2. In 2001, we set up mobileYouth. It was a time of 9.6K WAP
enabled phones and the Nokia star trek communicator. I (Graham count beans and crunch numbers
Brown) had spent some years out living in Japan and had seen the we focus on the human angle to
rise of i-mode in the late 90s. My business partner, Josh Dhaliwal,
had been working for a national TV broadcaster. We were both insights - (ACE: Anthropology, Culture and Ethnography).
convinced in the future of the communications industry and we Sure, there are more surveys out there telling us that teens are
both believed that the future would come from the grass-roots - sending 1,000 messages a day but what exactly does that mean?
teens and students but we needed a platform to help the industry Has anybody else been asking the question why?
join us in our vision.
That’s where we came in. We found clients were overloaded with
That’s why we launched our research business. Well, I say research data and research, what they wanted was someone to tell them
because that’s what we started out selling. Over a decade later, what it all meant and put it into context. That’s why we developed
some traditionalists would still call us a research business but The mobileYouth Way because we’ve been doing this since the
looking at what clients are now demanding we like to think of days when Nokia once told us “we don’t do kids”. How times have
ourselves as an insights consultancy. Rather than changed.
2
3. The base of The mobileYouth Way is the decade+ of and with each of those comes their respective anecdotes and
research and insights we’ve gleaned from working with a diverse insights learned from different markets. In fact, there were so
of brands from Vodafone to Apple to Disney to Red Bull. Each client many fascinating stories that I decided to write a book about the
the relationship
has given us new insights into
experience. The book’s called The Mobile Youth and is about the
young mobile owner (not the company).
between youth and their mobile I wanted to focus on the relationship between youth and the
phones and, importantly, the relationship between youth mobile phone; the emotional, psychological and social. It was the
and the industry. story untold by the industry. That’s why I was keen to gather a
wide set of stories from Amish teens secretly using mobile phones
What validates our research isn’t industry opinion but getting out to access Facebook to Japanese high school girls hacking pagers
there (a key component of ACE). Whether it’s interviewing kids in back in the 90s. These are just some of the stories from our
New Delhi or traveling the world to find the next big thing, we’re in travels that made the cut, and it’s from this wider set of insights
the mix somewhere to be found. In the last 2 years alone, I’ve we’ve created the The mobileYouth Way.
notched up nearly 500,000 air miles (or so my Tripit account says)
3
4. The mobileYouth Way is a consolidation of success lessons learned * Increasing recommendation and “buzz” with young customers
* Better product hit-rates and reduced launch failures
Ford, Monster Energy,
from companies like * Better, more qualified customer insights
Instagram, Facebook, Nordstrom, The Way doesn’t have all the answers but it provides us with powerful
Amazon, Apple, Ebay and questions that should lead our enquiry. The Way doesn’t provide quick
fixes to systemic problems but helps us understand the causes of these
Starbucks. They are not all mobile companies but we could systemic problems and what we can do to address these challenges and
learn a lot from stepping outside our industry. All the answers to our improve both our brand and product lines.
questions in mobile are already out there, we just have to have look
harder. We have successfully applied The Way to a wide set of industry
challenges since 2001 and we believe this approach will continue to
We designed The mobileYouth Way as the philosophical basis to yield dividends in the future with careful and mindful application. We
common mobile industry problems e.g; hope, too, that fans of The Way will help us grow and evolve the
* Reducing churn, increasing loyalty concepts to produce a more robust philosophy.
* More effective marketing
4
5. Ask a young mobile owner why they chose Blackberry and they’ll tell really make a big difference, like the way he makes you coffee in the
That’s what
you they liked the QWERTY keyboard.
morning or the way he dances around the house.
happens when you run a focus You wouldn’t tell a stranger as much because you’d worry about looking
stupid. You see, the quality of the insights we glean from research are a
group. function of the quality of our relationships. Why so much focus group
we’re trying to find
research is flawed is because
That’s what happens when you run an online market research
community. That’s what happens when you employ an ad agency to find real-world answers in fake
out what’s the next big thing with your product. Truth is that people buy
on emotion and justify with logic. Youth don’t buy QWERTY keyboards situations.
they buy something completely different but they just won’t tell you.
If people bought on logic alone nobody would smoke. Why buy a
If you think about a loved one in your life and list all the things why you product that killed you? Yet, as I’ve shared from the data in the Mobile
love them, chances are it will be the small, seemingly trivial things that Youth book, smoking is so much more a social and emotional behavior,
like mobile phones. That’s why they are also competitive.
