NEW YORK -- Teens have a love-hate relationship with brands. While they tend to be brand loyal, most say they are savvy enough to know that they are being marketed to, according to a new Teen + Brands study by Viacom's The N channel.
Nearly half (46%) of teens surveyed said they tend to stick with a few of the brands they really like. But, 52% felt, "Brands are created by marketers just to get more money."
The report, created in conjunction with Open Mind Research, New York, and OTX Research, Los Angeles—and based on interviews with 1,000-plus kids 13-19 online, via cell phones and in focus groups in March—revealed Generation Y to be a somewhat schizophrenic generation.
For instance, a third of those polled agreed, "If there were no brands, the world would be better." Yet 29% claim "having cool brands makes me feel cool" and that they are "obsessed with brand names."
It's a complex equation for marketers, said Rahda Subramanyam, vp of research and planning for MTV Networks kids and family group. "This generation is highly aware not just of brands but marketing strategies. Overt marketing techniques are not going to work."
Of the 47 brands tested, Apple's hugely successful iPod digital music player emerged as the brand that is "absolutely essential to teens."
"They respond to brands that reflect their lifestyle and offer innovation, creativity and a high degree of style," said Irma Zandl, principal of The Zandl Group, New York.
Teens consider brands like the iPod to be not only their favorite but also as defining their generation.
Other such trademarks include American Eagle Outfitters, Axe, Baby Phat, Facebook, Google, Hollister Co., MTV, MySpace, Vans and YouTube.
Soft drinks and fast food marketers have done a better job targeting teen boys. Half said the brand of soda matters, with Coca-Cola the most popular; 47% of the boys said fast food brands matter, compared to 41% and 39% of girls, respectively.
"Coca-Cola has a timelessness and we are committed to making it the brand that is the real thing: refreshing, energizing and the best taste in the world," said Katie Bayne, CMO at Coca-Cola North America, Atlanta. "Those simple things are important and true and all work for teens."
Regardless of sex, those who expressed the most intense loyalty were often the same people who would quickly leave one brand for another. Nineteen percent will swap brands due to boredom. One in four will switch if a brand becomes too popular.
"It's typical," said Anastasia Goodstein, founder of teen marketing site Ypulse.com, San Francisco. "Teens are going through a stage in their life where they are figuring out who they are. As they change their own identities multiple times, the brands adjust along with that. They can be completely in an Abercrombie phase and they switch to another group of friends, get into Emo music and are shopping at Hot Topic instead."
TV (per 32% of respondents) and magazine advertising (28%) still proved to be the most influential forms of media. "There is still more trust in a TV commercial or in an edited magazine versus a pop-up ad or the messages you get on MySpace from fake spammy friends," said Goodstein.
Brand names are most important when it comes to computers (64%), shoes (56%), MP3 players (55%), cell phone service (54%) and clothes (53%).
Despite being wired 24/7 with mobile devices and online communities, they feel the word "chill" best describes them (according to 40% of those surveyed). Music most defines them, according to 44% of teens, followed by family (39%) and moral values (38%).
Marketers need to understand today's new teen dynamic, said Subramanyam. For example, "The millennials’ relationship with the parent is completely different. There is no angst. [Parents] can be a best friend."
Brands are so concerned about focusing on influential teens, she said, meanwhile "parents can be the biggest influencer, especially when it comes to big-ticket items."
