Connectivity and kids: a practitioner’s view

Young Consumers

ISSN: 1747-3616

Article publication date: 15 March 2011

188

Citation

Urbick, B. (2011), "Connectivity and kids: a practitioner’s view", Young Consumers, Vol. 12 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/yc.2011.32112aab.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Connectivity and kids: a practitioner’s view

Article Type: Practitioner perspective From: Young Consumers, Volume 12, Issue 1

About the author

Bryan UrbickA frequent author and lecturer around the world on the subject of kids, families, women, Prime Timers (people aged 55+), product development, innovation and the NPD process. He is one of the founding directors of the Consumer Knowledge Centre and serves as the CEO and Chairman. Prior to setting up the business, Bryan worked in the food industry for over ten years, and prior to that in the banking/financial services industry – both in marketing and product development. He has been working with all ages and segments of consumers, but is particularly known for his years of work with children and mothers, having conducted research in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Central America.

For the last 15 years, he has been working to develop consumer research methodologies that innovate the research process and improve product success. Bryan was part of the team that won the ARF David Ogilvy Gold Award 2007 for creative research resulting in a successful advertising campaign. Bryan is also the 2004 winner of the prestigious Prosper Riley-Smith Award (from the international Association of Qualitative Research) for unique and innovative research with young children in the US on brand characters.

As well as numerous articles in trade journals and magazines, Bryan wrote the book, About Kids: Foods and Beverages published by Leatherhead Press and is the Managing Editor of Kids Food Trends, a ten-issue annually newsletter. In 2008/2009, two textbooks were published in which Bryan had contributed chapters: An Integrated Approach to Product Development (published by Taylor & Francis) and Developing Children’s Food Products (Woodhead Publishing). As an interesting aside, under the pen name of B. Conley O’Ryan, he wrote the successful and critically acclaimed children’s musical The Magic of Me which enjoyed a national tour to primary schools in the UK, and the play I Love You More produced in a London Fringe theatre, and is currently at work on writing non-fiction articles and a new children’s book as well as a new play for the theatre. Here then is a practitioner’s view on connectivity and kids:

In our current state of connectivity we seem to rule our own world. So said one of our young respondents when asked what technology represented to him. Another suggested that it gave them the freedom to truly express who she is; another believed that without the internet and mobile phones, there surely would be no way of surviving!

This young generation is the first to have grown up with such connectivity at their finger tips, so much so that they struggle to imagine what life would be like without it. As a consequence they have a completely different set of expectations and values. They communicate and relate to their friends and families in a way our own generation is only beginning to embrace, and in some ways they calculate their popularity by the number of followers or fans they have online.

But that is not all, this sense of connectivity that they experience, this sense of being in touch 24/7, is actually having an unusual impact: it is in fact giving them a false sense of connection and on a sub-conscious level they are craving deeper, more meaningful, more human relationship connections.

So while whole industries are jumping on this new bandwagon of social media; and while they re-think their communications’ tools, their packaging offerings, their product concepts and so on, they actually need to stop and listen more intently to what is happening deep down, in the very soul of the young consumers. This is where a whole new scenario is emerging, and it is going in a direction no one could have imagined or predicted. Perhaps it could be said the movement is going “back to its roots”, but it is not that simple. We have observed that this movement is more about another direction entirely; one that embraces technology and responds to the need for genuine connections, real life experiences, and the all-important human touch.

Social media has, of course, amplified WOM and created many more opportunities to get in close. Brands are already realizing, however, that the challenge still remains – connecting with children in a meaningful way is definitely not child’s play.

What we see emerging from our research is quite fascinating. Young children are already learning to gravitate towards authenticity, they are drawn by ethical issues and they are quick to recognize disingenuousness and to a limit, what they perceive as unethical. Furthermore, they seem to be less unforgiving. Just like their parents they do not want to be preached at and they do not want to be sold what they consider to be false ideas. Unlike their parents, who would perhaps have been more easily sucked in, today’s young consumers are much more savvy than even the previous generation of kids, and increasingly street-wise. They also seem more aware of the choices that they make, and the real or believed impact these will have.

Brands can tap into this – it seems an ideal time to create a meaningful partnership between brands and young consumers. Those brands who already genuinely listen to their consumers and act on their expectations are already far ahead. It does of course mean re-aligning business models, and though there has been little time to really prepare for this change, it is to a certain degree all about the real time, hi-tech era we live in. Long-winded business plans, intense research with little proper interaction with respondents are things of the past. Today consumers and brands are learning to walk and talk together and in our work we see that it is the young consumer who is truly driving this. It is also this same young consumer who will sense the difference between a marketing-driven bit of blurb and a real campaign that aims to offer what it says. Never before has transparency been so in vogue; never before has a real voice been so powerful. In combination, we are riding on the crest of a wave of ethical integrity the likes of which may make the nineteen-sixties seem a bit “fluffy” and ungrounded.

It is, of course, not as simple as keeping it true and ensuring integrity. The youth market concurrently experiences virtual thrills. They see their favorite movies in HD or 3D. They have touched, felt and smelt their way through their early adventures and their expectations do not stop there. Experiences can trump physical possessions in some cases. The youth market will shun anything that appears too edited, censored or controlled. They are fully prepared to follow brands that keep pushing through barriers to offer them a new and exciting way of experiencing their product.

Hyper-personalization is one way of doing this. With young people, hyper-personalization started with creating their personal avatars in Club Penguin (www.clubpenguin.com) or taking care of their pets on Webkinz (www.webkinz.com). It has then developed to avatars in multi-player games and even their homepages on MySpace (though this is now much less popular) and Facebook.

Personalization has given children, tweens and teens the vehicle to express their individuality and given them a taste of a contemporary independence. This taste makes them hungry for further personalization in other categories as well. Jones Soda in North America captured this insight years ago in the beverage segment and continues to truly respond to the need for authentic connectivity with a brand. By enabling consumers to have their chosen photos put on the bottle labels, Jones Soda is effectively handing over a piece of their brand marketing to the consumers, they are allowing them to make it their own. It is all about co-creation – yet it goes further. Brands are learning to trust their consumers and in turn, consumers are finding this means they want to trust and love these brands. The whole relationship is becoming a two-way street and it is moving in the right direction. There is great opportunity, though, to go even further.

Obviously we are still a very long way from achieving a nirvana where brands and consumers live happily ever after. Young consumers will grow up and their loyalties will evolve. Yet it is worth taking note that the current youth market will most likely follow quite a different pattern from generations before. Whilst we busily heed attitudinal differences in order to fine-tune our marketing strategies, we need to project forward and address the issue of what makes for long-term sustainable consumer behavior. We need to keep digging for existing human needs and then find new ways of unlocking them.

Bryan UrbickFounding director of the Consumer Knowledge Centre.

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