5
7. People don’t buy stuff, they buy give to strangers (like focus group interviewees). We
what stuff does for them. don’t want to expose our deepest emotions, our true identities and our
vulnerabilities.
Young people bought Blackberry not because of the QWERTY keyboard As technologists we need to be aware of the difference between
but for a variety of social emotional reasons: the sense of arrival “content” and “context”. The first is what we make, the second is how
afforded to young black Africans, owning the handset of the male we make them feel. Don’t confuse the two. Ad agencies seduce us into
executive as a symbol of status for young girls or the peer group believing a good campaign highlighting the key differentiators of our
belonging afforded by BBM. content is key to selling the product. They’re marketing like it was 1989
and the days of Coke and Pepsi.
If asked, few would confess to strong emotional drivers like “I would
feel left out” or “It makes me feel important” but these are the true If you want to know how you make youth feel then you need to get
The logical
reasons why youth are buying your technology.
away from the echo chamber of the advertising world and start builidng
a a relationship with customers. Employ ACE in your research and get
answers are the easiest ones to out there into their world. Otherwise, your world is a world of content,
of bits and bytes, 3G and 4G or iOS vs Android.
7
8. In the 1980s, Pepsi ran its famous “Pepsi Challenge” - blindfolded social packaging - the story, the authenticity and the way it connects
subjects were asked to choose the better tasting cola for the benefit of them with each other.
the cameras. Most people preferred the test of Pepsi. Pepsi was the
better tasting cola. But when scientists repeated the experiment years When we sell technology as an industry we often choose content - the
later but this time with a twist, they revealed the naked truth of content ingredients, the taste, the physical appearance of our “soda” and hire an
and context. When subjects were told which cola they were drinking ad agency to tell the world why it tastes great.
beforehand, 4 times as many preferred the taste of Coke to Pepsi.
In reality, the reason young people are buying and using our technology
By priming people’s expectations, marketers can actually make Coke isn’t to do with the “soda” itself but the can in which the soda comes.
taste better. And this is marketing in a nutshell. As Seth Godin says, BBM is a good example - it wasn’t a great technology but was accessible
People don’t drink the soda they
“
to a specific group of users (youth, particularly women in emerging
markets). BBM’s capacity to allow discrete networking and the formation
drink the can”. of select peer groups gave this peer group better tools to connect.
BBM had a better social packaging than other products around, even if it
Content is the product or technology you make, context is the tasted more or less the same.
8
10. The “real social” is a combination of 3 human disciplines As technologists, our world views are biased; we favour features
known as “ACE” - Anthropology, Culture and Ethnography. over benefits, we see faster as better and we forget that the
biggest cost of our work isn’t developing the products but the
When Japan’s NTT Docomo launched the world’s first mobile attention of our customers.
internet service in 1998 (i-mode) they furnished their launch
material with images of high-powered business executives Consequently, we pitch innovation at the wrong target groups like
accessing stock quotes and business news on the go. It was typical NTT DoCoMo did. High net worth, business owners want
ad agency - emphasize the unique sales point of this product consistent, robust products that won’t fail or baulk when
based on its unique/cool features. With 2 years of launch, the most integrating with legacy platforms.
widely used services weren’t those driven by these high net worth
individuals but jokes, horoscopes, dating and picture messaging, Reaching this market, however, involves a lengthy process of
services driven by young, low spending mobile owners. market adoption that starts with the traditionally “low end”
customer - youth, those with more time than money and a need to
explore.
The ad agency approach failed.
10
12. The drivers of emerging technologies like mobile video aren’t business If you want to understand the social drivers of mobile then you
users conferencing with each other but teens in their bedrooms using
services like ooVoo and young immigrants. With respect to the latter, it’s understand the social context
need to
the Hispanics in South West USA who are the hungriest for new mobile
services, not established white communities up the Atlantic coast. When
of mobile owners’ lives.
we understand how mobile is an integral part of each person’s social
fabric we also understand how and why they use it. Immigrants and You won’t get this information from focus groups - all you’ll learn there
youth share a similar social profile - both are often outsiders in their is how young people provide fake answers in fake social situations. You
own home, both are seeking a change in their circumstances and both also won’t get this information from your creative agency because the
have limited access to the mainstream of society. disciplines needed aren’t design and advertising but the human
disciplines - Anthropology, Culture and Ethnography.
