Teen tips on how so totally NOT to do digital

Thanks to NGT for providing us with this insightful article on vital digital perspectives from those that probably know it best


Brands all over the world are trying to reach young people through digital channels. So how are they doing? Are the kids digging their Facebook apps? What about that jam playing on their website? Are they besties with marketers on Bebo? Hmmm, not so much.
PSFK pointed us to Ruby Pseudo’s “Teen Commandments for brands wanting to ‘do digital’” which includes some way harsh, but important, feedback from young Brits. For one, they’re bored of Facebook shenanigans (see image).

Fern, a 23-year-old from London, said “I generally hate - with a passion - all Facebook applications. I currently have 500 unchecked applications. They are of no interest to me whatsoever. I don’t care what celebrity I look like; I don’t care whether I’m hot or not and I don’t have time to draw silly pictures on walls”

Perhaps Solomon, (21) sums it up then with “Offer prizes for shooting a duck? What am I? A freakin’ idiot?”

(Though it’s worth mentioning that these quotes are from 20-somethings, not teens…)

Secondly, they are tired of inauthenticity, pandering, pop-ups and other nonsense (they want utility, just like the rest of us!) Here Ruby enumerates rules of engagement for brands in the youth space:

1. Too often, I think brands believe frippery is fantastic, it’s not - get to the point. Kids - like adults - probably want to know something along the lines of the following from your site… a) where your nearest store, event or retailer is, b) what your product/event/etc is going to cost them, c) how to get in touch with you or d) something pretty much damn nothing like playing a game whereby you click a cursor so some girls knickers fall off.

2. Present the freaking facts. Have a place where kids can put their own opinions down, and be approachable.

3. Don’t redirect them, that’s just rude - they’ve just turned up at your digital door. Sort your URL out.

4. Don’t put some tune you think is ‘hip’ on in the background; it won’t be.

5. And don’t turn up on their Facebook page and think you know what’s going on - you don’t.

6. Also, whilst we’re at it, if they’re recently broken hearted, they won’t want to speak to you about it. Secondly, they don’t want you shoving some ‘Single? Broken-Hearted?” quip questions at them either. Have some manners.

7. Bebo… is not looked at by anyone over the age of 12. I’d say 8, but they’ll have some statistic to wak back at me that would disprove my point.

8. Do not, whatever you do, appropriate youth culture on your site, but hell, we hope you know this.

9. Avoid pop-ups. Kids hate them.

10. Finally, with Facebook and MySpace etc, please remember that you’re in their (digital) space: they didn’t ask you to be there, and they can’t very well ask you to leave, so talk nicely. And if you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all…

FW: Generation V (apparently)

From: Melissa Bolling
Conversation: Generation V (apparently)

News
Forget Generations X and Y: Here comes Generation V
Companies must overhaul their marketing plans to target the latest group,
Gartner says
Heather Havenstein (Computerworld) 15 November, 2007 08:00:02

Much has been made of the stereotypical characteristics of the generations
that followed the Baby Boomer era. The same can be said of the latest
generation, but Gartner warns marketers to define them by their online
actions rather than their birth dates. In a report released this week,
Gartner said that traditional marketing methods won't work with this new
group of consumers.

The latest group, dubbed Generation Virtual, or V, is made up of people from
multiple demographic age groups who make social connections online - through
virtual worlds, in video games, as bloggers, in social networks or through
posting and reading user-generated content at e-commerce sites like
Amazon.com, said Adam Sarner, senior analyst at Gartner.

The V generation is made up of people who are drawn to the Internet's "flat
meritocracy" where people can gain status and acknowledgement through ways -
like providing advice or recommendations or excelling at a video game - not
generally available in the physical world. Basically, Generation V is made
up of people who replace physical experience with an online experience,
Sarner added.

The online distinction is important, he noted, because companies looking to
sell products and services to this generation of consumers can no longer
rely on traditional demographic data like name, age and address to tailor
marketing messages. Generation V is more likely to interact with marketers
anonymously - through an online persona made up of all their online
behaviors, Sarner said.

"We have to start dealing with this idea of anonymous, multiple personas
interacting with our businesses and how to do that," Sarner said.
"[Businesses] are creating a world with processes to get them to purchase
things. Virtual environments will be a way to orchestrate customer
exploration, [but] underneath is the reality that they are providing goods
and services."

Over time, gathering details about the online personas of consumers will
become far more important than the mining of demographic data, he added. By
2015, Gartner asserts, more money will be spent marketing and selling to
multiple online personas than money spent marketing to off-line consumers.

For companies to prepare to market to Generation V, Gartner recommends:

* Organizing products and services around multiple online personas;

* Selling to the persona not the person;

* Creating virtual environments as a way to orchestrate customer
exploration toward purchases;

* Shifting investments from known customers to unknown ones; and

* Developing and retaining new employee skills to attract, connect,
contribute and gain insight from generation V and their virtual
environments.