Our Sonic Youth

I have gone a bit youth marketing crazy of late. I get fascinated about anything that's more dynamic than something else and I want to know why, but it does seem that youth marketing is the most dynamic aspect of the communications and brand strategy biz. With new media's spiralling grasp on our environment, it seems that the youth of today are almost permanently wirelessly connected to new mediums, considering the amount of share of activity online, mobile, blogs etc that they undertake in their daily lives, compared to us ageing dinosaurs (wait..I am actually 22!)

With this landscape changing, behaviours change, but the beauty of the youth is that, as early adopters, they are more likely to know where things are heading, because they are heading there too. Also, despite their cynicism and fickle natures, the youth are desirably loyal and have increasing spending power. They are the people of tomorrow and clambering for their favour at the most impressionable of times, will often mean brands can retain shelf-space well into adulthood.

So, for any brand to make a worthwhile contribution to this market, they need to think as fast as the youth do. They have to be interested in what the youth are interested in. This is fantastic for savvy young brands, who can mould themselves effortlessly into whatever is gaining momentum, like Ministry of Sound signing up to Joost and mobile marketing efforts from Dunkin' Donuts, which all encourages youth traffic to where brands want them to be, but most importantly, where youths want to go.

I like mobile marketing, not me personally really, but for young tech-savvy 16 yr olds, with extra-super-snazzy phones, which are permanently in-hand/on-ear, this can prove to be a very lucrative targeting opportunity. Also, kids are very social and these devices only encourage it, which encourages word-of-mouth - which is more prolific amongst youths than any other demographic group.

So, the opportunities are fantastic. Despite the challenges for advertisers and marketers in keeping up with them and understanding what's 'cool', I reckon the vibrancy that comes with the audience should be revelled in and not shunned.