This is the “real social” of mobile and it’s little to do with social media
and it requires us to appreciate the real world stories of young mobile What are her pain points? What problem are we, as technologists, trying
owners, the kind of stories I’ve documented in the book “The Mobile to solve? How are we going to make her more significant? How are we
Youth”. going to help her belong to her peer group? How are we going to help
her tell her own story?
12
15. When clients ask us how Apple does it they are surprised to
learn that their secret is actually a well known fact.
Apple doesn’t invest much in social
Rather than invest heavily in advertising and creative agencies, Apple
understands that getting the “social” thing and connecting with
media marketing, the buzz is
customers requires ACE. created in the real world. If you want to
understand social you need to understand first that the social media
The Apple store is as iconic as the Apple brand itself, in fact the store is
marketing buzz you are trying to create needs to filter into the real
a key composite of the brand. So important is this element of their
world. That’s the end game not a byproduct of a cool campaign that
marketing that now 30,000 of Apple’s 43,000 employees in the US work
garnered 100k likes. It’s easy for technologists to overlook this
in the stores. Each store is itself a living case study of human behavior.
“technicality” because the outside world of teen interactions and
By interacting in the real world with customers, the Genius crew do
conversations is a world away, a world that’s difficult to reach and best
more for creating buzz than any clever creative campaign could do. Not
replicated through proxies like Facebook. If you want your technology to
only does this “Frontline” drive buzz but it also generates invaluable
embrace social you first need to embrace the social context in which
ethnographic insights direct from the source that can be funnelled back
your customers use it - the 3H as we call it at mobileYouth - homes,
into marketing and product development.
hangouts and hideouts.
15
16. If you want to innovate, understand first why innovation If you consider the last 10 years of mobile innovation you see a
happens. The etymology of the word “amateur” derives from the familiar pattern - young people hacking existing products to make
latin word “amator” - or ‘lover’. If you want to understand “why”, them work better.
look no further than the amateur.
This can mean using SMS to bypass voice calls and save money or
We tend to view the word “amateur” in the pejorative. “Amateur Instagram to re-balance the open nature of Facebook. Either way,
dramatics”, “an amateur performance” or “If you want something it’s a labor of love and something that can only rarely be repeated
done, get the professionals to do it”. But professionals aren’t the by a design or ad agency.
source of innovation. Innovation doesn’t come from the guy with
“innovation” in his job title or from the mythical “department of If you want to innovate, you need to work with amateurs, those
who have a vested interest in your product.
innovation comes from
great ideas”. No,
the amateur, from the street because They’re already innovating whether you’re there or not, they could
just do with a little help along the way.
the need there is real and that’s where passion drives change.
16
18. I often use the case of Flip vs Zune in presentations. Flip was a they hated the most - carrying cables. And hence the Flip was
handheld video camera purchased by Cisco for $600m (now born, a small pop out USB stick that allowed the user to plug
defunct, thanks Cisco). straight into the computer.
Flip’s claim to fame was capturing 18% of the video market up By contrast, the Zune was designed by professionals. $200m in
against Sony etc despite spending $0 on advertising. How did it do development, Microsoft hired the “hottest” ad agency on the block
- CP&B to help convince young, cool iPod owners why the Zune
it? The answer lies in social innovation - working with the was better. In most instances where I’ve shown a slide of a Zune in
understand better how
customers to presentation, audiences have confused the Zune with an iPod.
they used the product in their daily In less than 1% of instances, even this technology savvy audience
have been able to correctly identify a Zune.
lives not focus groups. Despite investing in
focus groups they were still none the wiser as to what really were Well done CP&B.
the pain points of mobile video usage until, that is, they gave 100
units to young testers, who after a month of usage told them what
18
19. William Gibson, famed for coining the word “cyberspace” once wrote to only 32% of business execs. Clearly, the marketers had got their
“The future is out there, it’s just not evenly distributed”. When you sums wrong.
want to understand the future of innovation, look no The pager’s popularity is intrinsically linked to the story of the Japanese
further than the Japanese high high school girl herself - her position in society and relationship with
friends. They place an inordinate emphasis on their close peer ties and
school - as detailed in the book “The Mobile Youth”. value highly the tools that help them maintain these relationships. The
pager’s enduring popularity was largely due to the development of
“pokekotoba” - pager language - that exists as a forerunner to “txtspk”
In the book I share the story of how a product (the pager) originally
as we know it today.
aimed at high end business users was first adopted by low end girls who
created the foundation for an industry which later was able to go on and
High school girls in Japan are extremely innovative. Trends come and go
develop services for those high end business users. Without the grass
at lightning speeds but many fundamental behaviors remain - such as
roots exploration and experimentation of the amateurs, those high end
the messaging protocols of the pager, the development of picture
users would still be stuck at square 1. By 1998, at the height of the
sharing - and do so sometimes 5 years or more before the rest of the
pager boom, 64% of Japanese high school girls owned one, compared
world gets a hold of them.