jueves, 21 de junio de 2007
Much Music: premios a los mejores clips
La fiesta interminable del pop en pantalla
La señal musical realizó anteayer su particular ceremonia anual, con shows y entrega de estatuillas por las calles de Toronto
TORONTO.- No hay una gran sala de teatro con terciopelos rojos ni filas de butacas ni puertas traseras por las que las celebridades pretendan huir sin dejar rastros. De ninguna manera. Lo que ocurre en Queen St. West, el barrio más moderno y entretenido de la capital canadiense, es una entrega de premios que rompe con las convenciones. Un programa de televisión en vivo que le revela al gran público, y sin celos, los secretos que habitan detrás de cámaras. Una fiesta sin vestidos largos ni tocados pomposos, pero en la que todos se muestran espléndidos. Y lo extraordinario de la ocasión se impone, aun cuando algunos ídolos como Avril Lavigne, Maroon Five o la chica millonaria de Hollywood, Hilary Duff, dejan su huella en el extremo de una alfombra roja que (¡vaya diferencia!) los conduce por un camino plagado de teens efervescentes. Así son los Much Music Video Awards (MMVA): más que una vidriera, un puente entre la música y los fans de la televisión, para
Con las calles de los alrededores del edificio de Chum Television (el holding al que pertenece Much Music) debidamente cortadas al tránsito, ya desde el mediodía el centro de Toronto se preparaba para una fiesta que rigurosamente se agenda cada año en el calendario de imperdibles de
"¿Que a quién espero? ¡A todos! ¡A Billy Talent, a Nickelback, a Hedley!", decía
Con cada estatuita, cada nombre, cada breve acto en vivo, los MMVA fueron convocando en torno de los estudios del canal a unas seis mil jovencísimas almas y a una indefinida cantidad de curiosos que seguían los pasos de la fiesta desde las terrazas y balcones de las construcciones vecinas.
Mientras los metaleros de Finger Eleven tocaban en el techo del edificio exclusivamente para la cámara que los llevaría en directo a unos 3,5 millones de televidentes y al mismo tiempo que en los estudios del segundo piso se preparaba un clip de My Chemical Romance en alusión a los dos MMVA obtenidos (mejor grupo internacional, según el canal y el público), el paisaje del estacionamiento mutaba en tiempo real y a la vista de todos para recibir a la modelo y actriz Hilary Duff en una fugaz demostración de que, como cantante, sigue los pasos de Britney.
En calidad de presentadora, Joss Stone hizo su aparición para introducir el minishow (sólo un tema) de los Maroon 5. También estuvieron allí para revelar el contenido de algunos sobres una surtida fauna de famosos de cabotaje (músicos, conductores, bloggers , deportistas) y los más internacionales Emilie de Ravin (protagonista de
Lágrimas de princesa
El año pasado, la princesa punkie pop se había bajado los pantalones en escena y ahora, apenas horas antes de comenzar los premios, sugirió que quizás esta vez se los sacaría. Pero nada de eso ocurrió. Lavigne se calzó una estudiantil minifalda a cu
Muchos números
· 100 millones de espectadores vieron los MMVA en todo el mundo en 2006.
· 6000 fueron los adolescentes que poblaron las calles cercanas al edificio de Much Music anteayer.
· 1200 adolescentes accedieron con su pulsera dorada a las gradas que rodeaban el escenario del estacionamiento.
· 17 fueron las categorías que se premiaron, 4 de ellas representadas por el voto de la gente.
· 3 escenarios al aire libre vibraron simultáneamente con la actuación de bandas y solistas.
jueves, 14 de junio de 2007
Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play
Presleigh Montemayor often gets home after a long day and spends some time with her family. Then she logs onto the Internet, leaving the real world and joining a virtual one. But the digital utopia of Second Life is not for her. Presleigh, who is 9 years old, prefers a Web site called Cartoon Doll Emporium.
The site lets her chat with her friends and dress up virtual dolls, by placing blouses, hair styles and accessories on them. It beats playing with regular Barbies, said Presleigh, who lives near Dallas.
“With Barbie, if you want clothes, it costs money,” she said. “You can do it on the Internet for free.”
Presleigh is part of a booming phenomenon, the growth of a new wave of interactive play sites for a young generation of Internet users, in particular girls.
Millions of children and adolescents are spending hours on these sites, which offer virtual versions of traditional play activities and cute animated worlds that encourage self-expression and safe communication. They are, in effect, like Facebook or MySpace with training wheels, aimed at an audience that may be getting its first exposure to the Web.
While some of the sites charge subscription fees, others are supported by advertising. As is the case with children’s television, some critics wonder about the broader social cost of exposing children to marketing messages, and the amount of time spent on the sites makes some child advocates nervous.
