http://www.MobileYouthAmerica.com The American Marketing Association asked us to share our latest findings with its members. We identified 5 key trends relevant to North American Youth Mobile Culture and share those with you here today. We’ve put together some great research from our two US partners and we’d like to share with you five key findings on youth mobile culture in America. We hope this will help to frame the discussion on how brands can engage the American youth.

1. American Youth Mobile Culture: 5 Key Drivers for 2011 - 03-02-2011
by andrewladan - mobileYouth® - http://www.mobileyouth.org
American Youth Mobile Culture: 5 Key Drivers for 2011
by andrewladan - Wednesday, March 02, 2011
http://www.mobileyouth.org/post/american-youth-mobile-culture-5-key-drivers-for-2011/
by mobileYouth®
The American Marketing Association asked us to share our latest findings with its members. We identified 5 key
trends relevant to North American Youth Mobile Culture and share those with you here today. Click for more
information on mobileYouth in North America
We’ve put together some great research from our two US partners and we’d like to share with you five key
findings on youth mobile culture in America. We hope this will help to frame the discussion on how brands can
engage the American youth.
Positive Deviance - the key to youth mobile behavior
Before that, we’d like to introduce the concept of positive deviance. This has something to do with how a young
person relates to technology. Specifically, the emotional relationship a young person can have with their mobile
phone. Give an adult a phone and tell her to make calls with it. She’ll make the call. Now give a young person a
phone and tell her this is for making calls. She’ll find a way to make it work better, cheaper, and in a way that gives
her control of the medium. Looking deeper into this phenomenon, we see that young people derive social currency
from their mobile phone, and this will have implications for how brands can actually work with the youth.
1. All Youth Are Not The Same
Basically, we can split the market into the 10-19 category and the 20-29 category. You will find that different age
brackets have different emotional attachments. We went out and asked teenagers what they thought about key
brands. Travis, 15, thinks “Nokia = meh.” On the other hand, Jennifer, 25, says “My first cell phone was a Nokia -
so I’m a little fond of them.” Customers in Jennifer’s age group remember early Nokia phones, they remember
Snake, and they have a nostalgia, an emotional attachment to the brand that younger generations do not share.
Link: More data on the North American youth mobile market
2. Growth Lies In Less Wasteful Marketing
Revenues from American youth have reached their natural ceiling. We forecast spending to plateau in 2011 at
$70bn a year. The growth story then, doesn’t lie in broadening the already-saturated base, but in deepening it.
Brands should begin looking at new business models to increase the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) says a
Wireless Federation report.
3. Earned Media Reaches Tipping Point
For the last decade the tried and tested formula of celebrity endorsement has been reliable. However, according to
data from McKinsey, more recently new product sales are driven almost equally by recommendation and
advertising. By next year, influence will come mostly from earned media, or word of mouth, rather than paid media.
What the youth are saying is far more important than what marketers are saying. The opportunity, and the
challenge, lies in finding ways to become involved in their conversations.
4. We Have The Technology
Fortunately, we now have the technology to track earned media. The Online Promoter Score is one such Earned
Media Index. We ask youth on the Internet, would you recommend this product? The numbers show that actual
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2. American Youth Mobile Culture: 5 Key Drivers for 2011 - 03-02-2011
by andrewladan - mobileYouth® - http://www.mobileyouth.org
market share closely tracks online promoter score. A 2008 AdAge report talks about how OPS has helped brands
discover the connection between online buzz and sales.
5. Liked Vs Loved
If your young customers like you, be afraid - be very afraid. Young customers talk about brands that they love, not
about brands they like. Being liked today is as good as being invisible. Just because they “Like” your brand on
Facebook doesn’t mean that they love it, or that they’ll talk to their friends about it.
Considering these trends and the need for continued growth, how do brands get from just liked to loved? This is
where we go back to positive deviance, cultural hacks, and social capital. The insight is that young people need the
brand as much as you need them. Brands need to start dialogues that can facilitate the next youth discovery. The
question is no longer, how do we engage young people? The question is, how do we make it easier for the to
engage with us?
* We'll share regular trends and case study updates over at our new mobileYouth America website
* For a complete look at all the 50 trends covered in this study, download the 5 part series: The Youth Mobile Age.
View the original presentation:
Click here to listen to the original webcast with audio
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