19
20. I’m amazed how technology execs will spend large sums on focus When we raise doubts, they seduce us with new concepts like “Market
group research or with a creative agency yet when pushed on the Research Communities” which are effectively focus groups but online.
subject as to what youth want will turn to the example of their 13 year
old daughter using BBM at the breakfast table.
Real innovation happens with real
When we want to do the “youth thing” we wheel out the “youth panel”
at the industry conference then we, the industry, gawp at them for 30
people in the real world.
minutes like watching some monkeys in the zoo.
Your agency won’t like this idea at all because they sell ideas not real. If
The irony is that the BBM story is more valid, more real and significantly you want to embrace the amateur don’t hire experts. Set yourself a goal
cheaper to attain. When we work in large organizations we tend to fear of hiring in young interns to work on projects or, better still, a goal of
amateurs because they are somehow unqualified, messy and beyond getting your marketing team out there into the field.
control. Fear compels us to waste money with agencies because that’s
what’s always been done. If you want to see innovation happen it won’t happen in a focus group
but on campus, in a bar or in the shopping mall.
20
22. Your creative agency is probably trying to sell you on the “design about profitability but dedicating your career to a cause you can be
thinking” myth - the belief that great products, great innovation proud of.
comes from a great mind. Steve Jobs, they tell us, woke up in the
morning and looked in the mirror. That’s how “Apple did research”. That cause has got to be one that isn’t obsessed by protecting its own
identity but embracing change. Apple embraced change and built its
Needless to say, this school of thought encourages us to depend on retail stores to change the way it sourced insights and innovation.
agencies for insights and disempowers mere mortals by perpetuating
the myth of genius designers capable of dreaming up genius products.
Our reliance on experts will
That’s why creative agencies are generally resistant to the idea of
bottom-up innovation driven by amateurs because they challenge the
become our own weakness. The most
widely used innovations of our era - the internet, text messaging, file
status quo. Record labels have long fought against file sharing despite
sharing and Facebook are not the product of one expert or one agency,
the obvious benefit this technology could yield for the industry. Sure,
but that of countless iterations. These amateur social interactions have
record labels may, to some degree, be profitable but who these days
evolved robust platforms that continue to yield rewards for all those
grows up saying “I want to work for a record label?” Sometimes it isn’t
who are associated with them.
22
23. Communication isn’t an industry, it’s what we do on a daily In the book, I share a case study of a young American girl, Danielle,
basis. living on the east coast in Long Island and how she used video to hang
out with friends and talk to her boyfriend.
Nobody craves 4G technology or a Nokia phone. What they do crave,
however, are the tools that help them socially in their own worlds. Because her parents were so strict, she had little time to socialize
outside of structure school activities so tried to reclaim that lost social
Unfortunately, we have found ourselves the victim of our own space through group chat. Unknown to her parents, she would while
successes. A decade ago you could have marketed pretty much any away 5-6 hours a day simply hanging out, watching movies together
mobile product and people would have snapped it out of your hands. All
you needed was a good ad agency and deep pockets to help market the These are
online or watching friends watching movies.
key differentiating factor about your handset/tariff.
simple human needs, the need to
Now, however, we live in a different era but the creative agencies are
still plying the methods of yesteryear - tell them your product’s cool, tell
belong and be someone and it’s the stuff that
so often fails to make it into ad agency pitches because it’s too
them in a big way and keep telling them.
mundane, too real world and... wait for it... won’t win your agency any
awards.
23
25. Sexy wins awards. Reliable wins Fans. terms of execution and simplicity. Instagram built its app around people
by making the whole social proof aspect of “Likes” key to interaction
An ad agency would much rather spend $1m creating “active” stuff. E.g. and nothing more.
create a cool flash mob (read T-Mobile “Life is for sharing”) or throw
parachute your new youth car out of a plane (read Chevvy Sonic) than What really matters is the mundane nature of daily conversations not
talk about real world stuff like passive communication, hanging out and
everyday interaction. Your brand is worth less than
brands.
