Who are Gen Y?

According to OzTam, people born between 1976 and 1990 are officially ‘Gen Y’. This opens up a conundrum for brands trying to connect to these folks, as a 19 and 32 year old are likely to have different lifestyles, interests and desires. One approach offered was to segment Gen Y into the life stages of high school, university and blue collar, however from my perspective this seems a little too broad and out of date – Gen Y have grown up and left high school!

Do we really need to segment or categorise Gen Y? The beauty of social media is that it provides an opportunity for marketers to observe people’s behaviour to gain insights. Does it then matter if a person who loves Burton snowboards is 19 or 40 years old?

Future of Facebook

Facebook’s phenomenal success (currently over 6.9 million members in Australia and growing daily) has allowed marketers to reinvent their digital marketing strategies. With the Facebook Connect API, brands can engage with niche audiences who pass messages by word of mouth via functionally like automatic wall posts when they become a brand fan, or interact with pages or applications. In addition, the competitive CPCs on advertising make Facebook an attractive channel for brands wanting to target specific audiences.

There is some evidence out there to suggest that Gen Y are starting to lose interest in Facebook due to information overload and, let’s face it, when mum ‘pokes’ you it’s game over! Inside Facebook has reported that over 30% of members are over 35 years old and this demographic has the highest growth rate.

Gen Y Consumes 36 Hours of Media Each Day

This statistic is extreme (although the source was not revealed!). Assuming the younger generation still has to sleep to stay alive and the world still operates based on 24 hrs in day, Gen Ys are seriously multi-tasking and consuming media from multiple channels concurrently.

As I almost qualify as a Gen Y, I measured by own media consumption on Friday last week and calculated a total of 19.5 hrs (combination of iTunes, radio, Internet, TV and mobile phone). I work in the digital industry and still don’t make it close to your average Gen Y.

Is 36 hours a day of media consumption sustainable? Fast forward 10 years and I think there is going to be a shift in behaviour, with Gen Ys starting to seek a more simplistic lifestyle. Brands will need to be ready for a shift from generation ‘wired’ to generation ‘chilled’.

In summary, to understand Gen Y (or any generation) we need to observe people’s behaviour in social spaces, listen to what they are saying and develop insights that brands can use to provide relevant content or tools that truly add value to people – whether to entertain, simplify life or to educate. People are cramming their waking hours with information from multiple media sources, so brands need to focus on cutting through all this noise to build engaging, on-going and trusted relationships.

How many hours a day do you spend consuming media – are you ‘Gen Wired’?

Follow Emily on Twitter: @toadstuff

‘Of the frequent blog readers around 52% said that blogs played a role in deciding a purchase; 21% claim that blog content has influenced on buying a product or service and around 40% have acted upon the ads in blogs.

Dataportability open standards group has been marketing the concept for a few years now, which supports the OpenID login standard and has been adopted by Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter, and MySpace. Google’s Friend Connect and Facebook’s Facebook Connect are both offering open API’s to developers who can integrate their own login details with one of these major players.  Mashable has a good coverage of both of these tools here

Whilst this is interesting, it’s often not easy to visualise the possibilities of what Data Portability actually means for the end user.

This presentation from Razorfish looks at what might happen if Amazon and Itunes implemented Facebook Connect and cleverly paints a picture of how the experience of their sites would be enhanced.

Portable Social Graphs – Imagining their Potential

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: retail marketing)

I have no doubt that sharing of information between social networks will continue to be embraced, and as long as consumers feel safe that they are in control of their own information and relationships, then the privacy issues can be managed.

facebook connect

For business, allowing ease of signups, as well as potential access to the large amounts of personal information presents a great opportunitiy. So if you have a site that has a large database of users, it’s probably a good time to be considering integrating Facebook’s Facebook Connect and / or Google’s Friend Connect

1. Mobile apps
Goldman sachs estimates 210 million  iphone apps will be dowloaded by 2010. Much of this will be monetized by the emerging mobile ad market, e.g. www.admob.com

2. Video streaming from mobile
e.g. www.qik.com www.kyte.com www.ustream.com
Soccer mums through to corporate presentations will be beamed from mobiles directly to the internet

3. Syndication and widgets
Content syndication will become more mainstream
Value will emerge in personalized aggregation services
Rss will start to include ads (most rss feeds are ad free at present), this will finally convince the major publishers (news sites) to publish full feeds rather than only the article teaser.  e.g. Springwidgets.com/ and Sproutbuilder.com/

4. Location based services
Thanks to the GPS functionality on the Iphone and other smartphones, the use of location based services will rise turning the yellow pages directory listing businesses on their head.  e.g. iloop.com and brightkyte.com, but I expect facebook and myspace to integrate location based services in 2009.
Social recommendations will add value creating a mashup of recommendation & discovery services. e.g. tribesmart.com

5. Social media matures        
2009 will see social media mature as brands, organisations and politicians read about why Obama’s campaign was so successful.

