenie Bopper Fare Coming To SOAPnet

Although they are operating a little bit under the radar, one cable network everyone should keep an eye on in the coming months is Disney-owned SOAPnet. The cable network recently acquired the rights from Warner Bros. Domestic Television to air the first four seasons of former teen high-flier "The O.C." and The CW's "One Tree Hill." Both shows will debut on SOAPnet on Monday, April 9th. The lead-in for the newly acquired programming will be SOAPnet's current number one show (or soap as they like to call it) among 18-34 year old women and still my all time favorite teen drama: "Beverly Hills 90210." Although "The O.C." grabbed most of the recent headlines with the conclusion of the series on Fox a couple of weeks ago to its ratings decline over the past year, the show seemed to gain momentum of late, and we received feedback from several (but clearly not enough to save the show) panelists, females mostly, that were quite upset that it was ending. The extinction term used to describe "The O.C." now seems to be only a hiatus instead. We believe the real coup for SOAPnet is "One Tree Hill." Still airing on The CW, the show has been a fixture on our Top Ten List report for television shows over the past year, and should provide a nice boost for SOAPnet's ratings.

Expect "300" To Roar This Weekend

The big entertainment story this weekend will be the premiere of Warner Bros.' new epic "300", which opens today. Even amid not so great reviews, we believe the movie will attract a strong following from Generation Y. According to our latest Top Ten List Report for Movie and DVD titles, "300" came in at the number seven position on the men's list, which sets a precedent. The Top Ten List Report covering the first quarter (Jan '07 - March '07) was conducted the week of February 12th, a full three weeks before "300" was to hit theaters. This marks the first time a new unreleased movie cracked Top Ten, let along the top eight positions to date. That finding, along with anecdotal chatter we've been monitoring from a portion of our entertainment-heavy panelists seem to have all the makings of a perfect storm for "300," at least among the youth market.

March Madness Will Be Huge With Youth Market

Take away college football and the NFL and college basketball becomes the most popular sport young people watch on television. In fact, over the past two years, the growing popularity of men's college basketball has increased to a point where it recently eclipsed professional basketball as the number three sport watched on television among all young people nationwide. Nothing is bigger in men's college basketball than the national championship tournament, which occurs every March, the tournament commonly referred to as March Madness. As part of our regular monthly survey with our proprietary panelists, we went ahead and asked them a series of questions relating to the tournament, which gets underway next Thursday, March 15th.

March Madness '07:

- Plan to watch some of most of the games on television: 32% (46% of males/17% of females)

- Plan to watch as many games as my schedule permits: 25% (37% of males/13% of females)

- Plan to watch some of most of the games with at least two friends: 57% (59% of males/54% of females)

- Plan to watch some of the games online: 14% (21% of males/6% of females)

- Plan to fill out a bracket sheet using an online sports site: 28% (40% of males/15% of females)

- Plan to fill out a bracket sheet and enter a pool online: 24% (36% of males/13% of females

Site Watch: Want2bSquare.com

The usual fare featured in the site watch posts are the latest and coolest niche social networking sites, photo and video sharing sites, or perhaps a spin-off leveraging some new applicable technology from one of the big portals. In fact, this might be somewhat of a precedent for this posting category, the first time we've written about a brand marketer's promotional web site, but we think readers can get some value out of checking it out. Toyota's Scion is already well known for its alternative marketing practices and related programs that are specifically tailored to reach a hyper-connective and media savvy demographic target under the age of 35. Their latest site launch to promote the 2008 Scion xB, which hit showrooms in April, looks to be another innovative effort from the soon-to-be world's largest automobile company. The Want2bsquare web site features a mix of communication tools and applications that enable visitors to spread messages about the new Scion xB among themselves. There is also a contest element on the new site which allows users to earn points by playing branded games. The highest point total will win a new xB. Compared to other automotive-centric promotional sites we've seen, this has to be one of the best.

Teen Vogue Jumps on Adweek Hot List

Someone forgot to tell Teen Vogue that the teen magazine category was dreadful. Defying expectations (including our own somewhat dire predictions for the niche category as a whole) Conde Nast's Teen Vogue continues to rake in the ad pages and stabilize their subscriber base, partly made up of former YM readers. Trade magazine Adweek just released their 2007 Hot List of magazines and Teen Vogue came in 5th place, up from 10th position last year. According to the piece, Teen Vogue's revenues are up over 30% compared to last year, while its ad pages are up 22%. Teen Vogue was the only teen magazine to make the list surrounded by esteemed company like O, The Oprah Magazine, red hot US Weekly and Time Inc's powerhouse Real Simple. Not that we are experts on the magazine category by any stretch, we do try and track some of the basic readership trends. That said, we were somewhat surprised not to see Rachael Ray's new, fast growing title, Everyday, not on the hot list. Anyway, hats have to go off to Teen Vogue, they're up when the overwhelming majority are either flat and down, plus they're doing it against a demographic that it is more than partial to new media channels and outlets.

Is $500 Too Much For A Cell Phone? We'll See With The iPhone

If you've bet against Apple over the past three years, you've lost. They thoroughly dominate the digital music space with their iPod devices and corresponding iTunes downloading service. Their Macbook notebook computer line has sent shock waves throughout the consumer segment of the hardware category, best illustrated by their run up over the mission critical back to school and holiday shopping season last year. More teens and college students were foregoing previous staple brands like Dell and HP in order to get their hands on the hottest notebook around...and purchase intent for Macbook still remains high. Their next great challenge, and I believe it is extraordinarily great is conquering the mobile phone/smart phone space with the launch of the iPhone, which will come to market this June, only a few short months away. Apple is so confident in the iPhone that they have forecast to sell 10 million of them in just a year. To put that into context though, the 10 million would represent only 1% of worldwide mobile phone sales. If in fact Apple is able to sell through those 10 million iPhones it would bring in $5 billion in new revenues based on an expected retail price of $499 for the new phone. Is it doable though? Steve Jobs and team preach the iPhone is unlike any smart phone to hit the market, it has all of standard goodies of any smart phone model--the email, the web browsing and of course Apple's unique touches: the music and movie downloading and viewing capability. We just started tracking buzz and purchase intent for the iPhone among a select portion of our hyper-communicative panelists and early indications say that Apple has an uphill battle, at least among the youth market. First off, the iPhone will only be available to Cingular Wireless customers. Many panelists thought the iPhone would be available to anyone regardless of their current carrier. Cingular is the number two carrier behind Verizon Wireless among teens and college students nationally and by no coincidence also receives the highest quality and satisfaction ratings from the audience. The next challenge is that big price tag. Our panelists aren't scared of a $200 or even $300 cell phone, but the $500 price tag might end up being a big hurdle. There is a little bit of an indirect precedent for this. Look at what happened with Playstation 3 when it went head to head with Nintendo's Wii this past holiday season.  At this point though, we don't have enough tracking information to make an educated prediction, it's just too early to say what will happen, but unlike digital music category when Apple came to market in 2001, the cell phone industry, especially among young adults is very mature. I am not one to doubt the Cupertino gang, but this is clearly there most formidable challenge since perhaps 1984 when the original Mac came to market. It will be exciting to see what happens as we continue to track this event and I'll update everyone as more tracking data comes back from our panelists.