Teenagers can provide some surprising media learnings
Being the summer, I have had more time to chat with my teenage kids. As they have got older, they have become (a little) more interested in what I do for a living – perhaps as it starts to dawn on them that one day they too will have to enter the deep dark world of employment, and it would be wise to avoid the jobs that their parents do, as it seems like hard work.
Anyway, this week we got chatting about marketing and I proudly showed my eldest son the type of advertising that I’ve been responsible for over the years. His response was somewhat scornful but what he said was insightful about how our customers of tomorrow consume media.
Firstly, he just does not do email. He doesn’t have an email address, and sees no need to ever have one – he can do all he needs on text and social media. He doesn’t read newspapers or magazines – he gets all his news from Twitter, and the only websites he regularly visits are those for illegal pirate downloads. As the CMO of a responsible business, I am not sure how I feel about advertising on such sites, although I can see the attraction and may have to think hard about that one.
He went on to say that he ignores sponsored ads on Facebook, although he made an interesting suggestion about product placement – he follows lots of (in)famous people on Twitter and feels that getting them to endorse a specific product would certainly resonate with him.
I was also impressed with his maturity on getting something for nothing – he would happily watch an advert in exchange for a “power up” or a “premium character” in a computer game.
While never listening to commercial radio (he gets his music from illegal download sites or from Spotify), he reassuringly admitted that the medium he takes most notice of remains TV advertising. Phew!
So there you have it – the future of advertising is: endorsements by famous people, placing your ads where your customers go, rewarding the customer for listening, and good old TV advertising – so although the medium may have changed, the principles of good media buying certainly haven’t.
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