If you read the story of Danielle, you’ll understand how communication
you think.
isn’t active in the “look at me, I’m at a concert!” style touted by
agencies but in the very ordinary sense we come to expect of daily life. Forget what your brand consultant or ad agency tells you. Youth don’t
wake up thinking about your brand. Get over it. Your customers
But that’s what building a business around people is all about - probably talk about your brand a few times (if ever) in a week. They
accepting that it doesn’t have to be exciting or award winning, it just certainly don’t fantasize about using your product at a concert.
simply has to work well. Take Instagram for example. Not the first or Accepting this reality is the first step to realizing that youth owe the
the last photo sharing app in the world but perhaps one of the best in mobile industry nothing.
25
27. If your product is to work well then you need to appreciate the pain through the sharing of pictures but not “networking” as business users
points you are trying to solve. would know it.
ooVoo works for Danielle because her pain point is lack of social space. We are often seduced by advertising rhetoric that leads us to believe
2 generations ago, her parents and grandparents would have had the that youth want the cool stuff - the fun things that win ad campaign
freedom of movement to interact in public places, diners and parks but awards whereas in reality they want stuff that just works well.
not Danielle in this era of “stranger danger”.
Mobile companies that “stuck to the knitting” and focused on customer
Instagram works because it solves the pain point of discrete networking. service grew faster long term than those that tried to buy the attention
With parents, future employeers and teachers all over it, Facebook has of their customers through importing cool from other brands.
become just like the school yard or the living room for youth - not a
place where they can interact privately.
Do common things uncommonly
Instagram, however, allows users to find people of similar interests
regardless of background. It encourages interaction and belonging
well. Be known as a reliable tech brand. Build on this trust.
27
28. I recently read about RIM’s attempts to undermine an Apple product Engaging fans isn’t easy.
launch by a guerilla marketing campaign that employed a “busload of
paid activists” to heckle the store. There are perhaps too many things You can’t throw a large marketing budget at it.
wrong with this approach to go into detail here, suffice to say that one
factor underpins all of them - the creative agency. You can’t employ an award winning agency.
Most creative agencies are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the You can’t trade off having a “cool youth brand”. You have to do the
marketing of mobile technologies. The most widely used services - work. You’ve got to get out there, organize the events, organize the
Facebook, Instagram, Kik, Whatsapp, BBM and SMS have reached mass hackathons, be part of that community and that’s a step too far for the
market adoption as a result of Fans spreading the technology from guy who spent his whole career trying to get a bigger office not more
student to student not through creative agencies. If you want to time on the street. When Tony Hsieh (CEO) of Zappos is in the office,
he’s on the phone talking to customers. These customers become fans.
you’re be better off
engage the youth market, CEOs need to lead by example.
engaging Fans rather than the The era of paid media is over. Earned media means just that. You can’t
agency. buy youth trust and attention anymore, you have to earn it.
28
30. Fans tell each other about the Zappos story. Every brand has fans.
The problem is that handset companies, for example, speak to their ad There is real strength in humility,
agencies and get convinced that their fans are Apple fans and that if
they want to compete with Apple, they’ve got to “outcool” them. Bad
accepting who you are for what
advice. you are.
If you want to compete with Apple, you’ve got to do like Apple and be
Tech brands could learn more by listening to their fans and what they
true to your core DNA. Nokia fans and Apple fans are distinct, it’s just
really feel about the brand rather than the story the ad agency wants to
that Apple is the only brand of the two that is actively supporting its
manufacture.
fans. Nokia has a problem accepting its fans love the indestructible
3300. Rather it builds castles in the sky by having their real fans wax
Ultimately, when the ad agency has gone or collected their award, it will
lyrical about the Lumia and MS OS than what they really love. Fans of
be for the fans to continue the conversation (ad campaign on Facebook
sushi restaurants aren’t fans of McDonalds so why should McDonald’s
or not) in their daily lives.
try and grab the cooler crowd? McDonald’s is far more profitable than
any sushi restaurant in the world so who has the better business model?