6. Integrated campaign metrics
The holy grail of marketing .. will get one step closer as technology starts to allow a more integrated metrics reporting of campaign media.  This will accelerate the move to digital and digital agencies will start to play the lead role in marketing initiatives & strategy.

7. Personalised Knowledge Discovery
Recommendation engines and personalisation will start to produce some value as people learn about needs they didn’t know they had.
Attention spans will overflow forcing a change in information distribution.  E.g. Twitter will be used for what I call SPR or the “short press release”.

8. Attention Surplus Disorder will be coined as a condition that affects a growing number of people.  Media saturation will start to drive a market for a growing range of filtering services, many of them specialised on a niche topic.

9. Opinion fraud will become common place with companies paying for positive recommendations for their products and services.  Traditional media will continue to publish the worst of these stories, but even that will not be enough to discourage a growing number of companies into this activity.

10. Life Streaming will explode as devices simplify the ability to record experiences. Examples Socialthing.com/ (recently acquired by AOL) and Friendfeed.com/ 

All in all 2009 promises to be an exciting time for innovation and despite the economic climate, I believe that emerging tools will continue to prosper.

Nine out of ten organisations:

• Do not have a well-articulated digital strategy
• Endorse projects without a defined objective and with no consideration of how they’re going to measure what they put in place
• Have projects that are being led by staff with limited experience in what’s needed to deliver a successful digital project
• Believe that delivering the technical solution is the end game and do not consider ongoing management and development.

How can this be?

In the corporate setting, we have been investing in the web for nearly 15 years now, but it seems only a few organisations are learning what it really takes to succeed. It’s no wonder management are still not giving their digital program the investment boost it needs.

So what can you do? How can you make sure your next digital project has the success it deserves? Here are 7 steps that you can take to turn your digital program around and start delivering real outcomes:

1. Take a look at your business plan
   Find out how your digital program is going to articulate to your overall business plan. Find the links and use them in your communications. If you can’t link it, well sorry, I am not sure why you’re spending time on it. However, it doesn’t necessarily need to stop there, see point 2.
   
2. Dare yourself to think outside the square
   The web, mobile devices and the like are redefining the way we market our products, communicate to our customers and do our work. Replicating current ways of doing business is just not going to cut it. Make sure you critically review your approach to marketing and advertising – there’s a new player in town and it is not going away. *Nielsen research recently reported that time spent online has now surpassed TV.Our own research is telling us that 63% of consumers would prefer to perform activities online rather than over traditional mediums i.e. phone and face to face.
   
3. Research
   There’s a new generation of consumers coming through, to some of us they might as well be from a different planet. Now is the time to review your customer base and their habits. Don’t assume you know what they want – it can be costly. Getting your ideas and solutions to market quickly and having your market test it and provide feedback is a well-recognised product development technique. This may require you to get a little uncomfortable, but done properly, you’ll be well ahead of the curve.
   
4. Build a vision and garner support
   Without support, you’re pushing the proverbial up a hill. Identify the stakeholders from across your business that are likely to benefit from a digital program and get them involved. Create a vision that will capture the imagination of those with influence and power. Make sure it pushes the boundaries in exciting new areas. However, keep it practical and achievable with short term goals and expected returns. Those with the purse strings will need to see this well articulated. You may need to invest a few dollars here – there’s nothing more effective than a well thought out proposal and considered pitch.
   
5. Commit the team
   No, part-timers just won’t cut it I’m sorry. Why would you invest hundreds of thousands or millions without a dedicated team and commitment to grow it? You need a strong disciplined leader and a mix of skills aligned your plan. Make sure that Marketing and IT have strong representation, and in particular, you must commit resources to interpreting the data that comes through the various channels – a data analyst is a must. Consider a strategic digital partner because they bring experience. They’ve done this before, they have capacity and if they’re any good they’ll add a mix of business, technology, research and marketing skills to your team.
   
   
6. Establish a measurement framework
   How are you going to know whether your sites or campaigns are working for you? How quickly can you interpret the data and make intelligent decisions from it. This in my view is the number one failing of digital programs and activities. This is the age where we can clearly define return on investment from our marketing dollar, and more so, what’s working and what’s not. How does your measurement framework stack up?
   
   
7. Be patient and commit to the plan
   We’re all pretty much the same, we want things now. But to get widespread uptake you’ll need to allow some time for things to gestate and develop. If uptake is strong initially, that’s satisfying, however in my experience, it won’t be long lasting. Use this as an opportunity to get a good sense of what’s working and what’s not. Openly solicit feedback from your market and respond accordingly. You may in fact get a double whammy – a better quality product and a loyal customer!

So there you are; 7 steps to get your digital projects on track. Focus on getting a plan where you can measure the results and return for your organisation, get the right people involved and monitor and optimise continuously based on results and feedback. I think you’ll be surprised at the outcomes and delighted with the budgets that may flow as a result.

Good luck!

Greg Muller

Managing Director

E: greg.muller@bullseye.com.au

* March 2008 — The, Nielsen Online research study found that Australians were spending around 13.7 hours per week surfing the ‘net, while average television viewing was around 13.3 hours.