Youth Marketing
After a moving target by Jo Bowman 5-Nov-04, 08:49
Asia 's youth may be a moving target but targeted traditional media, from print to radio, can still work
Parents used to bemoan the fact that their kids were constantly glued to the set; now they despair that young people don 't seem to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. Sure, they 're still watching TV, but no longer are they couch potatoes, absorbing everything that flashes across the screen; they 're flicking channels, flicking through a magazine, texting their friends or moving to a PC -- a growing culture of impatience that began with the remote control and is now seen to an extreme degree in the region 's young. For marketers, this means a single-shot strategy is likely to be more miss than hit. What 's required, as ever, is careful targeting, but across a whole collection of media rather than a strategically selected one or two. It also means using media that young people don 't realise they 're consuming -- plenty of outdoor and events-based marketing, and even packets of tissues. "Young people are becoming more and more fickle in their consumption of media," says Florance Yip, marketing director at Nike Hong Kong. "So unlike in the past, it is no longer just one or two media that dominate their attention, and communication in many different ways is simply essential in reaching young consumers." Soonthorn Areerak, MEC Thailand 's channel planning director, says: "Young people today are very individualistic, very mobile. They 're always on the road, and always moving. They also embrace change well and have a high ability to adapt. This means media should also be ever-dynamic, new, and exciting." Media owners whose core target is young people are heeding the call, launching cross-platform media properties that give advertisers a whole raft of ways to reach their market. At MTV, along with developing programmes that cater to the music, sport and fashion interests of viewers, greater
Asia 's youth may be a moving target but targeted traditional media, from print to radio, can still work
Parents used to bemoan the fact that their kids were constantly glued to the set; now they despair that young people don 't seem to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. Sure, they 're still watching TV, but no longer are they couch potatoes, absorbing everything that flashes across the screen; they 're flicking channels, flicking through a magazine, texting their friends or moving to a PC -- a growing culture of impatience that began with the remote control and is now seen to an extreme degree in the region 's young. For marketers, this means a single-shot strategy is likely to be more miss than hit. What 's required, as ever, is careful targeting, but across a whole collection of media rather than a strategically selected one or two. It also means using media that young people don 't realise they 're consuming -- plenty of outdoor and events-based marketing, and even packets of tissues. "Young people are becoming more and more fickle in their consumption of media," says Florance Yip, marketing director at Nike Hong Kong. "So unlike in the past, it is no longer just one or two media that dominate their attention, and communication in many different ways is simply essential in reaching young consumers." Soonthorn Areerak, MEC Thailand 's channel planning director, says: "Young people today are very individualistic, very mobile. They 're always on the road, and always moving. They also embrace change well and have a high ability to adapt. This means media should also be ever-dynamic, new, and exciting." Media owners whose core target is young people are heeding the call, launching cross-platform media properties that give advertisers a whole raft of ways to reach their market. At MTV, along with developing programmes that cater to the music, sport and fashion interests of viewers, greater