Regardless, the sites are growing in number and popularity, and they are doing so thanks to the word of mouth of babes, said Josh Bernoff, a social media and marketing industry analyst with Forrester Research.
“They’re spreading rapidly among kids,” Mr. Bernoff said, noting that the enthusiasm has a viral analogy. “It’s like catching a runny nose that everyone in the classroom gets.”
Hitwise, a traffic measurement firm, says visits to a group of seven virtual-world sites aimed at children and teenagers grew 68 percent in the year ended April 28. Visits to the sites surge during summer vacation and other times when school is out. Gartner Research estimates that virtual-world sites have attracted 20 million users, with those aimed at younger people growing especially quickly.
Even as the children are having fun, the adults running the sites are engaged in a cutthroat competition to be the destination of choice for a generation of Americans who are growing up on computers from Day 1.
These sites, with names like Club Penguin, Cyworld, Habbo Hotel, Webkinz, WeeWorld and Stardoll, run the gamut from simple interactive games and chat to fantasy lands with mountains and caves.
When Evan Bailyn, chief executive of Cartoon Doll Emporium, said that when he created the site, “I thought it would be a fun, whimsical thing.” Now, he says, “it’s turned into such a competitive thing,” adding that “people think they are going to make a killing.”
Even Barbie herself is getting into the online act. Mattel is introducing BarbieGirls.com, another dress-up site with chat features.
n recent months, with the traffic for these sites growing into the tens of millions of visitors, the entrepreneurs behind them have started to refine their business models.
Cartoon Doll Emporium, which draws three million visitors a month, is free for many activities but now charges $8 a month for access to more dolls to dress up and other premium services. WeeWorld, a site aimed at letting 13- to-25-year-olds dress up and chat through animated characters, recently signed a deal to permit the online characters to carry bags of Skittles candy, and it is considering other advertisers.
On Stardoll, which has some advertising, users can augment the wardrobe they use to dress up their virtual dolls by buying credits over their cellphones. At Club Penguin, a virtual world with more than four million visitors a month, a $5.95-a-month subscription lets users adopt more pets for their penguin avatars (animated representations of users), which can roam, chat and play games like ice fishing and team hockey.
Lane Merrifield, chief executive of Club Penguin, which is based in Kelowna, British Columbia, said that he decided on a subscription fee because he believed advertising to young people was a dangerous proposition. Clicking on ads, he said, could bring children out into the broader Web, where they could run into offensive material.
Mr. Merrifield also bristles at any comparison to MySpace, which he said is a wide-open environment and one that poses all kinds of possible threats to young people.
To make Club Penguin safe for children, the site uses a powerful filter that limits the kinds of messages users can type to one another. It is not possible, Mr. Merrifield said, to slip in a phone number or geographic location, or to use phrases or words that would be explicit or suggestive. Other sites are also set up to minimize the threat of troublesome interactions or limit what users can say to one another.
We’re the antithesis of MySpace,” Mr. Merrifield said. “MySpace is about sharing information. We’re all about not being able to share information.”
Other sites are more open, like WeeWorld, which permits people to create avatars, dress them up and then collect groups of friends who type short messages to one another. The characters tend to be cute and cartoonish, as do the home pages where they reside, but the chatter is typical teenager.
“There’s a lot of teasing and flirting,” said Lauren Bigelow, general manager of WeeWorld. She said that the site had around 900,000 users in April and is growing around 20 percent a month.
Ms. Bigelow said that 60 percent of WeeWorld users are girls and young women, a proportion that is higher on some other sites. Stardoll said that its users are 93 percent female, typically ages 7 to 17, while Cartoon Doll Emporium said that it is 96 percent female, ages 8 to 14.
Some of the companies are aiming even younger. The Ontario company Ganz has a hit with Webkinz, plush toys that are sold in regular stores and are aimed at children as young as 6. Buyers enter secret codes from their toy’s tag at webkinz.com and control a virtual replica of their animal in games. They also earn KinzCash that they can spend to design its home. The site draws more than 3.8 million visitors a month.
Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the social aspects of technology, said that the participants on these sites are slipping into virtual worlds more easily than their parents or older siblings.
“For young people, there is rather a kind of fluid boundary between the real and virtual world, and they can easily pass through it,” she said.
For some children, the allure of these sites is the chance to participate and guide the action on screen, something that is not possible with movies and television.
“The ability to express themselves is really appealing to the millennial generation,” said Michael Streefland, the manager of Cyworld, a virtual world that started in South Korea and now attracts a million users a month in the United States, according to comScore, a research firm. “This audience wants to be on stage. They want to have a say in the script.”
But Professor Turkle expressed concern about some of the sites. She said that their commercial efforts, particularly the advertising aimed at children, could be crass. And she said that she advocates an old-fashioned alternative to the sites.
“If you’re lucky enough to have a kid next door,” she said, “I’d have a play date instead of letting your kid sit at the computer.”
The site lets her chat with her friends and dress up virtual dolls, by placing blouses, hair styles and accessories on them. It beats playing with regular Barbies, said Presleigh, who lives near Dallas.
“With Barbie, if you want clothes, it costs money,” she said. “You can do it on the Internet for free.”
Presleigh is part of a booming phenomenon, the growth of a new wave of interactive play sites for a young generation of Internet users, in particular girls.
Millions of children and adolescents are spending hours on these sites, which offer virtual versions of traditional play activities and cute animated worlds that encourage self-expression and safe communication. They are, in effect, like Facebook or MySpace with training wheels, aimed at an audience that may be getting its first exposure to the Web.
While some of the sites charge subscription fees, others are supported by advertising. As is the case with children’s television, some critics wonder about the broader social cost of exposing children to marketing messages, and the amount of time spent on the sites makes some child advocates nervous.
Regardless, the sites are growing in number and popularity, and they are doing so thanks to the word of mouth of babes, said Josh Bernoff, a social media and marketing industry analyst with Forrester Research.
“They’re spreading rapidly among kids,” Mr. Bernoff said, noting that the enthusiasm has a viral analogy. “It’s like catching a runny nose that everyone in the classroom gets.”
Hitwise, a traffic measurement firm, says visits to a group of seven virtual-world sites aimed at children and teenagers grew 68 percent in the year ended April 28. Visits to the sites surge during summer vacation and other times when school is out. Gartner Research estimates that virtual-world sites have attracted 20 million users, with those aimed at younger people growing especially quickly.
Even as the children are having fun, the adults running the sites are engaged in a cutthroat competition to be the destination of choice for a generation of Americans who are growing up on computers from Day 1.
These sites, with names like Club Penguin, Cyworld, Habbo Hotel, Webkinz, WeeWorld and Stardoll, run the gamut from simple interactive games and chat to fantasy lands with mountains and caves.
When Evan Bailyn, chief executive of Cartoon Doll Emporium, said that when he created the site, “I thought it would be a fun, whimsical thing.” Now, he says, “it’s turned into such a competitive thing,” adding that “people think they are going to make a killing.”
Even Barbie herself is getting into the online act. Mattel is introducing BarbieGirls.com, another dress-up site with chat features.
n recent months, with the traffic for these sites growing into the tens of millions of visitors, the entrepreneurs behind them have started to refine their business models.
Cartoon Doll Emporium, which draws three million visitors a month, is free for many activities but now charges $8 a month for access to more dolls to dress up and other premium services. WeeWorld, a site aimed at letting 13- to-25-year-olds dress up and chat through animated characters, recently signed a deal to permit the online characters to carry bags of Skittles candy, and it is considering other advertisers.
On Stardoll, which has some advertising, users can augment the wardrobe they use to dress up their virtual dolls by buying credits over their cellphones. At Club Penguin, a virtual world with more than four million visitors a month, a $5.95-a-month subscription lets users adopt more pets for their penguin avatars (animated representations of users), which can roam, chat and play games like ice fishing and team hockey.