30
31. When I was a student back in the 90s, Apple Macs were for left
handers; artists, graphic designers and the Bohemian set who hadn’t forfeited the
clever, long term marketing plan that has
quite got onto the Windows bandwagon yet. Now, every student is
pretty much running an Apple Mac.
quick wins of clever ad campaigns
Such as sea-change of opinion is one that requires a combination of
for slower, longer term wins that
clear vision and long term focus. are ultimately more sustainable.
The fundamental shift that occurred in those 20 years neither happened Apple’s approach to market serves as a useful case study into how to
overnight or as a result of a clever advertising campaign. Apple’s K-12 successfully win, even when you’re an outsider.
marketing strategy has played a fundamental role in their long term
vision of capturing the student market. Apple knows that by winning The answer? Build a Beachhead of Fans and focus supporting those Fans
this market yields significant returns down the line. Students influence who already love your product rather than trying to convert those who
their parents on technology choice. Students graduate and bring their are skeptical. If Apple went after the non-believers, it would have
Macs into offices. Students become IT managers. The slow conversion of simply wasted all its marketing budget with the latest “hot” ad agency
(like Microsoft did with CP&B and the Zune).
an entire generation one student at a time has been the result of a
31
32. If your focus group tells you that youth “like” your product you need to post-advertising era. How can a brand like Apple generate 9% market
do 2 things: share with 62% of market profits. Being the biggest by volume is no
1) stop running focus groups longer meaningful.
2) be afraid, be very afraid
If youth like your product you might as well be invisible. In the modern
attention economy, youth easily forget about products they like. They Focus on those who already love
certainly don’t recommend them to friends.
your product and try to forget about converting the
What matters is love. Winning the youth market isn’t about getting remaining 90%.
elected. It isn’t about winning 51% of the market share, it’s about
winning that small 10% who are passionate about your product. Focus Sell to the sold, they are your best marketing department out there.
on the 10% that already love your technology and leverage them to Rather than ask “how do we engage these fans?” we need to be asking
influence the 90%. The 90% aren’t listening anyway. “how do we break down the walls that prevent these fans from engaging
us?” The barriers aren’t technical but organizational, mental even. If
Ad agencies will tell you otherwise. They’ll tell you about awareness, you want to be loved, you have to first break down the walls that
brand equity and “top of mind”. These concepts are meaningless in the prevent those from loving you.
32
34. Jerry Seinfeld and his “Mac vs PC” ad. David Beckham and his
Motorolas. T-Mobile’s “Life is for Sharing”. Microsoft’s Zune. Countless How does technology get into the 5%? In the same way that we only
tech products endorsed by folk like Lady Gaga and Will.i.am. At the end really pay attention to photos with us in them. We look through the
of the day, the tech industry continues to make celebrities and ad albums of our friends with a secret desire in our head, “Where’s the one
agencies rich regardless of its own results. with me in it?” And we approach technology marketing in the same
way; every young person looks at your communication material and
If you want to sell technology to the youth market you need to first asks this one question, “Where am I in this story?”
appreciate that they aren’t paying attention to whatever you have to
offer. And, no longer can you buy attention with a clever ad campaign, Go to the creative agency and more likely than not they’ll tell you about
you need to earn it. cool social media marketing or guerrilla campaigns using subversive
students on skateboards. More often than not it will involve a celebrity.
Earning attention means getting But, the reality is that people don’t care which soda Britney drinks. They
into that 5% - the 5% of information that the brain are more interested in what their friends are drinking. It’s not who’s
telling your story but whose story you’re telling that counts.
processes at one time. If you’re in the 95%, you might as well be
throwing your marketing budget down a black hole (and many do).
34
37. Youth today grow up in a very different world. They don’t play out
in the park until dark. They don’t talk to strangers. But, to say that Storytelling can take many guises - a text, a tweet, a fashion
youth are somehow compromised underestimates their ability to find statement, a mural on a wall, the design of a fixed gear bike, a “Like”
solutions to these limitations. Youth are extremely resourceful. In the on social media or a video - but one factor remains constant - it is
book “The Mobile Youth” I covered one story of a 17 year old boy who youth, not ad agencies, telling the story. Our mistake as an industry it
broadcast news from inside Rio’s gang-ridden favelas via his mobile to try and control this story. Nokia is constantly trying to reinvent its
phone while all the professional journalists were outside, too afraid to brand story and remake its image in the wake of Apple’s success but it’s
enter. building castles in the air by fabricating an unauthentic story with its
creative agencies. The real story lies in those told by its fans on a daily
Every product or technology we basis - the story of indestructible 3300s, the story of the techs into
Windows and the story of the guys remixing the ringtones on Youtube.
produce will at some point become There are a billion storytellers out there and they are far more
a social tool for youth to tell their influential and effective than your ad agency. But, leveraging these
opinion formers means first accepting their story, not yours, is the most
own story. valid.
