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Rogue French Trader Evolves To Cult Hero Status Among French Youth

I can't say it's a regular occurrence that we focus on the investment world. After all, most teens and young adults aren't exactly active traders and most, quite frankly don't really understand or care to understand for that matter, how the capital system works. Ok, all that said, we've been intrigued by communications and feedback from our relatively small, but growing group of proprietary panelists from France with respect to the much publicized reports and activities of a young trader working for the giant French investment bank Societe Generale. His actions have reportedly forced the bank to take a multi-billion dollar loss in the most recent quarter. If you've picked up a copy of the LA Times, NY Times or WSJ lately, you would have seen story after story vilifying him. Honestly, we didn't think much of it, since we really have absolutely nothing to do with the space. It wasn't until Tuesday of this week, that we picked up on a growing chorus from our university-level French panelists seemingly endorsing the trader as a cult hero. At that point, we got a heck a lot more interested by what we reading and hearing, so we dug a little deeper. It turns out in the past week, there have been fan pages created on Facebook that already have thousands of members (the overwhelming majority are French university students) who are essentially broadcasting their discontent with a financial and political system in France that they feel is both elitist and in their words "behind the times of the world's marketplace." Pretty strong feelings and thoughtfully considered words from a bunch of kids who just got their driver license's a couple of years ago? We dug a little deeper. It turns out that France's unemployment rate for recent university graduates is at historically high levels. It seems there was a time that just about every young person in France with a secondary degree was almost guaranteed employment upon graduation. The university students blame the loss of jobs on the surge of immigrants who have migrated to France in recent years seeking a better life. The posts we've received go on an on, but clearly there is a large social trend unfolding among France's youth population. We're both intrigued and concerned at the same time. How this post helps all of you do your jobs better in the world of youth marketing, well, honestly we have no clue at this point. But, at the same time, as international representation of the Youth Trends panel grows, we feel it is important to provide of all of you the occasional "pulse" of individual market segments. It's really fascinating stuff!

Can Under Armour Really Take On Nike?

Without a doubt one the big stories playing out this year in the sports apparel and footwear category will focus on Under Armour's entrance into the athletic trainer category, a category long dominated by Nike. By now we all now the humble beginnings of the Maryland-based company--launched by a UM student who was seeking a new kind of "performance" gear, and the rest is history. Essentially, Under Armour created a new category that was received exceptionally well by the market, the target being young athletes mostly between the ages of 12 and 24. It's hard to attend a high school or college practice of a football, soccer, baseball, wrestling--whatever, and not see a decent number of those kids wearing Under Armour gear. If you look back a few years, it seems like they kind of caught the behemoths off guard a bit and created a nice little niche for themselves. Perhaps Nike should have tried to acquire them five year ago? Who knows, may be they did try and were denied. Now comes the next step and the biggest challenge to date for a company that is yet to break the billion dollar sales barrier, conquering the athletic trainer category. It's a bold move to say the least. Being a public company, UA is under intense pressure from shareholders and the investment community to grow. They already own about half the market for performance gear and as we first mentioned about six months ago, they've been making substantial strides in the women's performance category. It's almost like they didn't have any other choice but to enter an entirely new category to stimulate aggressive growth. In an Applesque mystique, UA will introduce their new line of trainers this Sunday with their first ever 60 second spot during the Super Bowl. That's a big deal for a company that has a limited media spend compared to Nike or Adidas. Hoopla aside, the real question is whether UA can gain traction in the category and how fast the traction will come. So, that said, here's our prediction...if the new trainers can parallel the unique characteristics of their apparel line, it's not unreasonable to think UA won't capture at least a 25% share of the athletic trainer market within two years. If the new line doesn't offer that same type of innovation widely seen in their apparel line, then perhaps running that multimillion dollar spot during the biggest television event of the year wasn't such a smart move after all. We'll see.

2008 Market Trends: Multiculturalism Spreads its Wings of Influence

One the unique characteristics of the youth market is their diverse ethnic and racial make-up. Simply put, this generation of young people is the most culturally and ethnically diverse in history. Nationally, Asian Americans represent only about 4.5% of the population compared to about 10% of the youth population while Latinos represent 15% of the national population and about 19% of the youth population. It's taken some time but with pervasive communications technologies, first and second generation tweens, teens and college aged kids are introducing some of their culture-specific elements to their group of friends. To date, the categories of influence included mostly music and entertainment. Illustrations would include the reggaeton music genre and manga comics. Over the next few years we anticipate a "ramp up" of influence against a wider net of product categories ranging from food and beverage tastes to the retail and shopping categories. Music and entertainment is just the start. Moving forward, we will refer to this lifestyle paradigm shift as multicultural trend currency. 

2008 Market Trends: Mobile Social Networking

What will be the most meaningful and impactful technological/communications-related trend of 2008 among young people? We believe it will be the first wave of traction for mobile social networking. Based on our observations, the segment of young people who have become active mobile social networkers is strikingly similar to the segment that first adopted text messaging as their communications vehicle of choice two years back and we all know what happened from there. Mobile social networking is like text messaging on steroids, it's that relevant immediacy that audience members crave. The more difficult part of this trend call is accurately predicting who will be the preferred back-end solution? Is it Twitter or Jaiku? Or, is it Facebook Mobile? Early money has to be on Facebook. 