Lane Merrifield, chief executive of Club Penguin, which is based in Kelowna, British Columbia, said that he decided on a subscription fee because he believed advertising to young people was a dangerous proposition. Clicking on ads, he said, could bring children out into the broader Web, where they could run into offensive material.
Mr. Merrifield also bristles at any comparison to MySpace, which he said is a wide-open environment and one that poses all kinds of possible threats to young people.
To make Club Penguin safe for children, the site uses a powerful filter that limits the kinds of messages users can type to one another. It is not possible, Mr. Merrifield said, to slip in a phone number or geographic location, or to use phrases or words that would be explicit or suggestive. Other sites are also set up to minimize the threat of troublesome interactions or limit what users can say to one another.
We’re the antithesis of MySpace,” Mr. Merrifield said. “MySpace is about sharing information. We’re all about not being able to share information.”
Other sites are more open, like WeeWorld, which permits people to create avatars, dress them up and then collect groups of friends who type short messages to one another. The characters tend to be cute and cartoonish, as do the home pages where they reside, but the chatter is typical teenager.
“There’s a lot of teasing and flirting,” said Lauren Bigelow, general manager of WeeWorld. She said that the site had around 900,000 users in April and is growing around 20 percent a month.
Ms. Bigelow said that 60 percent of WeeWorld users are girls and young women, a proportion that is higher on some other sites. Stardoll said that its users are 93 percent female, typically ages 7 to 17, while Cartoon Doll Emporium said that it is 96 percent female, ages 8 to 14.
Some of the companies are aiming even younger. The Ontario company Ganz has a hit with Webkinz, plush toys that are sold in regular stores and are aimed at children as young as 6. Buyers enter secret codes from their toy’s tag at webkinz.com and control a virtual replica of their animal in games. They also earn KinzCash that they can spend to design its home. The site draws more than 3.8 million visitors a month.
Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the social aspects of technology, said that the participants on these sites are slipping into virtual worlds more easily than their parents or older siblings.
“For young people, there is rather a kind of fluid boundary between the real and virtual world, and they can easily pass through it,” she said.
For some children, the allure of these sites is the chance to participate and guide the action on screen, something that is not possible with movies and television.
“The ability to express themselves is really appealing to the millennial generation,” said Michael Streefland, the manager of Cyworld, a virtual world that started in South Korea and now attracts a million users a month in the United States, according to comScore, a research firm. “This audience wants to be on stage. They want to have a say in the script.”
But Professor Turkle expressed concern about some of the sites. She said that their commercial efforts, particularly the advertising aimed at children, could be crass. And she said that she advocates an old-fashioned alternative to the sites.
“If you’re lucky enough to have a kid next door,” she said, “I’d have a play date instead of letting your kid sit at the computer.”
Pink Hello Kitty Laptop
Japan's cutest kitty in glittering pink crystal decorates NEC's new laptop
TOKYO — Japan's cutest cat in glittering crystal decorates NEC Corp.'s new pink laptop in the Japanese electronics maker's latest effort to woo working women.
The La Vie G Hello Kitty model, available for $1,650 by Internet order only in Japan, went on sale Wednesday, and has gotten off to a good start, company spokesman Shinya Hashizume said Thursday, while declining to give numbers.
"PC users now tend to be men, but we're hoping to attract women with this product," he said.
The laptop, developed in collaboration with Sanrio Co., the Tokyo-based company behind Hello Kitty, uses 299 Swarovski crystals to depict four hearts and the bubbly feline head wearing a pink bow and crown.
NEC is hoping to sell several hundred of the Hello Kitty laptops in the next few months, targeting the summertime when Japanese workers receive their twice-a-year bonuses, Hashizume said.
The La Vie G Hello Kitty model, available for $1,650 by Internet order only in Japan, went on sale Wednesday, and has gotten off to a good start, company spokesman Shinya Hashizume said Thursday, while declining to give numbers.
"PC users now tend to be men, but we're hoping to attract women with this product," he said.