37
39. Every mobile phone is a social tool. In fact, we’ve found that youth
will use the mobile phone as any of its 7 distinct social tools during a to evolve the tool to make it work
given day.
for them.
The social tool isn’t determined by the company that manufactures
them. There are numerous cases of tools being developed after the
Technologists too often focus on the importance of a high end consistent
technology has left the factory gate - SMS, BBM as examples of
product that has all the answers but in many cases, the high end
technologies that required the youth market to first evolve and exploit
market is too risk averse, too encumbered by legacy systems to absorb
them to make them viable for the mass market.
change. They’ll absorb change through familiarity with their sons and
daughters or younger members of their team.
What youth buy isn’t the out-of- What technologists should focus on is developing a platform that helps
the-box technology but the ability people connect rather than a finished product. Push the platform into
the youth market and work furiously with Fans to evolve the connective
capacity of the technology.
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41. If you want to understand Social Tools, take a look around us on a Instagram has shown how most people don’t actually crave higher
daily basis. Food is an easy place to start as the act of eating is replete quality imagery but a service that is more shareable. Technologists too
with both ritual and protocol. Food is a core element of social gatherings often fail by considering how to improve the product by doing just that -
- from Weddings to Barmitzvahs to business meetings. We don’t like improving the product. What we need to consider is how we can
eating alone (go Google the subject). How is it then that we baulk at improve the social experience.
waiting in line for more than 5 minutes at efficient McDonald’s but will
pay extra to wait in line for 30 minutes to 1 hour for a Food Truck in Los The mobile TV hype soon blew over 5 years ago despite the widespread
Angeles? available of technology to support its delivery. What youth really wanted
wasn’t TV on the go, but traditional TV in more social format (text
The reason is that it’s the context of food, not the content, that is more interaction with TV, Youtube etc).
important. We pay to wait in line for a food truck because we are paying
to belong to a crowd of likeminds who have a passion for gourmet fast- When we evolve technology we need to consider how we can first
food. Likewise, we have to consider the social function of our evolve the social experience the technology delivers. In many cases,
technologies become less social with time and our goal is to reclaim that
technology. Faster isn’t always better. loss (e.g. with the advent of CDs and MP3s, music became less
shareable until the arrival of services like Napster).
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43. About Graham Brown, author “Graham Brown is a marketing whistleblower despised by
advertising agencies the world over for sharing the simple truth
that you can’t buy or hurry love…you have to earn it yourself. So if
Since witnessing the growth of youth media and technology having you’re happy to continue paying for sex that leaves your brand
lived in Japan in the early 90s, Graham along with business empty on the inside, crying itself to sleep at night, don’t bother
partner Josh Dhaliwal has helped grow mobileYouth to serve over reading this book. However, if you want to build a brand with soul
250 clients in 60 countries worldwide – names such as Vodafone, and earn lifetime loyalty from your consumers then buy all his
Nokia, Coke, McDonald’s, Telenor, Orange, O2, Verizon, Boost books before advertising agencies find a way to silence him
Mobile, the UK government and the European Commission. forever.” Jamal Benmiloud, VP Marketing, Monster Energy
Graham is a regular public speaker and has presented at the 3GSM Drinks
World Congress, Barcelona and been interviewed on CNN, CNBC,
BBC TV and Radio. His work has also featured in the Wall Street Books: “The Mobile Youth” by Graham Brown
Journal, Financial Times and the Guardian. He hosts the youth Blog: www.MobileYouth.org
marketing stream on Upstart Radio and mobileYouth’s own TV Research: The Mobile Youth Report by mobileYouth
channel. Make contact: Contact form here
43
44. THE MOBILEYOUTH 2013 REPORT
youth marketing insights for handset brands,
content providers and operators
features:
29 reports
400+ pages
data, charts, cases
mobileYouth:
tracking youth & mobile culture since 2001
MOBILEYOUTH
youth marketing mobile culture since 2001
45. THE MOBILEYOUTH 2013 REPORT
http://www.mobileyouth.org
MOBILEYOUTH
youth marketing mobile culture since 2001