2008 Market Trends: The Reality of the "Green" Marketing Themes

Ok so we pretty much all know the environment is the top social concern among the youth market. Over the past year and a half it's hard to think of one blue chip marketer that hasn't introduced some sort spin on "green." It's been the bandwagon of all bandwagons. What many do not realize is that pro-environmental awareness and consciousness takes on multiple meanings for members of the youth market. Here's a dirty little secret: to date, the market has effectively preached a hell of a lot more than they have practiced. For this calendar year among those folks that have a burning desire to employ a youth-targeted "green" approach please keep in mind this very simple but powerful thought--it will do you a world of good to think about the 95% of the audience who strive to be 5% green as opposed to the 5% of the audience who is already 95% green. It sounds simple enough, but frankly speaking, we don't think a lot of companies are following the path of least resistance. Overly "green" is a turn-off for the majority of young people. They view it as superficial and over the top. Plus, those representative of the 5% who are already 95% green most likely live in a tree house, don't watch tv and make their own clothing, so if you think about it, they're probably not the ideal consumer segment for your products and services. Instead, shoot for the 95% with a keen almost indirect reference to green. 

2008 Market Trends: Drinking Beauty

One could easily deduce that at least a portion of those young people who have become increasingly active by exercising and working out are doing so purely out of selfish reasons, meaning at the end of the day, they just want to look good and attract the opposite sex. Really, it's that simple for most. With this audience, it's not that they're always looking for the easy way out (I think that more on Gen X's back), but perhaps looking for a less intensive alternative. So we go back to physical appearance...you're all on board that appearance and self image is just about the most important thing the audience thinks about...Ok, so the notion that along with a some kind of healthy diet and a regular exercises schedule one could consume a beverage or pop a pill that would ultimately make them look better is wildly appealing for this audience. There is a whole new category that's being referred to as drinkable beauty or cosmeceuticals that is almost sure to stir up the pot. One initial challenge we see for the early entrants is their target audiences. A product we're watching that is due to hit the market this quarter comes from a partnership between beverage king Coca-Cola and beauty queen L'Oreal. Their tea based nutraceutical, which is called Luma, helps improve women's skin, but the new brand will be targeting women 25+ which we think is an early misstep. Luma is just one of many cosmeceutical and nutraceutical products launches that will hit the market over the next two years. We can already envision specialty retailers like Sephora and Bath & Body Works becoming key purchase points, at least among the young women's market.   

2008 Market Trends: Club and Intramural Sports

We start our list of 10 trends for 2008 looking at club and intramural sports. The real beauty behind club and intramural sports for young people is that they are one part athletic competition and perhaps even more important, one part social activity and get together amongst friends. The macro active health and wellness trend we've spoken about for the past year and half has infiltrated club and intramural sports. Participation among students has grown by over 25% since 2005. We believe club and intramural sports represent a unique localized sponsorship opportunity for brand marketers and media companies looking to reach and ultimately engage the college aged audience. According to our latest research, the top club and intramural sports played include flag football, soccer, softball, ultimate frisbee and ping pong. The somewhat intimate setting for intramurals present branding, sampling and event opportunities. There are also ways to tie sponsorship back to the online world via Facebook. At schools across the country, player/managers set up schedules and times using Facebook's immensely popular Event tool, which can customized for a particular brand. Sponsorship in this space is the opposite of static so lots of legwork and preliminary research will need to be completed before one can get started, but at the end of the day, we strongly believe a sponsored program utilizing this popular and growing activity will deliver superior results compared to other forms of traditional media.

We're Back After Six Weeks In Stealth Mode

Before jumping into why we've been dark for the past six weeks, let me start by first wishing each of you a very happy new year. Yes, it's been a little while since we've posted. There has been a lot going on and I will try and fill you in as to what we've been up to. There are two major initiatives well underway at Youth Trends that will ultimately reshape the company's image and offerings moving forward. First, on the research side of the business, we've been building a foundation over the past three months in order to launch the first of several international Youth Trends youth research reports. Based on our existing resources coupled with the amount of interest we received over the past year from brand marketers and media companies we will start first with the launch Youth Trends UK and Youth Trends Australia in the early part of the second quarter of this year. We are enormously excited to take our existing infrastructure we've built up here domestically and leverage our comprehensive model to create an international offering. This has been a huge task but we're confident that our strategy and hard work will pay off. Once we gain some traction and learnings from the first waves of Youth Trends UK and Youth Trends Australia we will begin to focus on Youth Trends Asia. A lot more to come with this, so stay tuned. Back here in the U.S. over the past six months we have been building out the next phase of the Youth Trends marketing services practice called Ignition. Ignition is a next generation word-of-mouth marketing platform that leverages the fast growing Youth Trends proprietary panel of tweens, teens, college students and young independents. We saw a large market opportunity for Ignition as early as 2006 and have been dedicating resources to its launch since July of 2007. As Youth Trends transitions from a pure play research company into a more diversified marketing services firm, we believe we have some distinct advantages to offer to the marketplace. First, we intend for Ignition for solely focus on the youth market, those young people between the ages of 8 and 28. We have no desire to have Ignition be all things for all people. The youth market is what we know and do best, hence the simple decision. Secondly, our existing focus and value proposition to our research clients--personalized and customized results and actionable follow ups bodes well as look at Ignition following a similar path in the word of mouth marketing space. Simply put, our word of mouth marketing clients will receive a highly measurable product that will feature a series of metrics that can be used a form of return on investment. As a company grounded in collecting and analyzing data, we're well positioned to migrate these tactics and learnings to the new Ignition platform.  We're excited with all of our new endeavors and look forward to updating you on their progress. We're also happy to be back posting and we'll start 2008 just like we did with 2007 with key market trends we're focused on and certainly ones you should be aware of.