GenY – Is Content Still King?

According to an attitudinal research study completed by Resonate Research, 18-34 year olds purchasing behaviors are influenced by both the products value, the aspirational aspect of a product’s brand message, and also by it’s “cool” factor.

From the press release: This group is more passionate about social issues like energy (36% more than the 35 plus online population), climate change (48% more) and animal rights (24% more). However, in general they are 15% – 25% less likely to make purchase decisions based on their issues of importance. Instead they look to products for external validation, meaning they buy products that convey and reward their success and personal achievement. When compared to the 35 plus online population, 18 – 34 year olds are more likely to purchase based on the following brand attributes: innovation, looks, popularity and prestige. In fact, they are five times more likely than their elders to purchase a product that is viewed as prestigious, and over twice as likely to buy a popular product or a product that is aesthetically appealing.

Online TV Shows are trending towards a subscription only model

It has been fascinating watching the tentative forays of broadcast networks coming to grips with putting TV shows online.

Many Gen-Yers are taking the trend towards placing all TV content online for granted, and perhaps in the larger strategic sense it makes perfect sense for advertising industry and broadcasters to team up in order to take advantage of the Internets capacity to deliver more targeted advertising content. However, robust business models for incorporating profile driven advertising for TV shows do not really exist yet, and the jury is still out on if this translates into buyer behavior that would ultimately generate more revenue. In the meantime we are witnessing a retrenchment of sorts:

According to an article in the NY times today, AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon are among the companies exploring a subscribers-only approach to online TV.

Broadcasters “went out and did deals to put content on broadband without a whole lot of thought about the long-term financial model,” said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner and a principal supporter of the new subscriber-only Web video plan. “If people aren’t subscribing to the programming, you probably shouldn’t put it online, because then half of the financial support goes away. That isn’t good. It hasn’t been good for the newspaper industry.”

Image by JB Photo via Flickr

While a younger web-savy generation is thinking about concepts like trading their google searches and twitter activity to advertisers, in exchange for fewer and more targeted ads, the mechanics for this do not exist yet, and the aggregation platforms (like HULU and Boxee) that could deliver such business models are viewed with deep suspicion by network executives.

A friend today reminded my that old business models are easily destroyed, and die far more quickly than new and successful ones are born.

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• Some Online Shows Could Go Subscription-Only (nytimes.com)

Advertising that is perhaps a bit too interactive

Came across this story in Gizmodo: In Amsterdam a bus stop bench now interacts with a nearby fitness ad to publicly display how much you weigh… The ad indirectly shames you into joining a gym, but seems rather prejudiced.

All seriousness aside:  Why use technology in such a limited way?

Let’s discriminate more broadly and democratically:  Why not dynamically display different ads based on how much you weigh, for example “Hungry Jack” TV dinners for the underweight, school supplies for those under 40lbs,  funeral services special offers for those over 275lbs etc.?

Or how about adding one of the new facial recognition enabled cameras to detect a person’s hair color and outfit and suggest makeovers, hair-styling products, shoes and the like, complete with photo-shopped before and after “mock up” for the entertainment of those “unlucky” enough not to get a seat at the bus stop?

Bus Ad Shames You Into Joining a Gym by Showing Everyone Your Weight

By Adam Frucci,

This bus ad for Fitness First in Rotterdam, The Netherlands gives you the hard sell via shame. It uses a scale in the seat to display just how fat you are to everyone around.

I, for one, would be pretty pissed off if I didn’t know about this thing and sat down to wait for the bus, only to notice people laughing at my weight. It’s an attention grabbing ad, to be sure, but one that might just cross the line into ruining the bus stop rather than just advertising via it. But hey, if it’s getting people to work out at Fitness First, it’s effective. What say you? [DirectDaily via Animal New York]

Technorati Tags: advertising, interactive media

Yes, We Plan: How Altruism and Advertising Could Change the World

Here is a very interesting idea of using crowd sourcing concepts, combined with social media tools,  to engage, organize and motivate people to actually accomplish something positive and altruistic, by helping them move beyond “just talk” or “joining groups”, and by enabling and empowering them into action in a novel way.

I think that if successful, any tools that in large daunting projects help break down and reduce the scope into doable chunks, would have much wider applications in our lives both at home and at work.

I think we could all use help in moving forward with the meta projects in our life.

Original Article in Wired Magazine by Eliot Van Buskirk March 03, 2009

Marketing veteran Cindy Gallop and software developer Wendell Davis are on a quest to make the world a better place, with a crowdsourcing project to motivate people to do big things by taking small bites. Their theory: Small, good intentions can bring about great leaps.

Gallop is the former global marketing chief and U.S. chairman for the BBH marketing behemoth that ran campaigns for Levi’s, Axe Body Spray and other brands. She’s joining with former Splice and Zooomr CEO Davis (pictured) to accomplish this lofty task one piece at a time. They’ll encourage corporations to work with the customers they seek, as the community tackles a user-generated database of large and small causes.

Their unlaunched site, IfWeRantheWorld.com, should succeed in giving online activism some sorely-needed teeth. Rather than raising awareness, the site is set up to convert intent into action, to get things done. As a side effect, it could reinvent advertising as a transparent interaction between corporations and individuals.

“The single largest pool of untapped resource in this world is human good intentions that never translate into action,” said Gallop, who founded the company with Davis two years ago after digital guru Esther Dyson introduced them. Gallop says current do-gooder networks make it too hard to find achievable, concrete tasks that fit one’s skill set, time and budget — and that offer instant gratification.

“For a large amount of the world, doing good is fundamentally very, very boring,” explained Gallop. “If you go to the homepage of something like DoSomething.org, or any one of the many [like it], there is an instant yawn factor -– ‘I know this is really good stuff, I should be doing it, but I’m half asleep already.”

“There is no Google of action,” she added.

IfWeRantheWorld.com breaks even the largest goodwill projects (“feed Darfur”) down into discrete tasks, which it distributes to members through a commercially supported, socially networked environment. When people have the urge to act on something that irritates them about the world, they can actually do something. Their plan (more below) not only impressed us, but also Dyson, who said it will create “a liquidity of goodness.” Former Google executive Katie Jacobs Stanton, who joined the Obama administration as “director of citizen participation,” heard about the plan from Gallop at the TED conference last month.