The laptop, developed in collaboration with Sanrio Co., the Tokyo-based company behind Hello Kitty, uses 299 Swarovski crystals to depict four hearts and the bubbly feline head wearing a pink bow and crown.
NEC is hoping to sell several hundred of the Hello Kitty laptops in the next few months, targeting the summertime when Japanese workers receive their twice-a-year bonuses, Hashizume said.
The laptop, which comes with a Windows Vista operating system, 100 gigabyte hard disk drive and 1 gigabyte memory, is being advertised as a laptop that's "dazzling and gorgeous like a jewelry box."
Hello Kitty has been popular for years with children and young women, but the cat has begun to appear on electronic gadgets, guitars and expensive jewelry.
There's even a Hello Kitty Barbie, who wears a belt, necklace and jacket with the image of the celebrity mouthless cat.
Hello Kitty has been popular for years with children and young women, but the cat has begun to appear on electronic gadgets, guitars and expensive jewelry.
There's even a Hello Kitty Barbie, who wears a belt, necklace and jacket with the image of the celebrity mouthless cat.
lunes, 11 de junio de 2007
LOS ADOLESCENTES HACEN CORRER EL RUMOR
Los jóvenes de la llamada generación Y, de entre 13 y 24 años, son los más proclives a correr la voz sobre las cosas que les gustan. Además, son quienes más disfrutan de los contenidos generados por los usuarios. Según el informe State of the Media Democracy, realizado en Estados Unidos por la empresa de consultoría e investigación de mercados Harrison Group para la compañía de servicios profesionales Deloitte & Touche, las aptitudes para el "boca a oreja" de la generación Y vienen de sus largas listas de contactos electrónicos, a las que envían mensajes instantáneos y emails. Los chicos de esta generación tienen una media de 37 contactos en sus listas, una cantidad considerable si se piensa que la media general es de 17 contactos.
Que corra de boca en boca
Se trata de una generación que se maneja con absoluta facilidad en internet y son capaces de correr la voz sin problemas. Cuando los miembros de la generación del milenio, como también se llama a este grupo de edad, ven un anuncio de televisión o un sitio web que les gusta, se lo cuentan a una media de 18 personas, mientras que la media de todas las edades es de 10 personas. De hecho, la principal razón para visitar un sitio web suele ser que un amigo lo ha recomendado; en otros casos se visita el sitio web tras ver el anuncio en televisión.
No toda la publicidad es aceptada
Sin embargo, el que los adolescentes sean proclives al llamado word of mouth se contradice con sus preferencias publicitarias. Un estudio realizado por Harris Interactive en mayo de 2006 demuestra que los adolescentes prefieren encontrarse con el ya conocido product placement que con campañas de marketing viral. Además, algunas tácticas provocan una respuesta claramente negativa: el 45% de los jóvenes entre 13 y 18 años rechaza la idea de encontrarse en un chat con algún promotor que publicite sus productos. El 44% se opone a que se regalen productos de muestra a los jóvenes más populares. El 65% se opone a que se les pida sus datos personales. Y el 55% está en contra de la publicidad en teléfonos móviles. Tampoco acaban de aceptar que se escriban blogs dedicados a productos (32% en contra).
¿Qué hacen los adolescentes en la red?
En cuanto al consumo de contenidos online de esta generación, su principal ocupación es la búsqueda, descarga y escuchar música (78%), seguida de la lectura y visionado de contenidos personales creados por otros (71%). También visitan sitios de juego online (66%) o ven YouTube y otros sitios de vídeo online (62%). Otra función habitual de la red en estas edades es la de cauce de las relaciones sociales (62%). La creación de contenidos personales (58%) y mantener y compartir fotos (53%) son las facetas activas más habituales en esta generación. Algo más de un tercio de los encuestados mantiene sus propios blogs y sitios web. La misma cantidad suele participar en foros de discusión.
Las únicas actividades en las que esta generación es superada por otras es en la búsqueda de información y productos financieros y en la participación en subastas online, tipo eBay.
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